[mythtv-users] Possible solution to slow mythfilldatabase with tv_grab_uk_rt

[Nick Morrott]

I've been looking into this after having had it take up to 3 hours for a
complete run cycle of mythfilldatabase, providing listings for 3 sourceids
but only 15 channels. It would appear when just running 'mythfilldatabase'
from the command line that the program was looping or taking a *very* long
time to get listings into the database.

It was suggested to run the grabber manually and export listings to an XML
file, and then run mythfilldatabase --file to import these listings. I was
quite amazed at the enormous speedup this provided.

(using Myth 0.16 from atrpms, xmltv 0.5.37 compiled from source with http
caching of listings)

Using the following commands:

# perl /usr/bin/tv_grab_uk_rt --config-file /root/.mythtv/dvb.xmltv --output
/root/uk_rt_sourceid1-dvb.xml --quiet
# mythfilldatabase --no-delete --file 1 -1 /root/uk_rt_sourceid1-dvb.xml

# perl /usr/bin/tv_grab_uk_rt --config-file
/root/.mythtv/analogue.xmltv --output /root/uk_rt_sourceid2-ana.xml --quiet
# mythfilldatabase --no-delete --file 2 -1 /root/uk_rt_sourceid2-ana.xml

# perl /usr/bin/tv_grab_uk_rt --config-file
/root/.mythtv/ntl_digital.xmltv --output
/root/uk_rt_sourceid2-ntl.xml --quiet
# mythfilldatabase --no-delete --file 3 -1 /root/uk_rt_sourceid2-ntl.xml


meant that the initial download from the RT site took only a couple of
minutes to produce the XML file, and then a minute or two to import the
data. The first pull for the DVB listings (I'm also testing tv_grab_dvb)
took a bit longer than the others due to having more defined channels
currently (only 14!), but I'm just so shocked that the 'automatic' running
of mythfilldatabase takes nearly 100x as long to complete for me. (perhaps
it could be because I ran this test with --no-delete) The only updates that
were logged as the import ran were changes to program timing adding 'UTC' to
the listings.

I'll get these dropped into a script and cron it now that I appear to have
solved this little aspect. With my other problem about imported only the
radio channels from the dvb grabber, my listings seem a lot healthier now.

I'd certainly recommend any other UK users finding it's taking ages to run
to try the manually grab and fill as see if this has the same kind of
speedup that I've observed.

Cheers,

Nick



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