Okay, first off wasn’t sure which category to put this topic in so I picked support and troubleshooting. Either way we can move it later if need be.
So here is the issue. Lately I’ve been seeing lots of threads on here about Tablo units having connection issues, getting locked up and just general screwiness and needing to power cycle them to get them back online. The problem here is that by the time people realize this lots of recorded content is missed leading to unhappy folks all around.
Given this what I am wanting to know is what is the best way to monitor a Tablo unit to see if it’s up and working correctly? A simple ping of the unit is not really good since it seems to respond even to them even when in these odd states of existence.
Now being the Geeky person I am and working in the IT field I have quite a setup at home and I monitor it already with an application called Nagios linked together with a smartphone app called Pushover so I can get realtime alerts to when things go south at home. What would would be ideal is if there was a way to query the Tablo with some check and parse the results to confirm it’s up and running and then raise an alert of somekind to let us know that the unit is offline and needing attention.
I think this would also be helpful for support as we would be able to provide records of these events and show it could be a bigger problem then they know.
Anyway, how about it. Anyone out there got any ideas? Anyone familar with the Tablo API got some suggestions?
Interesting thought… I don’t know what percentage of Tablos have this problem, as I’ve only seen it mentioned 2 or 3 times, but I can envision an application that periodically interrogates Tablo to see if it’s still responsive. If it’s not, use a Wi-Fi controlled outlet to power cycle it.
The Tablo folks seem reluctant to implement a remote reboot capability, as it wouldn’t work for all use cases, especially if Tablo has lost sanity and isn’t self recovering, but a remotely controllable outlet would give you that capability.
Nagios as the ability to check and take an action if needed. There are quite a few networked power devices that give the ability to cycle power through their API. All that can be scripted in the Nagios framework. If the Nagios check fails for a time of X, call the power reset procedure.
In my case my Tablo is in my basement in my wiring closet where all my house wiring terminates (CAT6, Coax, SAT, ANT, etc…) so it’s not exactly handy to access when it needs to be reset. Not that I’m saying walking downstairs is a problem, but its just a PYA to have to do.
Mostly I’d really just like to know and track how frequently this is really occurring and Nagios will give me the ability to track, log and report this.
Not sure this is what you’re looking for, but if you fill in your local Tablo IP address, you’ll get a response from your Tablo (assuming it’s “up and running”):
After some testing I found you can just hit the Tablo with HTTP on port 18080 and get back “Nuvyyo Tablo Server”. I’m wondering if the check is just that simple? Since the Tablo web server has to process the request to display that page perhaps it will be a good enough check to confirm the unit is still functional since I assume the access to the Tablo via my.tablotv.com is using the same method of access?
Since the Nagios check_http plugin allows for checking of a string in the returned page we just look for that and if we get it, great. If we don’t raise an error to handle.
Most generalized port monitoring software doesn’t prove anything other then the port exits. Many server OS’s accept connection requests asynchronously to the actual application accept.
A response doesn’t mean that tablo can record shows or play recordings. And actually starting a software connection protocol that is never fully or properly completed can cause issues since there may be virtual circuits that tablo keeps open waiting for additional protocol messages.
The check_http I reference it not just opening a TCP socket to the device, it’s completing an http request to the server running on port 18080, i.e. doing an http get to the device and receiving a response.
I do agree with you that there could be issues with just opening a TCP socket to see if it is there and then closing it but that is not what I’m suggesting or doing here.
I don’t see an explanation of how you would ensure that the tablo can record an episode, play Live TV, play a recording, detect if the disk is connected, or for those media players that need a WAN connection a WAN is functional.
This is a decades old problem that most large enterprise software can only solve by supplying administration applications that monitor the internal functioning of various product components.
This is how monitoring starts. Back in the day it was ping and it’s evolved into what it is now. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. There will always be gaps, but we aren’t talking a mission critical tier 1 app - although I’m sure if a certain show doesn’t record there might be a BIG escalation At the end of the day, it’s just TV.
Agreed that yes at the end of the day it’s just TV and such and there are other ways to get missing shows (Sickrage).
I was looking at this more from a knowledge base so that information about frequency and such could be used when talking to tech support. Also so that we could possibly remote reset the unit.
@Spunky03 It may be best for you to join the development community. This way, you can get access to endpoints and/or solicit existing third-party developers on building a tool like this.
There’s a fairly simple unprotected call you can make that returns a basic JSON string that you can probably use for status. If may have to write your own nagios plugin to check for that though.
At the end of the day, it’s just TV.