• bobsz
  • Blue Buddy
  • Offline
  • From: Long Beach NY
  • Registered: 2011-01-01
  • Posts: 546

Topic: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

I hope this is just a morning glitch. Both my C1 and C8 went down about 8:45 EST. First both acted like they were new, never registered, asked if I wanted to set up a network. and register the devices. I restarted both with special options, but both hang at "downloading the control panel." Don't know if I should go through the whole setup again, or what. I'd noticed the chumby.com site was down for much of the night. Only had the C1 running tonight. It was going ok until I tried to play music. I noted only about half the music sources  were listed- no MyStreams, others missing. After that try it just went to white screen. If I restart it again it keeps just freezing at "Downloading the control panel- please wait a moment."

Similar scenario if I plug in the C8, won't d/l contriol panel. C8 says "Control panel download unsucessful-update not successful- try again."

I'm guessing something's up with the servers, update or not.  So I'll just leave both unplugged for a while, hope to get some guidance from here later on. I know I'm probably just paranoid about charmageddon, hope this isn't a big thing.

Hope you can let us know what's up. I'm assuming it's not just my Chumbys! Thanks in advance for any info.

  • Registered: 2011-01-13
  • Posts: 31

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

I woke up this morning to the same thing.  I always freak out a little bit whenever the backup alarm goes off.  Noticing that the www.chumby.com server is down doesn't look good, but I also notice that insignia.chumby.com still seems to be working. 

My first thought upon hearing the backup alarm was, "Crap, I haven't downloaded the offline firmware yet!"

  • orbit
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2012-02-09
  • Posts: 6

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

All 4 of mine are down also.  Bad feeling about this.  Late to the "post Chumby Server Party"... where do I find out about the off line firmware?

  • Registered: 2011-10-12
  • Posts: 326

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

But this forum is still up and likely in the same place. So incredibly I think this is just an outage.  It shouldn't be but there is no explanation why forum should still be up.

  • Registered: 2011-10-12
  • Posts: 326

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Posted by Duane:

Chumby.com is current experiencing an unscheduled outage.

We're working on it.

  • Registered: 2007-10-24
  • Posts: 52

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

See here...database ran out of space.  They are working on it.

http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8311

  • Registered: 2007-11-03
  • Posts: 67

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Sorry, panicking right now.  So is Chumby down "forever" or will it come back up?  A bit of a hardware noob here; is there a way to "save" widgets even if Chumby.com is discontinued?

  • Registered: 2011-03-26
  • Posts: 45

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Threemoons wrote:

Sorry, panicking right now.  So is Chumby down "forever" or will it come back up?  A bit of a hardware noob here; is there a way to "save" widgets even if Chumby.com is discontinued?

You're not even going to bother reading the 2 posts above yours are you?

Anyway, the service is supposed to come back up some time today.
As for getting widgets onto your device without needing the Chumby.com service, check out this thread http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8061

  • Registered: 2007-11-03
  • Posts: 67

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Outrager wrote:
Threemoons wrote:

Sorry, panicking right now.  So is Chumby down "forever" or will it come back up?  A bit of a hardware noob here; is there a way to "save" widgets even if Chumby.com is discontinued?

You're not even going to bother reading the 2 posts above yours are you?

Anyway, the service is supposed to come back up some time today.
As for getting widgets onto your device without needing the Chumby.com service, check out this thread http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8061

The other two posts weren't up when I posted.

  • Registered: 2008-03-28
  • Posts: 93

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Mine's back up and running normally right now. BIG kudos to Duane and the keepers of the flame!
Also, while chumby.com was down, I used Zurk's offline-mode homebrew and it worked flawlessly. BIG kudos to Zurk!

  • Registered: 2007-11-03
  • Posts: 67

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Gonna check the Zurk fix.

In the meantime...has anyone proposed a Kickstarter or similar crowdfunding in order to keep the servers up?

  • bobsz
  • Blue Buddy
  • Offline
  • From: Long Beach NY
  • Registered: 2011-01-01
  • Posts: 546

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

This was a good drill for me. I thought I had the offline firmware setup fine, but it kept reverting to the "default" profile after about 20 minutes. Back to the drawing board with that. And thanks once again to Duane.

  • bj101
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2011-03-20
  • Posts: 4

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

where does one find the offline firmware?

  • Plank
  • Busy Chum
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2008-05-17
  • Posts: 217

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Chumby is back online!

  • From: Somewhere on or near Earth
  • Registered: 2009-12-16
  • Posts: 774

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

bj101 wrote:

where does one find the offline firmware?


http://sourceforge.net/projects/zurk/files/

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

BoloMKXXVIII's Website

16 Reply by infocastme (edited by infocastme 2012-08-24 04:23:02)

  • From: Arizona
  • Registered: 2012-05-17
  • Posts: 294

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Everything is back to normal!

BIG Thanks to Duane and all his hard work.

Misquoting  AC/DC, Those who ROCK we salute you!

  • Registered: 2011-03-26
  • Posts: 45

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Threemoons wrote:
Outrager wrote:
Threemoons wrote:

Sorry, panicking right now.  So is Chumby down "forever" or will it come back up?  A bit of a hardware noob here; is there a way to "save" widgets even if Chumby.com is discontinued?

You're not even going to bother reading the 2 posts above yours are you?

Anyway, the service is supposed to come back up some time today.
As for getting widgets onto your device without needing the Chumby.com service, check out this thread http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8061

The other two posts weren't up when I posted.

Unless you took a whole day to post it without refreshing I don't see how that's possible.
Look at the time stamps.

  • From: Meridian, MS
  • Registered: 2012-04-30
  • Posts: 867

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Thanks Duane for your work with chumby servers.

Owner of 3 Sony Dash, 2 Info 8.
  • Registered: 2008-02-19
  • Posts: 55

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

I had to reactivate my chumby when the site came back up.  I lost all my alarm settings and streaming settings. sad

But I'm glad the site is back up and my chumby is running again! smile

20 Reply by dhl

  • dhl
  • Busy Chum
  • Offline
  • From: San Francisco, CA
  • Registered: 2007-12-04
  • Posts: 114

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

@creep

Did your Chumby say "unable to connect to chumby.com" when you tried connecting back to the site? How did you reset it? I really don't want to lose all my settings but I guess I could copy the files before doing a reset...

dhl's Website

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,200

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

You should not have to reset your device in the case of a server outage.  If you do so, you'll simply lose your settings, as many folks have reported.

The message that your device needs activation when the servers go down or are overloaded is an erroneous message - an old bug that never got fixed.

Duane's Website

22 Reply by dhl

  • dhl
  • Busy Chum
  • Offline
  • From: San Francisco, CA
  • Registered: 2007-12-04
  • Posts: 114

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Hi Duane,

During the outage, I tried Zurk's and Servalan's offline firmware. What's happening now when I try restarting without the thumbdrive is I get the network connection failed message (chumby.com is unreachable).

It looks like the offline firmware patched something and it's preventing my chumby from talking to the chumby.com servers. The offline documentation is pretty scattered here on the forum and I haven't found info on how to undo the offline patch. Any info much appreciated!

btw, I also want to thank you Duane, for everything you're doing to keep our chumbys going! smile

dhl's Website

23 Reply by dhl (edited by dhl 2012-08-24 12:43:48)

  • dhl
  • Busy Chum
  • Offline
  • From: San Francisco, CA
  • Registered: 2007-12-04
  • Posts: 114

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

@msharp

Thanks for the info! Before I reflash, is there any info on what parts of the filesystem Servalan's firmware patches? I'm pretty handy with SSH and editing files on the Chumby.

UPDATE

Figured it out. Just needed to edit the hosts files in mnt and psp directories back to normal. All good! smile

dhl's Website

  • From: Australia
  • Registered: 2008-11-12
  • Posts: 104

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

msharp42 wrote:

Servalan's offline firmware is meant to be permanently installed and patches the chumby filesystem. reflash the chumby and reset to factory settings to get rid of it.

You don't need to reflash. You need to read the instructions. Just ssh into your chumby, modify the hosts file & reboot. That's it.

Explained here:
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=41664#p41664

BTW it's not my firmware. It's just a local copy of the control panel, widgets & a few hacks to trick the chumby into loading html/xml content from local storage. Nothing flash at all.

25 Reply by electronymous (edited by electronymous 2012-08-25 08:24:46)

  • Registered: 2012-08-24
  • Posts: 4

Re: Chumbys stopped dead this mornng

Props and beyond to Duane for the recent heroic effort.
Only one little thing or two...
When the server went down, I did a knee-jerk reboot. The control panel loaded, but then I got the "register your new chumby" rhorshach test thingy. I thought "mebbee it's lost its settings, I'll go along with this" but this was wrong.  I couldn't complete the registration -- already registered,dontcha know. Next boot attempt brought dreaded failure to load control panel message. Next step was to reboot with zurk's offline world just so I'd have a clock radio ready when the time came for such...
It came to pass that Duane got the servers back -- yayyyy! .
After having run for a few days on zurk's offline software--a reboot with with the  mothership should have been an occasion for joy, but it would appear that in the interim all of my alarms are wiped out, as are my custom stream URLs.  What's more, my  customized music list is back to factory default. Ooddly, my FM radio presets are undisturbed.
My second priority after setting all those alarms was to SSH in and get that music list back to
the way I like it, but what the Hey, SSH suddenly wants a password! It had never required one before and I certainly didn't install any such thing. Also, when a clock widget is running and you press the u-switch, the "authenticating" screen sometimes comes up for a few seconds before the control panel appears. 
So, what to do? I tried the "script on a stick" password removal method mentioned in this thread http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8143
To no avail.
  I plugged in a USB keyboard, and ruined my eyesight, but could not reset the password.
Does anyone know of a method to reset this password or have a clue as to how it got there?
Thank you for reading this, and for any suggestions that might useful to a relative noob in getting this sorted.





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