Just getting started on OSX - seeing many 'wake' events

Channels DVR Server
#1

We've been using EyeTV on MacOS for many years as our DVR. But it seems to be a dying app (very little support). We're trying Channels DVR but our machine really isn't treated as a server. It's just a general purpose "Media Center" Mac Mini. So we do let it sleep when we're not using it. So far I'm very impressed with Channels - Aman was helping me yesterday getting TVE setup and that's one thing EyeTV can definitely not do (a VERY impressive feature). The biggest thing for us is that the Mac is connected to a large-screen TV and we don't use Apple TV or any other device. So - for now - there isn't a Channels app for us. But the web browser access does seem to work very well. And - once recordings are made - we can view them with anything we want (like the new IINA media player).

I did choose to install the "Auto Wake Helper" and the Mac did indeed wake to record a show. But when I do the "pmset -g sched" command - to show all the "power" events - I see over 20 of them for "com.getchannels.dvr" just for today. The next scheduled recording isn't until tomorrow and I think this is related to retrieving the Guide Data (and checking for updates?). Here are 2 that I see:
[17] wakeorpoweron at 08/13/19 22:38:08 by 'com.getchannels.dvr'
[18] wakeorpoweron at 08/13/19 22:38:29 by 'com.getchannels.dvr'
So that's strange because they are very close together. With EyeTV, we just pay $25/year for Schedules Direct and we run a nightly script that grabs all the guide data and makes an XML file - that process takes less than a minute. And we just do it once per day.

Is there any way to have control over when Channels wakes up the machine to do this ? Can it be restricted to once or twice per day ? (I did see a .plist file that seemed to have some scheduled wake events but I'm seeing many more of them in this "pmset" display) I know we're really not using Channels as intended because we only record and watch on one device, but I'm hoping we can have some control over when it wakes the machine for updates.

#2

Channels grabs guide data once a day, usually around 0900, IIRC.

#3

Could it be Bonjour or Remote DVR being enabled?

#4

Bonjour is not enabled. It's possible that it won't actually be waking the computer up at all those times - I've just never seen anything set so many of those events.

#5

Anything in the ChannelsDVR log for that time?
Maybe backing up the databases.

#6

The auto-wake functionality is still experimental and not widely used. Most users have their DVRs on all the time, because they want to be able to use their iPhone or Apple TV to connect and start watching TV at any time.

There is some bug causing the extra wake up events to be registered with the OS. I will need to spend some time to track it down.

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#7

One of them is supposed to happen in about 15 minutes. So I'll put the Mac to sleep and see what happens.

One interesting thing is that EyeTV had set a wake event for tomorrow at 2:57pm but then I deleted that EyeTV schedule but now there are 4 wakeorpoweron events listed for Channels at that exact hour and minute. Odd.

#8

It really did wake up when it said it would. And the only thing in the Channels log is:

2019/08/13 21:54:04 [DVR] Waiting 17h5m55.503277s until next job 1565812800-ch5.6 Paths of Glory (1957)

So it looks like it made a wake event just to put one line in the log. Certainly not the end of the world but - hopefully - whatever is doing that can be fixed. I'll keep monitoring.

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#9

I did some more testing - I set a couple of simultaneous recordings to happen at 1am. It did a great job of Waking to record those - and the wake events were automatically set for 3 minutes before the start of the recordings - excellent! One was a broadcast channel and one was TVE - no problem at all. I just checked before going to work and the only wake events now are for today (8/14). There are now 9 duplicate events for the time that used to be an EyeTV schedule. So I have 9 events that all say "wakeorpoweron at 08/14/19 14:57:00 by 'com.getchannels.dvr'". They all appear in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist

Like many others here, I am VERY impressed with the responsiveness of these developers. It looks to me like the quality of the recordings made by Channels is better than what EyeTV makes (more stable). It's nice to know that we're not stuck with an old 32-bit app that even dropped support for HDHomeRun.

P.S. we do have an actual (old) Mac Mini but we're running Channels on a $200 Hackintosh Mini (HP8300 USDT) with 8G of RAM and an SSD ; it's a "vanilla" install (the main partition is exactly the same as a standard Mac) and we're just using the Integrated Graphics on the Intel chip so I don't think this "wake event" issue has anything to do with the hackintosh-ing

#10

Fully appreciate your desire for wake events to work as expected, but may I ask why you don't want your machine running full time? I have a mini running 24/7 and energy consumption is extremely small.

#11

We ran our first Mini that way and it seemed to affect the life of the machine. So for our second one we let it sleep and it seemed to last longer. So it wasn't really about energy consumption. But maybe the issue with the first one was something else - I guess we can't be sure.

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#12

So many factors in play but one can never be sure how long hardware will last. I've been lucky - I have a 2012 mini that's been running 24/7 since I got it (in 2012).

#13

My 2012 Mac Mini has also been running non stop and still hosts my DVR.

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#14

I may finally pull the trigger and buy a new mini. The 2018's finally look interesting to me.

Edit: apologies, this was off-topic

#15

We looked at the new mini but it's about 60% more than the old one and it's still (at least for us) non-upgradeable. Our budget is pretty tight so we tried hackintoshing and it worked - we're very happy with it so far (after a few months).

But we can always go back to our old mini and it's nice to hear about one from 2012 that's been running non-stop and doing DVR duty.

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#16

I've run Minis as media servers full time for at least 10 years, EyeTV back in the day and now Channels and Plex. macminicolo.net runs 1,000s of them as servers because they're so robust. Really no need for sleep.