Two Problems While Trialling CF 1.03.12 on HDR-Fox T2

N

Newcoppiceman

Active Member
Problem 1 - PVR freezes then automatically re-starts. As well as interrupting live viewing this causes scheduled recordings in progress to be cut short. This happens even if there is no LAN connection; I've made one available for the purposes of investigating the CF but we have never previously had one (everything we watch comes via Freeview).

Problem 2 - Difficulty obtaining manufacturer's 1.03.12 (which the PVR had been running on successfully since 2014). In recent years we've started doing a lot of moving recordings between folders and have previously noted that about 1 in 20 times this causes a freeze/re-start so now avoid doing this while recording is in progress - other than that 1.03.12 has been solid for almost ten years.

I studied electronics at Imperial College in the late '70s and joined BBC TV as a broadcast engineer, later moving to Channel 4 (a 30-year career), so my background is not in computers/IT. Accordingly I am currently getting my head around using SHA1 to validate 1.03.12 obtained from third parties (rather than Humax).

I joined this group in late 2021 when our PVR started playing-up. Interested in the CF minds immeasurably superior to mine had crafted I nevertheless resisted the temptation to try it. I identified "that capacitor" as the cause of our PVR’s problems (see pic).

Our repaired PVR has worked fine since, but came under suspicion last month. The problem was periods of bad picture/sound break-up and I replaced our principal PVR with a spare one we have but this didn’t solve the problem. (Neither of our two TVs suffered from this problem.)

We’re in Woking and get our signal from Crystal Palace via an external aerial and an amplifier located in the loft. Our reception for 10+ years had been QEF (Quasi Error Free) - ie essentially perfect - on all 7 muxes. With our principal PVR out of service, and while I investigated the reception problem, I thought I’d install CF 1.03.12 in this PVR.

The cause of our reception problem (which principally affected the 5 muxes using the 64-QAM method of modulation) was a faulty capacitor in the power supply feeding 12V to the amplifier.

After replacing this capacitor I returned the principal PVR (now with the CF) to service last Saturday (11 Nov). Since then we have had the freeze/re-start problem. Although I'm assured this can’t be due to the CF, obviously the first thing to try is going back to the official 1.03.12.
 

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Newcoppiceman said:
... Since then we have had the freeze/re-start problem. Although I'm assured this can’t be due to the CF, obviously the first thing to try is going back to the official 1.03.12.
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Try eliminating the hard drive from the list of possible suspects
  1. Tidy up the filesystem (eg use the reformat in the box or filesystem check on external Linux pc or replace the drive with a known good one, etc)
  2. Take note of the current drive SMART attributes
  3. Run a drive SMART scan
 
bottletop said:
Try eliminating the hard drive from the list of possible suspects
Click to expand...
The OP was previously advised to take a look at my Steps for Resolving HDR-FOX Crash/Reboot Issues (click) guide, which includes simply disconnecting the HDD in order to eliminate it from suspicion.

Reverting to standard firmware has never been a solution so far as I am aware (it's just included as a last resort, and experienced CF'ers wouldn't even consider it) – even without actually disconnecting the HDD, with CF installed a disk check operation is simple to perform (from Maintenance Mode).
 
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My focus is currently on reinstalling official 1.03.12 (still exchanging e-mails with Humax). If the problem persists I'll then get stuck in to fixing it and preserving existing recordings. The problem occurs infrequently - no problem apparent between the Saturday lunchtime and Tuesday evening - when even switching off the mains and manually restarting the two recordings that had been running didn't prevent it freezing again (couldn't cursor up/down) and auto re-starting.

I haven't tried tidying-up the file system - does this risk losing recordings or schedule? SMART info in first attached.

Current crash.log (as at 12:00, 17 Nov) showing Tuesday evening's mayhem at 20:xx and earlier (unnoticed) crashes. Although not appearing in crash.log there must have been another crash at around 23:30 on Wednesday as only the first 25 mins of a 75 min programme was recorded (full 75 mins on the other PVR).

I'm currently in Maintenance mode trying to run a short HDD test but results not forthcoming despite waiting >> "1 minutes".
 

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Could you show the lower part of the SMART output which is where the interesting data is to be found please? The fact that the reallocated sector count has increased shows something is happening with the hard rive but the count is very low.
 
I've used https://www.strerr.com/en/sha1_file.html to try to validate the two 1.03.12 downloads available at https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/F...igital-Recorder-Firmware-10312.shtml#download

One of the .hdf files is 22,307KB and yields 06217d41aabdb96f68e68db0515ab58a65b2e998
The other .hdf file is 22,327KB and yields 9dd3271e40c0170a7664f77a1781cb0f6444209e

Neither matches the dfc458b52c66754092a1bedbba57ab9385eb74c4 which BH advised (elsewhere) is the SHA1 hash for the 1.03.12 firmware.

Hopefully Humax will deliver on promise to provide.
 
Newcoppiceman said:
It is the original HDD, so ~14 years old. Full SMARTs attached.
Click to expand...
Thanks. To my eyes that looks fine; to have only 13 reallocated sectors after 13 years is remarkably good. Still worth running fix-disk to see if there are any issues with the file system. In my experience the chances of losing any recordings are very small.
 
Details for my files, maybe others can check theirs are similar
Code: 
sha1sum HDR-FOXT2_1_03_12/*
b3f2801791927ede432aa90e93c0118b347d5e05  HDR-FOXT2_1_03_12/HDR-FOX T2 1.03.12 Software Update.txt
06217d41aabdb96f68e68db0515ab58a65b2e998  HDR-FOXT2_1_03_12/hdr_fox_t2_upgrade.hdf

 1706 bytes          (Jul  9  2014) 'HDR-FOX T2 1.03.12 Software Update.txt'
 22841546 bytes      (Feb 11  2014) hdr_fox_t2_upgrade.hdf
 
Newcoppiceman said:
One of the .hdf files is 22,307KB and yields 06217d41aabdb96f68e68db0515ab58a65b2e998
The other .hdf file is 22,327KB and yields 9dd3271e40c0170a7664f77a1781cb0f6444209e
Click to expand...
They don't match any version of official firmware, as far as I'm aware, nor any recently released CF based on 1.03.12. They'd have to be unpacked further to work out what they may be.
Newcoppiceman said:
Neither matches the dfc458b52c66754092a1bedbba57ab9385eb74c4 which BH advised (elsewhere) is the SHA1 hash for the 1.03.12 firmware.
Click to expand...
Is that not what you get from the file on the link I provided? I do.
This file was downloaded from Humax before they deleted everything. You've heard the same from two people now.
For the record:
Code: 
5c6320e40e3771018d3e482274d37fa609fc286f  HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.07.hdf
b8771e6bc472e73ab03e8859d676e22652a0445b  HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.20.hdf
a149685bc05615ed75cf5d14c06c4940e99277dc  HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.27.hdf
b5ab2a569602dd5e5335b2f2e9388b4c1e908fb2  HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.28.hdf
a8a72c7c659438074fdfc66a5cb7a5f56810c1fb  HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.29.hdf
684cb5f872c4f99abef311fe11a113654be509da  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.06.hdf
3fb5a4864e6ef531339d5ad7427c5d338018f4b7  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.11.hdf
dfc458b52c66754092a1bedbba57ab9385eb74c4  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12.hdf
53fbf5334f02dae948c2c7c6355c5b1807acafa8  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_iPlayer_testfix.hdf
9dd3271e40c0170a7664f77a1781cb0f6444209e  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.13.hdf
15f20c0a2abc27ffce5a6949be982c461ad23c31  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_mod_3.13.hdf
728465c25f6531526c15b40fec8cde4645e0c135  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_mod_3.13d.hdf
dcbdd8d89eeedf978d9bebcdd26efc9cdcffc065  HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_mod_3.13k.hdf

-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 17598758 Thu 23 Jan 2014 16:30:28 HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.07.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 19129839 Thu 23 Jan 2014 16:31:52 HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.20.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 19433202 Thu 23 Jan 2014 16:33:18 HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.27.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 19431529 Thu 23 Jan 2014 16:34:44 HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.28.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 19432879 Thu 23 Jan 2014 16:36:10 HDR_FOX_T2_1.02.29.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 22176529 Fri  6 Dec 2013 04:46:52 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.06.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 20923372 Fri 24 Jan 2014 08:18:16 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.11.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 22841555 Sat  1 Mar 2014 01:14:52 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12.hdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23007296 Thu 28 Jan 2021 12:23:02 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_iPlayer_testfix.hdf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 22862093 Tue  9 Mar 2021 06:07:31 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.13.hdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24392674 Wed 26 Apr 2017 20:28:05 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_mod_3.13.hdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24503941 Wed 26 Apr 2017 20:28:18 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_mod_3.13d.hdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24172117 Wed 26 Apr 2017 20:28:29 HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_mod_3.13k.hdf
 
bottletop said:
22841546 bytes (Feb 11 2014) hdr_fox_t2_upgrade.hdf
Click to expand...
Maybe this is a pre-release 1.03.12 ? Somebody had a funky loader version with what appeared to be debug code in it, which we don't know the source of. Maybe this is it. I expect I'll have to download and have a look to satisfy my own curiosity now.
 
prpr said:
Maybe this is it. I expect I'll have to download and have a look to satisfy my own curiosity now.
Click to expand...
It isn't. It's the same as the official release but was probably packed with a different version (or different options) of the .hdf generating tool. Here are the component parts for each:
Code: 
cb2ac636a5583364c8f573ca1623e82d7c6f81c4  10312/2.hdfbin-1-1e00000.raw
cb2ac636a5583364c8f573ca1623e82d7c6f81c4  Unknown/2.hdfbin-1-1e00000.raw
cb4822854ca7823de5928400c72e6c70ef9cb604  10312/1.hdfbin-1-000000.raw
cb4822854ca7823de5928400c72e6c70ef9cb604  Unknown/1.hdfbin-1-000000.raw

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1915421 Fri 17 Nov 2023 17:57:07 10312/2.hdfbin-1-1e00000.raw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1915421 Fri 17 Nov 2023 17:56:14 Unknown/2.hdfbin-1-1e00000.raw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21069824 Fri 17 Nov 2023 17:57:07 10312/1.hdfbin-1-000000.raw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21069824 Fri 17 Nov 2023 17:56:14 Unknown/1.hdfbin-1-000000.raw
This was for the file with SHA1 starting 0621. I couldn't see another one on the link provided. So still keen to see the 9dd3 file.
 
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prpr said:
Is that not what you get from the file on the link I provided? I do.
This file was downloaded from Humax before they deleted everything. You've heard the same from two people now.
Click to expand...
! "What link?" was my first thought. I think you must be referencing post #117 in the previous Faulty Preamp PSU... thread. Although it doesn't say this post was edited, I distinctly remember your "' ' marks around the i word?" comment but not the "Try looking here..." which takes me to a 2022 post with a link to your Dropbox. Will check it out. (Who was the other person?)
 
Newcoppiceman said:
! "What link?" was my first thought. I think you must be referencing post #117 in the previous Faulty Preamp PSU... thread.
Click to expand...
I was.
Although it doesn't say this post was edited, I distinctly remember your "' ' marks around the i word?" comment but not the "Try looking here..." which takes me to a 2022 post with a link to your Dropbox. Will check it out.
Click to expand...
It hasn't been edited. You must have skipped over the second sentence!
(Who was the other person?)
Click to expand...
Black Hole, and me, and now bottletop (if you believe what I say in #113).
 
So I now have valid v1.03.12 Humax firmware - thanks everyone! I won't install this straight away as we haven't witnessed any further freezes/re-starts since Tuesday evening's meltdown. Will stick with CF pro tem and see how things go over the next few days.
 
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