# Tivo hung up with reboot command



## Nandy (May 13, 2006)

I am having problems with my hacked box. The zipper installe a cron job to reboot the box twice a week. Looks like everytime the cron job reboot the box it never finalizes and I get the "Powering up" message but it never finalizes powering up. If I issue a reboot command same thing happens. The only way to get it to finalize the reboot is to power cycle the box. This is causing me to loose shows as sometimes I dont stop to check the TIVO before leaving to work. I was not able to do the "restart and clean" advised by the zipper because I dont have the original remote and I need the thumb down button to confirm the restart. Any help will be very appreciated.
Thanks!


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

I hate to state the obvious, but have you considered just disabling the reboots?


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## dthreet (Jan 18, 2006)

you can push the <info button> for thumbs down and push <arrown down> for enter


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## Nandy (May 13, 2006)

BTUx9, The hack that was installed, recomends the rebots twice a week as part of the maintenance of the unit. If I cant solve the problem and a second install of the hacks dont work either then i guess I will do that and resort to manual reboots.

DThreet, that does not seems to work in my universal remote.


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

The main reason for the reboot is to let fakecall work... unless you are using the onscreen callerid, this isn't really necessary

tivo is designed to run constantly, without periodic reboots.


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## dthreet (Jan 18, 2006)

oh sorry you have to do it on the front of the unit. I guess i should have said on the front. sorry


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## Nandy (May 13, 2006)

DThreet, it did work with the remote. I was using the remote while in home theater mode and in that mode the info key is assigned to the tv. Thanks!
BTUx9, not to be argumentative, but the reboots are recomended for more than just that!

5. Installs a fully functional cron setup for improved performance and logging. Creates all required directories and files, and installs a crondtab to do the following:

- Restart Tivowebplus every night at 3am CST to eliminate occasional problems that crop up with TWP.

- Create a tarball (archive) of your logs once/week, and save it in your root directory for easy FTPing. Helpful to have if something ever goes wrong with your Tivo, or you just want to explore your logs for well-defined time periods. 

- Wipe your logs once/week (after archiving them) to keep them from getting to big and hindering performance. Also wipes the tarball archive above. 

- Run fakecall every night at 3am. 

- Reboot your Tivo twice/week at 3am. This cleans things out for better performance if you have several hacks running. Also restarts logs, and allows fakecall to reset the last successful call indicator, so your Tivo won't call home (fakecall doesn't update mfs entries without a reboot). This allows you to keep your phone line connected for PPV ordering or CallerID. 

However, it is still an option to just disable it if I can find a way to fix the reboot issue. It does not look like this is the way it should work. I will try the clear and reset as soon as all the progams have been recorded and let's see if that fix the problem.

Thanks.


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

A reboot is more likely to cause problems than fix them... you run the risk of:
1) losing everything in /var
2) corrupting mfs
3) missing recording(s)

so, in my opinion, scheduling regular reboots isn't a good idea unless you use callerid (or don't like ordering PPV over the web) and don't want to use one of the other methods to prevent calling home (or don't care whether your box calls home)


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## cheer (Nov 13, 2005)

BTUx9 said:


> The main reason for the reboot is to let fakecall work... unless you are using the onscreen callerid, this isn't really necessary
> 
> tivo is designed to run constantly, without periodic reboots.


Alternatively, could you not just run fakecall from cron instead of rebooting from cron?


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

AFAIK, fakecall doesn't prevent calls without a system reboot (I believe the info is cached, and not reread from mfs until the next boot)


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## cheer (Nov 13, 2005)

Could be -- I only use it to stop the nags; I don't have lines connected (I do caller ID via the network).


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

superpatch stops the nags


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## Nandy (May 13, 2006)

I have considered just stopping the reboot cron but it was recommended in the hack and anyways I dont think hung up in reboot is the appropriate behavior and would like to fix it. However, if somebody can tell me how to disable a job from cron I might try that and will reboot the box by power cycling it when system performance starts to degrade.

Thanks!


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## Nandy (May 13, 2006)

any ideas on my Reboot issue?


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## BTUx9 (Nov 13, 2003)

given that you believe this is a zipper issue, I'm not sure why you aren't asking in the zipper thread. I don't use it, so don't really know how it sets up the hacks, specifically (how they are initiated, dirs, etc).

From a general standpoint, the best way to diagnose reboot problems would be to check the logs, and if the problem occurs BEFORE the var partition (9) is mounted, then using a serial cable to check what's being reported when the boot hangs.


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