VOMP Client Crashes

[morfsta]

Hi,

I use powerline ethernet and it is slightly susceptible to network issues with power variations. I have found that if there is a problem with the network stream whilst watching live TV or a recording VOMP client seems to freeze completely and there is no way to restart it (to the average user) without power cycling the MVP. But, the MVP is still on the network and running the Operating System so killing and restarting vomp client via a telnet login brings it back.

Would it be possible to implement some kind of watchdog whereby if the process freezes then it will restart after a short period of time, or something similar? Or if possible still allow the client to monitor for the power button so it will stop and restart?

Regards,

Morfsta

[neeesat]

That would be very helpfull. I am experiencing a lot of freezes my self so it would be very nice to have this feature.

Regards

Neeesat

[cafedelmar]

Hi,

I am using a new MVP Rev. H4 since yesterday and also noticed some freezes while watching recordings or hearing to music. I have everytime to stand up and to cut the power connection for a few seconds. Thats very annoying especially when you are lying in bed and watching a recording to fall asleep.

With this problem the MVP unfortunately is not very usefull for me, maybe this could be fixed in the near future (through the mentioned watchdog function)?

Regards,
CafeDelMar

[morfsta]

Yes, I should have also added that I have a H3 and when it freezes and if I (or my wife) power cycle's it then we have to wait over 10 minutes before I can start it up again otherwise it just hangs on restart. So, once that happens its pretty much the end of TV using it!

This also makes general use of vomp very hit and miss, which is a real shame because otherwise its great. :-(

Whilst the devs might come up with a more realistic solution, I wonder if perhaps there is a simple hack we can make in the build environment to restart the process on a vomp-client freeze?

[avvdr]

some questions/hints:
1. does this also happen during using the media player?
As I saw in the source the live tv and recording player have a good chance to freeze the client if there is no/bad data. The media player should not have this problem.
2. maybe you could modify the startup commandline of the client to give some "post mortem" log info - to find out where it crashes. See the following post for a proposal how to do this:
http://www.loggytronic.com/forum/index.php?topic=260.0
Should even work with a non-nfs dongle.
My commandline in /etc/rcS is:
/vompclient -d 10 2>&1 | /vdebugrot /vomplog 2048 5 &

After the crash telnet to vomp, look for the last written log file (number is in vomplog.cur - or just find out with ls -ltr) and go to the end - c&p the last xx lines to the board - would help to find out what's wrong.
Please also add an output of ps -ef.

Watchdog is a bit more complicated - would first need some keep-alive info (maybe a file that is periodically touched in the main loop when fetching from the message queue).

Regards
Andreas