Dashcam and Sentry not recording in 2020.24.6.4

[andyschroder]

In version 2020.24.6.4 Dashcam and Sentry are not recording. It also did not work in the last version that I had that introduced the video viewer. I didn't write down that software version because I was "hoping" it would just start working again with the next upgrade, but it does not. In the last version it had an error message something about the USB drive. In the current version, it doesn't and it acts like sentry mode and dash cam are working, but nothing actually gets recorded.

I have a 1TB SSD with 833.9GB for the partition holding the TeslaCam.

I am using the ext4 filesystem. The filesystem is only 41% used, the rest is free. I don't want to use another filesystem, nor do I think it would even work with an 833.9GB partition.

Interestingly, if I change the file system root's user and group ID, every time I plug it back into the car it will reset to a user and group ID of 0 (which is root). Also, if I change the user and group ID of the TeslaCam folder and all it's children, upon plugging back into the car, those files and folders will be restored back to the user and group ID of 1999.

The dashcam viewer will play some videos that were recorded before the update that broke recording functionality, but the video selection list is super glitchy and doesn't always work. Also, when playing a video, mid way through playing the video it will just stop and then revert back to playing the last saved video file that was recorded before I did the software update that initially broke everything.


My music partition seems to work just file, as long as I run "chmod -R 755 Music" on the music files before plugging into the car.

 

[sduck]

Lots of threads on this. I'd try reformatting to fat32 - yes, you CAN format a 1TB drive in fat32 - see if it works. And they added support for exfat recently - maybe worth a try. Or just try reformatting it in your linux box to ext4 - it may just need a fresh start. I use ext4 for my music drive, which is a seperate ssd, and fat32 for the sentry drive. I use Paragon's ext4 utility on my mac, which doesn't have any permission tools, so can't help you with that, although there was some mention of that in one of the previous threads here.

 

[andyschroder]

I did not want to re-format and loose all my video recordings, and, as mentioned above, didn't want to use fat32.

What I did try to do is rename the TeslaCam folder to TeslaCam-old, then create a new TeslaCam folder. This appears to be working, so now I'm not sure if the issue had anything to do with ext4 filesystem.

It's possible that the tesla has some bugs when dealing with a large number of recordings and that has been temporarily mitigated by starting once again with what appears to the tesla as having no prior recordings. I will report back over time if it again begins to fail as more video recordings are saved.

One other interesting thing to note is that in the new TeslaCam folder, the tesla seems to be now using the user ID of 1984 for some things instead of 1999, but it still uses a group ID of 1999 for everything.

 

[andyschroder]

So, I tried using dashcam about 18 minutes into my drive to work this morning. It did not work again. Sentry mode also did not work, even though it said events were detected after sitting in parking lots.

I checked the disk this evening on my computer. Interestingly, the userID is now back to using 1999 again for everything instead of 1984 and 1999. Also, folders were actually created this time for some of the sentry and dashcam recordings, except the only thing in them is an event.json file.

I will resize my existing partitions and make a new one that is fat32 and then try again.

It seems pretty annoying that the software would have so much trouble with different filesystems. However, if tesla is moving different processes to different user accounts, that is a good thing from a security perspective, so hopefully they'll get that approach more robust and then there will eventually be an overall gain from a better architecture. fat32 has no concept of file permissions, so if there really is a problem with permissions, it's just obfuscated by the limited design of fat32.

 

[turok3000]

I would recommend reformatting your drive via the car to ensure it is using the currently preferred filesystem format.

Ie

1. Plug the drive into another machine and copy the existing files off.
2. Plug it into the car and format.
3. Move it back to your other machine and copy your original files back.
4. Reinsert into the car.

 

[andyschroder]

The new partition I created with a fat32 filesystem "seems" to be working after a few days of use. Definitely a shame that ext4 no longer works. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Also, this new dash cam viewer seems super glitchy. Videos will just jump around forward in backward in time during playback. It seems like they are getting the sequence of the 1 minute video clips out of order. Also, the video will not start playing from where you drag the seek bar to. Instead, it will just jump to an arbitrary position within 30 seconds of where you dragged to. However, when playing back on a computer I can just drag back and forth with nearly unlimited precision with no problems.

 

[sduck]

Tesal doesn't seem to think that informing us end users about what kind of file system to use or what kind of files are supported is important. They never mention in their release notes about this kind of thing - we have to find things out by trial and error. Note that exFAT may or may not have been added recently - I seem to remember it works for teslacam but not audio, or vice versa. For most tech car companies informing their customers about this would be second nature, buit not tesla.