# BUG REPORTS L186: Nightly reboots, recording from SAT channels and other problems...



## muenchris (Jan 16, 2004)

I am not sure if I am the only one but I still have a series of problems with the 921 that are persistant since a couple of L18x releases. Right now its streaming 187 so I am very thrilled what will (not ) work now.

All problems below are with 186. I did multiple smartcard and powerplug resets with the 921 still all problems below remain.

Problem1: Timers for SAT channels do not fire anymore...AT ALL!
They dissapear from my timer list once they have past but they never fire. Reading about some trouble other users have with timers not firing when watching a OTA channel I made sure that I am on a SAT channel to test it...still they do not fire

Problem2: I cannot add OTA channels to favorites.
I can scan them and they stick in the "Subscribed Channels" and "All Channels" guides but not in my favorites....I even have the feeling there is a limit of how many channels I can add. A couple versions back I could not add/modify/delete ANY channel (including SATs) from my favorite lists. Since I have a nice setup right now I do not dare to try again.

Problem3: Caller ID
That seams to be a ping-pong game. Every second release its not working again....you should see my caller ID history. You can see when there was a release to the 921 because there are days and even weeks with no caller ID than there are weeks with multiple calls per day (as it should be).

Problem4: Nightly reboots!
I cannot believe the 921 is doing that? Why is that necessary? What about timers that are set to fire in the middle of the night? Being an embedded developer myself the only reason I can think of such a crasy thing is to "preventively" reboot the device before it crashes to clean out stacks, caches and other unknown "bad developer bugs" (Buffer overruns, stack corruption caused by imprecise reference counting etc). (Too bad that there are no good heap-check tools for Linux). If the nightly reboots were meant to solve the issues with the unmotivated crashes during normal operation - they were successful. I did not have a crash in months. - But not a good sign for the dev-crew behind the 921.

Problem5: PIP - I do not use it anymore
I tried PIP a couple times when I got the 921. It looks like the 921 sometimes internally forgets to turn it off (although the window is not visible). Resulting in strange "you cannot change away from this channel because there is no free tuner anymore" (or similar) message.

Problem6: Recording suddenly removed!
I came back from 3 weeks vacation and half of my recordings where just gone! There were no active times (even if there were, they did not fire anyway). Did I miss something that recordings time out? I guess I should read the manual for a change

Problem7: (New to 186 and I hope its gone with 187) I loose SAT channels!
They just go to an "Oversubscribed" mode in the guide. I get them back after a smartcard reboot but I cannot do Smartcard reboots everyday. I am sure that is caused by these strange unnecessary nightly reboots. Interestingly its always channels where I do have timers in the future set (i.e. USA or HDNET) and therefore might also be the reason why some timers do not fire.


Here comes my biggest question:
There is an option "Factory Reset" in the Menu.
What is happening when I select that? Will it really clean out all databases including maybe corrupt OTO lists, Favorites and my recordings?
Shall I do this in hope it will fix at least some of my problems? (ie. Timer fire, Favorites and OTA related could be caused by corrupt databases on the 921)

I also want to let you know that some month back (I think around April/May) I had perfectly fine working 921. No issues at all: CallerID was working, OTA was working, Timers were working, stable running. Except maybe some crashes during longer viewing hours.

Any response is greatly appreciated.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Why don't you do a factory reset and then redo your timers fresh. I did a factory the other day and I didn't lose any timers but I did lose all my favorites list and caller id list history. I didn't even lose any ota channels. It all works fine now. This was pre 187 though. I don't know what happens if you do it now.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Answer #1: It sounds to me like you've got timer database corruption. Delete all timers. Do a power plug reboot. Do it again. The second hard boot is important. You should be good.

Answer #4: Yes, Eldon has equipped the box with a nightly automatic reboot - IF it is idle with nothing pending.

That's all I know.


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## dishbacker (Jun 15, 2004)

#4: I believe if you don't put your receiver in standby mode, it will not automatically reboot. And then your timers will fire correctly.


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## muenchris (Jan 16, 2004)

will give all your suggestions a try. Especially the dual Power Plug boot. If that does not help I will do the factory reset. Strange thought that a factory reset does not delete all the OTA channels.

Thanks.
I will keep you posted what happens after 187


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Problem #1 - test again after L187. Lots of timer fixes (although not completely mentioned in the release notes).

Problem #2 - I'm told this will be fixed in either L188 or L189 (they told me, I just don't remember which one it was).

Problem #3 - seems to be working for most people now under L187.

Problem #4 - feature, not bug that is still in L187. The reboot won't take place unless the 921 is in standby, and there are no timers set to fire.

Problem #5 - I have never seen that one in all of the PIP testing I've done over 25 or so software versions.

Problem #6 - I have no idea...

Problem #7 - sounds similar to what Don Landis was going through with L186 as well.

Factory Reset does now clear all of the OTA channels as well.


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## muenchris (Jan 16, 2004)

I did retest all things with L187 and did the "Delete-all-times-and-power-plug-reboot-twice". Here is the result:

#1: Timers still do NOT fire! I can be on a SAT Channel, OTA channel or on the channel itself that I want to record - nothing! (btw: The OTA Timers fire just fine - just the SAT timers do not)

#2: It says "Done" but it did not do anything:-( - so no change here

#3: Yep, that is fixed - again - I hope it stays that way since it worked with every second build version 

#4: Still embarassing! THey should rather fix the memory leaks

#5: I do not dare to test. Right now I am not using PIP so ... no worries here.

#6: Try to get your harddrive full with HD recordings and have a couple OTA timers fire 

#7: So far I did not see this again. But I sometimes loose my Satellite signal (that is new since 186). I think if I stayed a long time on a OTA channel and exercised the DVR functionality and than move to a SAT channel I loose the satellite signal. The only way I can get it back is by turning off the 921 (standby is ok) and turn it on again - right afterwards I get back the signal. That is still the case after the dual-power-plug reboots.

My next stop is "Factory Reset". Reading the post above I am wondering what it does. If it does not clear out the OTA registrations and timers it cannot be a clean Factory Reset (FR).

I still love my 921 and have high hopes  that it will work perfectly some day...


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## muenchris (Jan 16, 2004)

Oh and one more thing...

I think #7 could have to do with that new feature "supports the SW34 switch".
I do not have ANY switch between my Dual NLB Dish and the 921. TO support a switch, the drivers have to change/optimize their realtime-timing. It might be that these changes have de-stabilized the "normal" mode.....Just an Idea


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## Slordak (Dec 17, 2003)

You mean... supports the DPP-44 switch?

The DP-34 was supported before, and there is no SW-34. In any case, it seems unlikely that adding DPP-44 support would cause those running *without* a DPP-44 to suddenly experience odd failures. It would seem reasonable to expect that the only time this would be active would be during a "Check Switch", after which point in time if it was determined that a DPP-44 is not present, no further DishProPlus operations would be attempted.


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## muenchris (Jan 16, 2004)

yes, sorry, the DPP44. Well, as far as I know driver developement you have to add code/behaviour/timing to a driver for any new hardware you want to support. the DPP44 is new hardware for the old driver and so no matter when that code is active, the driver was touched/changed. And it looks like it was changed in a bad way. These problem started to appear in 186 and are still there with 187


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

It's unlikely that adding the DPP support would cause this issue. Adding the original DishPro might have because it was an entirely new methodology of controlling the switches/LNBFs. The DP "Plus", at the hardware level, is nothing more than adding a few new commands to an existing command set. No timing issues or anything like that. The actual changes for DPP are (at least) one layer higher than that. Caveat: This assumes that this part of the software has a reasonable design. Considering that this part of the 921 works pretty well, I think that's a safe bet.

So, sorry, nice hypothesis, but I don't think it's an issue.


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## muenchris (Jan 16, 2004)

well....I guess I have to wait for 188 or 189 or what ever build will finally work again


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