NextPVR freezes after removal of ISCSI disk

[erik]

NextPVR worked fine.
I'm using an ISCSI disk for backup, using the microsoft ISCSI initiator, the disk does not have a drive letter
No other application or service is supposed to use the backup disk

Whenever the server that provides the ISCSI target is down and the ISCSI inititator on the NextPVR machine is trying to reconnect, strange things happen

After starting NextPVR it is possible to play music or films.
But when going to recordings or the guide screen NextPVR locks up and never becomes responsive again.

Logs are attatched. Seems the database is accessable, no error messages

Now I have completely stopped the ISCSI initiator, after removing all ISCSI references and still NextPVR locks up when trying to access the guide or the recordings panel.

Anyone with a suggestion on what to try next????

[Graham]

I see this in the npvr.log

2014-08-16 11:03:14.055 [ERROR][1] Error initialising Direct3D: SlimDX.Direct3D9.Direct3DX9NotFoundException: Direct3DX 9 was not found. Please install the latest DirectX end-user redistributable package from Microsoft.

You might want to re-install the full DirectX from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/...px?id=8109

[erik]

I did and the problem disappeared, but how could this have been related to the iSCSI disk not being visible????
Beats me.

[sub]

There is nothing in that log showing anything going wrong, but I suspect it's more of a Windows thing rather than NextPVR to use or look at your ISCSI disk. NextPVR doesn't have any logic that generically looks at all attached volumes. It only looks at the paths explicitly specified as the recording directory, live tv buffer directory, and library directories.

[erik]

I removed all traces of iSCSI on the system and added a physical disk for the backup (its a windows home server v2)
The backup drive has no drive letter

As soon as NextPVR enters the recording or the guide screen the backup disk will spin up so something is accessing the disk.
Could this be the database driver?

[sub]

As soon as NextPVR enters the recording or the guide screen the backup disk will spin up so something is accessing the disk.

The only disk access that is likely occur with this activity is loading data from the database, and checking that recording files exist in the locations specified in the database. So, as long as you don't have that drive specified as a recording directory, and haven't made recordings to it, then NextPVR has no reason to look at it. It could easily be Windows just deciding it wants to look at the drive for whatever reason, or some utilities you've got installed a triggering it wake the volume when their is any activity etc.

Could this be the database driver?

I wouldn't think so. It's usually on the C:\ drive, and the app opens the file with the explicit path, so there would be no reason for it to be looking at other drives.

[dljones8053]

Where is your Live TV folder located? Verify this in the NextPVR settings to make sure Live TV folder is correct and in a good location on a disk that's still in place.

dj

[martint123]

I'd use sysinternals filemon to see what process is accessing the drive/file.
I see that it's no longer filemon but process monitor that does the same and more.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysin...s/bb896645

[erik]

I found and solved the problem.

In the past I used a network share to store recordings.
Due to a changed configuration the NPVR system changed to having an internal disk for recordings but the recordings database still contains the recordings to the network share.
Then I changed my network configuration so the old path to the server storing the recordings as mentioned in the recordings database was no longer valid.
Both the recordings panel and the guide panel when activated start to check presence of recordings in the recordings database on the main thread. As the path to the recording was no longer valid a very long network timeout occurred on each of the many past recordings in the network share still in the recordings database (as proven by using processmonitor, this is tricky as process monitor only shows the call to access a files AFTER the call completes, thus after the very long network timeout) causing NextPVR.exe to become non-responsive
The solution was to edit the hosts file so the path to the server storing the network share did resolve thus eliminating the very long network timeout.

I hope it is possible to change this behavior of NextPVR.exe as this is something that could happen to other people and is VERY difficult to diagnose.

[martint123]

AFAIK the default behaviour of npvr is to delete database entries for recordings that cannot be found. This can be turned off in config.xml though.
It can always be a problem when changing drives for recordings. I can't think of a way to prevent the problem you had without the possibility of losing database entries for an offline network drive.