# Yet another 6.2a to 6.4 horror story



## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

OK, so I gave in and updated my old zippered 6.2 Dtivo boxes to 6.4. Boy was that a mistake...

First I did it on one box, Got it to work, boots 6.4a but man, the box is so slooooooow. I do not mean regular Tivo slow, I mean unusable. So slow, it is not even capable of reliably sync up with the satellite. OK, after wasting a day trying to figure out what is wrong, I chucked it up to being a hardware issue - either drive dying or something else. So I stupidly updated the second one. That one turned out to be even worse. Also just as slow. But as a bonus, after a few reboots it is now stuck in a reboot loop, booting slowly into satellite dish type selection screen (???) with black background (???) and immediately rebooting. Telnet is not on long enough to get any debugging done, but before it died I noticed the load was steadily growing from 4 to about 10 (after which I lost ability to check)

I am so fed up with DirecTV and tivo at this point, I seriously question if this is worth the time and effort anymore...


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## StanSimmons (Jun 10, 2000)

Try disconnecting your USB to Ethernet adapter. 

I had the same problem. I re-ran the tweak.sh with the latest rbautch_files.tgz and all was well. It apparently was an issue with the USB to Ethernet adapter driver that I had loaded.


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

StanSimmons said:


> Try disconnecting your USB to Ethernet adapter.
> 
> I had the same problem. I re-ran the tweak.sh with the latest rbautch_files.tgz and all was well. It apparently was an issue with the USB to Ethernet adapter driver that I had loaded.


Thanks for the advice, but I think the upgrade messed up the MFS partitions.

I have tried removing USB network link - no reaction. I re-run the tweak.sh - nothing. I tried redoing the upgrade to another partition (this time only keeping the kernel and serial console, leaving the rest of the os stock) - same thing.

I am pretty sure something about this upgrade somehow corrupted my MFS partitions. I tried forcing green screen - but it was useless. I even moved the drive from the box that booted but was unusable to the other one, in case it was a hardware issue - but that was a bust too. I have no idea how to fix the MFS partitions without loosing the data on them. Basically I just lost about 1300 hours of recordings + all of my season passes, etc. Ironically the third box that had nothing of significance on it, upgraded and works just fine. Go figure. :-(


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

You could have some bad clusters on the drive. Keep in mind that you have two sets of partitions for the OS and kernel. Anytime you update the software it toggles to the unused partitions. If there are bad clusters on the drive in the area assigned to those partitions your update will get hosed and you end up with either poor performance, reboot loops, or a GSOD.


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

mr.unnatural said:


> You could have some bad clusters on the drive. Keep in mind that you have two sets of partitions for the OS and kernel. Anytime you update the software it toggles to the unused partitions. If there are bad clusters on the drive in the area assigned to those partitions your update will get hosed and you end up with either poor performance, reboot loops, or a GSOD.


Neah, I tried on both sets of partitions - its nothing that simple. There is some major problem with 6.4 and MFS - at this point I pretty much ruled out most hardware issues.

I did get the tivos to come back to life though - by downgrading back to 6.2 (via slices) - all the problems disappeared and it is back to working as it was before -- all of my recordings and season passes are still there.

I do not have another 3 days of my life to waste on trying this again, so we'll see if the original issue with locals & 6.2 comes back and if so, maybe try a different approach to the problem (perhaps one involving a sledge hammer). :-/

-HH


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## Hichhiker (Apr 21, 2002)

StanSimmons said:


> Try disconnecting your USB to Ethernet adapter.
> 
> I had the same problem. I re-ran the tweak.sh with the latest rbautch_files.tgz and all was well. It apparently was an issue with the USB to Ethernet adapter driver that I had loaded.


The more I think about this, the less this makes sense. 6.2 and 6.4, at least when hacked, use EXACT SAME kernel, so unless I am missing something, the kernel modules should be the same, no?


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## StanSimmons (Jun 10, 2000)

I thought so too, but disconnecting the USB to Ethernet allowed the DSR7000 to complete its boot and display tv. Reinstalling tweak.sh using my serial cable let me reconnect the USB to Ethernet adapter.

Thinking back on it, on the slicer upgrade, I may have told it to NOT use the backported drivers... thinking that it would keep the ones it was currently using in 6.2.


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