Preventing Auto Updates?

Channels DVR Server
#1

I'm an old school IT guy and would never allow any of my systems to auto-update, ever! Best practice is to wait till the next update comes out then determine what was broke on the prior by looking at what it fixed before updating to that prior version. (of course security concerns do occasionally over ride that in the real world) For the life of me I cannot find a setting to not auto-update. Is there a special menu, like on Sage you had to go to a certain screen and type in Jenny's number to see all the advanced settings? Apparently if you could find that in the documentation they assumed you weren't a total noob. -Bill

Yes, I know recording our TV shows isn't mission critical to me, but you don't know my wife... I am sure all the married folks know all about the WAF.

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#2

Only stable releases auto update and they only go out once a month or so, and only after being used by many people in the community as a pre-release.

Channels DVR Server has no ability to disable auto updating. Despite what you said, auto updating is actually one of the most important parts to keeping Channels stable.

While I'm sure you can figure out your own hacks to keep it from auto updating, there is no supported functionality to do so and technical support for a system like that can not be provided.

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Where do I find earlier versions of Channels for sideload
#3

Understood about technical support issue. I would just update it manually if/when a problem occurred. I spent way too many years (and all-nighters) supporting many large eCommerce systems for a huge multinational to ever think of having auto updates enabled. And that latest update that brought my MAC from 48% memory usage over the last 6 weeks up to 62% memory usage since that update, woke me back up to my reality. -Bill

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#4

Everyone else on your other thread did a good job of explaining the situation, but I'll take another run at it:

Channels DVR Server did not start using more RAM with the update. That little sliver of yellow is the amount of memory used by Channels:

In this latest stable release, we improved the visualization for the RAM, and we also decided (partially to answer questions like "Why Is Channels Using So Much RAM?") to add an additional piece of information to the status. Namely, how much of the used RAM actually is the DVR Server and the processes it spawns (like ffmpeg and comskip).

As someone who has supported large systems, I'm sure you understand the importance of historical metrics to be able to make accurate assessments regarding the cause of observed changes to operational systems. To do that, it would require having per-process memory usage over the past month to see what the average process usage is of everything on your system. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like you have that available.

Eyeballing your graph, the little yellow sliver on the left (which is the memory used by the DVR Server) does not appear to be anywhere near 14%, so we can rule out Channels as being the source of that increase in memory.

Edit: I noticed that you did submit diagnostics in the middle of December and looking at that diagnostic submission, it appears your total memory usage at that time was 60%, so it looks like we’re talking about a 2% change in your over-all memory usage on this system between then and now.

On my 16GB M1 Mac Mini, my DVR Server is reporting that it is using 2% of available RAM:

screenshot-2024-01-18-11.49.04@2x
screenshot-2024-01-18-11.49.04@2x1002×578 71.3 KB

Have you opened Activity Monitor and sorted by Memory and seen if there's anything new that jumps out at you on the top of the list?

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#5

I read that before but prior to this last update the yellow wasn’t actually visible (to me) and the green had stayed at 48% for total usage each time I viewed it, which was quite often as I was always checking the status to see what this new server might be doing. I also don’t have auto updates for anything else on that Mac so, for me it was the Channels update that did something. I am not too worried, but I will have to figure out how to block them. I guess I need to install wireshark to figure out where the updates are coming from or just put in a hosts file entry to direct it to NUL -Bill .

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#6

@Bigbillsd
I completely agree and understand not trusting Auto-Update in scenarios. I too disable auto-update on all things. Updates often break things as often as they fix things.

But. And its a really big BUT. Bigger then J-Los.

TVE is constantly changing breaking and needs to frequently be fixed. By not allowing auto-updates your going to get lots of broken recordings and stations. CDVR is trying to unify many different outside sources that dont to be unified/combined.

What kind of assurance do you have that these updates are good. The best CDVR can do is "Trust me bro". Normally those are scary words. When someone says trust me bro, its usually shady. But this 3 man team has proven time and time again. I personally trust @eric , @maddox , @tmm1 . I trust their updates enough that if they would officially enable auto update-beta I would enable it in a heart beat. Its not saying they are perfect. But their track record speaks for itself. I have had Eric push updates on a sunday do to me having issues. I have had tmm1 help me with issues on my CDVR server and he took time to remotely connect to my server and fix it for me. I have had maddox fix issues for me. Very few software devs are this personaly active with their users.

So @Bigbillsd i ask you to trust them bro. Auto update is required for this internet DVR to work properly. But i also 100% agree that concerns about auto-update are valid. Any other piece of software I have EVER used i disable updates when possible. So I understand where your coming from.

End of rant

edit Devs have never officially said "trust me bro" I am putting words in their mouth. But my rant is still valid.

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#7

Feel free to block any internet communications at home all you want. But please know this:

Zero affordances are made on the client software for the possibility of out of date Channels DVR Server software. Period.

The clients will always assume the latest version and you will see crashes, instability, and odd effects.

This is part of how the system works and it has worked incredibly well for both the users and us, for 8 years.

So feel free to do this, but you’re honestly creating a less stable system than keeping it stable.

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#8

Totally agree with maddox after having blocked auto-updates twice myself.
You can do it, but you soon realize you don't want to.

You can avoid pre-release versions and wait for a new stable release if you want.

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#9

To be clear, the yellow and green visualization of memory usage was added at the same time in a pre-release on December 28th in v2023.12.28.2258. It was then first available to our wider customer base as a stable release in v2024.01.08.1431. If you had not manually triggered an installation of a pre-release after December 28th, you would not have seen a green bar before that stable release auto-updated on January 8th. Before that, it was just text that said a percentage.

We have a long history of delivering on both stability and responsiveness to customer needs and issues. Being a small team of highly skilled individuals we are constantly balancing how we can best be successful and provide all of our customers with the best experience using the product and best support we can to them. Sometimes this means finding ways to not waste time re-diagnosing issues that are already fixed.

Of course you're free to do what you want and it sounds like you've made up your mind on this, so my clarifications are mostly to make sure anyone else reading these threads understands where we're coming from and the current situation with memory usage and what it means.

4 Likes
#11

21 posts were split to a new topic: Slow speeds when seeking

#12

I also work in IT and to be honest turning auto update off is the most stupid thing you can do. You also have to remember… the next update never comes as straight after that one there is another one! So saying “I just wait for the next update” is just silly talk.

Delay in playback restart after seeking (Stalls)
#13

Sorry if you don't approve. But my company paid me a lot to keep things running as downtime estimates were 10's of millions of dollars a day, and way more than that from late summer to around the Christmas holidays. And keeping my stuff up and running is more important, happy wife happy life.

#14

...which is why leaving auto-update on for the stable releases of Channels DVR is recommended. Especially when it comes to keeping up with major, required changes for channel tuning, audio, TVE, etc.

As always, context is everything.

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#15

I see an update downloaded @ 23:33, Shutting down began at 00:53, Recording job started @ 00:55....
Updates on 9-15, 11-13, 12-28, 1-8, 2-8, 2-11... I assume the same process..
Is idle system taken into account or will this process break an active stream? Will a client recover?

#16

Yes

#17

I disagree. Auto update is nuts on a critical system. It took me years to get all my systems (750 servers) under change control, and our IT organization was the hardest folks to get to comply. And my DW thinks her shows getting recorded is a VERY critical thing. I'm sure, no one else wives think that way. But...

#18

Auto update only happens on release level that have been tested by the community/developers prior to release ... the updates only happen during when the DVR is not in use and only takes a few seconds.

#19

@ED I have previously been informed. And every other system says or implies that. So, in the mean time, for the back end I have kept my SageTV and I can choose to update if they ever do that, not that it needs updating, what they need are clients that can handle H.265! I've reinstalled and am currently running Plex as the client against the SageTV back-end due to it being able to handle the TVshows in an unstructured file system without issue. Channels and Emby could not, although the Emby developer told me they have a plan to fix that. -Bill

#20

@Bigbillsd I hate to say it but SageTV is on it's deathbed It is no longer supported and it cannot do H265 and AC4. best to move on and invest your time in getting ChannelsDVR to function according to your needs in your household. There are also many users on this community that are willing to give up some of their time to assist you.

#21

Nah, It still works flawlessly for recording! And if I didn't need to transcode the video to make it smaller to send over my cellular connections for traveling I would not even look else-ware. So far, nothing I have found has anywhere near the functionality SageTV had in 2005, not even close. Just need to find a client that works with the trans-coded to h.265 video. I wish I was a programmer and knew more stuff about Video as a whole, I would just modify the existing Android client to work with the HEVC stuff and be fine for many years to come. -Bill