Frndly TV New Guy Question

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

New Guy here

I have everything set up and working fine with Frndly TV, Pluto, YouTube TV. Love the integration.

However, I've noticed with Frndly TV, everything seems to work and then about 0300 (3 a.m.) Everything on Frndly stops recording. I did have remote channels set up but I removed that from my Android, and deleted the port forward in my router for it as a precaution.

I set up Frndly TV per the forum instruction and have latest docker and Channels. Is there something else I should be doing? Added firewall exception even though, 3 weeks ago when I added Frndly TV, I didn't need one. It all worked fine until this weekend and now it seems as if this is a nightly issue.

Ideas? Can you point me to a post that is similar that I haven't found with some corrective steps, please?

Thanks in advance

#2

Frndly has been having overall service issues the past few days. That may be what you are seeing. It has effected not only us here with the Frndly-for-channels docker but all of Frndly’s official apps and live tv website. It’s has been intermittent and occasionally lasting hours. I am hoping they get it figured out soon.

Frndly TV for Channels
#3

Thank you. I appreciate the information!

Cheers

#4

no problem. I would say with your problem being isolated to Frndly and it just so happened to start occurring when Frndly itself started having problems that it is a little too coincidental. I personally would see if it happens again today. Frndly for me has been rock solid today. I am making the assumption that your other sources like Pluto and YouTube are not experiencing recording issues. I am also assuming these recording are in-progress and being interrupted (they were able to start).

#5

Well, your assumption is correct, no issues with Pluto or YouTube TV. They recorded with no interruptions. I Checked the shows that had the failures and all the channel numbers were isolated to Frndly TV. I did see that Frndly had issues and I thought those were past. Then early I noted the recording failures that started early morning and continued into the morning for about 6 hours. That has me wondering if there is a token issue by chance?

Thanks again

#6

Well that might be a possible reason. Some of us did a little volunteer leg work to help @matthuisman determined that the tokens did expire after 6hrs. I do not know if it was ever determined if a stream in progress simply stops at token expire.

A keep alive routine was put in the docker that checked every 5 minutes and relogged in if the token had expired. It was also set to always log in after 5hrs from the last successful login. That was a default for a couple of weeks.

But the latest docker (unannounced) that came out 2 weeks ago actually has keep alive turned off by default (returning to the original on demand). So if you installed a new docker in the last 2 weeks the keep alive is probably off (unless you specifically included —env “KEEP_ALIVE=xx” in your docker run. xx is of course number of minutes to check if token is still valid.

Again I don’t know if inprogress streams stop on token expire. But I have tested (once) if an in progress stream stops on re-login. The test recording was unaffected.

#7

I misunderstood what you actually stated. I was thinking you were getting failures after 6 hours of recording. Now I have reread and you were actually saying you were getting multiple failures for 6 hours. So that keep alive stuff I mentioned probably is not relevant. So I don't know. But who knows, maybe some of the information is helpful.

#8

I think you have the answer. I did install latest docker within last 2 weeks and didn't run the keep alive. That may be the issue!

THANKS!!!

#9

so far I only knew one user who needed keep-alive.
If it turns out its actually needed for more - I'll set default to enabled again.

1 Like
#10

I'm on the road for a week. It will be a good test. I'll check on the 5th and provide feedback

Thanks:)