Weird temp files

[pjpjpjpj]

I have found that my C:/Windows/temp is filling up with files which are:
"MaloreOnlineVideo{19 numbers}.cln"
("19 numbers" being 19 actual digits, clearly a numbering system of some sort)

They have the size of 0 kb, but there are thousands of them so they add up.

I don't use Malore menus or anything from the Malore arrangement and nothing online in that respect, but I do have "Malore extras" turned on in the detailed setup and I'm guessing that is the reason these files show up.

Anyone know what they are, why they show up, and whether they can be stopped?

Edit: in a poor move, I deleted all those "CLN" files at the same time I was posting the above. Now everything recordings-related in Sage is gone: favorites, recordings, channel names in the guide, etc. The files are still there on the computer but Sage doesn't see any of it. I'm guessing the Malore file, while it appears to be an "option", actually drives the entire recordings programming... but why is it saving files in Windows/temp that are not overwritten (and instead keep piling up in the folder)?

HELP???

[Tiki]

I checked my PC and I don’t have any such files in my Windows Temp folder. I also have Malore menus installed, so not sure what’s going on with your computer.

Have you tried restarting Sage? Normally files in the temp folder are safe to delete and would get recreated if needed.

I don’t know what a cln file is - the only thing I could find on Google was that cln Giles were used for some sort of Windows 3.0 backup many years ago.

Is it possible you have some sort of ransomeware that was in process of encrypting your files or something?

[pjpjpjpj]

Something is really wacky. Sage runs fine. The recordings menu is empty (archived, current). Favorites are gone. All four of my tuners still show up but no channels are showing. The EPG guide is therefore blank. All my paths to everything are still there so movies, photos, music, etc., are still there.

Under "Videos", every single recording shows up. Years worth, organized as if they were just videos files. So with a lot of scrolling and searching, we can watch stuff that was recorded previously. However, with no channels and no favorites, nothing new is recording and we can't watch live TV.

All the temp files that I had deleted, I did "restore" out of the recycle bin and put them back in the windows/temp, and rebooted. Same behavior. I then did a complete c: drive restore from a system backup this evening from before everything went wacky last night, and it's still the same situation. What would cause that? Where is the data about when a file is a recording vs. a video? Wouldn't that be in the wiz.bin? I thought so but my wiz.bin shows the date modified as a few years ago.

I just don't understand how the whole system appears to be (partially?) corrupted based on me deleting some "malore online" temp files, and how a c drive restore didn't fix it (at least I think the restore completed)...

[VCRUser]

Just a wild guess - could this have something to do with auto-delete settings? Maybe Sage thought it was supposed to delete shows and started doing so, but got more confused when you deleted the temp files?

Do you have a backed up Sage installation (just the Sage folders with wiz.bin and related stuff) you could try restoring? Since your actual videos are still there, it sounds like it's just what links them to their metadata to show up properly in Sage may be missing.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I have found that my C:/Windows/temp is filling up with files which are:
"MaloreOnlineVideo{19 numbers}.cln"
("19 numbers" being 19 actual digits, clearly a numbering system of some sort)

They have the size of 0 kb, but there are thousands of them so they add up.

I don't use Malore menus or anything from the Malore arrangement and nothing online in that respect, but I do have "Malore extras" turned on in the detailed setup and I'm guessing that is the reason these files show up.

Anyone know what they are, why they show up, and whether they can be stopped?

Edit: in a poor move, I deleted all those "CLN" files at the same time I was posting the above. Now everything recordings-related in Sage is gone: favorites, recordings, channel names in the guide, etc. The files are still there on the computer but Sage doesn't see any of it. I'm guessing the Malore file, while it appears to be an "option", actually drives the entire recordings programming... but why is it saving files in Windows/temp that are not overwritten (and instead keep piling up in the folder)?

HELP???

It nothing to worry about that just Malore Menu in SageTV under Customize

[Tiki]

All the symptoms you describe would happen if wiz.bin was lost.

Sage stores all the favorite settings, watched history, recording history, metadata for recordings, etc in wiz.bin. If Sage can’t find wiz.bin (or it is corrupted) when it is starting up, it will create a new blank one to work with.

Recent versions of Sage (I think starting with v7), store copies of some of the metadata inside the recording files. So if wiz.bin is lost or corrupted, some of this information can be recovered. However, if you transcoded your recording files to a different format, this metadata may have been stripped. In some cases (depending on what plugins you have installed and how things are configured), Sage may also create text files containing the metadata alongside the recording files and may be able to use this info rebuild a lost wiz.bin file.

Although metadata for recordings may be able to be recovered as described above, if wiz.bin is lost you would still need to reconfigure all your favorites.

[pjpjpjpj]

So......

Sage is eating my wiz.bin file.

Things went bad on 11/11. I found an older copy of wiz.bin (from 10/30) on my computer. I shut down Sage, replaced the wiz.bin (and wiz.bak) with the ones from 10/30, and restarted Sage.

It did not fix things, it's still messed up. But after I close Sage... wiz.bin is GONE. Disappears from the SageTV folder.

W.T.F.

There's not anything you have to do in Sage (properties or whatnot) to replace wiz.bin, is there? You just shut it down and replace the file and the program reads whatever one is in your folder, right?

[pjpjpjpj]

BTW... Is wiz.bak just a copy of wiz.bin, such that you could rename bak into bin and replace bin with it? And if so, what triggers creation/updating of bak?

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

BTW... Is wiz.bak just a copy of wiz.bin, such that you could rename bak into bin and replace bin with it? And if so, what triggers creation/updating of bak?

Yes, wiz.bak is just a backup copy of wiz.bin. Yes, you can just rename one to replace the other.

I’m not positive about the logic for when it updates wiz.bin and wiz.bak - it might be every time you shut down Sage or every time you start it?

[pjpjpjpj]

Well, I gave up and ended up replacing wiz.bin with the last wiz.bin that I had that didn't crash... from June of 2017.

Spent this morning creating a bunch of subfolders for every show we have many copies of (within a master folder called "Old recordings") that I'm gonna make a menu item on the main menu, so whenever my wife wants to watch a previous recording, she can go there (since it's viewed as a video rather than a recording). Eventually we'll plow through and get most of them deleted. The kids stuff all auto-converts and moves to a separate drive anyway, so that isn't a problem.

Amazing how many new shows we've added to our Favorites since 2017... I just ran through our list of recordings and added back anything that was new since then (had to use "keyword/title" since Sage doesn't even know the newer shows exist yet).

So I think it's time to set up an automatic backup of just the wiz.bin file weekly on another drive...