Not receiving, not recording

Channels DVR Server
#1

Two days ago Channels DVR appears to have stopped receiving and recording shows. During the recording times I saw red dots displayed in the web UI, but instead all shows remained "queued" long after they were over, with only the first missed show listed as "failed".

First failed show:

2020/01/13 18:00:00.007425 [DVR] Starting job 1578967200-1 The Rachel Maddow Show on ch=[6050]
2020/01/13 18:00:00.007558 [DVR] Waiting 5h34m59.992455748s until next job 1578987300-2 The Late Show With Stephen Colbert
2020/01/13 18:00:00.008152 [TVE] action=auth mvpd=Comcast_SSO requestor=msnbc
2020/01/13 20:25:57.673439 [CACHE] Deleted cache for file 475 (19.1MB). Last access was 2019-12-30 16:32:30 -0800 PST.
2020/01/13 23:35:00.009933 [DVR] Marking expired job 1578967200-1 The Rachel Maddow Show

Then nothing but guide updates in the log, even though there were several shows queued.

After noticing the problem this morning, I also discovered I could not watch live OTA or TVE through Channels DVR. I could watch the same live TV shows directly on my PC via the HDHR app and Xfinity Stream.

2020/01/15 06:50:48.350886 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch2.1-dANY-ip192.168.0.175
2020/01/15 06:50:48.385222 [HLS] Couldn't generate stream playlist for ch2.1-dANY-ip192.168.0.175: Stream stopped
2020/01/15 06:54:29.176920 [HLS] Stopping transcoder session ch6050-dANY-ip192.168.0.175
2020/01/15 06:54:29.244009 [HLS] Couldn't generate stream playlist for ch6050-dANY-ip192.168.0.175: Stream stopped

Those same channels were received OK in the HDHR app and Xfinity Stream. My Synology NAS also seemed to be running OK.

I could see no way to do a software restart of Channels DVR, so I forced an update from 2020.01.01.0239 (uptime 14 days) to 2020.01.15.0443.

That restarted Channels DVR, and I see in the log it then marked all expired recordings, which are now listed as "failed" in the web UI too, and everything seems to have started working again. Live TV can be received, and recordings will probably work.

#2

Did you reboot your NAS? I had the same problem with my pr2100 and a reboot fixed it

#3

Restarting Channels (by updating) seems to have fixed it. The NAS itself seemed OK. For all I know this lockup problem was fixed in the latest release, but if not I hope the cause can be discovered, and that a future release of Channels will be able notice this problem and get around it or alert the user.

#4

If you're going to use prereleases on your DVR, you really ought to keep up with the updates. Running old prereleases is far worse than running older stable releases.

If you are not going to manually check for prerelease updates on a regular basis, then you really ought to setup a cronjob (or whichever method you prefer to use) to automatically and regularly check updates.

Send a PUT request to your DVR at /updater/check/prerelease, and do so on a regular basis.

#5

Can you file>save on http://x:8089/log?n=-1 and email it to [email protected]

#6

Log sent, thanks!

#7

Thanks for the logs.

It appears something got stuck in the TVE chrome automation. When you upgraded and restarted, everything went back to normal.

I haven't seen this before and am not sure what caused it. If it happens again, please open http://x:8089/debug/stack and file>save which will show us where it is stuck and let us fix it.

#8

OK thanks, if there is a next time then I'll save that info before I restart. I may be switching from TVE to a Prime soon though. Now that Windows 7 is gone, more WMC users are putting good-condition Primes on eBay, and I just freed up a CableCARD by decommissioning a TiVo.

1 Like
#9

Eureka, it happened again. It was OK for one day and recorded that show via TVE, but then got hung up on the same show on the second day. No successful recordings of any show since since. I'm sending the debug/stack file now.