Nightly reboots: Why they must go...

[3HaloODST]

Not really. He is complaining about a bad smell, and saying that they should just get rid of whatever is causing the smell.
Everyone here is suggesting he cut off his nose to avoid smelling it.

The most troubling thing is that so many people aren't bothered by the smell at all.

No. Refusing to remove the EHD, then complaining about how long it takes to reboot, doesn't bother Dish in the least. It does however inconvenience Mr. Kotches unnecessarily, and even more so than if he were to simply remove the EHD right before the brief reboot, then reconnect it. That would be cutting off his nose to spite his face.

It's not that I'm not bothered by this issue, believe me, I am, and have been for a long time now (this issue is also present in the 722 series, with the exception of being able to change the reboot time.) It's just that I'm being realistic here. If I don't unplug the EHD, then I'll just sit in front of a blank TV with slow burning rage every night that I'm up at 1am, for an entire hour. If I unplug the EHD right before the reboot (can even do it when the dialog pops up,) then I become irked but after 5 minutes I'm back watching TV.

 

[dangue]

Not really. He is complaining about a bad smell, and saying that they should just get rid of whatever is causing the smell.
Everyone here is suggesting he cut off his nose to avoid smelling it.

The most troubling thing is that so many people aren't bothered by the smell at all.

The bad smell doesn't bug me because it doesn't impact me even slightly. I'm rarely watching TV at that hour and if I am, I tell the popup to delay the reboot. If, for whatever the reason, that wasn't possible, I would disconnect my external hard drive and not sit for an hour waiting for the TV to come back online.

Would it be better if people could change the reboot time or if it only happened once every fees days instead of daily (with no performance impact)? Sure. Would it be better if having EHDs connected didn't add to the reboot time? Sure. But the workaround really isn't all that difficult and the minimal inconvenience involved is not something that is worth me getting worked up about.

Complaining is all well and good. The squeaky wheel gets the oil and all that. However, until it gets fixed, affected individuals can and should do what they can to minimize the impact on them if they can. Refusing to do so because the issue shouldn't exist is just hurting the person refusing to implement the workaround. It's not going to make Dish fix it any faster.

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[Bobby]

Not really. He is complaining about a bad smell, and saying that they should just get rid of whatever is causing the smell.
Everyone here is suggesting he cut off his nose to avoid smelling it.

The most troubling thing is that so many people aren't bothered by the smell at all.

I wouldn't exactly say that Gary. For example, I am asleep at 1AM all the way to 6AM. I can't smell a thing. I have a feeling that most of us are in that boat, not all of us, just most....

 

[KAB]

I wouldn't exactly say that Gary. For example, I am asleep at 1AM all the way to 6AM. I can't smell a thing. I have a feeling that most of us are in that boat, not all of us, just most....

I'm your shipmate. Don't smell (or hear) a thing either. With my 500GB drive connected, cycle never lasts more than 15 minutes.

 

[GaryPen]

Complaining is all well and good. The squeaky wheel gets the oil and all that.

I thought it got the worm.

 

[KAB]

And silence fell over the crowd.

 

[Barry Erick]

Do you have inactivitity disabled?

 

[John Kotches]

3Halo:

It's a supported configuration. Why should i have to connect and disconnect the drive to bypass their issue. I'm not lowering my expectations to meet their delivery.

Rebooting every night, even without a software update? Anyone who supports computer systems should be appalled at the lack of stability.



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[GaryPen]

And silence fell over the crowd.

Not totally. You made noise.

 

[Smwoodward]

I do completely agree that reboots need to go or at least allow us to change the time that it happens.

One way I look at this. Compare the Hopper to all the other boxes from the different providers, to me the Hopper is the best one I have used BY FAR! The interface, features and speed are hands down better than comcast and uverse boxes. Granted those don't require a nightly reboot, but they are crap.

 

[patmurphey]

Go over to the DTV threads and read about DVRs getting slower and slower until they have to be manually rebooted to get them back to normal - a little slow. Dish has it right.

 

[John Kotches]

Go over to the DTV threads and read about DVRs getting slower and slower until they have to be manually rebooted to get them back to normal - a little slow. Dish has it right.

Rebooting as a "fix all" is a lazy approach. The correct method involves analyzing the system (Hopper is a special purpose computer) and determining what items are causing the slow downs, then correcting them.

Slow downs are symptoms of other underlying problems that need to be addressed.

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[dare2be]

I suspect that the major slowdown on any DVR would be file fragmentation. Multiple record streams going on at once, in addition to manually deleting titles during recording would cause a fast buildup of fragmentation. Perhaps the shutdown is required to put the system in a low-level mode (turning off all other functions) to prevent anything from interfering with the defrag run. It would also explain why having an EHD attached would slow it down considerably, if the defrag is being run on the EHD as well. An fsck is NOT a defrag.

 

[John Kotches]

I suspect that the major slowdown on any DVR would be file fragmentation. Multiple record streams going on at once, in addition to manually deleting titles during recording would cause a fast buildup of fragmentation. Perhaps the shutdown is required to put the system in a low-level mode (turning off all other functions) to prevent anything from interfering with the defrag run. It would also explain why having an EHD attached would slow it down considerably, if the defrag is being run on the EHD as well. An fsck is NOT a defrag.

You are correct, that an fsck is not defragmenting the file system. Then again, unix systems generally don't require defragmentation.

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[dare2be]

Then again, unix systems generally don't require defragmentation.

Generally I agree with that, but specifically with DVRs and multiple write streams, I don't.

 

[John Kotches]

Generally I agree with that, but specifically with DVRs and multiple write streams, I don't.

Depends on many factors, not limited to the number of streams, the amount of buffer space available, the IOPs required etc.

If it's a defrag, I'm still of the belief that daily is overkill. I'm good with weekly.

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[KKlare]

We can find that the EHD is NEVER defragged by Dish. The only way to defrag is to copy the disk to another.
It should do this as a background task and you should find a clean disk every morning---wishful thinking.
It, of course, only matters to those of using every bit of each disk we have.

BTW, why can't we select from more than 2 disks and transfer to/from more than 3? Big improvement, but....
They have shown it can be done better than any prior systems, so let's see it carried forward.

I agree that we should not have to worry about the EHD being offline to shorten the reboot time since it doesn't do anything that we can see.
Nor should the system be down for guide update--well, software update, yes, but just for a single reboot as time provides.

It seems the Hopper does much better about looking at the schedule and adjusting the reboot time.
All previous models seemed to say "hey, I want to reboot and I don't care what you are doing or plan to do."

-Ken

 

[mentsmin]

Slightly off-topic, but it seems like a lot of people around here use EHDs. Is that just because you have tons and tons of recordings? Or is there some other benefit I'm not thinking of?

 

[navychop]

Some of us think a quality EHD will be more reliable than the HDD inside the DVR. One of my EHDs is a RAID.

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[John Kotches]

Some of us think a quality EHD will be more reliable than the HDD inside the DVR. One of my EHDs is a RAID.

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There's a lot less heat to dissipate which would lower chances of failure.

Additionally, you don't lose the content if the hopper dies.



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