Box ran painfully slow

[Martincape]

Hi guys.

Came home from work before, box was already on, the mrs was watching. I went to change channel and it took ages to fire up the bouquet list, then to load the epg, even exiting took ages.

Decided to restart it. That took about 3 mins to reboot!!!!

Seems fine now, but it's the first it's ever done that.

[Larry-G]

Where do you have picons saved to ?, also if it happens again try activating the debugging feature so you can log it, this is pretty much the only way were going to be able to diagnose and repair the problem.

[Martincape]

Debugging mode is on all the time pal. Picons are saved to the USB along with the EPG.

[Larry-G]

If debugging is activated and saving to the HDD it will cause the HDD to spin constantly. try moving it to the USB stick instead. as for the EPG thats perfectly fine in the internal HDD as it's held in live memory at all times.

[Martincape]

How do I know where debugging is saving to pal?

[Larry-G]

Check in the logs section and hit menu. Sorry i cant be more specific as i'm at work and not near a receiver to give exact details.

[Martincape]

Just checked pal. It's saved in /home/root

Is that the internal flash? Is that ok pal?

[Larry-G]

yeah thats fine thats where i save mine too.

next time the box does slow down like you described above wait a minute or two then reboot it and upload the corresponding log for us to check.

[Martincape]

Will do pal. Cheers for that.

[Rob van der Does]

A reboot taking a long time can have several causes.
One is an internal HDD that's being checked (because the journal tells Linux there may be an issue).
Two is an external mount (a NAS or so) that is not alive.
Three is a large amount of channels/bouquets, timers and autotimers.
Four is one or more plugins causing issues.

[Martincape]

It's just done it again. Started immediately after watching a program on the internal HDD

I enabled debug mode, left it or a while now it's rebooting. Still!!!

Taking ages to reboot. I can hear the HDD clicking a few times.

[Martincape]

Finally can connect to box via FTP again. Heres the debug log:

32945

[ronand]

If you can hear the hard drive clicking then it may be a faulty drive. How old is the drive?

I see from your log that you have a mount point failed also

[cactikid]

would the box and router need powering off for 30 secs then on as i have to do that the odd time when restarting or rebooting by remote does not work to clear the problem.

[Martincape]

I think it's the drive. It's only 2 month old WOS fitted it when they sold me the box.

I just clicked on the hard drive button on the remote. It took 30 seconds to load anything up. Now the box is dead slow again. There is something not right with the hard drive which is affecting the entire box.

What can I do? Can the internal hard drive be rebuilt? As in formatted, new partition an remounted etc?

Making the box unusable :(

[cactikid]

have you tried rebooting as in off/on yet before you dig into the hdd.

if faulty hdd be covered under warranty i imagine.

[Martincape]

Yea it'll be covered by warranty. I've switched off by rocker switch and gonna leave off for tonight.

I've switched off and on a few times to reboot. But as soon as I want to go into hdd everything slows. Took me 30 seconds to to view menu before!

Could be something has become corrupt on hdd. Everything on it is backed up on laptop so if I have to try a format etc it's no big deal. Just don't know how to do it on the box. Or if it will be possible due to that causing the problem.

[Larry-G]

try formatting the drive ( initializing it ) via the image first to see if that sorts it. sorry i cant give the exact path to the initialization option rite now as i'm at work and not near a receiver.

[Rob van der Does]

If the HDD is making clicking noises that's a clear sign of a dead HDD. And that would perfectly explain the symptoms you see.
As a final check: if you power the box down, disconnect the HDD and power up again you should be back on a normal boot time if indeed the HDD is faulty. And if that's the case, just contact WoS.

[Martincape]

After it being totally switched off all night. The box seems fine today. I haven't gone into the hdd yet. I'm on back shift so I don't want to do anything this morning lol. But time shift is enabled and that records onto hdd. Think I'll still reflash and reinitialise everything Friday when I get chance.

[stevejd2001]

I had very similar issue --- thought was HDD, ended up being a rogue plugin

[Martincape]

Think that's why I'm going to do a re flash soon. A re flash wipes the box and reinstalls doesn't it? So it's a fresh install?

Saying that, TSMedia has just gone to 5.0 recently. I tried to download from it yesterday and I couldn't find the file. Wonder if TSMedia is the problem.

[Larry-G]

yes a fresh flash will wipe the previous image and all settings, akin to a new windows OS being installed on your pc / laptop.

[Martincape]

Cool cheers pal. Think I'll wipe everything. Both hdd and USB.
Fresh start.

[Martincape]

It's been spot on last few days. Until today. I was trying to transfer, via FTP some mp4 files to the internal hdd.

It was transferring painfully slow. 1.8Mib/s!!!!

So I just left it, but when I tried to change channel on box, it was going the same slow speed it has been. So I've given up transferring and tried to reboot the box. This has taken over a minute. But it's back to normal again.

Has anyone else seen this issue? It must be something to do with the hdd function. I want to leave a total reflash as the last option as it takes ages getting all settings and everything set up again.