Displays various operating information about the Scientific-Atlanta Resident Application, or SARA. Additionally, if there have been any unusual or failure conditions detected by SARA, they will be listed on the lower half of this screen under the heading "Software Anomalies". If any anomalies are show, the entire message displayed should be written down exactly as displayed and communicated to the appropriate people at S-A.

•Global Cfg - This is the timestamp of the global configuration data sent to the set-top. This is not the time the data was received, but is the time of when the configuration was created. If the set-top has not received any global configuration data, "Unavailable" will be displayed. •Addressed Cfg - This is the timestamp of configuration data that was sent specifically to this set-top. This is not the time the data was received, but is the time of when the configuration was created. If the set-top has not received any global configuration data, "Unavailable" will be displayed. •IPG Daemon - This displays four pieces of information about the Interactive Program Guide (IPG) Daemon from left to right. The "daemon" is the software that collects the IPG data from the network.
•Leftmost is the current state of the daemon. Possible values are:
•"Idle/Waiting" indicating it has nothing to do, •"Filling Cache" indicating it is attempting to cache seven (7) days of IPG data (this state does not mean that all 7 days are available, but it still tries anyway), •"Getting Data" indicating that it is reading title/program data beyond the required minimum cache size. •"Getting Desc" indicating that it is reading a file containing program text descriptions, •"Freed Resources" indicating all data has been purged by a request for memory, •"Awaiting Update" indicating an update notification has been received, but the updated data is not quite yet available on the Broadcast File System, and •"Getting Update" indicating that it is in the process of reading updated data.

•Next is the cache state indicator. This indicator is "c:" followed by a hexadecimal number, starting with "0x". Each bit in this number represents a day of the month, from 1..31 that is currently cached in the set-top's memory. (Bit 0 will never be set). The bits are in descending order from left-to-right with bit/day 31 being the leftmost bit (0x80000000), and bit/day 1 being the rightmost bit that will ever be set (0x00000002). •Third is the timestamp of the newest data file that has been read. This is the time the file was created, not when it was read by the set-top. The timestamp format is YYMM.hhmm. •Last is the timestamp of when most recently update file finished being read. If there have been no updates read since the set-top was booted, this will say "Initial Load", otherwise it will be "@" followed by the timestamp. The timestamp format is YYMM.hhmm.

•EAS - This displays information about Emergency Alert System messages received by the DHCT.
•Total is the total number of EAS messages received. •Last Load/Start is the Load and Start times for the last EAS message received by the DHCT. The time format for the load and start times is MMDD.hhmm.

If there is a heading labeled "Software Anomalies", the message or messages following the heading indicate unusual or failure conditions that should not exist if everything in the system were operating properly. If a message starts with "WARNING", then this is an unusual condition that has been handled as best as possible by the software without causing further problems, however it indicates that there is a problem that needs further investigation. If the message starts with "FAILURE", then this is a serious condition that the software cannot work around and will require the set-top to be rebooted. (In a production ROM, the set-top will reboot automatically after a failure has been displayed for 1 minute -- long enough to write down the message.) If any anomalies are show, the entire message displayed should be written down exactly as displayed and communicated to the appropriate people at S-A. Please note that the presence of an anomaly does not necessarily indicate a problem with the set-top; it could be a network or headend problem that the set-top detected and/or tripped over.

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by Corvus
last modified: 2005-02-15 20:54:19