Topic: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

(I am not cross posting I was directed to report this issue here)

Hello My chumby seems to have developed an issue.
Some times when I am setting up custom alarms the date set screen freezes and I wait a moment and the chumby seems to come to and resets itself.

Other times when I am inputting text into the search area in the shoutcast search window the chumby freezes  sometimes I have to press the button and sometimes it will reset on it's own.
This seems to happen on a fairly regular basis now it is becoming more and more frequent. a random resets also happen.
I have reset the chumby I have rebooted the chumby returning it to factory...None of these things seem to have any effect on this unwanted repeating behavior.
I am not a programmer and have not modified this unit in any way. I have never run anything but currently available widgets.
Can somebody please help me with this. It feels to me like I need to send it for repair. Not my first choice since it is in daily use and I like it. Sending it away for some unknown time would be a pain in the ass.
My hope is that there is some form of firmware reset or new version which will take care of this issue.
Thank you.
Yaesumofo

A Chumby in hand is worth 20 in the Wherehouse.

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

I am also having some freezing on my chumby and other intermittent issues. Most of my freezing comes when it is playing a photo widget (Flickr and Photobucket). The chumby will get stuck on a photo. Sometimes I can go into the control panel and reload the channel, other times I have to change channels and then go back and then on occasion I have to power cycle the unit as I can not even get into the control panel. I am running the beta control panel on this unit, but have not heard of any confirmed issues with the beta or the current firmware that would cause these types of issues.

Other times I will have certain widgets stop updating information while other widgets keep working fine (so I know the connection is still good).

Like you I am hoping a new control panel or firmware will solve these issues. It would be nice to see what if any stability issues are being resolved in any future updates - just to know that they are recognized as issues and if they have been reproduced.

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

One thing that would be useful is if you could capture a log of these failures.  The way we do this in QA is to open up an SSH session, then do:

# stop_control_panel
# chumbyflashplayer.x -i /tmp/controlpanel.swf

This will output a lot of information about what's going on, and you might be able to see the failure occur and why it's happening.

4 (edited by huckfinn 2008-01-28 09:17:44)

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Duane,

Thanks for the response. Is this logfile stored in non-volatile memory? IE if I have to reboot my chumby to recover from a freeze will the information still be available? I am starting to think that in least my case the problem could be related to the custom alarms. Here is my resoning.

I now have two Chumbies, one at home and one at work. The unit at home has a custom alarm that changes the channel to photobucket at 10:00 AM. I do not get home until later that evening, so this is more so the wife can see some pictures. At some point in the day it will freeze. My chumby at work does not have any custom alarms and it has been running the PhotoBucket widget for 2+ hours now without any issue. Now this could also point to a hardware issue as well as I have not tried the custom alarms on my work unit to see.

EDIT>>

This was the first time I have done anything with the SSH stuff, so I get it now. This is just basically spitting out a running log of activity, so I will setup a computer at home to log this information and hopefully it will help debug this issue. As I am not a software guy, do you want me to send the log file to you? Also do you have any recommended SSH tools to capture this log?

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Well, I let it run for about 5 hours and photobucket ran fine, even interacting with the widget occasionally. So I killed the ssh conenction as I needed to use my laptop for some actual work ;-). A few minutes later, maybe even instantly the chumby froze completely. I could not get into the control panel, but I was able to get back to a ssh prompt. So I repeated the commands you listed above and that restarted it. I will leave photobucket running for a little while longer to see if I can recreate the issue.

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Duane,

I let the capture run for several hours on my home unit and was able to capture the freeze on Photobucket. I am not a software type of guy so this log does not mean too much to me. I have an almost 4 Mb text file (zips up to less than 300kb) that I can email to you if you want or I can try to post areas of the log that seem to be of interest.

To give you some background I left it on the "Default" channel when I set it up, there is a custom alarm at 10:00 AM to change to the photo bucket channel and it appears to start having problems around 10:27. I start seeing a bunch of "MemoryObject::Alloc(0x40a2b5d4) rejected request for 49 blocks (1568K)" start popping up, they occur more and more frequently over the next few minutes but then seems to get over run with errors at 10:30 but is still chugging along at this point getting more and more errors. By 10:56 it completely stopped loading images.

Thanks for any help.

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Please email the ZIP file to me at duane@chumby.com

Thanks

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Duane,

Did you receive the zip file? If so can you provide me any feedback on what might have been found. I had a similar freeze on the myspace widget while flipping through photos. I have not captured a log of this one yet, but will try to get to it as soon as I can.

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Yes, we got the ZIP files, and I forwarded it to the widget development group.  I don't have any info yet, except that there may be a memory leak that's exacerbated by photo widgets because of the large amount of stuff they tend to load.

We've fixed a number of such bugs for the next firmware release, so it's possible this bug will simple disappear without any changes to the widgets once the firmware is updated - that firmware release is still in QA.  The good news is that the bug count is *way* down, but we still need to do some long-term testing to see if it's all good - and these photo widgets are part of that process.

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

I had a feeling it was a memory issue by the looks of the log file. Thanks for the update. As always if there is anything I can do to help please let me know. Hopefully you are correct and the upcoming firmware release will solve these issues. I will try to wait patiently.

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Many lockup thus far. About one every other day (perhaps more). Most time spent has been with the beta control panel.  I am hoping this is a software problem that will get corrected but I don't see all that many similar reports form other users thus far.  I would think that lockups of this magnitude (if real) would bring much attention to the issue and a fast attempt to fixing it. I am switching back to the released software and see if the problem go away. Hate to loose the alarm functions but I have to find out if I have a design or manufacturing problem as opposed to a software problem that may be fixable. I need to figure this out soon while I am still within the first 30 days of ownership (so I can return it if need be). I will follow up in a few days.

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

I personally do not think it is a hardware build defect. I have two units which are behaving the same way. I would think that a memory leak is strictly a software/firmware issue and not a hardware design or defect issue. I am not a software guy so this is pure speculation, but a wikipedia search on "memory leak" results with "In computer science, a memory leak is a particular kind of unintentional memory consumption by a computer program where the program fails to release memory when no longer needed. This condition is normally the result of a bug in a program that prevents it from freeing up memory that it no longer needs." So an update to the software or firmware should be able to fix this.

Duane please correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think there is anything wrong with the hardware design or build that could cause this problem. Usually hardware either works or it doesn't - not works for a while and then stops, works again with a soft reboot then dies again.

As for there not being too many similiar reports, it seems that the photo widgets are the big contributing factor. Mine locks up on the photo widget after 1-2 hours. I am not sure how many users leave the Chumby running on photos for hours on end. So that may limit the exposure of this issue. I am going to setup a few custom alarms to switch out of the photo widget every 30 minutes or so and then back and see if this clears up the memory leak.

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

I'm very confident this behavior isn't hardware related - as I mentioned elsewhere, we have *known* memory leaks in the Flash Lite player current deployed to the field.  We have fixed a number of these leaks, and a new firmware image is in QA.

However, even with the new firmware, there's still a possibility of such leaks, since these are the trickiest type of bugs to locate and fix, but it should be much better.  This will be an ongoing process - both we and Adobe actively search out these types of things.

The reason that photos exacerbate this issue is that pictures are pretty large and are loaded in quick succession - a photo widget might load several megabytes of data during its brief lifetime.  RSS feeds, on the other hand, are relatively small text files and don't load as frequently - typically just once when the widget appears.

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Last night my chumby had a BSOD... well black screen of death...  The screen went black and when I pushed the top button it turned solid white.  I had to reboot it.  Will my alarm still work when this happens?

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Please let us know it that happens again.  I can't really answer the question about the alarm until I understand exactly what state it's in.

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

I am VERY happy to report that with the new firmware the problem I was having is gone. I have let the Photobucket widget run all day without a single lockup.

Thank you!!!

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Duane, I spoke too soon. I am still having some issues with both the Photobucket and Flickr widgets. If I leave them running all day, the Photobucket locks up with a red screen and Flickr just quits updating. Would you like me to do anything to capture longs again?

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

I have tried to capture the same types of logs as before, but whenever I try it never freezes up. I've been capturing a log for the last 3 days and no hickups at all. Does starting the control panel with the logs do anything different?

-HuckFinn

19 (edited by huckfinn 2008-03-04 17:50:39)

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Duane,

I have been able to capture a freeze up, but the log is quite big as it took 3 days for it to happen again. Are you interested in seeing parts of this log or should I just let it go? This is an issue that the wife just points out to me as soon as I get home from work. "Dear your $180 alarm clock is frozen again..."

-HuckFinn

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Thanks, but no  - we've reproduced some of these really long-term freezes and are working on solutions.  These are the most tedious to address because they take so long to manifest.

Re: random (semi) freeze!!!! Please Help!!

Ok, just knowing that you can reproduce the problem is a huge relief to me. Usually the biggest challenge with these types of issues is simply reproducing them. Please keep me posted on potential fixes and if there is anything I can do to help.

-HuckFinn