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Turbonet only occasionally starts up (v2.5.5a)!
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Posted by: peterb

I had been using TiVonet for several months before upgrading to a Turbnet card. When I installed the Turbonet, all I found was necessary was to change the insmods from 8390 & tivone to ax88796. Everything came up and worked well and reliably - ftp, telnet, TiVoweb and daily calls over broadband.

I have just received an upgrade (TiVo UK) from v2.5.5 to v2.5.5a

Having re-installed all of the configuration, such that (as far as I am aware) it is all as it had previously been under v2.5.5, I find that the ethernet very rarely comes alive. I have not been able to establish whether there is a significant change in circumstances which determines whether it works or not. My closest guess is that it is determined by how long the box is left powered down. If this is the case, then it would seem that the power has to be off for significantly more than one minute before the ethernet will start up.

I have tried re-seating the Turbonet card etc, all to no avail.

In the circumstance where the ethernet does not come up, my hub/switch does not indicate a live connection (ie all the lights stay off). However, the lights on the switch do, eventually, come up (after about half to one hour?) but there is still no connectivity.

The tail of my rc.sysinit looks like this:

echo "rc.sysinit is complete"
/bin/bash </dev/ttyS3 >& /dev/ttyS3 &

tnlited 23 /bin/bash -login &
sync ;
insmod -f /var/hack/lib/modules/ax88796.o ;
sleep 2 ;
sync ;
ifconfig eth0 10.2.100.1 netmask 255.255.0.0 broadcast 10.2.255.255 up ;
/var/hack/bin/route.tivo add default gw 10.2.0.2 ;
/var/hack/bin/tivoftpd
/var/hack/bin/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb

Can anyone shed any light on what the problem is here? It wold be comforting if the ethernet started up reliably!

Thanks,
Peter.

Posted by: peterb

Hasn't anyone got any ideas on this one??

Posted by: jafa

Hi,

Can you please add debuglevel=3 to the ax88796 insmod command line, reboot, and then dump the kernel log file (/var/log/kernel).

Make sure that you remove the debuglevel for normal operation.

Nick

Posted by: peterb

quote:
Originally posted by jafa
Hi,

Can you please add debuglevel=3 to the ax88796 insmod command line, reboot, and then dump the kernel log file (/var/log/kernel).
Nick

Thanks for the response, Nick.

Unfortunately, I don't think I quite understand what to do with the debuglevel=3.

I tried:

insmod -f /var/hack/lib/modules/ax88796.o debuglevel=3 ;

but all that happened was the kernel log said 'invalid parameter debuglevel'.

Am I putting the parameter in the wrong place, or should I be using ax88796_debug.o?

Posted by: jafa

Sorry, you are doing it right except you need to use ax88796_debug.o

Nick

Posted by: peterb

Okay, thanks. The tail of my Kernel log file is attached - this is for a session where the ethernet did not start up (no indicators lit on switch, no response to ping).

I hope that it means more to you than it does to me!

Thank you very much.

Posted by: jafa

That log shows a happy tivo with a working turbonet card :)

Did you try pinging it that particular boot?

Nick

Posted by: peterb

quote:
Originally posted by jafa
That log shows a happy tivo with a working turbonet card :)

Did you try pinging it that particular boot?

Yep, as I said no indicators lit on switch, no response to ping.

I'll go and try it again!

Posted by: peterb

quote:
Originally posted by peterb

Yep, as I said no indicators lit on switch, no response to ping.

I'll go and try it again!

Okay, here is another capture in the log. I'm absolutely certain that the ethernet was not working as a result of this boot (no indicators lit, no response to ping).

Restarting the box within 5 minutes of power down results in this condition. A 15 minute wait before powering up appears to be sufficient to get the ethernet back up and running!

Posted by: jafa

Weird, the tivo is talking to the card fine.

That either means that the PHY is not coming out of reset or you have a bad cable/port.

Can you please try another cable (reasonably short) just to tripple check.

Nick

Posted by: peterb

quote:
Originally posted by jafa
Weird, the tivo is talking to the card fine.

That either means that the PHY is not coming out of reset or you have a bad cable/port.

Can you please try another cable (reasonably short) just to tripple check.

PHY?

The TiVo is normally located some distance away from the switch, and connected via about 100ft of built-in cabling, with short patch cables at each end, plus a short piece of flat cable from the Turbonet card to the outside of the box. However, I have already tried placing the TiVo on my desk with a different short patch cable from a different port on the switch directly to the Turbonet card. So, I'm pretty confident that this isn't down to a cabling problem. In any case, I would be surprised if the cable was able to suffer from the 'delay' effects which I am experiencing.

Iguess that it is possible that this effect has always been present with the Turbonet card, and it is just that I hadn't tried any 'short period' power-downs before i experimented with the 2.5.5a download!

My concern is that if we suffer a short mains power outage, I may not be aware that the Turbonet hasn't started up until the TiVo runs out of guide data!

I will try introducing a hub between the TiVo and the built-in cabling to see whether this makes any difference.

I have seen warnings that the Turbonet should not be restarted within a minute (?) of powering down. Is it just that my card is suffering from a longer delay than normal - presumably some RC timing components on a reset line may be out of spec??

Posted by: peterb

quote:
Originally posted by peterb
I will try introducing a hub between the TiVo and the built-in cabling to see whether this makes any difference.

I can now confirm that I get exactly the same behaviour when connecting the Turbonet directly to a 10BaseT hub with a short patch lead.

So, I guess that the conclusion must be that I have a faulty Turbonet card?

Posted by: peterb

quote:
Originally posted by peterb

I can now confirm that I get exactly the same behaviour when connecting the Turbonet directly to a 10BaseT hub with a short patch lead.

So, I guess that the conclusion must be that I have a faulty Turbonet card?

Okay. Is any one (Nick?) able to advise me on how to reduce the power-down time required before the turbonet card will restart, from its current 15 minutes?

Any components on the card that I can check/replace?

Posted by: jafa

Hi,

There is one more thing to try - I will post a slight change to the driver to test.

Nick