Sab triple tuner hanging during crossepg download

SabUser

Hi,
my Sab triple tuner hangs when I try to manually download/Update the crossEPG and I have to powerdown at plugtop to in order to use the box again.

In my EPG, a lot of the time, my Saorview channels dont always contain program data so I try to rectify this by going into Setup/crossEPG/Download now. However in a lot of instances this action hangs during the "Reading Summaries" phase?

Can anyone help in trying to resolve this issue?

Regards
Kenny

Gerry Wicklow

Trying to troubleshoot similar issue on Formuler F1. Will report back if I suss it out.
BTW crossEPG has nothing to do with Saorview. Simply tune in a Saorview channel for a few seconds and it will fill the EPG

Gerry Wicklow

Update: Cant suss it out yet. Works OK for a few days then goes wrong again. For now I've uninstalled the plugin and resorted to the inbuilt downloader. If you are using openATV it will eventually fill the EPG itself, it's just slow and can take a few hours but does work.

Nigzcurran

I remember having very similar trouble with my crossepg last year and could not sort it so eventually flashed an old Hyperion 4.5 and it’s worked a charm ever since

The high horse brigade

Crossepg is for satellite channel EPG, Saorview epg loads with the channel and does not need crossepg. It sounds like your satellite runner is busy or the box isn't able to change from terrestrial tuner to satellite to run the scan

If you manually run crossepg when you are on a satellite channel what happens?

STB.

From what the OP is describing its a memory issue. The NAND is 256megs on the Sabs. After the image is written, you will have less than half that.

Any chance the EPG setup is pointing to internal flash rather than a dedicated usb stick ? If a usb stick is being used make sure it is still working. Go in and delete the epg.dat file off it and try and download again.

What Skin is being used - the Sky Q Skin eats up memory.

I assume the OP hasn't downloaded a load of high quality picons and stored them on the internal flash.

If its none of those, it could be the image itself. Reflash and dont install any further add ons until you have the epg configured to write to usb

SabUser

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Crossepg is for satellite channel EPG, Saorview epg loads with the channel and does not need crossepg. It sounds like your satellite runner is busy or the box isn't able to change from terrestrial tuner to satellite to run the scan

If you manually run crossepg when you are on a satellite channel what happens?

Hi, The high horse brigade, That's the way I normally run it and it can hang more often than it completes.

Kenny

SabUser

Nigzcurran wrote: »

I remember having very similar trouble with my crossepg last year and could not sort it so eventually flashed an old Hyperion 4.5 and it’s worked a charm ever since

Sorry but you lost me after"eventually":o

SabUser

STB. wrote: »

From what the OP is describing its a memory issue. The NAND is 256megs on the Sabs. After the image is written, you will have less than half that.

Any chance the EPG setup is pointing to internal flash rather than a dedicated usb stick ? If a usb stick is being used make sure it is still working. Go in and delete the epg.dat file off it and try and download again.

What Skin is being used - the Sky Q Skin eats up memory.

I assume the OP hasn't downloaded a load of high quality picons and stored them on the internal flash.

If its none of those, it could be the image itself. Reflash and dont install any further add ons until you have the epg configured to write to usb

Pointing to external drive, download worked this morning? Saorview still empty but as was pointed out saorview isnt populated by this mechanism, so saorview problem is a red herring but download still an issue

Q What Skin is being used - the Sky Q Skin eats up memory.
A No idea how to determine skin

Q I assume the OP hasn't downloaded a load of high quality picons and stored them on the internal flash.
A Not that I'm aware of, only downloads I have on the external hard disk are movies, epg, system save and system image

Kenny

The high horse brigade

SabUser wrote: »

Hi, The high horse brigade, That's the way I normally run it and it can hang more often than it completes.

Kenny

Then I suspect you are saving to internal flash, you should be saving to usb key

Gerry Wicklow

I still think it is an issue with crossEPG itself or the data it is reading. I even rolled back to a backup image from 2 months ago which I knew was good, just in case a recent update messed up something, with similar results. I had deleted the crossEPG folder and epg.dat from my HDD. I have now reinstalled crossEPG. So far it is behaving but I was down this route before and it went wrong again after 2 days. Sometimes it would hang, sometimes it completely crashed the box causing a reboot (a rarity with linux) and then it would work fine for 2-3 days.

EDIT: there is nothing more frustrating than trying to troubleshoot an intermittent fault.

STB.

The Skin is the User Interface(UI). If you are using the UI that came with the box, dont worry about it. If you have installed a third party Skin, then worry about it.

You would be better off reimaging the box.

I presume its one of these boxes.

https://www.sabsatellite.nl/en/product/1137/sab-alpha-triple-hd-s811

The image download link for SAB Alpha OpenPli image 14-09-2018

Unzip that to a USB stick and install. After install have a dedicated USB stick for EPG, Swap and Picons (anything 4gigs up). You have to do all of this through the menu. Change the mounts to usb. Point the EPG to load only at /media/usb and (not internal flash). You should also setup a swap file (biggest you can) and that option should be in the info menu (from my memory)

Gerry Wicklow

Two guesses who got rudely awakened by the TV switching on at 06:00 when crossEPG crashed his sat box again. Totally stumped at this stage. I would do without crossEPG except you then lose data for CH4, CNN and all other non-Freesats.
DAMN FRUSTRATING

Nigzcurran

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

Two guesses who got rudely awakened by the TV switching on at 06:00 when crossEPG crashed his sat box again. Totally stumped at this stage. I would do without crossEPG except you then lose data for CH4, CNN and all other non-Freesats.
DAMN FRUSTRATING

Have you an older back up with a different image you could try?

Gerry Wicklow

Nigzcurran wrote: »

Have you an older back up with a different image you could try?

I tried one from June without success but might see if I have an older one lying around. Its as if it is misinterpreting something in the download. The logs say corrupt data file. Deleting EPG.DAT and the crossEPG folder works for 1 day. On day 2 it crashes/hangs

Nigzcurran

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

I tried one from June without success but might see if I have an older one lying around. Its as if it is misinterpreting something in the download. The logs say corrupt data file. Deleting EPG.DAT and the crossEPG folder works for 1 day. On day 2 it crashes/hangs

Ah ok not identical to my issue then, mine just wasn’t populating at all, attempted to download but just couldn’t get any data, I tried reflashing and reinstalling but in the end I just used an older image and it’s been working perfect ever since, it came with a few unnecessary plugins already installed I can’t remove so I might just build a fresh image as the only 2 I use are crossepg and cooltvguide. Do you know of anyone else using the same image as yourself with crossepg working trouble free?

STB.

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

I tried one from June without success but might see if I have an older one lying around. Its as if it is misinterpreting something in the download. The logs say corrupt data file. Deleting EPG.DAT and the crossEPG folder works for 1 day. On day 2 it crashes/hangs

Something to try.


FTP into the box using filezilla (or some other ftp program) go to media/usb or media/hdd and find that epg.dat file. Make sure the attributes are 755 rather than 644. Apply them. It seems to be an overwrite problem.

Gerry Wicklow

STB. wrote: »

Something to try.


FTP into the box using filezilla (or some other ftp program) go to media/usb or media/hdd and find that epg.dat file. Make sure the attributes are 755 rather than 644. Apply them. It seems to be an overwrite problem.

At the risk of tempting the gods, did a complete clean install and it seems to be behaving itself for now. 3 days and counting

Gerry Wicklow

Knew I was tempting the gods, it crashed again this morning. I'm now chasing a new line of inquiry. I think it might be the HDD failing. As a temporary stop gap I've stuck a USB dongle in until I can dig up a better HDD from my junk pile. Fingers crossed.

NewClareman

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

Knew I was tempting the gods, it crashed again this morning. I'm now chasing a new line of inquiry. I think it might be the HDD failing. As a temporary stop gap I've stuck a USB dongle in until I can dig up a better HDD from my junk pile. Fingers crossed.

CrossEPG regularly crashed my TiviarA+, when I moved to OpenATV 6.3. I moved back to a clean install of OpenATV 6.2 and so far, so good. (1 week)

Gerry Wicklow

Further Update on crossEPG crashing Formuler F1 using openATV 6.3 :-

Having had time to do more detailed testing, it was indeed the HDD failed. Hdparm tests show roughly 1/10 the speeds I would expect. That HDD has been in constant use for over 2 years so,...

Thanks again to everyone here on Boards for your support and suggestions. This is what makes these forums so great.