6.2.1 2005-08-23 Bad bad bad

[Yannzola]

The 6.2.1 2005-08-23 nightly crashed my SB2 immediately. No connection possible. I futzed with it for over an hour... no joy. Installed and reinstalled several times. Switching back to 6.1.2 brought the system back online immediately.
Bad bad 6.2.
Naughty 6.2.

y.

Oh yeah, all of this was on my WinXP MCE 2005 rig.

[Dan Sully]

* Yannzola shaped the electrons to say...

>The 6.2.1 2005-08-23 nightly crashed my SB2 immediately. No connection
>possible. I futzed with it for over an hour... no joy. Installed and
>reinstalled several times. Switching back to 6.1.2 brought the system
>back online immediately.
>Bad bad 6.2.
>Naughty 6.2.

What's in the Event Log?

I can't say this enough times - in order for us to fix things, we need a lot
more information than this. "My car wouldn't start when I put the key in it."

If you are on this beta list and using the 6.2 nightlies - you *MUST* be
prepared to send the appropriate amount of information. Otherwise it just
goes in the bit-bucket. Please open a bug when needed.

Thanks.

-D
--
You have the puzzle pieces? Good, then turn off the damn walls.

[kdf]

On 23-Aug-05, at 7:22 PM, Yannzola wrote:

>
> The 6.2.1 2005-08-23 nightly crashed my SB2 immediately. No connection
> possible. I futzed with it for over an hour... no joy.

is this your official report? bug: lack of joy

>
> Oh yeah, all of this was on my WinXP MCE 2005 rig.
>
naughty MCE...bad bad.

-kdf

[Yannzola]

On 23-Aug-05, at 7:22 PM, Yannzola wrote:

>
> The 6.2.1 2005-08-23 nightly crashed my SB2 immediately. No connection
> possible. I futzed with it for over an hour... no joy.

is this your official report? bug: lack of joy

>
> Oh yeah, all of this was on my WinXP MCE 2005 rig.
>
naughty MCE...bad bad.

-kdf

Har!
But seriously... what other info would you like me to provide? I've been running the 6.1.2 nightlies without significant problems... other than the occasional freeze up /shutdowns (which I believe may be caused by MusicMagic). Nothing a simple restart wouldn't fix. But today I tried the 6.2 beta in order to test out Jacobs new ExBrowse2 skin... and spent the next two hours bashing my head against the wall unable to connect =at all= to the SB2, and worse... having to unplug the device over and over again as it froze up on the "cannot connect to slimserver" screen.

I eventually gave up... exhausted... and reinstalled todays 6.1.2... hoping it would still work. And it did.! Yippy!

So... at least in my case, running the latest 6.2 nightly was a bad bad bad experience. Not very informative post....I know. But cathartic for me.

Seriously. What info would you find helpful in order to diagnose the problem?

y.

[kdf]

On 23-Aug-05, at 10:05 PM, Yannzola wrote:
>
> Seriously. What info would you find helpful in order to diagnose the
> problem?
>
I think i've said if a few times in other posts:

check the bugs, find out if any match what you are seeing.
if not file a new one. Attach some tracks that are giving you
problems, as well as details on what programs you used to rip, tag or
download. d_info logs of the scan on those tracks, and any related
m3u/cue sheets referring to that track. Also, as with any bug report,
OS and date/build number of the nightly.

Also, make sure you aren't getting fooled by old playlists that might
be encoded with mismatching character sets (ie from different
slimserver versions). The Unicode support is a bugger, and there are
many combinations. 6.1.2 may be 'better' for now, and that's by design
(stability vs features), but eventually 6.1.2 will be left behind. If
you put in the time to describe the problems you have now, then you
will have a much better experience later.

you may also want to perform a complete rescan, with clear library
checked (after installing 6.2) and keep an archive of your prefs file
and slimserversql.db file in case you are asked to provide it later.

Also, if you are using importers (ie, musicmagic) try turning that off
and doing a complete scan. that may be part cause of some problems.
There are a LOT of causes/questions if no specific problem is given.

-kdf

[Yannzola]

check the bugs, find out if any match what you are seeing.
if not file a new one.

I'll do that.

Attach some tracks that are giving you
problems, as well as details on what programs you used to rip, tag or
download. d_info logs of the scan on those tracks, and any related
m3u/cue sheets referring to that track. Also, as with any bug report,
OS and date/build number of the nightly.

No tracks were problematic.... as I was unable to connect to my SB2 at all. Essentially Slimserver was unable to start and the player was frozen.

Also, make sure you aren't getting fooled by old playlists that might
be encoded with mismatching character sets (ie from different
slimserver versions). The Unicode support is a bugger, and there are
many combinations. 6.1.2 may be 'better' for now, and that's by design
(stability vs features), but eventually 6.1.2 will be left behind.

I understand. I've seen several other posts regading unicode related issues.... but most were able to actually start slimserver. I was not. The player could not be detected.

If you put in the time to describe the problems you have now, then you
will have a much better experience later.

Agreed.

you may also want to perform a complete rescan, with clear library
checked (after installing 6.2) and keep an archive of your prefs file
and slimserversql.db file in case you are asked to provide it later.

Will do.

Also, if you are using importers (ie, musicmagic) try turning that off
and doing a complete scan. that may be part cause of some problems.

MusicMagic has been off for a while now (due to the occasional crashes it caused to my entire wireless network) It was off when I experienced this most recent problem.

There are a LOT of causes/questions if no specific problem is given.

-kdf

Well... the problem is pretty straight forward.After the 6.2.1 2005-08-23 nightly was installed, Slimserver could not connect to the player. The player was not detected by Slimserver, and the player itself froze up, requiring a hard resets in order to respond to remote commands...Several reinstalls were attempted, and I even tried starting Slimserver from slimserver.pl. No change, no improvement. Reinstalling 6.1.2 immediately fixed the problem.

y.

[dean]

On Aug 24, 2005, at 7:06 AM, Yannzola wrote:
> Well... the problem is pretty straight forward.After the 6.2.1
> 2005-08-23 nightly was installed, Slimserver could not connect to the
> player. The player was not detected by Slimserver, and the player
> itself froze up, requiring a hard resets in order to respond to remote
> commands...Several reinstalls were attempted, and I even tried
> starting
> Slimserver from slimserver.pl. No change, no improvement. Reinstalling
> 6.1.2 immediately fixed the problem.

A couple things to try:

1. See if you can connect via the web interface. (This will tell us
if the server is running and not locked up.)

2. Press and hold the LEFT button on the remote to see if you can go
back to setup (this indicates that the player firmware is locked up
or if it's just the server.)

3. Check the Task Manager and see if Slim.exe is using an inordinate
amount of memory or CPU cycles.

4. Stop the server and move aside your prefs file and your db file.
Restart the server. If it comes up, we'd love to see those files.

[Yannzola]

What's in the Event Log?

I can't say this enough times - in order for us to fix things, we need a lot
more information than this. "My car wouldn't start when I put the key in it."

Odd I must have missed this post yesterday. Here's a snippet from my event viewer logs.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 8/23/2005
Time: 6:07:01 PM
User: N/A
Computer: MEDIA_CENTER
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( Application ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: DBD::SQLite::db prepare_cached failed: no such column: remote(1) at dbdimp.c line 268 at /PerlApp/Ima/DBI.pm line 391, <DATA> line 1.
.

This same error message is repeated 6 times... looking at it it seems to be connected to the times I attempted to start slimserver.pl, when the .exe refused to connect (???).

Thanks Dan. Hope this provides some usable info.

[Dan Sully]

* Yannzola shaped the electrons to say...

>This same error message is repeated 6 times... looking at it it seems
>to be connected to the times I attempted to start slimserver.pl, when
>the .exe refused to connect.
>
>Thanks Dan. Hope this provides some usable info.

Try moving aside the slimserversql.db file and restarting the server.

-D
--
<Nigel> Please refrain from fearing the reaper.

[kdf]

On 24-Aug-05, at 7:38 AM, Yannzola wrote:
>
> description; see Help and Support for details. The following
> information is part of the event: DBD::SQLite::db prepare_cached
> failed: no such column: remote(1) at dbdimp.c line 268 at
> /PerlApp/Ima/DBI.pm line 391, <DATA> line 1.
>
aha...database problem. I'd have to check, but I think there have been
more than a couple version changes in the db. Maybe the upgrade isn't
as smooth as it might need to be. move aside your slimserversql.db
file (upgrading to 6.2 would trigger a complete rescan anyway). I
expect you'll have much better results then.

-kdf