failed to connect to DCErouter

[drjenk]

Something is wrong with my system.

Last night I was configuring pipes between my devices.  I notice on the screen it said I should quick reload the router, which I did.  It seemed like it was stuck on "generating orbiter #20" on 0% forever (that is my onscreen orbiter device).  So it was late, I figured let it go and continue tomorrow.  Well today I went to browse the A/V devices, and I got an error in my browser, something to the effect of not being able to allocate memory.  So I did a reboot of the system, then after that a quick reload, and observed what was going on.  It got stuck on 0% on the onscreen orbiter device again.  When trying to browse to media directors or orbiters on the admin page, I get "loading" and no content.  So in the fear of making things worse, I figure I better stop now and ask for some advice.  The last thing I was doing was assigning the A/V pipes to my receiver/pvr etc.  (for the first time).  Prior to that, I think I did a "set up new diskless MD" in the media directors screen, in preparation for booting one of those for the first time. 

Any idea what I should do next?  Any logs I can send?  I see on the display now it says "failed to connect to DCErouter!".  That can't be good. 

Thanks
Dave

PS, after a longer pause, when going to the AV screen on the admin page, I get this in the browser:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 40 bytes) in /var/www/pluto-admin/include/adodb/drivers/adodb-mysql.inc.php on line 541

[drjenk]

To follow up on that, still hosed.  When it starts up, it tries to do a reload, says "this may take a while", and after about 20 minutes, it finally ends up  on "failed to connect to DCErouter!".  It seems like perhaps something got currupted.  I see in the lines preceding a few failures also, :
Initialize LM_device: Connect failed
Initialize LM_device: Not Retrying

Is there any way to possibly recover?  I am contemplating a fresh install.

[drjenk]

Has this ever happened to anyone before?

I installed the i386 dvd, I have an amd x2.  Could that be the problem?  I have been sitting here all evening trying everything, full regens, running the setup wizard (unrelated I know, but out of ideas), reboots a few times, combing the troubleshooting wiki.  I spent a lot of time training remotes last night (after finally getting the usb uirt to work), so I'm hesitant to throw that all away, but I'm just not really able to even run this any more for some reason.  It stalls on the screen before linux mce comes up on boot, in the linux mce launch manager, but doesn't proceed any farther.  Is the general rule for every small change to a quick load of the router, before changing too many things in between reloads?  That is all I can think of.

Is there a list of do's and don't somewhere that I violated?  I only had the hybrid/core as a device in the system so it doesn't seem like there was a lot of work for it to do figuring out the connections.  The problem seems related to generating the screen orbiter, and I did briefly enter the "scenarios" screen, to realize that I better do my pipes in the av devices screen before that.  I don't think I changed anything in the scenarios screen though. 

I'd like to know the potential downfalls or "don'ts" before falling into one again, especially if I spend more time than I have (less than a week) tweaking everything.   


Thanks for any help

[jimmejames]

I've seen this a couple times on my WebDT 366- but only when I was a fair distance away from my wireless router and other devices (microwave, phone, etc) were in use.  That orbiter now sits ~14' away from my wireless router (F5D7230-4) (directly above it through 1 floor) and the units response to inputs now is clearly faster and the "failed to connect to DCErouter" message does not appear.

[drjenk]

In your case you are using an actual discrete orbiter wirelessly.  In my case, the only orbiter I have is the on-screen orbiter so far.  I was just setting up.  It a long time on 0% for "generating orbiter #20" (my on screen orbiter device), then eventually does the failure messages above. 

Not many seem to want to touch this one!  I don't blame them.  Judging from my lack of finding anything in the posts having to do with the strings I am seeing, this doesn't happen often. 

I am just wondering now what I did, and how not do it again if I re-install.  When adding devices and pipes via the web admin page, is it best to stick to the web interface to initiate the quickload, or respond to the screen prompts and initiate from there when it says it needs to?  I think when I was adding pipes, I turned around, noticed on the tv screen it says I need to quick load, and did it from there.  That seemed to be the beginning of my problems, but not sure.

[drjenk]

Well I've done a complete re-install, with i386 image again, and have been having some success and have actually added a media director and can see my pvr from another room.  In hindsight, I think I know what I did to brick my hybrid/core (just a theory), and thought I'd share in case anyone runs across this. 
I remember I was getting ready to start up my media director in the living room for the first time (hybrid in separate room), so I did the "setup diskless MD" and let it run it's course.  I then thought, well before I do that, I better set up the pipes better in the rec room (where the hybrid is), so I can control the equipment once I get the media director going.  Well, in the course of setting up the pipes, I remember relaoding the router, and somewhere along the way, I remember looking in the restart screen on the web admin page and seeing 2 entries instead of one, "core" as the core, and "hybird/core" as a media director.  I thought this was odd.  I had only seen the "core" entry before, which makes sense because I only had one machine on the network at the time.  So perhaps the pipe definitions pointing to themselves confused the dcerouter so much that it couldn't resolve it.  (?)
So my lesson I took from this was, don't do the "setup diskless MD" until immediately prior to actually booting it up, and don't do anything in between setting it up and booting it for the first time.  That is, I HOPE this was the cause, because I'd sure hate to do this all over again.

Dave

Dave