Proliferation of "no data" recordings after Sage9 install

[VCRUser]

I completed a Sage9 install (9.1.2.662), and have a steadily increasing count of recording files marked "no data." It's up to 42 now! I'm looking into how to use BMT to fix them, but would like to stop the bleeding. Any ideas?? I haven't yet set up SD, but my current EPG is working (I put in the environment variable and can see listings several days ahead.)

[Narflex]

It'll only mark a recording with No Data if there is no EPG data for what it's recording. You should look at what channel those recordings are from and then see if there's data in the guide for it.

[VCRUser]

These are showing applying to 52 shows with dates in the past; the channels involved (a spot-check) do have guide data.

[wnjj]

Did you upgrade over top of your existing install or install new?

If new, did you copy over your wiz.bin?

Since you're coming from V6, my understanding is the media files themselves have no meta data in them like V7 does. If they're not in wiz.bin it may be unsure of what they are.

If you can go back to V6, maybe installing V7 first to convert wiz.bin will work better?

Warning: I only pretend to know what I'm talking about.

[VCRUser]

I updated to 7, then to 9, updating each time over what was there previously, including the wiz.bin. I'm going to restore 7 momentarily (after saving metadata for the recordings made since, so I can re-insert the data)

[graywolf]

recording files marked "no data."

Just want to be sure on same page. When you say "No Data", yo are refering to existing recordings not having descriptions or actor lists?
You are not refering to the Guide information where a time slot for a channel shows "No Data" correct?

The "No Data" may be misleading some to think about the Guide information.

To get descriptions, actors, other metadata for existing recordings you might want to read up on BMT https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...light=Metadata

Also. what is your SageTV install path, is it the default or did your have it somewhere else?
I have noticed with the Sage V9 Windows installer, it will install into C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV (maybe not the x86 one) instead of detecting where the existing one is. Be sure to choose Options to ensure you are installing over the correct SageTV install path before telling it to install.

[VCRUser]

Originally Posted by graywolf

Just want to be sure on same page. When you say "No Data", yo are refering to existing recordings not having descriptions or actor lists?
You are not refering to the Guide information where a time slot for a channel shows "No Data" correct?

No. I am referring to existing recordings (generally older ones), whose original metadata (show name, episode name, description, original date, airing date - and some of the rest, but the ones I listed are the only ones I really care about) gets replacaed with "no data" for the show name, nothing in the episode name, nothing in the description, seemingly random dates, and nothing in the other fields. I think it is somehow picking up Guide information based on an airing ID or some other ID field.

Originally Posted by graywolf

To get descriptions, actors, other metadata for existing recordings you might want to read up on BMT https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...light=Metadata

I did read up on that, tried it, and it could not find any info based only on the file name (which was all that was left to go on, based on everything else getting wiped out). I saw information about filename scraping, but no info on how to make that actually happen. Also, installing BMT wiped out my old web interface, replacing it with Jetty. I installed Jetty's web interface, which started throwing Java errors and so was unusable. That could be because Java wanted to be updated, but the update message said it might wipe out a previous version, and I don't know enough about Java to know if it can be backed up/restored simply by copying the relevant JRE folders, or if some installation mechanism is required and if so, how to access it - if I need to restore the previous version for some reason. So I have left Java alone (at ver 7).

Originally Posted by graywolf

Also. what is your SageTV install path, is it the default or did your have it somewhere else?

I used the default path, installing over the previous install. In the end, I restored that installation (7.19), and am now back to where I was, but I know I need to move to 9 and want to avoid having the problem in the future. Cold the following be the cause:

I set the indicated environment variable to my license key, but may have inadvertently set only the user-variable, not the system variable. I eventually got a message saying that the EPG login failed, and have since set the system variable as well. I plan to double & triple-check the licence key (is there a way for Sage itself to display that, to check against what I saved, made copeis of for backup, etc. ?) before re-trying the 9 installation.

In the initial installation, I set the "number of days to schedule" to 14.

I'm speculating that when it had trouble verifying my license key for EPG, it looked ahead, found 50-odd aring IDS that matched up with "no data" Guide listings, and replaced the existing metadata with "no data" and lots of empty fields. I'm planning to limit the "days to schedule" to 4 in hopes of limiting potential damage on the next install. I'm also hoping to get SD up & running soon, and could well run into some similar issues in that regard.

[Tiki]

So, the filenames are unchanged, but the title and other metadata that shows up in Sage is all wiped out for existing recordings that used to have the correct data? And if you go back to your backup of Sage v7 the missing data returns?

That would not have anything to do with the EPG or your license. That sounds like wiz.bin got corrupted somehow. I would try stopping Sage and copying in a backup of wiz.bin from before the upgrade, then restart Sage.

When you launch Sage, if it detects an older version of Wiz.bin, it automatically updates it to the current format.

[VCRUser]

Originally Posted by Tiki

So, the filenames are unchanged, but the title and other metadata that shows up in Sage is all wiped out for existing recordings that used to have the correct data? And if you go back to your backup of Sage v7 the missing data returns?

Yes, exactly.

The reason I suspected my license key being in the wrong environment variable was that all was fine after installing 7 (a day or 2 before), which used the "special" version that read my 6 license key, and the first night I had 9 set up, I got about 35 no data hits (which may have occurred before I entered the environment variable the first time, since the system message of failing to find an EPG key had a time-stamp that was consistent with the data-loss), and then about 15 more around the time I got the second system message (a day later) because I'd put it in the user environment variable instead of the system one. The damage being done, I reverted to 7 (and its wiz.bin), and am going to re-try the 9 install tonight once there's nothing that needs to be recorded for a few hours.

[Narflex]

If you have the sagetv_0.txt log file from when you did the upgrade to V9, then I should be able to tell what went wrong...but unfortunately, I have no ideas for why this would fail other than looking at the logs to get more information.