Recording Schedule Update

[gandalf]

What causes SageTV to rebuild the recording schedule?
I have noticed recently that rebooting the computer leaves me with an empty recording schedule when SageTV is restarted. After some time it populates and all is well. However, if a favourite was scheduled to record shortly after the reboot then it will likely be missed. Is there any way to force a schedule rebuild? I know I can force an EPG rebuild and have done that - so EPG is up to date. That does not affect the recording schedule, which just says there are no recordings scheduled - yet several favourites ought to be scheduled.

[Striker:WG]

That does not sound like the typical experience that I have, granted I do not restart my server very often.

Could you elaborate a little more on your setup?

What operating system are you running on, are you using a service, what are you using as your guide source data etc?

[gandalf]

I am using v9.1.10.783 running on Windows 10.10.0 64-bit. SageTV runs as a service. EPG is a licensed service from Schedules Direct.
I have never noticed this behaviour before so it may be something new.
Restarting Windows starts up the SageTV service and I am sure that when I started the UI it used to show whatever recordings were scheduled immediately. Now it does not do that. The SageTV UI starts and shows no recordings scheduled. The EPG populates fine - just the recording schedule. Hence the question as to what prompts SageTV to scan the schedule and whether I could manually poke it to do that.
If I leave things alone for a time, not sure how long but more than minutes and less than many hours, the record schedule will populate correctly and all is well.
The problem is that for that time SageTV will not record any shows the were (or should have been) scheduled.

[peternm22]

I've seen this from time to time over the years. Typically it has occurred for me a hour or two after an EPG update and there are "new" shows set to record as favorites, or a show has moved time slots that same day.

One of the weird things that I have seen happen is that a show will be displayed in the recording schedule as a favorite, but the title displays the wrong show. For instance, I might have had a favorite set up for "Lost", but the schedule would display the show "Desperate Housewives" that was airing on the same channel but at a different time. If you checked the favorite options for that airing though, it would show "Lost" as it should. After an hour or two, this always corrects itself.

I haven't seen this for a few years though. I made a couple of changes that I think helped:

1) I disabled a ton of channels. I realized that there were only a handful of channels I watch regularly, and maybe 70 others that I "may" have some interest in watching some day. I disabled all of the other channels, so instead of the schedule being built over hundreds of channels, it only has about 90 channels to process.

2) SageTV automatically updates its EPG every 24 hours. This time can drift though for a variety of reasons (daylight savings, server being off, etc). So to get around this, I set up a scheduled task in Windows Task Scheduler to run the EPG update at the exact same time each day. This prevents SageTV from drifting the update time. I have it set to update hours before "prime time", so there is plenty of time for the schedule to be built properly.

[Tiki]

I have seen this behavior before (where either it shows no recordings scheduled, or a smaller than expected number of recordings scheduled). It happens when Sage can’t access the tuners for some reason.

Whenever I reboot, the first thing I do is launch the Sage UI and press the info button to bring up the information screen. I scroll down to where it lists all the tuners and check their status to make sure they all say they are functioning. If anything isn’t working, I troubleshoot.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by Tiki

It happens when Sage can’t access the tuners for some reason.

I was trying to come up with a reason, and this is all that I could think of in my own past experience. I believe there may have been a condition where OpenDCT may have rolled before my Ceton tuner was identified on a reboot, but it was rare. I even seem to recall temporarily putting the OpenDCT and SageTV service on a delayed start to help. I'm sorry I don't recall what exactly resolved it ... maybe moving the OS to a solid state drive ...

[UgaData]

I have also experienced something similar, typically when Sage, for whatever reason, can't find any tuners. If there are no tuners to record with, there are no upcoming recordings.

I also see this quite regularly on my client with Gemstone (upcoming recordings widget). This is most likely something entirely different from what you are experiencing.

Since you mention that you are sometimes missing recordings, I will presume that the server is unable to find the tuner(s). This could be a hard drive about to fail (or full?) and/or a bad network connection (network tuner), or some problem with the tuner(s) itself (wherever it maybe located).

[gandalf]

Interesting series of responses but nobody knows what actually triggers the schedule rebuild (which must happen automatically somehow - possibly when the EPG rebuilds).
When the computer reboots (not very often but Windows update usually has enough important stuff to force a reboot about monthly) the SageTV service restarts as does the driver to the R5000 network tuner. I manually start the UI later. The EPG seems to force an update after a reboot, as shown in Info. All the tuners start OK most times. If there is a tuner restart problem then that shows up as a scheduling error in the UI - usually a show recording conflict. That has only happened recently because my MP4 cable box irritatingly goes into sleep mode when its firmware does a reload. However none of that is the issue here.
What I see is that the SageTV service starts fine, as do all the tuners. When I start the UI manually I see at the bottom that there are no shows scheduled. Normally that bottom line shows the recording load for the next 72 hours. Manually looking at the schedule also shows no scheduled recordings - yet I know there are favourites that should record later in the day.
An hour or two later I check and all is well. Expected favourites show. However between reboot and that schedule update (whatever triggered it) those favourites are invisible to SageTV and do not record. There are available tuners and there is lots of disk space.
I am sure this did not happen in the past but I have no idea when or what changed (version of Windows, SageTV etc).
I know how to trigger a manual update of the EPG - but is there any way to trigger a manual update of the recording schedule?

[Malfunction]

I'm having related issues. If I have favorites scheduled to record outside of a week ahead, they often turn into another program. I think the stations are doing this. SageTV doesn't seem to be aware of the change and will record the wrong show. Cutting the lookahead time to 7 days or less fixes most of this.

What's more disturbing is my recording schedule isn't updating unless I restart SageTV. If I have 7 days worth of programming scheduled and look at the schedule in 3 days, I will have 4 days scheduled.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Malfunction

I'm having related issues. If I have favorites scheduled to record outside of a week ahead, they often turn into another program. I think the stations are doing this. SageTV doesn't seem to be aware of the change and will record the wrong show. Cutting the lookahead time to 7 days or less fixes most of this.

What's more disturbing is my recording schedule isn't updating unless I restart SageTV. If I have 7 days worth of programming scheduled and look at the schedule in 3 days, I will have 4 days scheduled.

I don't remember where in the forums it is, but there is a way to change the EPG marker so that SageTV requests a full EPG download. It's in the Sage.properties somewhere, so you have to shut down SageTV to edit that.
It sounds to me like you possibly have a corrupt pointer in there telling SageTV that you already have that EPG data when you don't.
It happened to me quite a while ago when my CMOS battery died then the computer booted up with a bogus time/date confusing SageTV as well as many other things like Windows Update. Once I replaced the CMOS battery and set the time/date in CMOS I had to make that edit to the properties file to get SageTV to do a full download of the EPG rather than just updating from it's last "known" update time/date.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I don't remember where in the forums it is, but there is a way to change the EPG marker so that SageTV requests a full EPG download. It's in the Sage.properties somewhere, so you have to shut down SageTV to edit that.
It sounds to me like you possibly have a corrupt pointer in there telling SageTV that you already have that EPG data when you don't.
It happened to me quite a while ago when my CMOS battery died then the computer booted up with a bogus time/date confusing SageTV as well as many other things like Windows Update. Once I replaced the CMOS battery and set the time/date in CMOS I had to make that edit to the properties file to get SageTV to do a full download of the EPG rather than just updating from it's last "known" update time/date.

Maybe the setting I mentioned here? https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...19&postcount=7

There are also “expanded_until” settings for each tuner in the properties file.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Maybe the setting I mentioned here? https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...19&postcount=7

There are also “expanded_until” settings for each tuner in the properties file.

Pretty sure that is what I used. Thanks for giving the link.

[Striker:WG]

How large is your wiz.bin file?

If it is exceptionally large, it might be taking time to process that file and read in all the relevant information before the recording schedule is parsed and displayed.

You could try backing up your wiz.bin, make a new one and see if the behavior continues.

[waynedunham]

Simply as a frame of reference my Wiz.bin is well over a decade old is approximately 120k.

With conversions along the way as new SageTV versions came along that required a Wiz.bin conversion with the upgradeed SageTV.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Simply as a frame of reference my Wiz.bin is well over a decade old is approximately 120k.

120k? That seems exceptionally small. Mine is 67mb, and most of the people that have posted the size of their wiz.bin on this forum are over 1mb.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

120k? That seems exceptionally small. Mine is 67mb, and most of the people that have posted the size of their wiz.bin on this forum are over 1mb.

Yes, I should have said MegaBytes, not KiloBytes.

[Malfunction]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Maybe the setting I mentioned here? https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...19&postcount=7

There are also “expanded_until” settings for each tuner in the properties file.

I'm trying setting all 3 to 0. I'll let you know if it worked. I noticed that if I set my lookahead past 8 days it will fill up with shows that are my favorites without any descriptions. The stations don't update past 1 week or so.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Malfunction

I'm trying setting all 3 to 0. I'll let you know if it worked. I noticed that if I set my lookahead past 8 days it will fill up with shows that are my favorites without any descriptions. The stations don't update past 1 week or so.

What are you using for EPG data? I'm using Schedules Direct and I just had to renew my subscription which I got when SageTV's built in EPG went away. I've had to renew it yearly since and just did so within the past week. Any chance your SD subscription ran out and that it why it's not updating?

[Malfunction]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

What are you using for EPG data? I'm using Schedules Direct and I just had to renew my subscription which I got when SageTV's built in EPG went away. I've had to renew it yearly since and just did so within the past week. Any chance your SD subscription ran out and that it why it's not updating?

Schedules Direct. It updates fine if I restart SageTV once a week.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Malfunction

Schedules Direct. It updates fine if I restart SageTV once a week.

Got me completely stumped then, sorry.