sagetv forgot what it recorded

[-LD]

overnight sagetv seems to have forgotten what it has recorded...nothing shows up as recorded in my sage recordings...there should be about half a dozen shows

the storage is on a network drive, but should that make any difference? isn't the datanase stored locally?

now that they are gone (from sage, not physically), is there any way to get them back?

why would sage just decide to forget it had any recordings?

[Lady Avatar]

If you quit and restart Sage it should import the files.

[JasonJoel]

Right, if there is something that you think should be ther, and is not, make sure and check the "TV" section of the "LIBRARY". That is where Sage shoves recordings it does not know what to do with for one reason or another.

Usually you will find that they are in there.

Jason

Originally posted by Lady Avatar
If you quit and restart Sage it should import the files.

[-LD]

restarting didn't help

they also aren't in the "TV" section of the library

they are in the Video library but they just show as any other video, just the file name

[JasonJoel]

When they get imported into the Library, they just show as the filename. You loose any EPG information for the shows. And actually, this is by definition.

If it had the EPG information, it would have been in 'Sage Recordings' in the first place, not in the Library.

I've only had this happen once or twice. There is no way to get the guide information back when this happens.

Jason

Originally posted by -LD
restarting didn't help

they also aren't in the "TV" section of the library

they are in the Video library but they just show as any other video, just the file name

[-LD]

but why did sagetv lose the information? why did they drop out of my sage recordings?

[justme]

You said the storage was on a network drive right. I presume you meant on another computer on your network, if so it's probably a network related isuue as in this thread.

If that's it I don't know what would have caused the network interruption. But by using Jeff's workaround and backing up your Wiz file on a daily basis you can help minimize the issue til Jeff fixes it.

Edit:In case someone new reads this and wonders what I altered, I only updated the thread link to point to Frey's new server. The old one failed when Frey changed servers a while back. So now the link's URL points to the same exact same post/thread on the new server.

[-LD]

that would probably explain it...i know there was a network interruption (but not more than a minute or so)

let's just say that is a fairly crappy "feature" to just arbitrarily decide to remove recordings from the database with absolutely no way to recover them...i keep all my media storage on a central file server (can't imagine i'm alone in that regard), sometimes i reboot it, sometimes the network may hiccup, sometimes it may even crash...none of those things should make sagetv just decide to remove all the info about the recordings from the database with ZERO possibility for recovery

if it's going to delete info, a prompt would be nice, like when there is a scheduling conflict...if it's going to delete info it should make a "recovery" file of the deleted info so a user can restore those things sage decides arbitrarily it wants to delete

there's always a better method, i can't believe this hasn't surfaced sooner

[justme]

I agree but I feel this goes beyond just network situations. I just posted a suggestion to the official SageTV Request thread. This possible feature could be slightly modified to include your recovery file scenario, as well as what I had envisioned. IMO

Edit:In case someone new reads this and wonders what I altered, I only updated the suggestion link to point to Frey's new server. The old one failed when Frey changed servers a while back. So now the link's URL points to the same exact same post/thread on the new server.

[cryptAWD]

It can't hurt to have other who have had this problem post here as well. Up until now I was the only person who has mentioned this phenomenon (see thread mentioned above and one in the Beta forums). For the past month I've been thinking I was crazy since nobody else had this problem. There has to be a better way!

[mlar]

I've had the same problem too.. And my mount was on LOCALHOST! Just goes to show you how stable windows networking is. Let that be a warning btw, if you are using network encoders, and use a network path instead of the drive letter, you run the risk of losing all your recordings. The better solution is to mount the drive as for example V: on the network encoder, and then use SUBST on the server to create the V: drive there. Network paths are dangerous, even if it is one the same machine!

[snipeman]

I can report the same problem as well, when Windows lost connection to my media server. It was REALLY annoying.

Why can't Sage just do NOTHING in this occurence? Why does it have to move TV Library to Video Library? That seems very strange to me.

Andy

[stanger89]

Here's what happens (AFIAK).

When you loose a connection to the media server, Sage can't find the files and decides/thinks/assumes they were deleted, it then deletes all the info it had stored about them. When the connection is re-established all the sudden there are a lot of files Sage knows nothing about (it deleted all the info) so it moves them to the errant directory and imports them into the Video Library.

If Sage did nothing when files dissappeared then the wiz.bin file would get huge.

Now it would seem like a good idea if there were a timeout of say 1hr on files that are lost, so that if they become found again everything would go on happily.

[ErsatzTom]

To state the bleeding obvious, it would be nice if any such timeout was configurable in the properties file.

t

[snipeman]

Yea, my series of Monk recordings is all split up in different Libraries now!



I'd love the configurable option.

This has caused me to remove Sage from startup on my HTPC. If by some .001% odds I don't connect to the media server, I'll lose all my EPG data on all my TV Library.

The HTPC is on a battery, but I still run a small odds of a random reboot "killing" my PVR.

Andy

[ErsatzTom]

Perhaps you could wrap Sage in a script which checks to make sure the media server filesystems are mounted before it starts Sage up? That way you could have it start automatically most of the time.

[snipeman]

That's a great idea. I've never lost connection to my media server after it's connected. I've just seen XP once in a blue moon think it's unavailable for no real reason. If you just manually click on a share, it pops right up. It's very rare though.

What scripting environ would you recommend?

Could Girder do something like this?

Andy

[ErsatzTom]

CAVEAT: I haven't tested this so, you know, use at your own risk, ymmv, author takes no responsibility for loss of life or limb, etc, etc.

Well, I'm really a Unix guy not a windows guy so maybe there is a much better way to do it but it seems like you could just write a simple dos batch file something like this:

# startsage.bat
@echo off
if exist \\Fermi\Fermi_TV goto exists
echo Path not found!
goto end
:exists
"C:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV\SageTV.exe"
:end

And run that instead of running sage. Of course you would want to
change the network share to yours or to some directory on the mapped
drive if that is how you have it setup.

t

[snipeman]

Sure, I'll modify that.

A few changes:

I map F: to my Sage drive, so I'll replace the \\PATH with F:\... it might be remotely possible for the \\PATH to work but F: not to be there...

I think I'll make a little 1 byte file called "bookmark" in the root of F:\ and test for the existance of it.

This solution should help anyone out who stores their content over a LAN connection.

You could even make an argument to use it in all situations, say you run Sage off of C: and you lose the video D: to hardware failure.

Thanks,

Andy

[stanger89]

Although it doesn't help in the rare case that the network/server goes down while Sage is running.