[Formuler F1] Error -6 When Recording Makes Box Unresponsive

[PJDiddy]

Hi all

Forgive me if I have missed something obvious but I'm a newbie to this after getting my first Enigma2 box last month to replace an aging Foxsat box, a F1 populated with an extra DVB-T2 tuner for Freeview in addition to the two sat tuners being supplied from a Sky dish for Freesat/FTA however the box keeps becoming unresponsive every couple of days displaying the spinner stopping recording and unable to change channels. I love the flexibility of the box but its driving the wife mad especially when it fails on her recordings. The logs suggest "'prepare' failed: error -6" when certain recording are set to start, what is the definition of this error? I can find a number of posts about it but no real fix. Seems to happen when two recordings occur at the same time. Any ideas to stop this happening?

View attachment Enigma2_debug_2018-01-26_17-23-17.log

Thanks

Paul

 

[birdman]

It does seem to be the first recording on the DVB-T2 tuner?.

Error code -6 here is [FONT=courier\ new]errAllSourcesBusy[/FONT].

 

[twol]

Also can see 2 harddisks sda & sdb and a network mount.
To which device are you recording?

 

[bbbuk]

I thought my missus was bad with recording but it looks like yours is recording near enough 24/7 lol

I have never done my own debug (not yet had a reason too) but I noticed a lot of "renames" for each recording. Not sure if this is normal or if you have extra settings enabled to rename recording from the default. I state this as there was a few 'mv' errors. Maybe you sort the recordings into folders or something else?

Also, 'parted' was mentioned so have you partitioned a drive (hence what twol mentioned about using sda and sdb).

May need more idea of setup like plugins you have downloaded and installed that weren't already included in image when it was flashed?
Do you have recordings moved to specific folders or anything or changed default filenames?
What size HDD or USB do you use and how many and if partitioned?

 

[ccs]

There are a few

<210132.958> [TimerSanityCheck] conflict detected!
<210132.958> [RecordTimer] timer conflict detected!

errors near the end of the log, suggesting there might not be enough tuners available for future recordings.

 

[PJDiddy]

Hi guys, thanks for responses so far, here's answers to the queries. I have a 2TB drive connected (/media/hdd) for recordings, currently 88% free and a 64GB USB stick (media/usb) for EPG with 27GB free (it's also got some tunes on there), neither partitioned that I recall, certainly wouldn't have gone out of my way to do so but I can check if needed (not sure which is sda and which is sdb either off top of my head). The network mount is the old Foxsat box as we've not finished watching some older recordings, (was gonna use the Kodi plugin but it won't play them unlike Kodi on my Pi). I was hoping there were some out they who were recording far more so we didn't look that bad, honestly not couch potatoes! Tried to include timers but it said it was too big so maybe that was clue!

Apologies for not including the plugins, I had them in my draft post but forgot to include them when I copied it across as they were above the text. I have Kodi as mentioned above, the renames/moves will be due to Movie Organiser (prefer multiple episodes in directories like the old box), it's also set to remove "New" from the title but this doesn't seem to work very often. Downloaded OnDemand but not tried it yet as I hear it's fairly broken. I also have picons installed.

I've assigned alternatives to the most channels where alternatives exist. When I'm using autotimer I normally select to record a specific HD channel from my Freesat bouquet that the program is one but when it detects a conflict I switch the recording channel to one on my Freeview bouquet instead or it'd be a ongoing conflict each week, is this a correct way of doing things? Or should I be using a different method, I feel like I may be doing something fundamentally wrong. Having said that, why does the box effectivly hang until the plug is pulled just because all the tuners are busy when it does encounter this conflict? Spinner doesn't stop after recording should have finished and tuners freed, it sits there spinning until box is restarted.

The box is normally left on so I guess one tuner (normally a sat tuner as that's the first bouquet we use) is always in use. Am not using zap and record, I guess that this may eliminate the issue but would interrupt viewing. The old Foxsat box with two tuners (I do realise they are different but...), on finding a conflict would change to a channel on same transponder, admittedly also interrupting any viewing but only when it had to, not everytime like it would with zap and record.

Sorry for lengthy post, really feel it's down to me not knowing enough yet for the most part, not having had experience of Enigma2 before, love the customisation but there's so much of it! Again thanks for the help, will happily answer more queries and let me know if I missed anything.

 

[cactikid]

just a thought is your hdd mounted and showing ext3 -ext4?
i presume you set a timer recording on your sat epg and also on your freeview epg?

 

[PJDiddy]

just a thought is your hdd mounted and showing ext3 -ext4?
i presume you set a timer recording on your sat epg and also on your freeview epg?

HDD (sdb1) is formatted as ext4 and USB (sda1) is vfat. I started out using OpenWebif's epg search and creating an autotimer from that but the channel selector box didn't always refresh and showed incorrect channel (I've found a couple of post going back years with this issue), I now use the Android app Dream EPG Premium after hearing good things.

If the box encounters this conflict, is there a setting that will change to a channel on the same transponder rather than just stopping due to the error? I'm pretty certain from the answers that it happens when I'm watching something on tuner A (sat), box wants to record two programs both set for the sat tuners as there's not normally a conflict at this time but as I'm watching one so it errors as there's no free tuner, does that sound like what happening? If so whats the best way to avoid it? A box from almost 10 years ago is smart enough to change transponder, can this? I thought with an extra/spare tuner, it would make things easier.

An option would be to watch Freeview and use the sat tuners to record, its not very often I need all three recording at once but wife is accustomed to Freesat channel number, don't really want to reorder the entire Freeview bouquet to match the Freesat!

 

[cactikid]

usb to me is not setup correctly it also needs to be ext3- ext4
not sure if you are using something not supported as epg can be setup using vix with sat and freeview scans run in the morning giving you 7 day epg.
box should have 2 sat feeds but check both tuners are configured and getting a signal and the same goes for the freeview feed.
if 2 sat recordings happen you may have to go to freeview to view free tuner,recordings overide viewers
sometimes if recording 2 sat tps other tps will be lighter in colour and viewable on the same tp.

 

[PJDiddy]

Think I just shoved in first USB stick I found when setting up so will get that changed. I've tested both sat tuners by disabling one, trying to watch something then disabling the other, both work fine and show correctly in the infobar that I'm using tuner A or B. Also checked signal strength on meter and this looks ok, Freeview feed also working fine showing tuner C whenever I watch something from Freeview bouquet so I assume no probs here either. Whilst playing with the tuner configs, I just tried to record on one tuner for a duration of 1 minute whilst second sat tuner is disabled and it won't let me, stating a conflict with an upcoming recording which isn't starting til tomorrow evening...?!

I currently have the EPG setup with two TV bouquets (one Freesat and one Freeview, an empty favourites and a third bouquet with 5 "channels" of my CCTV streams). I have it set up to download EPG info every 24 hours I think and both show a full 7 days listings.

Forgot to mention earlier that after box does hang and I reboot it, once back up it immediately picks up on the two timers and records both programs with no issue. Seems like box isn't overriding the viewers over the recording as you say it should (exactly like I thought it would work), should it just kick me off the channel I'm watching if it needs the tuner I'm watching?

 

[cactikid]

on my solo2 both tuners are set to simple,single and sat 28.2 as both are from a fixed dish.
i have a funny feeling you might have to setup box from scratch as wrong settings and epg going to internal flash causes grief.
if watching a channel and box is recording one message comes up saying timer recording is starting and it switches to that.

 

[PJDiddy]

Nope, never seen any such message. Tuners set up the same, as shown below. Should the EPG be located on hdd then rather than usb?

GH

 

[cactikid]

setup tuner b like above post and not as post 10,
i use a usb to store my epg as handy to delete and setup again but others use hdd

 

[birdman]

should it just kick me off the channel I'm watching if it needs the tuner I'm watching

That is configurable:
Main menu -> Setup -> Recordings, playback & timeshift -> Playback & timseshift / Recordings always have priority: yes/No.

 

[birdman]

... and epg going to internal flash causes grief.

While true, there's no evidence of that happening here:

<199142.598> [eEPGCache] 99236 events read from /media/usb/epg.dat

 

[birdman]

usb to me is not setup correctly it also needs to be ext3- ext4

Mine is vfat and it causes no problems at all. I'm not downloading an EPG to it though (I get mine from the transponder data).

 

[birdman]

Totally unrelated to your problem, but there's a bug in the MovieOrganisor plugin (it can't handle files with a ' in their name).
If anyone knows where the source is it should be fixable.

 

[PJDiddy]

That is configurable:
Main menu -> Setup -> Recordings, playback & timeshift -> Playback & timseshift / Recordings always have priority: yes/No.

Thanks, thought this might sort it but looks like I already have it configured correctly.

 

[PJDiddy]

Totally unrelated to your problem, but there's a bug in the MovieOrganisor plugin (it can't handle files with a ' in their name).
If anyone knows where the source is it should be fixable.

Not sure location of source but I think it was quite by grog68 on Techkings forum so might be worth asking there. Might be why the removing of New sometimes fails.

 

[Andy_Hazza]

Ditch the usb and point the EPG to your HDD.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk