TiVo Community Forums Archives - TiVo and Serial PPP Help

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TiVo and Serial PPP Help
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Posted by: HogarthNH

Hi gang.

Most of this was covered in another thread, but nobody seems to be seeing it, so I thought I should repost.

I have a TiVo HDR312 with a dead modem.

My connection is:
TiVo --> Serial --> PC (win2k) --> ethernet crossover --> Linux Firewall Router (SmoothWall) --> Cable Modem

TiVo can connect to the PC, gets PPP, and, if I turn my Firewall's proxy on, I see TiVo making requests to http://204.176.49.2/tivo-service/HServer.cgi
and the like in the log.

TiVo typically connects, receives between 31k and 50k of data through the connection, (sending 2-3k) and then the connection 'freezes', not transmitting data, then about two minutes later, TiVo disconnects.

Routing seems fine and when TiVo is connected, I can ping it fine.
(DHCP from the router usually assigns it 192.168.1.10x, where x is 2 to 9, depending on how many tries I've done lately.)

Test calls work great.
Daily calls return "Failed. Service Unavailable."

I tried opening up UDP port 123, as I saw it was required in another thread here in the underground.

I tried turning off serial buffering, but it had no effect.
I have tried 19.2kbps, 57.6kbps, and 115.2kbps.

One try at 9.6kbps seemed to work better (Downloaded 216k) but then it still crashed, the same way.

I am not behind a Transparent Proxy.

I can't see anything that looks notable in TiVo's logs (C-E-C-ThumbsUp).

Can anyone assist??

I would really, really appreciate it.

Posted by: shinji

I have a Tivo that I have hooked to my linux box using PPP over serial. I was having some similar trouble where tivo would quit downloading and the pppd on my linux would crash. I finally figured out it was trying to do some compression and the tivo would handle this for awhile then die. In linux a just added a flag to the pppd to disable compression (nodeflate and nobsdcomp). I know nothing about how to make sure compression is off in Windows. But the symptoms sound the same.

Posted by: Demandred

What about flow control? Do you have 3.0? Have you checked Otto's FAQ?

Posted by: HogarthNH

quote:
Originally posted by Demandred
What about flow control? Do you have 3.0? Have you checked Otto's FAQ?

Flow Control is set to None.
I'm running v3.0.2002.05.08-1537

Otto's FAQ is how I got this far.

Posted by: stick

I am having the same problem with almost the same setup. What I am noticing though is that the address 204.176.49.2 does not seem to accept packets larger than 1300 bytes. If you do a normal ping to this address followed by ping -l 1500 204.176.49.2 you will see what I mean. I think the solution may lie in getting the MTU size on the cable connection lowered. Not sure how to do that on windows 2000 though.

Posted by: HogarthNH

I found a tool called WebWorks (http://www.ndksolutions.com/index2.htm) that let me tweak the MaxMTU setting.

It did not seem to change the behavior.

Things always crash right after /tivo-service/unpack-perflog.cgi
The size of the data posted to unpack-perflog varies depending on how long it's been since I last tried a call.

Otto? Gleffer? anyone? Help please.

I've been looking at /var/log/tclient but all it tells me is that TiVo gives up on the connection and I don't know why.

Another idea I have is this:
The network route between me and 204.176.49.2 sucks eggs.
Anyone else having problems care to try pinging it for awhile and see how good/bad it is?

[Edit: Here's my results:
--- 204.176.49.2 ping statistics ---
1042 packets transmitted, 998 packets received, 4% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max 149.0/857.4/2416.7 ms
That's pretty bad, isn't it?]

Thanks

Posted by: stick

I found the problem on my system. Seems that Tivo doesn't care what the MTU is set to on the PC it is connecting to. I set the MTU on all my interfaces to 576 and still could not connect. Using a packet sniffer, I saw that Tivo was still attempting to use packets of 1500 bytes. I ended up removing my Tivo's A drive and mounting it on my PC. I then edited the /etc/ppp-options file, adding the line "mtu 576". I put the drive back in Tivo and was able to connect immediately. All the packets from Tivo are now a maximum of 576 bytes and all is right with the world ;)

Posted by: Demandred

Weird. It works great on mine, and I didn't change anything about the packet size.

If you want, I can check the size of my packets and tell you what I'm seeing. Just tell me how to do that, and I will. :)

Posted by: stick

Its called NetworkActiv sniffer and can be found on www.download.com. Pretty much, just install it and press start to capture the packets. You should see packets moving between whatever address your direct cable connection is assigned and 204.176.49.2. You can see the size type and contents of the packets. Pretty interesting just to watch actually.

Posted by: HogarthNH

stick,

Thanks for all your assistance.

I've cracked my case, mounted my TiVo disk, changed ppp-options for a new MTU.. (took me 7 hours to figure out I had a locked drive.)
all that jazz.

Downloaded NetworkActiv.. my packets are still 1500 in size!!

how many different occurences of /etc/ppp-options is there??

I edited the on partition hdc4, but are there others?

Jesus this is a pain in the butt :( :( :(.

Thanks

Hogarth

Posted by: stick

Wow, sorry your having all these problems. There are a couple of partitions the Tivo can boot from. On my system it is partition 4 or 7. Right now my system boots to 4. The way you can tell is to use hyperterminal with the tivo plugged into your com port(using the null modem as well). Start hyperterminal, restart the tivo and press "enter" within a few seconds of tivo powering up. The password is "factory". You should then bet a prompt, press "p" at the prompt. This will show your boot parameters, including which partition the Tivo boots to.

Posted by: HogarthNH

stick,

I appreciate the help.

I was able to mount partition 7 and change the ppp-options file found there, too.

I was then able to make a daily call. Yay!

Otto, I'd recommend adding that to the FAQ..
If one can't connect using the initial methods, mounting the TiVo drive and adding 'mtu 576' to all ppp-options files worked for both Stick and I.

Hogarth

Posted by: stormsweeper

You can see it without getting into the PROM, too. Do -

code:
dd if=/dev/hda count=24 bs=1

you should get some weird characters, then something like

code:
0306root=/dev/hda4

so hda4 is your active root.

You can also do tis from the boot cd, just change hda to hdc or whatever as needed. note the output will still list hda4 or hda7, however, just mount hdc4, hdc7, etc.

Posted by: usafa92

Can Someone point me in the direction of Otto's FAQ? I can't find information on how to setup my Series 2 (Sony SVR 3000) serial cable up for updates....

Posted by: pastrami

quote:
Originally posted by HogarthNH
stick,

I appreciate the help.

I was able to mount partition 7 and change the ppp-options file found there, too.

I was then able to make a daily call. Yay!

Otto, I'd recommend adding that to the FAQ..
If one can't connect using the initial methods, mounting the TiVo drive and adding 'mtu 576' to all ppp-options files worked for both Stick and I.

Hogarth

This is might be what I just need to get my tivo working. My current setup is :

cable modem --> computer (winxp) --> (serial cable) tivo

At some times it completes the test call but zero luck with the daily call.

Do you have any instructions on how I can add 'mtu 576' to all ppp-options?

thanks, can't wait to try this out!

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