AltEPG

I see that the AltEPG image increases the buffer from the default of 30 minutes. Now that I know that can be done, I wonder if I can turn off the live buffering completely? I just don't watch live TV at all and the chances of turning on the TV to see that I've missed the start of something I'm interested are as near to zero as it's possible to get.

So, rather than thrashing the disc 24x7, can I stop the live buffering completely?

Of course, that begs the question as to whether it can actually be turned off and therefore not use the disc, or whether it is just reduced to a minimal buffer but still uses the disc.

Well you can give it a go, just run:

./bufferhack32a.tcl

The lowest default option is back to 30 mins, but it will allow you to put a custom setting in

It will stop buffering if it can't see any input from AUX or if its tuned to a non-existant RF channel.
Problem with that is that it will also reboot after a while (an hour) with no signal.

I honestly doubt it has any bearing on drive life though !

I certainly don't want it rebooting just because I've turned off the Virgin STB.

Why don't you think it will effect drive life? The disc is getting hit 24x7x365 - that's a lot of reading/writing and seeking. The only drives I've had fail are the ones I've had in the TiVo. If I can stop the buffer, the disc will only get used when recording or playing back a programme and that will be a significant drop in usage.

Thanks Dave, I'll try running the TCL script.

Umm, not recommended. The Tivo went into a boot/crash cycle and I've had to pull the disc. For some reason I can't mount the partition when booting with the mfstools disc either, so I maybe some time.

swuk wrote:Umm, not recommended

Yikes! , which bit?
Just running bufferhack?
or did it not like the custom setting?

I entered a custom time of '0' which the script was OK with and then proceeded to use and by the looks of it, wrote the value into /tvbin/tivoapp.bufferhack. Finally reporting:-

Code: Select all

tivoapp has been patched to properly display a buffer with 0 Minutes
REBOOT for changes to take effect

So I rebooted and that's when the problems began.

But now I appear to be screwed. I've put the disc into my old PC and tried various boot discs to get at the disc to change the value back, but I can't mount partition 4. Even the AltEPG boot disc can't do it and reports that it can't find ext3 (or 2) filesystem on the device. Ultimately reporting that it can't mount /dev/hdb4 on /mnt/tivo. Seems to me that it's toast. Maybe the partition table got corrupted?

Not sure how to fix this now without re-writing the AltEPG image and starting all over again.

Any ideas? Preferably before the wife gets home from work.

I guess in hindsight, setting to 0 isn't a good idea, part of the bufferhack is to edit the system so the timeline shows correctly according to the live buffer.
I would imagine the reboot cycle you were getting would have been tivoapp keeling over, unable to handle that.
I forget the order of things, its possible you would have had a small window of opportunity to telnet in before the next crash but on the same basis, I wouldn't expect you to have a problem mounting the partition either

TBH a drive running 24/7 is far happier than one that is not, my current TiVo drive is just coming up to its 9th Birthday rarely turned off, running on a UPS, the only time it gets powered down is for its once year de-fluffy of the inside

Yet I've had drives that have been used/accessed far less that have lasted only 4 years before going west

Furbag

As I only had a day to lose as it were, I just re-flashed the drive. All back to normal (or will be in 4-8 hours).

Also, I know it's too late to mention this now, but if you've ever sat reading the tvlog file that TiVo generates (as you do of an evening), you'll see that TiVo is constantly creating and deleting "recordings" that form the live buffer.

So if you set a shorter buffer like a few minutes, you'll be working your TiVo much harder making it do this more often!

TiVo is always recording, and always playing back at the same time unless you press pause. The Sky clouds backgrounds in the menus are recordings too. And it's always (always!) scouring the guide data/free disc space/to-do list checking for schedule changes and working out your disc space etc, shuffling items in the To-Do list and other housekeeping. And it constantly writes all this activity to its logfiles.

It's writing to disc 24/7 and its disc will never spin down. Even if by disabling logging (not recommended) you could set a short enough spin-down time to get it to do so, it would spin up again really soon to do something else. Then you're in the realm of whether or not constantly spinning up/down wears out a drive more than leaving it running.

swuk wrote:As I only had a day to lose as it were, I just re-flashed the drive. All back to normal (or will be in 4-8 hours).

In a way that's great (for you)! I'd love to know what actually happened though

mrtickle wrote:

swuk wrote:As I only had a day to lose as it were, I just re-flashed the drive. All back to normal (or will be in 4-8 hours).

In a way that's great (for you)! I'd love to know what actually happened though

My money's on a divide by zero somewhere - 'puters don't like zeroes...

I can understand a divide by zero causing the crash, but not to the point that it prevented me from mounting the disc in a PC. Somehow, something got corrupted. I suppose I could have pulled the plug at the wrong time.

Still, it's easy enough to replicate if someone wants to understand it more.

mrtickle wrote:......... but if you've ever sat reading the tvlog file that TiVo generates (as you do of an evening), .

my life cannot be complete

Furbag