1 (edited by scottjanousek 2008-05-01 16:24:29)

Topic: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

OK, it's *not* a Windows like Blue screen smile ... it's black and it says:

"Unable to download the Chumby Control Panel ... Please restart your chumby to try again. If the problem persists, please
contact custom support by emailing: support@chumby.com".

Rebooting does not seem to fix the problem in my case ...

Maybe this is a global problem, since it's trying to pull down the control panel ...
(and yes, I sent an email in addition to posting this message for others)

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Did you just get your chumby or have you had it for awhile. Im thinking you might have a corrupted update..
Try downloading the current chumby firmware onto a USB memory stick... power up the chumby but keep a stylus/fingernail onto the screen untill the Special Options screen appears... then have it run the update from the USB stick... reboot, and reconfigure for your network...

If that dont work, you might want to try chumbys live help from their website in the morning..

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

We're getting scattered reports of site unavailability from the East Coast of the US, but don't see any issues at our end.  The servers are up and feeding data to chumbys.

It sounds like there may be a backbone or peering problem somewhere on the Internet.

4 (edited by scottjanousek 2008-05-02 06:54:49)

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

joltdude: have had it for a while. Yes, I actually booted into special and tried to set back to factory, but still same error. I was holding off on firmware reinstall from stick.

duane: Yes, it did seem like a network problem at first glance ... *so by peering, you mean the control panel is downloaded by peer network?* (Update: never mind of my stupid comment. It was really late and I wasn't thinking straight, doh)

I don't know much about the chumby sequence (but I guess now I am curious).

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

scottjanousek wrote:

duane: Yes, it did seem like a network problem at first glance ... so by peering, you mean the control panel is downloaded by peer network? I don't know much about the chumby sequence (but I guess now I am curious).

no, the control panel is downloaded from a *.chumby.com server, no peer network involved.  the SaaS Ops team has not
received any alerts and our servers have all been functional, so this smells like a strange DNS problem, potentially isolated
to the East Coast.

if it happens again, can you do the following from either a windows or unix machine?

nslookup xml.chumby.com

which should return:

Name:   xml.chumby.com
Address: 69.43.206.68


we will also continue to investigate on this end


/mdkail

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Boots fine now. It's 11:05 AM (EST).

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

BTW: DNS returns back as stated above (I am in Boston, MA).

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

8 (edited by scottjanousek 2008-05-02 07:56:49)

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

It is 5/2/2008 11:42 EST and the problem has reappeared.

However, the DNS is coming back as listed above (from my PC) ... if that helps.

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Thanks, Scott - a couple of other folks are reporting the issue.  As before, the servers are completely operational, and this appears to be a pure DNS issue.

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

gotcha.

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Working now ... I did cycle my airport extreme and wifi AP just moments ago (as per Sam's suggestion).

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

ok, i tracked down the DNS issue and have fixed it.  i won't post the technical details here, but if you want them, i'd be
happy to send via e-mail.

/mdkail

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Just to add my experience, Chumby was out yesterday afternoon GMT over here in the UK. Came back up just before midnight BST.

The forums were also not accessible.

Today I am being asked to activate my chumby, but cannot

14 (edited by gingerbeardman 2008-05-02 10:13:42)

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Just a quick addition: as of right now, I am unable to access www.chumby.com

Edit: decided to do something drastic and factory reset my cable modem and I am back in business. I had previously tried software reset and also a hard power cycle, both which made no difference

15 (edited by scottjanousek 2008-05-02 11:44:00)

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Just had the control panel issue again. Attempting to cycle again. 3:42 PM (EST).

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

16 (edited by scottjanousek 2008-05-02 14:58:34)

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Still getting it. Is it only me? 6:56pm EST. It's been intermitent all day making efficient on-device development difficult. Nothing in my network has changed, so I'm imaging it is external as was noted above.

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

scottjanousek wrote:

Still getting it. Is it only me? 6:56pm EST. It's been intermitent all day making efficient on-device development difficult. Nothing in my network has changed, so I'm imaging it is external as was noted above.

no one else has reported a problem since i fixed the issue around 0900PDT today.

i know that you have power-cycled your AP, but have you done the same with your cable/dsl modem?  something has
the bogus info cached.  and, make sure you power-cycle the chumby as well, since the flashplayer tends to be
hyper-aggressive about caching DNS.

/mdkail

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

I just currently had the same problem. It takes about 4 hours to clear up. I also live on the east coast. I wonder what could have caused it.

“I would rather have an inferiority complex and be pleasantly surprised, than have a superiority complex and be rudely awakened.” - Vanna Bonta

19 (edited by scottjanousek 2008-05-02 20:05:41)

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

DannoXD wrote:

I just currently had the same problem. It takes about 4 hours to clear up. I also live on the east coast. I wonder what could have caused it.

Cycling your cable/DSL/Fiber router, your wifi, and chumby seems to do the trick (for a while) ...

www.scottjanousek.com/blog | scottjanousek.mobi
Adobe Flash Lite Certified Training Instructor | Adobe Community Expert - Mobile & Devices
Coauthor, Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices - www.flashmobilebook.com
O_o ... Enjoy your chumby!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

first, i want to apologize to everyone for providing M$-esque "solutions".  Rest assured that we are working on tracking
this sporadic issue down and i'm on the phone with a major ISP right now as i have pin-pointed a name lookup failure to
at least one of their nameservers.

in order to help mitigate the problem with their nameservers and CNAME RRs, i've updated our zone file to change our
CNAME RRs to A RRs.  most important to the Chumby device is www.chumby.com, which now should resolve to:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.chumby.com.         345     IN      A       69.43.206.68

so, to summarize, this is not a chumby network server problem, though it certainly appears as such to a few of you.

update: i now have a ticket open with the ISP and they can reproduce the problem, so hopefully they will get their nameservers
restarted and things will flow smoothly again.

/mdkail

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

I am now having connection problems to the Chumby network, from BOTH of my Chumbys (Chumbies?  Please don’t ask why I have two!).

Originally, they were not changing widgets, and when I rebooted, both returned the error reported above:

Unable to download the Chumby Control Panel ... Please restart your chumby to try again. If the problem persists, please contact custom support by emailing: support@chumby.com

I’ve reset my router and cable modem, and initially one Chumby booted, and the other seemed like it was going to reboot, but wanted me to manually reset the time, defaulting to December 31st, 1969 (epoch zero).  After a few more reboots, including one time when it claimed it was no longer registered, it eventually booted correctly and I had my widgets back.

Both worked for a few (3+) hours, and both are now not working again.  I rebooted one, and am getting the error message reported above.  I did not reboot the other -- which I use as a clock -- and it is faithfully displaying the built-in Chumby clock, but I have none of my widgets.  I can make a WiFi network connection from the Control Panel to my router, and can successfully get a DHCP address, but I cannot get connected to the Chumby network (Control Panel claims that my Chumby is not registered).

Also, other WiFi Internet access is working fine for me – same WiFi router and same cable modem -- for other devices, including a VoIP phone and an Apple TV.  So I don’t think this is a problem with my local network.

I am on the East coast (New York), but the last posting from support said the problem was resolved the morning of May 2nd.  This is to confirm that I am seeing this problem on Sunday, May 4th.  I did not have any problems prior to today (both Chumbys were working as of late last night).

22 (edited by joltdude 2008-05-04 10:42:52)

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Chumby's having some upstream DNS issues.. Its known
See the following thread

http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=2360
Thanks
Joltdude

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Thanks for the link!  Good to confirm it's not just me ... and this gives me some good troubleshooting tips for the future as well.

Actually, when I came home tonight both Chumbies had "magically" fixed themselves ... so hopefully that means that either the DNS problem has finally been resolved, or the DNS cache has finally expired.

Otherwise, if the problem comes back, at least now I have a fix by hard-coding the IP in the local hosts file.

Thanks again for the pointer!

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

We've switched away from the provider with the bad DNS record - we're now hosting it ourselves.

Re: Black Screen of Death (BSOD) on Chumby?

Please see this thread:

http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=2366