[mythtv-users] Zap2It needs our help

[Jarod Wilson]

On Jun 13, 2004, at 23:29, David Rees wrote:

> Jarod Wilson wrote, On 6/13/2004 11:01 PM:
>> On Jun 13, 2004, at 22:08, Chris Petersen wrote:
>>>> It's in the General setup in the frontend, fourth (last) page.  
>>>> Check
>>>> the "Automatically run mythfilldatabase", and then fill in the 
>>>> settings
>>>> that appear...
>>>
>>> ahh, sweet, thanks.  Would have thought it would be under "TV".
>>>
>>> so all things considered, wouldn't it be best to set the default 
>>> times
>>> to 1 -> 24?  So it runs randomly at some point during the day?  
>>> (could
>>> add code to the random such that it would never run less than 12 
>>> hours
>>> apart, etc)
>> I had that same thought, but also the same concern -- I wasn't sure 
>> if there was a possibility it'd run at 23:59, then again at 00:01 or 
>> something, so I just went with a 3-hour window in the afternoon, 
>> since from zap2it's chart, it doesn't look like much of anybody is 
>> hitting them at that time. I like your idea though, and I think you 
>> could take it one step further, and remove the choice to select the 
>> time period, just make everyone's system fetch data randomly each 
>> day, but at least 12 hours apart from the adjacent days' fetches.
>
> Thanks for the tip Jarod to use the built-in mythfilldatabase 
> scheduler.

No problem. Only really stumbled upon it this weekend myself.

> I've set mine to update from hour 0 to 24.

 From Matt's description of how the scheduler works, it looks like 
you'll get a stepping pattern through the days, where each subsequent 
database fill is 24:10 after the prior one, rather than actual 
randomness.

> I agree that it would make sense to add some sort of randomization in 
> there, but not necessarily a good idea to take away the option for 
> people to schedule the update at a time they might prefer.

True, I'm sure there are those out there that need to have control over 
when the fill runs.

> I like the idea of it picking a random time each week to run 
> mythfilldatabase, as that will help make sure that random times are 
> chosen for updates and if for some reason things aren't quite random 
> they will automatically randomize update times on their own.  I think 
> that with this scheme you could ignore the occasions last weeks 
> updates occurred late and the current weeks happen early, or you could 
> reschedule the event halfway between the last one and the next one.

It sounds like your randomizing script actually did more randomizing 
than the internal scheduler, but perhaps the two could be married (or 
at least, share the same house). Have two options in the built-in 
method, one that uses your randomizer, one that uses the current setup 
as Matt described, leaving people with the ability to have control over 
when it runs. Of course, one can always stick with using crontab to do 
whatever they want, but in striving for ultimate user-friendliness, I 
like the change for users to be able to set this up without having to 
manually adjust a cron job.

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE
jcw at wilsonet.com

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