XMLTV Guide Data Refresh Ever 15 Minutes

Channels DVR Server Feature Requests
#1

I like the content on Samsung TV. Even though there are a lot of the same channels on Pluto, I prefer Samsung because I find the stream to be more reliable and closer to real time.

The problem with the Samsung integration is the guide data only goes a few hours out. So even with the XMLTV Guide Data refresh rate set at one hour, I can still miss recordings if I don’t manually refresh a few minutes before the show starts.

I realize a 15 minute option would be far from ideal in most other cases, it would certainly help me not have to fiddle with the server so often. So I’m hoping it’s a simple change that isn’t repugnant to the fine Channels developers.

#2

If you can setup a cron job or task schedule you can roll your own.
set it to run every 15 minutes
This works for Pluto, just change the lineup name to match your Samsung lineup
PUT /dvr/lineups/XMLTV-Pluto

task scheduler command I use
curl -s -XPUT http://192.168.1.3:8189/dvr/lineups/XMLTV-Pluto

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#3

This is due to a bug.

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#4

I’m on the latest prerelease. I suppose it hasn’t been fixed?

#5

If you decide to use a task to update it, you can find the lineup name in the DVR log.
When it does a guide update you'll see the name like mine below;
[DVR] Fetched guide data for XMLTV-Pluto in 0s
Maybe yours is XMLTV-SamsungTV, dunno

I found Channels DVR too unreliable at refreshing the guide. It would miss updates, and besides I wanted to control exactly when the guide data updated, so I have mine run every three hours for Pluto.

#6

I agree. I try not to hack around too much for fear of later stepping on the mines I’ve laid, but I will look into this tomorrow. I need things to run for the most part without intervention.

#7

Well, I dusted off my cron skills and set this up and it seems to be working. I have initially set it at every 15 minutes but that's probably overkill and it spikes the CPU for a second when it runs. So I will experiment to find a ideal time frequency form my purposes.

Thanks to all for your help!

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#8

Possible fix in v2022.01.20.2019

#9

I will disable my cron jobs and observe and let you know how it goes.

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#10

I have 4 custom channels set to refresh hourly. I installed the specified update. It immediately fetched, indexed and pruned entries for all 4. Then one hour later it did the same. I will check again in the morning to make sure the pattern holds and confirm here.

Thanks for your work on this.

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#11

Okay. It did it's thing -- fetch, index, prune -- every hour on the hour over night until 7am, then it skipped the 8am run and did a big batch of pulling stuff for other channels along with my custom channels. Looks like this is part of the normal channels workflow management designed to keep too many maintenance jobs from firing at the same time. So I think we are good! I will keep an eye on it today and let you know if anything weird happens.

Thanks again.

BTW, I submitted diagnostics just in case you want a closer look -- 78dfc9fd-c9f4-4d42-aa3e-796d3c23b62a

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#12

I'd assume that was the daily morning guide refresh (between 9-11am) that happens for all sources.
I've noticed my Pluto daily (9-11am) refresh is missing some days (as evidenced in the log).
But I haven't reported it since I script a refresh every three hours.

#13

That's my assumption as well. Try pausing your script. I'm guessing it's no longer needed.

#14

Thanks, but I'll let you be the guinea pig.
I need strict control of my EPG update schedules to avoid a scheduled maintenance task on my NAS's in the early morning hours. Can't have anything disk-intensive like that running at the time.
I even modified the shell script sleep command in the Pluto for Channels container so it runs exactly every three hours.

#15

Gee, I've been envious the folks who have NAS -- all in one solution and all. Although I may need to figure something out because I'm about to max out my 8TB USB drive. Maybe I will just add another. I have Channels itself running on a small SSD which is pretty quick so I haven't had a IO bottleneck. My drives just sleep most of the time.

#16

I got an ORICO 5 drive USB 3 Case and set up an UBUNTU server with Raid5 ... moved everything DVR off my Synology prefer using the Synology for backups and storing other stuff.

I even tested if I could just move the RIAD5 to another UBUNTU machine and that worked no loss off data.

I find UBUNTU server to be more Stable then any server i have used in the past.

this video made it so easy step by step ... This is my final home for my DVR apps . Windows was erratic... Synology just not powerful enough for a full time server.

#17

Agreed. I used to use VMware with Windows Server VM's because that's what I was familiar with from my job It worked but it consumed a ton of resources just existing. Moved to Ubuntu/Docker a couple of years ago and the server rarely comes off idle. Much easier administration too.

#18

I do not want to hijack this thread, but I will temporarily lol I was surprised how well RAID 5 performs on UBUNTU.

#19

I think it's already gone off the rails. My fault as usual. I wander.

#20

I have monitored the logs for for the last several days and the guide data has consistently updated at the set interval. I'd say this one is definitely squashed.

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