Formuler F1 Twin Satellite Tuner plus hdd for sat and saorview.

greasepalm

How many things dont work on 6.1 ? plugins feed?

Gerry Wicklow

@swoofer
@greasepalm
@martin6651

Prior to doing an update there is the option to back up your settings as well as doing a full backup. I always recommend doing regular backups of your settings. This preserves things like favourites lists and timers etc. When you do an image update it will ask to restore your most recent settings backup even on a clean install.

EDIT: look under MENU>SETUP>SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT

greasepalm

But one has to have a usb or hdd to backup old images and my box was a vu solo with an apollo image.
Are there no conflicts when doing a settings restore as i had a few on vix so always did a fresh setup from very old images.
@gerry wicklow

martin6651

Gerry tried that and got message 0 updates available

greasepalm

Thats because its not supported and moved ahead to another version.

Zardoz

swoofer wrote: »

Just keep 6.1 as they say if it works dont fix it. I have 6.1 as well and no worries in the Tiviar. You only need to update if the old one becomes corrupt or the newer one has some whizzo of a new feature.

I have mine set up with plugins, wi fi, auto bouquets, iptv, skin, 4 tuners, picons, favourites and so on. It would take me ages to do all that again so I'm staying with 6.1.

Its straightforward to upgrade from 6.1 to 6.3.
You can backup all of your plugins,bouquets,settings,etc and flash a new image online and it will import them back in automatically.
I do it regularly ,works well.

swoofer

Does that include everything? I'm sure I tried update a few times and tried restore but still lost settings> what about tuners, network settings, hdmi , resolution.

Can you say briefly what I need to do? Is it simply download latest to usb etc. I have to say I have not tried an update for a few years so very rusty. All my plugins still work and I have bits like ts panel, autobouquets, crossepg, e2istream and others.

This is with tiviar.

And what will I gain with 6.3

Gerry Wicklow

From memory the settings backup covers all the important stuff When you select the new image version, it will offer to do a settings backup etc. The choices are very simple and obvious. It will then download the new image, install it and reboot. After the reboot it will offer to re-install any non standard plugins, skins etc you had on the previous version. Just OK all this and you should be good to go. The only thing I'm not sure about is autobouquets as I don't use it myself. The whole process takes ~10-15 minutes
If you haven't already done it, I strongly recommend doing both a settings backup and full backup. Then if things go badly astray you can roll back to your current setup.

EDIT: Don't get worried if some low level messages are in German. This is the original language of the software. It will come back to English once fully booted.

boardtc

I finally got my room rewired and turned on my formuler box for the first time in 1 year. It is now connected via ethernet

Pressing the red button and software updates show 200 available. Pressing green say's my "image is out of date and after such a long time, there is a risk that my Formuler F1 will not boot after online update, or will show disfunction in running image. A new flask will increase the stability. An online update is done at your own risk!! Do you still want to update?"

Had anyone done such a big update?

greasepalm

I would play safe and start from scratch,what happens if it freezes while doing it?

Gerry Wicklow

I would say go for the fresh flash. During the process it will offer the option to backup your existing settings and restore them with the new image. This keeps things like your current bouquets, timer settings etc. If you are really nervous, there is an option under the software management menu to make a full backup, as well as a settings backup. If worst comes to worst you could restore your current set up and end up back where you are now.

boardtc

Thanks for the advice. It sounds like the fresh flash option is accessible from the settings somewhere? I'll have a dig later.

Gerry Wicklow

boardtc wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. It sounds like the fresh flash option is accessible from the settings somewhere? I'll have a dig later.

look under MENU>SETUP>SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT

boardtc

Thanks. I found the flash under that and selected online (green) which is to download and flash. I selected the backup option as you suggested. I then get an error saying my backup location is not writeable :-(

I have a WD passport connected to the USB port.

I could not see anywhere to do configuration for the backup location.

Has anyone done this before with a hard drive connected through the USB Port?

NewClareman

swoofer wrote: »

Does that include everything? I'm sure I tried update a few times and tried restore but still lost settings> what about tuners, network settings, hdmi , resolution.

Can you say briefly what I need to do? Is it simply download latest to usb etc. I have to say I have not tried an update for a few years so very rusty. All my plugins still work and I have bits like ts panel, autobouquets, crossepg, e2istream and others.

This is with tiviar.

And what will I gain with 6.3

I’m not sure you’ll gain anything. In theory 6.3 should be faster and that appears to be the case. Apart from that you already have e2istream, so nothing new as far as I can tell.
I have tried two clean installs of 6.3, most recently last week, on the Tiviar. In each case I did a settings backup and new versions of the plugins were installed from the 6.3 feed. However, I keep getting a software error at least every day or two, which appears to be EPG related. The core CrossEPG code is incorporated into 6.3, so that plug-in is no longer needed. But the issue persists, whether I use it, or not.

boardtc

Any advice on how to do the backup is appreciated.

Gerry Wicklow

boardtc wrote: »

Any advice on how to do the backup is appreciated.

MENU>SETUP>SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT you'll see the option to backup settings. Click that. It only only takes few seconds. Each time you run that it creates a file with the time/date as part of its name.
There is also the option to do a full backup. This takes maybe ~5 minutes.

boardtc

Thanks, Gerry. I did not explain myself well enough in post #405. When I try that I get an error saying my backup location is not writeable. I have a WD passport hard drive connected to the USB port of the Formuler. Is there something else I need to do in order for it to write to the passport?

Gerry Wicklow

Under that software management menu is "advanced options". Check that the backup location is set to your HDD not internal flash.
Other than that, I assume you have the HDD formatted to EXT3 or 4 and not NTFS or fat32.

boardtc

Oh, My passport is NTFS, had not thought about that! I followed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xSqah1QGyY to create a EXT3 file system on a 1GB stick I had. I then tried the flash a bunch of time selecting the 3 images that show in turn, all of them blue screen:

Gerry Wicklow

I think we're talking at crossed purposes. The backup utility will write the backup to the same HDD that you would normally use for recording to. The online flash utility also downloads the image to your existing HDD, unzips it and installs from there. Downloading a separate image to a different USB is a whole different ball game. If you want to go that route the USB would normally be something like an 8GB dongle formatted to fat32. That would then install a raw version of the operating system which you would later configure.
Have you been using the passport for recordings up to now? If you have stuff on the passport you want to keep don't format it or you will wipe everything.
If you want to upgrade your existing setup you could use a temporary small USB dongle instead. To format any HDD to the EXT system, the box has the option to "initialise" the drive under the HDD settings. Again be careful this will wipe everything on the USB.
Once initialised you can the do the backup onto the dongle, select the online flash and follow the onscreen instructions. Normally it offers to do a backup of the settings anyway before it flashes.Then after it reboots, it will restore your settings from the backup.

boardtc

Thanks for sticking with me Gerry! I'm quiet confused after your post!

A couple of things, I have had the formuler box for 2 years but after never been able to use it, as I never had my room sorted with cabling until now. So, I am hoping to use the formuler box over Christmas.

So, I have never recorded before. I had a NTFS formatted passport attached, I removed that and added a linux formatted 1GB stick I had. This is the only HDD attached to the box now. It sounds like I should upgrade that to something bigger if I want to record stuff.

So you say "The online flash utility also downloads the image to your existing HDD, unzips it and installs from there. Downloading a separate image to a different USB is a whole different ball game...". I'm not sure of the relevance of your post when I have a 1gb linux formatted stick already connected? Maybe I missed something? Probably I did not explain well again.

So, I tried to do the upgrade and got the blue screen above, what did I do wrong?

greasepalm

Regarding a hdd or usb storage device most come as fat32 and when setup on box for first use are setup via the box initialize it then upgrade from ext 3 to ext 4 which is correct for recordings.
I always had issues with passports and moved to 2 tb toshiba canvio externally powered.
Most times i need to flash a new image to box i would download to pc and extract image to a formatted fat32 usb stick of 8gb like a kingston and inserted into rear port when powered off.Any other usb devices need to be removed first.1gb stick is tiny

Gerry Wicklow

Sorry for delay getting back to you. I didn't realise you never had the box up and running. Forget about the passport for now. The 1Gb will only be useful if you need to flash a new image onto the box. It is far too small for recording.
Unplug all USBs and see if the box boots up. You should be able to go through the initial setup screens even without a USB plugged in. If you still get a blue-screen we have bigger issues. Once you get the box up and some channels scanned in, we'll move onto the next steps.

boardtc

Hi Gerry. I have done a bad job again at explaining myself again! I did get the box up and running before, I just have never used it as I had to have long cables stretched all over the gaff! So I boxed it up until that was sorted. I can watch all the channels now. I just want to upgrade/reflash.

Gerry Wicklow

PM sent

boardtc

Thanks for the help Gerry!
I'm going to try with a new HDD to see if that will stop my blue screen!
@greasepalm I know you use a kingston usb stick for flashing
Has anyone used one for recording? I can pickup a 128GB one for a good price, e.g https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00U88FV0S

MenloPete

boardtc wrote: »

I can pickup a 128GB one for a good price, e.g https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00U88FV0S

I've no connection with the company, but why not support an Irish company?
https://www.memoryc.ie/usb/flash-drives.html#Capacity[]=128GB&Interface_Type[]=USB3.0&orderby=price&page=0

boardtc

Thank you for that site. 100% I did not know about it and it's competitive. But they will not ship until Dec 20 :-( Is it realy local :-(

Gerry Wicklow

boardtc wrote: »

Thank you for that site. 100% I did not know about it and it's competitive. But they will not ship until Dec 20 :-( Is it realy local :-(

Yes i have often collected stuff directly in Celbridge. If they have it in stock you often get next day An Post delivery although they say allow 2 days. No affiliation either but a satisfied customer.