Hi,

I am having a problem with my home server. I am trying to use it to transfer some videos from my camcorder using the firewire port. My idea is to transfer the videos to my laptop so I can work on them later. So i connect to the server using ssh and launch dvgrab (nohup...) and log out. When I try to log in to get the file my network interface is mysteriously down (at least that is what my netgear router says). Does anyone know if there is any issue between ieee1394 and ethernet cards? What kind of information should I be checking to see if there is a problem? I will have to reboot my server to be able to log back in but I dont plan to do that every time I download some video Does anyone have any suggestion on where to start? Thanks!

You do not describe your hardware. Since it is a headless home server I assume it is a rather old computer. Your firewire card may put heavy load on it's IRQ, effectively killing everything else. I've seen it happening with cheapo ethernet cards. Next time don't log out, run top instead.

Ok, I am sorry for that. I dont have a monitor here because I am planning to connect it to my tv since most of the time I will use it with the tv. I do have a monitor that is hidden somewhere in the house just in case things get real strange

My server's specs:
Athlon 64 3500
Asus A8N-VM CSM (so absolute everything is on board)
1 GB RAM Kingston (2 x 512)
350 GB SATA Seagate
40 GB ATA Seagate

*I am using a 3COM network adapter here because when I just got this system my ethernet didnt work and I couldnt afford to have it sitting in the house waiting for a working driver to be released.

My lspci:
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51PV [GeForce 6150] (rev a2)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a2)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev a1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a1)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
04:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
04:09.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905B 100BaseTX [Cyclone] (rev 34)

Regarding software I just upgraded from 2.6.15 to 2.6.16-r9. I run gentoo linux here.

I would like to have the process run on the server, doanload the file and then I just transfer it to my lapto so I can work on it. I tried to remain logged in while it was trasnfering the file but I wasnt successful. After I logged out I just couldnt continue from where I stopped because the terminal just hang. I will do it again now because I just finished upgrading my kernel. I will remain logged in and will unmount my video processing partition and reboot the system. After that I will do a few more tests. the top command puts the process in background like "nice" right?

Thanks for the reply.

Hi Emerson,

I have tried it again but my system still hangs. After the tape was way done and the terminal didnt respond at all I decided to turn the camera off and disconnect it from the computer. Then I tried to request a new channel using my ssh but nothing happened. After a few seconds the terminal I had open was closed and now I cant get back in the server. Do you know what can be causing this behavior? Have any other ideas? Should I file a bug report?

Thanks,

I assumed you have a Pentium or P2 class box, these make great home servers. I've no idea what is causing this problem with such a powerful computer like yours. To diagnose this problem you need to know what processes are running and how much resources are used. This is why I recommended running 'top'. Also running ifconfig before firewire transfer and after could shed some light on this issue. You need a monitor for this.

Don't know if this helps, but i have noticed a Firewire profile in my networking interface list - it shows up as eth1 while the ethernet card shows as eth0. I have had this profile come up unbidden a few times -

It should not halt the computer while it is downloading the DV. All I can think of is you are using a wireless NIC for your notebook computer. I suggest only using wired networks because wireless tends lose connection during use.

In the BIOS turn off on-board ethernet and its bridge. This will give your computer more resources. While you are at it, turn off serial and parallel ports if the system has them.

Is IEEE-1394 libraries and utilities compiled with -O3 or -O2. If it is compile as -O3, then no wonder you are having problems. I recommend re-compile with -O2 and print out the errors. Please code of the ub code in this forum. I recommend compile everything to -O2 if everything is compiled as -O3 or higher.

Try enabling file sharing on your notebook computer. Then mount its file share on the desktop system. You should be able to use dvgrab to download from the camcorder to directly to the notebook computer.

SATA and Seagate drives do not mix well with all controllers. This goes true for Maxtor SATA drives. I recommend checking the logs. Probably the Seagate drive is set to PIO which will seem like the computer is freezing. I recommend using hard drives from Hitachi or Western Digital. I recommend SATA controllers from VIA, Highpoint (1640 and lower), and 3ware for reliability. People are going to argue with my list of reliable SATA controllers, but they are the most reliable when upgrading the kernel, they do not have any data corruption, and they do not have problems setting up DMA.

Critique:
I recommend a very, very good power supply like from Zalman, Eneramax, Power & Cooling, and Seasonic. I do not recommend power supplies from Antec or computer cases that comes with power supplies because they are crap.

I recommend using ECC memory for any computer. ECC memory is a lot cheaper than parity memory and you can turn off ECC if you want performance instead of reliability. For a server, ECC memory definitatly needs to be used.

ASUS motherboards are known to include windows dependent hardware. I suggest ABIT NF-95 because the on-board NIC seems to be Realtek and the BIOS can be updated using FreeDOS or any DOS bootable disk. ASUS needs Windows to update its BIOS.