TiVo Community Forums Archives - Program Guide Data ....Big Brother

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Program Guide Data ....Big Brother
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Posted by: mickyw

In June I upgraded my Tivo Series 2 Unit to replace the 40 gig harddrive with a 120 Gig hard drive with success...Or so I thought. Since then, every two weeks, my unit reports no Program Guide Data. I started to watch and sure enough if you went to pick shows to record, it would warn you that your program guide data was low. This despite the fact that the daily calls are successful.

Upon calling Tivo about this, they informed me to first try and repeat guilded setup, then to erase season pass and to do list. Then finally to erase everything. After each of these, the problem showed up again. After talking to Tivo today, they informed me that there diagnostics show that I have a hacked unit, they can no longer support me. They can tell the DAY that I upgraded. The question I have is could this problem that I am having be coming from them?

And if not, what is it?

Thanks.

Posted by: Robert S

Does the problem go away if you put the old drive back in?

Posted by: mickyw

I would love to test that theory...but alas, I don't have the old drive anymore.

Live and learn...

any other suggestions?

Posted by: Robert S

Tell us more about how you did the upgrade. Did you just change the hard drive, or did you do some hacking too? Did you follow Hinsdale or figure the procedure out for yourself?

Normally getting Guide data is pretty reliable. The only thing that occurs to me is swap problems, which make TiVoes behave oddly and completely prevent UK TiVoes from getting Guide data. Your TiVo has more RAM than mine, so I think it should be able to run the indexer with no swap, but it's the only thing that springs to mind.

Unfortunately, as you're running 4.0, you can't use the backdoor codes to read your logs, so verifying you have working swap is a rather involved process.

Posted by: mickyw

Robert,

I should add that a Repeat Guided Setup gets the guide data for the next couple of weeks.

When you say "involved" does that mean impossible?

Thanks,
Micky

Posted by: Robert S

I forgot to ask, does the 'indexing' date in System Information advance after a daily call? Also, do you get 'raw' Guide data (the on-screen EPG, Browse by Channel etc) and it's just the indexed data (Search by Title, SP's, etc) that's missing?

'Involved' means it helps if you know how to use a Linux command line. You need to mount your /var partition from a TiVo boot disk and then read /var/log/messages (or is it /var/log/kernel), which will, of course be something like /mnt/log/messages in the PC environment and track down the lines where the TiVo declares the activation of the swap partition.

If you answer the questions at the top of my previous post it may be possible to determine this without opening the TiVo.

Posted by: mickyw

Robert,
Okay let me see if I can recall this...its been a while (two months)

First I printed out Hinsdales how to....

I also had it up on the screen in my office...I found a later version on the web.

I originally downloaed MFS Tools, but the wrong version (which I started with cuz it was link from TomsHardware.com)

I plugged in my old and new drives on a secondary IDE controller, booted the cd from the MFS tools cd...
backed up my original image to the harddrive in the computer, ran the various utils (sorry for not being more specific) on both the old tivo and new drive and attempted to get both drives to work.

mfs tools reported at that time that the capacity had been upgraded and that the drives were blessed.

but the two drives never worked (never booted)

So I went down the path of just restoring the old image to the new drive, blessing it and putting it in.

That worked (booted)
and looked like everything was okay.

The potential issues is maybe the image got corrupt along the way, but in my experience as a programmer, that would be an wickedly "organized" corruption in that the behavior really is predictable.

If I have to get to the command line, I just need to get telnet on there? I am a linux user, so that wouldn't be an issue.

Thanks so much,
Micky

Posted by: Robert S

I see your 'little revelation' in the Hinsdale thread that this TiVo connects through a firewall rather than a dial-up. You do realise no everyone on this board knows every detail of your setup and it's easier for us to figure out what's going on if you tell us these things?

So, forget everything I said above and replace with the following: Does the TiVo get its Guide data correctly if you use the dial-up?

Posted by: Robert S

If I have to get to the command line, I just need to get telnet on there? I am a linux user, so that wouldn't be an issue.

Wow, TiVo CS really dodged a bullet with this one, didn't they?

READ WHAT I SAID!

You need to mount your /var directory from a TiVo boot disk. In a PC? Similar to what you did when you upgraded?

Getting shell prompt on Series 2 isn't easy.

Posted by: Robert S

If you used a fairly recent (the last year or so) copy of Hinsdale then you should have restored with -s 127 and therefore have plenty of swap.

Thus I'm thinking your idea about the NTP port on the firewall is a more likely explanation for your problems. AIUI, the problem occurs when the clock drifts more than a certain amount, so it could well be that your clock is fairly accurate and took a good while to drift out by enough and that just coincided with your upgrade.

Posted by: mickyw

Robert,
yes I did use the -s 127 option.

I really appreciate the help here. Sorry I didn't pick up on the mount information in there.

So let me answer your questions

quote:
Does the TiVo get its Guide data correctly if you use the dial-up?

I don't have any way of testing this in my house because I don't have a phone line, just cell phones. The original setup of this box was at a friends to get the 3.0 software to support my USB.

quote:
I forgot to ask, does the 'indexing' date in System Information advance after a daily call? Also, do you get 'raw' Guide data (the on-screen EPG, Browse by Channel etc) and it's just the indexed data (Search by Title, SP's, etc) that's missing?

Hmm...as I have tested it, browsing by channel and moving the guide up 12 days works...but the indexing data does not. So I guess it is just the indexed stuff that doesn't work.

quote:
I see your 'little revelation' in the Hinsdale thread that this TiVo connects through a firewall rather than a dial-up. You do realise no everyone on this board knows every detail of your setup and it's easier for us to figure out what's going on if you tell us these things?

Yes this is a broadband connection. USB, wired not wireless.

quote:
Thus I'm thinking your idea about the NTP port on the firewall is a more likely explanation for your problems. AIUI, the problem occurs when the clock drifts more than a certain amount, so it could well be that your clock is fairly accurate and took a good while to drift out by enough and that just coincided with your upgrade.

I can check my firewall to see if its denying anything coming from/to TIVO...

quote:
Wow, TiVo CS really dodged a bullet with this one, didn't they?

READ WHAT I SAID!

...sorry?...

Posted by: Robert S

-s 127 definitely gives you 127Mb of swap, so that's fine. As I said, getting Guide data is normally pretty reliable and the only other thing I can think of that would stop it (particularly after doing the full reset) is the firewall thing.

Posted by: mickyw

Robert,
Thanks for your help. Tonight I'm going to try and just softening my firewall rules to allow everything in and out temporarily, and then do the Tivo call. If that works, I'll know it was the ntp thing.

Thanks again,

Micky

Posted by: mickyw

Robert,
I started a new thread called Guide Data and Indexing to consolidate the threads from yesterday and update the status.

Thanks for you help yesterday.

Micky

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