[mythtv-users] problems with tvtoday grabber and mythfilldatabase --manual

[David Watkins]

> I did exactly what you said more or less easily and got the desired results!
> I have my EPG populated with program infos and my channels configured.
>
> For the record, this is what I did:
> 1. tv_grab_de_tvtoday --configure
> --> this populated the file ~/.xmltv/tv_grab_de_tvtoday.conf with the list
> of channels. I removed some of the channels I didn't want from that list.
> 2. tv_grab_de_tvtoday --config-file ~/.xmltv/tv_grab_de_tvtoday.conf
> --output ~/.xmltv/output.xml
> --> this is the actual grab for EPG infos. I specified the file output.xml
> to store the output. The grab took quite a long time.
> 3. mythfilldatabase --file cable -1 output.xml
> --> This filled the mythtv database with EPG infos. (cable is the name of my
> video source)
> 4. opened the channel editor from within mythtv-setup and configured the new
> imported channels. I had to specify for each channel its video source
> (cable), its channel number and frequency. I got those infos from my cable
> provider and ptune-ui.
>
> My next question would now be, is there a way to automate the grabbing
> process? Should I put the commands into crontab?

I've actually been pretty lazy.  I've created a script, containing the
two commands you've used, in /home/mythtv, and I run it manually once
my guide data goes below about a week (I get 14 days on each run). 
This works well enough for me.

I'm sure using cron would work fine.  Only reasons not to use it might
be if your machine's not on all the time; or to avoid always hitting
your listing server at the same time of day - though I'm sure you can
choose a quiet time to schedule crontab for. The mythfilldatabase
scheduler has some functionality to minimise the hits on the listing
server, but I guess they're geared to the US providers so may not be
effective in Europe anyway?

If I need to automate my setup then I'll probably use crontab and
combine it with my shutdown/startup scripts to ensure that the machine
wakes up to do a listing grab once a week or so (I'm using
nvram-wakeup).

If anyone's already done this I'd be interested?