Bug 4951 - Transporter freezes often on SqueezeNetwork
: Transporter freezes often on SqueezeNetwork
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: SB Transporter
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Hardware
: unspecified
: PC Windows XP
: P2 normal with 3 votes (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Andy Grundman
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
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Reported: 2007-05-01 14:04 UTC by tomer maoz
Modified: 2007-10-26 08:58 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Category: ---


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Description tomer maoz 2007-05-01 14:04:52 UTC
customer start having issues with using to SqueezeNetwork, it freezes often when keys are pressed on the remote. he also noticed that the status of the transporter as reported on the SqueezeNetwork web site tends to be wrong or old most of the time - it doesn't show what's currently playing correctly, etc.
He have the most trouble with Pandora, but there are freezes with other Internet radio stations as well. If he plays a radio station, and then go back to "Now Playing" and then press the right button, the player freezes for about a minute, and then goes back to normal. The music keeps playing. Pandora has worse freezes. Sometimes the player goes back to normal after a minute or two, and sometimes he will have to turn it off by pressing the power button for a few seconds.
Then he downgrade from firmware 31 back to 27 and then the audio stop working, reset the xilinx chip and everything start working again but now he cant connect to Pandora cause it require update to 31.

the issue happen wireless or wired.
SlimServer work fine.
ticket #070420-000935

Customer brought the player for repair and i tested it with Rico here in the office and the first time it was doing the same  behavior.
We reset the player and deleted is SN account and then everything started to work fine with firmware 31.
Gave the player back to the customer and he call the same night saying still the same issue.

customer brought the player again the day after and we gave him a new player, customer email me a day after still the same issue.

i have the player here and i did try to reproduce the issue but after the first reset i did for the player i dont see the freezes any more.

Andy do you have any idea what can cause something like this?
Comment 1 tomer maoz 2007-05-01 16:12:53 UTC
Just wanted to add that i just finish to talk to another customer on the phone with the same issue, so it's not a single  incident. 
Comment 2 Peter S 2007-05-01 17:32:07 UTC
I also had this problem and called about it. I spoke with Tomer. Rhapsody and pandora would play the stream fine, but once the stream was started the remote would cause the transporter to freeze up (while still playing the stream fine). So I could play a single stream and then never use the remote again without rebooting the transporter. Internet radio (slim picks) seemed to work ok when I tried it, however I don't use it much at all. My squeezebox still works perfectly, so it is not my network. I'm running only the newest firmware. 

I thought I had fixed my problem by making a new squeezenetwork account and moving the transporter and my rhapsody/pandora accounts to the new squeezenetwork account. It worked ok for a half hour or so. Now it is doing the same thing again. So I'm still stuck and very frustrated with it.
Comment 3 Andy Grundman 2007-05-01 17:47:01 UTC
Any reports of the same thing with a SB2/3?
Comment 4 tomer maoz 2007-05-02 12:17:57 UTC
No Andy, we did not get any issue like this since the firmware update with the Squeezebox.

The customer that put the post before (Peter) got also a SB2/3 on the same network that the transporter is connected to and it's working fine for him.

Is this correct peter?

Comment 5 Terry Cotterill 2007-05-02 12:47:54 UTC
I believe it was tomer who dealt with my Transporter  issue which is identical to the original bug. All internet radio freezes with firmware 31.
My supplier says that he has other customers with similar problems and is awaiting a fix. I rate this bug as major.

I have a MAC running OS 10.4.9

 incident 070410-00295
Comment 6 Peter S 2007-05-02 13:20:05 UTC
Yes that is correct. I have a squeezebox 3 running on the same network without issue. I have a second SB3 as well which was running fine where the transporter sits now. Its in a box at the moment destined for the office, but it worked great as well. All connections are wireless (except the slimserver machine to the router). I am using one of the recent nightly builds of slimserver, less than a month old probably. I don't know that it matters, but here is what slimserver reports:

SlimServer Version: 6.5.2 - 11764 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
Server IP address: 192.168.1.100
Perl Version: 5.8.8 MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
MySQL Version: 5.0.22-community-nt 

I also noticed I can control the transporter through the web interface on squeezenetwork fine. Volume control also works via the remote prior to the freeze. Left, Right, Now Playing all freeze it up though. Probably more stuff as well. 
Comment 7 Andy Grundman 2007-05-02 13:36:04 UTC
Wish I could reproduce this... does it happen with the front-panel buttons as well as the remote?
Comment 8 Peter S 2007-05-02 13:44:52 UTC
I just reproduced the "success" I had last night. I made a new squeezenetwork account and migrated the transporter/pandora/rhapsody to it. Its working great now. I don't expect it to last but its been working for about 15 minutes.

I'll check the front buttons once the problem comes back. 
Comment 9 Peter S 2007-05-02 14:11:17 UTC
I have a hunch it has something to do with setting the visualizer screen to "Spectrum Analyzer and Extended Text Display". 

I'm going to continue messing around with it and will give more info if I get any, but this and see if you can reproduce the problem:

- Add a transporter to a squeezenetwork account (resetting all settings)
- Play with it with default settings, should be fine
- Set the visualizer screen to "Spectrum Analyzer and Extended Text Display".
- It might take 5 seconds it might take 30 minutes, but see if it locks up for you (using remote) while playing rhapsody

I seem to be able to reproduce this here. I'm going to set it to the default settings and just let it run for a long time to make sure it actually works long term like that here. 

I'd be interested to know what those of you reading this with this problem or not have set for your visualizer screen. 
Comment 10 tomer maoz 2007-05-02 14:25:25 UTC
I manage to see the same issue on my Transporter, i'm not sure what cause it but it was running fine for a 2 days playing music from Pandora and now after reading the info that peter post i try to play with the visual button on the front of the player and it's freeze.

I will try to play with it more and see if i can find where it start to freeze.

Comment 11 Andy Grundman 2007-05-02 14:27:44 UTC
Good one!  The visual button did it for me too, thanks, that's very helpful.
Comment 12 Peter S 2007-05-02 14:28:18 UTC
FYI I was changing the visualizer option via the web page. I'm not sure if this makes a difference or not, but that's how I did it.
Comment 13 Peter S 2007-05-02 14:30:28 UTC
That's great news Andy. I do this for a living also, and I know how hard the irreproducible ones are. :)

I'm going to leave it on the analog vu default all evening. If I have any problems I'll post them, but hopefully that's a valid workaround. 
Comment 14 tomer maoz 2007-05-02 15:02:09 UTC
i reset the player once then everything was working again then i went to the SqueezeNetwork site and change the visualizer screen to Spectrum analyzer and everything freeze again.
reset to factory default try again and until now it's behaving fine even after i try changing the visualizer screen from the web site or play with the Visual button on the unit.

i just finish writing and now it's freeze again, i'm not sure what really cause it but it's hard to pin point to specific thing.

Comment 15 Peter S 2007-05-02 15:05:50 UTC
It usually happens immediately but not always for sure.

I'm still running great on the squeezenetwork defaults.
Comment 16 Peter S 2007-05-02 16:11:08 UTC
It just froze up on the vu meter. I was scrolling through my rhapsody artists and it just froze. The stream stopped playing this time as well (after skipping briefly). 
Comment 17 Peter S 2007-05-03 05:14:40 UTC
Well it ran all last evening with only that single freeze. I don't know if that's the same problem, a different problem, or an isolated incident. In any case, the analog vu meter on the visualizer seems to be a decent workaround for rhapsody and pandora.
Comment 18 Andy Grundman 2007-05-03 08:14:26 UTC
This bug is caused by the recently added slimproto compression.  I've disabled compression for Transporters on SN until we figure out what's wrong.
Comment 19 Chris Owens 2007-05-03 09:17:14 UTC
Andy, you know just what to say to make me happy.  I'm glad you were able to return so easily to the old way and just for Transporter, too!
Comment 20 Peter S 2007-05-03 10:13:46 UTC
Excellent news that you've narrowed it down so far! So with the compression off, everything should work now?
Comment 21 Peter S 2007-05-03 16:21:47 UTC
I'm getting freezes tonight using the spectrum analyzer. Not nearly as bad, but I've had enough to be annoying tonight. Definately still as I scroll around with the remote.

I'm moving back to the VU Meter.
Comment 22 Peter S 2007-05-04 13:59:49 UTC
I'm getting lockups with the VU meter today. Whatever you did reduced the frequency of the lockups considerably (especially on the spectrum analyzer) but it has not solved the problem. The current lockups are probably too infrequent to find any kind of test case for.
Comment 23 Andy Grundman 2007-05-04 14:05:59 UTC
If it's the compression code (and I suspect it is), it should have only happened in the extended text mode, the other visualizers are all done by the firmware.  I have not seen a lockup in any other situation.  How long do the lockups that you are seeing now last?
Comment 24 Peter S 2007-05-04 15:50:36 UTC
They are permanent, requiring pulling the plug and reinserting it. Press and hold power doesn't shut down. I only get them maybe once every couple hours, not immediately like before. They always seem to occur when moving through the menus with the remote. Its possible its a different problem that wasn't showing up until you fixed the compression issue. It just seems very similar to the previous problem. 
Comment 25 Terry Cotterill 2007-05-09 12:14:31 UTC
Took a chance and upgraded to the nightly build 9th May . Squeezenetwork has now been playing for 2 hours without a freeze. Tried all the visualiser settings and so far everything is fine. Can not try Pandora my 90 day trial has expired after 30 days?
Comment 26 Ariel Cohen 2007-05-14 20:52:29 UTC
I'm the customer mentioned by Tomer in the bug description. I also just used SqueezeNetwork for a couple of hours without getting freezes. I'm using the same Transporter firmware version that I was using when I got the freezes before (version 31). My guess is that something was changed in the new SqueezeNetwork software (r844 from 5/10/07) which addressed the problem. I'll keep testing and report any problems.
Comment 27 Ariel Cohen 2007-05-16 10:24:39 UTC
It froze on me while playing Rhapsody last night. Pressing and holding the power button didn't do anything, so I had to disconnect the unit from the power and then reconnect it.

When this happens, it happens when something is pressed on the remote. The display on the unit continues displaying whatever it was displaying, and the unit continues playing for a while, but it becomes completely unresponsive, and it stops playing after a while.
Comment 28 Peter S 2007-05-16 10:42:12 UTC
I am also still getting a couple freezes a night. Its much, much better than when this started, but its still VERY frustrating.  
Comment 29 Ross Levine 2007-10-10 16:01:04 UTC
Is anyone still experiencing this?
Comment 30 Peter S 2007-10-11 07:11:49 UTC
I still get freeze-ups, but they are infrequent now, and almost entirely on rhapsody.
Comment 31 Terry Cotterill 2007-10-11 23:29:05 UTC
Not had a freeze since the nightly build of 5th May 2007
Comment 32 Blackketter Dean 2007-10-26 08:58:04 UTC
Appears to be fixed.  Please reopen if you start seeing this again.