# Networked Tivo no longer makes daily call



## IainJH (Mar 27, 2002)

Hi

This is probably an old, well known issue and solution but I've tried searching and haven't found a solution that works. Here goes:

Hi all

One of my cachecard'ed tivos will no long make it's daily calls. It fails always with a "failed. Couldn't connect" message, inc when I try to force it to "make daily call now". Both tivo's get daily call data via network. I can access tivoweb on that tivo fine.

The other tivo is still getting it's data fine.

I've reinstalled the cachecard drivers, rebooted, and even ire-installed the cachecard drivers by pulling the drive and doing that from a PC. Still no luck!

What do I do now? Help Please!

cheers, Iain


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## memememe (Dec 7, 2004)

Hi, it would seem I too have the same issue. I thought it was my wireless bridging network but tested at the weekend with a very long Ethernet cable and no difference. It does some times get a connections and so far I have not ran out of program data. A "Test Call' always works.

Hope some one has the answers and they 'pop' alone soon


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## speedyrite (May 18, 2002)

Presumably it's not the old "Tiscali" phone network problem is it?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=408738


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

You might try lowering the MTU setting on your router. I have seen that help in some cases.


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## Nero2 (Aug 22, 2005)

For reasons that I dont fully understand a networked enabled Tivo* will sometimes revert to trying to make the call over its internal modem rather than use network connection. I had the exact same problem earlier this year.

Solution here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=431617&highlight=nero2

(* - Have you had any power outages?)


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## IainJH (Mar 27, 2002)

Sorry for slow reply (away for work)

nic_config_tivo still reports its set to dial using network. In the past I've also seen it revert to dialed and also mess up the gateway address, but presently all seems fine.

I'll drag the box over to a phone line to try that this weekend, else i'll just reformat it and start over. confused!


thanks all


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

You need to find a phone line and reset the network options. I don't know if the daily updates are triggering something or it is simply (Tivo) old age, but these failures appear to be a regular problem lately.

The 'couldn't connect' message usually means Tivo has reverted to modem dialup - but nic_config_tivo will still show 'network'. Looking through tclient.log for AT commands and modem fail messages will confirm this.

What you need to do is
- change nic_config_tivo to dialup
- reboot
- make a test call using the phone line - my Sky box telephone cable was ideal for that
- change nic_config_tivo back to network
- reboot again
- check all is ok by making another test call: should be noticeably faster than the phone line to complete
- run a full daily call (or wait for Tivo to do it as scheduled)

The reboots and phone line test call are required to make Tivo reset itself before restoring network dialup.

An earlier thread on the subject here.


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## memememe (Dec 7, 2004)

Great reply and thanks, will help IainJH but I am stuck at the first hurdle

I can not control my card as when I try nic_config_tivo I get a fault:

----------------
TiVo TurboNet/AirNet/CacheCard on Tivo Configure - 20050218

Copyright 2002-2004 Silicondust Engineering Ltd. All rights reserved.

Detecting TiVo hard drive...

Detecting TiVo partitions...
Active kernel partition = /dev/hda3.
Inactive kernel partition = /dev/hda6.
Active root partition = /dev/hda4.
Inactive root partition = /dev/hda7.
Var partition = /dev/hda9.

Determining software version...
Segmentation fault
bash-2.02# 
----------------

A solution for this would be good if anyone can

Cheers


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Swap your hard drive to be on the secondary master, or at least on slave, then try again.

A lot of the tools don't like the tivo drive being on /dev/hda (due to byteswapping)


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## memememe (Dec 7, 2004)

Update

small in road. . .

If I first 'kill' the tivo web server my daily calls always work! Result

I just wished I had not set TivoWeb to auto start on reboot, anyone know how to disable that? Better for me to telnet in and turn it on when I need it rather that auto start on reboot. So some progress.

Cheers


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## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

In Tivoweb choose restart then quit. Its part of the Tivoweb menu structure


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## memememe (Dec 7, 2004)

Sure and thanks RichardJH but I have scripted this Tivo auto starting Tivoweb on boot up, I want to work out a way to reverse the auto start script starting on reboot. I use as you say to quit Tivoweb to get a successful download. Appreciate your help.


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Bet your start up says

```
/var/hack/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb > /dev/null 2>&1
```
rather than

```
/var/hack/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb > /dev/null 2>&1 &
```
Been there done, that, got tee-shirt...read the documentation....fixed it...


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## aamac (Oct 13, 2009)

I am having the same problem
I have replaced my rooter, Can some body remind me how to find out my Tivo ISP,, so I can reset everything, tried ping on the normal number but no returns

Many thanks

Barnetflyer


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

aamac - your best bet is to force your new router to offer the same IP address and range as the old one - at least temporarily so you can get into Tivo.


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## memememe (Dec 7, 2004)

Thanks Ian_m

Not sure how I should check? Can't seem to navigate with telnet from bash-2.02# prompt, not knowing unix commands

FTP-ing in I can pull off the tivoweb config and view t I get as below

============= 
#!/bin/sh
export TIVOSH_POOLSIZE=2916352
shopt -s extglob
dir=${0%%+([^/])}
bin=${dir}httpd-tt.tcl

if \[ ! -f ${dir}GPL ] || \
\[ ! -f ${dir}copyright ] || \
\[ ! -f ${dir}TRADEMARK ] || \
\[ ! -x ${dir}bsearch ] || \
\[ ! -d ${dir}images ] || \
\[ ! -d ${dir}uploads ] || \
\[ ! -d ${dir}modules ] ; then
echo
echo "!!ERROR!! tivoweb was not installed correctly"
echo "please follow the instructions in the README"
echo " -- the establishment"
echo
exit
fi

if \[ -f /etc/SubTest ] ; then
echo
echo "!!ERROR!! Invalid service state"
echo
exit
fi

if \[ -f $bin ] ; then
if [ ${1:-null} == "console" ] ; then
tivosh $bin &
else
tivosh $bin >> /dev/null 2>> /dev/null &
fi
else
echo "Error: could not locate httpd-tt.tcl in dir '${dir}'"
fi
=============

is that what you mean? I seem to be getting somewhere solving this, fully appreciate anyone's time in help - thank you


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## IainJH (Mar 27, 2002)

my problem was solved when I pulled the drive, reformatted it and started over. Now it all works. Thanks for the tip, Ian re
--
/var/hack/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb > /dev/null 2>&1

rather than
Code:

/var/hack/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb > /dev/null 2>&1 &
--
I'll keep an eye on that for next time.

Iain


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## irrelevant (Mar 19, 2002)

I've had the same problem .. just realised that the reason the poor thing had missed a recording was it had no guide data! Last successful call 8th October. Eeks. TivoWeb phone page shows "failed: wrong number"

Followed the instructions in reply 7 and it seems to be working now ... It's currently in "downloading".. finally! I can confirm that it needs a successful test call via landline before you change it back - if that call fails, it doesn't work when you swap back to network.

The poor tivo is definitely showing it's age. I've had to put it on a timer to do a cold reboot every night otherwise it goes all blue-screen and stops recording anything. I've a spare box, but that goes all flickery on it's output at frequent intervals..

Maybe it's time to call it a day. I'm still paying a tenner a month for it, plus a tenner for the sky multiroom for it's sky box, so it would be a significant saving if I did. I just can't bear to have to rely on the sky UI.. the new one on the HD box is .. well .. dire! I still use the tivo search facilities to find things, even if I end up recording them elsewhere!


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## irrelevant (Mar 19, 2002)

ok. Corection Mine doesn't work after all - I'd had the phone connected still, which it obviously re-used, despite having been told to switch back to network. 

The gateway address had somehow got changed, but I corrected that and still no joy. 

I may just have to let it use the actual phone line


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## Rob Randall (Nov 28, 2002)

I'm intrigued by what seems to be an increase in prevalence of networked TiVos not making their daily call via network even though they are configured to do so and were working okay previously.

Mine stopped making the networked daily call a couple of months ago. I connected a phone line and then the call worked. So I did the usual steps to get it back to network and was able to disconnect the phone line. Calls via the network went okay for a few days and then starting failing again. Connected the phone line and the call went through okay.

This has happened about 3 times since so I've now given up trying to fix it and just leave the phone line connected. Everything else works fine on the TiVo.

One other quirk I did notice though is that Backdoors used to enable automatically on boot-up after I installed a cachecard. This no longer happens. Could this be an indicator of what the problem might be? I can still enable backdoors via the remote if needed and connect to Tivoweb,ftp, telnet, etc.

Anyway, as I said, I gave up trying to fix it, left the phone line connected and just get on with trying to watch everything the TiVo has recorded for me


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## PhilG (Jan 15, 2002)

Rob Randall said:


> I'm intrigued by what seems to be an increase in prevalence of networked TiVos not making their daily call via network even though they are configured to do so and were working okay previously.
> 
> Mine stopped making the networked daily call a couple of months ago. I connected a phone line and then the call worked. So I did the usual steps to get it back to network and was able to disconnect the phone line. Calls via the network went okay for a few days and then starting failing again. Connected the phone line and the call went through okay.
> 
> ...


The tenor of some of the notes in this thread really gave me cause for concern, BUT

My Tivo is still happily getting guide data from the net, and all the hack bits and pieces are still running

So at least it's not EVERYONE's Tivo that is acting strange


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## irrelevant (Mar 19, 2002)

Indeed. Mine has been working fine and uninterrupted for the last god knows how many years (since cachecards were fairly new) with only an incident a few months ago where it lost /var. I reinstalled tivoweb but not much else, as poor old TiVo is now very much a secondary device... It does seem odd that so any are having the same issues all about now....


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## jleroux (Oct 21, 2006)

i'm having the same/similar problems. about 2 months ago, tivo stopped updating over the network and I had to follow the documented procedures (including the dial-up part in the middle) in order to get it working again.

after just 48 hours it's done the same thing again. here are the symptoms:-

1) I can connect via telnet to the tivo fine over the wireless network.

2) I can NOT ping anything from the bash prompt.

3) Test call comes up with Failed: Line Unavailable.

4) The default gw and the the nic_config_tivo settings are all correct

As an aside (and possibly unrelated) I lost the endpad and tivowebplus features at some point around the same time - I suspect a power cut maybe caused all this but can't confirm that.

Anyone got any ideas? Really don't want to give up my TiVo!

Jonny


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## jleroux (Oct 21, 2006)

OK - i'm fairly confident it's now a problem with the connection via wireless bridge i'm using (which is 192.168.0.225 between the tivo 192.168.0.200 and the router which 192.168.0.254). 

at the moment my routing table looks like this:-

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 32767 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.254 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

but i'm guessing i need another static route in there for the wireless bridge? ISTR doing something about this when I set the box up (about 6 years ago!) so a bit odd that it's lost the settings now.

TIA 

J


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

jleroux said:


> 1) I can connect via telnet to the tivo fine over the wireless network.
> 
> 2) I can NOT ping anything from the bash prompt.
> 
> ...


Just to suggest...
The fact that you can connect in, but Tivo can't connect out would lead me to query if the Default gateway on Tivo is _really_ right?


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