# Tivo not fetching listings



## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

My TiVo seems to have decided to stop fetching listings, getting the error message either:


```
Failed. Couldn't connect.
```
or:


```
Failed. Wrong number
```
Anyone any ideas? I have a Cachecard so gettings listings across the network, but I've not changed anything that could affect this for a couple of weeks.


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## Warble (Sep 2, 2002)

I have the same problem. Answers seem very thin on the ground  

I will be borrowing another Tivo (believe it or not fully subbed but unused for 2 years  ) while I work on mine. I am going to try a different hard disk as I think (hope) the problem might be a corruption there.

If I have any succes I will let you know.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Warble said:


> I have the same problem. Answers seem very thin on the ground
> 
> I will be borrowing another Tivo (believe it or not fully subbed but unused for 2 years  ) while I work on mine. I am going to try a different hard disk as I think (hope) the problem might be a corruption there.
> 
> If I have any succes I will let you know.


It does sound like the same problem, which is a slight comfort, as it means it might not be my fault 

I'll let you know if I manage to fix it too.

Cheers,

Dave


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

Power off TiVo for 60 seconds and try again.


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## Warble (Sep 2, 2002)

I know I have powered off - but didn't leave it for 60 secs. Will try that after the other half has had her daily helping of Corrie!


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

My problem seems to have just gotten worse.

My cachecard, or something it on the blink. On boot up, everything goes as normal, cachecard caches data, then after that the network interface comes up. The problem is, a little after that the network interface goes back down again.

I've watched the little lights on the cachecard a couple of times as it boots and it all seems to go fine (power light comes on, cache light flickers, link light comes on) but at the final stage the link light goes off.

Now, I've not changed anything on the tivo for a couple of weeks, but in taking the cover off to watch the lights on the cachecard and such, I notice the hard disc sounding what I can only describe as 'crunchy' which I hadn't noticed before. Do I have a failing hard disc and is it this that is causing the cachecard/update problems, or is it more likely to be a cachecard hardware issue?

Any help very gratefully received.

PS. Did anyone notice the board disappeared earlier?


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Warble said:


> I am going to try a different hard disk as I think (hope) the problem might be a corruption there.


I missed you saying that. My brain still seems to think it's the weekend! It's sounding like my disk might be at fault too - odd that it happened at the same time...


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## Warble (Sep 2, 2002)

'Crunchy' noises or sounds that the disk is retrying to read/write an area would tend to indicate problems. My disk has started to do that recently - even seeing the odd artifact appearing when it does so. For some reason I didn't change the disk when I installed the cachecard - but I will now.

Are you able to access your Tivo either by telnet or web?


Tried leaving it off for a few minutes - no difference.
Thanks anyway Ozsat.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Warble said:


> 'Crunchy' noises or sounds that the disk is retrying to read/write an area would tend to indicate problems. My disk has started to do that recently - even seeing the odd artifact appearing when it does so. For some reason I didn't change the disk when I installed the cachecard - but I will now.


I also didn't upgrade the disk at the time of installing the cachecard, mainly due to cost. Seems like it may be time to do it now



Warble said:


> Are you able to access your Tivo either by telnet or web?


Nope, as I said above, my cachecard seems to lose it's link to my router, which stops all network activity to it



Warble said:


> Tried leaving it off for a few minutes - no difference.
> Thanks anyway Ozsat.


Ditto


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## Hermiod (Aug 1, 2006)

This is the exact same problem I'm having. Network comes up when I reboot the TiVo then the light goes out. I was having a problem connecting for a Daily Call as well.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Hermiod said:


> This is the exact same problem I'm having. Network comes up when I reboot the TiVo then the light goes out. I was having a problem connecting for a Daily Call as well.


Crazy. Don't suppose you guys bought your cachecards off of ebay?


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## Hermiod (Aug 1, 2006)

I bought mine from blindlemon.


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## Warble (Sep 2, 2002)

I got mine from Ebay.

I spent the evening installing the borrowed Tivo. Had to change to Sky and then do a full update. 

Anyways, pulled the harddisk out of my own Tivo and installed the hard disk I had cloned previously. It wouldn't connect out either - just sat at 'Connecting' (maybe why I didn't install it). Quick check of nic_config_tivo and realised I had set the gateway wrong. Set that and re-booted.
Hey Presto! Working Tivo.  

This suggests I had a problem with the drivers/configuration on the disk. I hadn't changed any settings so it must be some sort of driver corruption issue.

Not guaranteeing that changing hard disk/drivers will solve your problem...

Really hope this helps.

(Just noticed that no updates after 30 days seems to put Tivo in 'boat-anchor mode'.)


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## Hermiod (Aug 1, 2006)

The network connection starts, as indicated by the light on my router, but about 20-30 seconds after starting up it goes out.

I cannot reconfigure the network settings because of this.

To be honest, I am considering just cutting my losses and buying a Freeview DVR. All the TiVo records these days is the Daily Show on More4 and the CSI shows, plus the occasional film.


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## Warble (Sep 2, 2002)

I have never tried, but what about a serial cable and connecting to Tivo that way?


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## Hermiod (Aug 1, 2006)

I have not got a clue how to do that.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

I just reinstalled the cachecard drivers onto my current TiVo disk and it seems to have cured the problem. However, I shall probably be upgrading my disk soon, as I suspect there may be something wrong with the disk to cause it to go wrong.

Slightly annoying that it happened to happen in the week when NTL were reorganising their channel numbers, so at the moment TiVo has no idea what number is where :\

62% through loading the data though


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Reopening this thread, because it has happened again.

First of all, couldn't get guide data, I had a new disk on the way so I waited for that to arrive copied everything across, re-ran the cachecard driver install and I now have the same dropping connection problem 

Any takers this time around?


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## Warble (Sep 2, 2002)

The only possibilities are flaky internet or Cachecard. I have never really checked the lights on my Cachecard but I can. What about memory? Do you have any in the Cachecard - if that was faulty it could be creating a problem?

To be honest - not sure - I just know that changing my disk fixed my issue which I put down to drivers.

Checked lights on Cachecard. 
Top green light stays on.
Middle green light comes on and stays on after Tivo has booted (link light).
Bottom red light flickers a lot (hard disk light).


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Warble said:


> The only possibilities are flaky internet or Cachecard. I have never really checked the lights on my Cachecard but I can. What about memory? Do you have any in the Cachecard - if that was faulty it could be creating a problem?
> 
> To be honest - not sure - I just know that changing my disk fixed my issue which I put down to drivers.
> 
> ...


My internet / router is fine as far as I can tell. I've tried 2 different sticks of memory and also without any memory, but get the same problem.

I *think* the hardware is fairly sound, as the network stayed up for ages before this reboot. It seems like it might be a software/driver fault, but I don't know where to start to work out what is wrong.



EDIT: I can make the network stable now - it seems turning debug on (which I was doing to try and debug the problem  ) seems to make the network fall over. Still no daily call though.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Ok, this is getting on my nerves now.

As far as I can see, by looking in /var/log/tclient when I try and do a daily call, the tivo is still trying to connect over the modem I see all of the normal dialing stuff (ATDT08081050005, etc). No matter what I do, it seems to be always doing this. Is this normal?

If it is normal, and TiVO does this when trying to connect over the network (although, why it would I don't know) my other thought is that there is some routing / caching issue with my NTL connection stopping the TiVO from getting to the listings server...

Anyone have any thoughts on either of these? I'm tearing my hair out here 

Dave


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## FREEBBC (Feb 13, 2006)

Paperface said:


> My TiVo seems to have decided to stop fetching listings, getting the error message either:
> 
> 
> ```
> ...


Get Sky+


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

No. Better to fix the problem than dump it for an inferior product


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## Maelstromo (Sep 30, 2006)

Well, I don't know if this is of any help to man nor beast, but I have just spent the weekend setting up a cachecard and have found it to be _extremely_ sensitive to cabling.

I have been unable to make it work with a number of cables which function quite happily on my network, but after a lot of trial and error have found a combination that works. - The cable that plugs into the cachecard itself seemed to be the critical one - whether its proximity to the power supply has anything to do with this I don't know...


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Maelstromo said:


> Well, I don't know if this is of any help to man nor beast, but I have just spent the weekend setting up a cachecard and have found it to be _extremely_ sensitive to cabling.
> 
> I have been unable to make it work with a number of cables which function quite happily on my network, but after a lot of trial and error have found a combination that works. - The cable that plugs into the cachecard itself seemed to be the critical one - whether its proximity to the power supply has anything to do with this I don't know...


Most network activity is fine now - only the updates won't work. Although I'm happy to try another cable.

EDIT: as I suspected, brand new cable - did the same thing:


```
Failed. Wrong number
```


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## OzSat (Feb 15, 2001)

cwaring said:


> No. Better to fix the problem than dump it for an inferior product


Agreed - on average I've lost many more recording on Sky+ than my two TiVo's put together.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

Right...

Further developments.

I have reinstalled the cachecard driver, run nic_config_tivo a number of times, set the Dial prefix to ,#401, but still my TiVo persists in updating over the phone line.

Anyone have any ideas?

What exactly does nic_config_tivo alter to make the tivo update over network instead of the phone line?

Cheers,

Dave


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

Are you using the latest cachecard drivers from

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=990
The most recent one says it fixes a problem with UK dial up.

If you want to make Tivo connect to get its daily data from the Internet, fire up nic_config_tivo cachecard then ensure option 4 is set to Network. You will also need to enter the IP address of your router as the Gateway address.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

johala_reewi said:


> Are you using the latest cachecard drivers from
> 
> http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=990
> The most recent one says it fixes a problem with UK dial up.


Yup. Think I did that before, but I just did it again too and made no difference.



johala_reewi said:


> If you want to make Tivo connect to get its daily data from the Internet, fire up nic_config_tivo cachecard then ensure option 4 is set to Network. You will also need to enter the IP address of your router as the Gateway address.


Done these multiple times too


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

Any turbonet2 messages in the kernel log? For example...

Oct 10 07:05:06 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: attempting to connect (port 80)...
Oct 10 07:05:06 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: connect succeeded (port 80)...
Oct 10 07:05:06 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: POST /^P
Oct 10 07:05:07 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Oct 10 07:05:07 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: attempting to connect (port 80)...
Oct 10 07:05:07 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: connect succeeded (port 80)...
Oct 10 07:05:07 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: POST /tivo-service/TCD411.cgi HTTP/1.0
Oct 10 07:05:07 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Oct 10 07:05:08 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: attempting to connect (port 80)...
Oct 10 07:05:08 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: connect succeeded (port 80)...
Oct 10 07:05:08 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: POST /tivo-service/HServer.cgi HTTP/1.0
Oct 10 07:05:08 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Oct 10 07:05:10 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: NTP request...
Oct 10 07:05:10 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: NTP response.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

johala_reewi said:


> Any turbonet2 messages in the kernel log? For example...
> 
> Oct 10 07:05:06 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: attempting to connect (port 80)...
> Oct 10 07:05:06 (none) kernel: turbonet2: call log: connect succeeded (port 80)...
> ...


Nope nothing like that. Only cachecard things I get in there are about it initialising at boot.


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## Paperface (Sep 14, 2005)

It is with great joy that I can close this thread, as I have found the answer to my problem!

Whilst googling for an error message I saw in /var/log/kernel on my TiVo, I came across this post on this fine forum:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=282072

and upon checking my /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author I found the following...


```
/var/hack/endpad.tcl -s 1 -e 10 -auto >> /dev/null &
/var/hack/bin/autospace.tcl start >/tmp/autospace.err 2>&1
/var/hack/tivoweb-tcl/tivoweb &
```
Spot the deliberate mistake? That's right, a & was missing from the end of the autospace line and this is what was casuing the problem. Which is pretty crazy.

Anyway, my daily call problem is fixed, along the way I have come across a missing sound problem, which I think is fixed. Fingers crossed that doesn't raise it's ugly head again.

Thanks to all who helped along the way, I shall now quit whinging about my broken TiVo (because it isn't broken).


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