Very slow EPG

Jeddy

Member
Hi, can anyone help please? The performance on my EPG has become chronically slow of late. Sometimes I can click up / down / left / right and it may take 15 seconds to respond. Another time it may only be a few seconds. Similarly if I click on record, or move down to select reminder - can take ages.
Needless to say this makes scheduling recordings very tedious.
It is similar with the TV portal which also crashes the box from time to time.
The 'media' menu works fine, so there is no problem with the remote / receiver etc.
I tried a factory reset, retune etc., which I thought may have worked initially (still not exactly fast), but if that did make a difference it didn't last long.
Any suggestions please?
 
Best idea is to ask first and reset/retune later. A retune, especially when programmes 'go missing' often looses more channels than you had lost in the first place.
 
The Portal is very unreliable and liable to cause the machine to crash.

Disk problems can cause slowdowns so it would be worth installing the customised firmware (if you dont already have it) and running fix-disk to ensure the disk is clean
 
Check your recording schedule and remove any finished (--:-- ~ --:--) series that you no longer need. That may speed up the EPG navigation.
 
Check your recording schedule and remove any finished (--:-- ~ --:--) series that you no longer need. That may speed up the EPG navigation.

A retune should have removed any existing (--:-- ~ --:--) series together with the rest of the schedule
 
Thanks for all the thoughts.
Yes I do have CF so will try fix-disk.
I do periodically clean up old scheduled events - especially when I noticed the EPG going slow and yes it does help, however this slowness has gone way beyond that, I have tried it and only have a few old entries - the web interface scheduled events list makes it easy to keep this clean!
I do wonder if I may have fixed then reinstated the problem though, after I did the retune I used the web interface to restore all my scheduled recordings, I guess if there is a problem in there I could simply have reinstated it. Maybe I need to make a note of my scheduled events, retune and manually recreate them?
Thanks for the google search suggestion.
I know on an old PVR, a failing power supply (capacitors) could cause assorted similar problems, I half wondered if the same could be going on here.
Also, given I have 2 identical boxes, presumably I can swap the disks over and see if the problem moves (I recognise I'd loose access to encyypted recordings while the drives are swapped, and assume I'd get them back when swapped back). Although I'm not quite sure what action I'd take depending on whether the problem does move or not!
Thanks guys.
Jeddy
 
The CF can remove the encryption on all your recordings on both boxes. Even without the CF you can view your recordings on one box on the other, and vice versa.
 
Thanks for the google search suggestion.
The reason I offered it is because it produces loads of results of similar discussions - too many for me to be bothered linking them all in a post. The EPG went "slow" with 1.03.xx firmware, and there was lots of discussion about it and what could be done to alleviate it (one of which is to go back to 1.02.xx firmware - but you lose the TV Portal).
 
I don't believe this is specifically a 1.03.xx firmware issue. OK, the EPG was never exactly lightning fast, but it is only over the past few months where it has become almost unsuable. Also, the other Hummy with identical firmware is 'ok', i.e. 1-2 second response as opposed to 5 - 30 second response.
 
Have you run option 1 (fix-disk) from the maintenance mode Telnet menu yet? You need to.
Not yet, I've been out all day and there are recordings scheduled all eve and as best I can recall this takes a while to run. I'll do tomorrow.
Thanks. Jeddy
 
Having run a fix-disk, none of the following jumps out at me as being indicative of a problem.
Code:
Please select option: 1
Any additional options (or press return for none):
Are you sure you wish to run the hard disk checker? [Y/N] y
Running /bin/fix-disk
Custom firmware version 3.02


Checking disk sda

Unmounted /dev/sda1
Unmounted /dev/sda2
Unmounted /dev/sda3

Running short disk self test

No pending sectors found - skipping sector repair
Using superblock 0 on sda1
Using superblock 0 on sda2
Using superblock 0 on sda3


Checking partition /dev/sda3...
e2fsck 1.42.10 (18-May-2014)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
/lost+found not found.  Create? yes

Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

hmx_int_stor: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
hmx_int_stor: 14/655776 files (7.1% non-contiguous), 123762/2622611 blocks

Checking partition /dev/sda1...
e2fsck 1.42.10 (18-May-2014)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
/lost+found not found.  Create? yes

Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

hmx_int_stor: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
hmx_int_stor: 15/65808 files (6.7% non-contiguous), 16232/263062 blocks

Creating swap file...
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1073737728 bytes
UUID=77556906-ae1b-4565-91ef-1039f53baa23

Checking partition /dev/sda2...
e2fsck 1.42.10 (18-May-2014)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
/lost+found not found.  Create? yes

Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

hmx_int_stor: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
hmx_int_stor: 7173/60334080 files (6.3% non-contiguous), 128161055/241304331 blocks
Removing extra swap space.
Are you having problems with a delete loop? [Y/N]: n
Skipped

Finished

Press return to continue:


Jeddy
 
Last edited:
Your CF isn't completely up to date, but I doubt updating it would produce a different result. If the HDD isn't slugging the system with retries, and you're adamant this isn't a 1.03.xx problem, I don't see what else could be causing the delays you have reported.

Regarding posting terminal output, see Newbies Guide to the Forum
 
I would try resetting the EPG database from the maintenance mode menu - it may have a lot of stale data in it.

(The epgrange diagnostic can tell you.)
 
Oops, apologies, previous listing embedded as code.

Regarding epgrange
Code:
>>> Beginning diagnostic epgrange
Running: epgrange
Mon Nov 14 00:00:00 GMT 2016
Tue Dec  6 23:55:00 GMT 2016
>>> Ending diagnostic epgrange
which again I wouldn't have said was excessive. I've reset it anyway. Initial impressions are hopeful with 2-3 second response (at least that's usable), I'll monitor to see how this goes.

Time to have a look at what the latest CF gives, as above, I've not touched it for a while!

Thanks and fingers crossed...
Jeddy
 
That didn't last long in any case. The EPG response on this box is now 5+ seconds most of the time.
I did check 'her' box (identical with same CF but it gets used a lot less), and the response is almost instant.
I have also noticed that now when I go to windows explorer and look at the file structure on my Hummy, I can only see a minority of the files. Some folders appear to be empty, others only have one or two .ts files in even when I know there are many more recordings. (I have show hidden files on, I don't have hide protected system files on)
It all feels like the box is too busy doing something else to bother about what I want it to do.
Jeddy
 
Back
Top