[mythtv-users] Guide updates for CBS and TNT this evening
Michael T. Dean
mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Wed Nov 18 19:29:03 UTC 2015
On 11/18/2015 11:59 AM, Robert Eden wrote:
> On 11/18/2015 7:49 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> So, I would say that the 2am spike is due to people/distros
>> misconfiguring systems and disabling "Automatically update program
>> listings" and scheduling a cron job to run at 2am. I don't know if
>> some (or most? or all?) distros tend to set up their crontabs so that
>> /etc/cron.daily/ jobs are run at 2am, but if so, perhaps some
>> distro(s) is throwing a script to run mythfilldatabase (or to run it
>> if the script thinks it hasn't been run recently--meaning that the
>> distro doesn't trust mythbackend to do the job right) in
>> /etc/cron.daily/. Regardless, since there's no magic 2am time in any
>> of MythTV, whatever causes the spike is outside of MythTV--at least
>> outside of https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/tree/master/mythtv
>> (meaning some distros may be putting in some 2am hard-coded time in a
>> patch, but I don't know of any, and don't see any in
>> https://github.com/MythTV/packaging ).
>
> Has it always been that way? I seem to remember when the 2am thing
> first came up, it was fixed, but many folks had old versions.
>
> The user agent strings at 2am UTC are:
>
> | MythTV v0.27.20140323-1 MythDownloadManager |
> | MythTV v0.27.20150622-1 MythDownloadManager |
> | MythTV v0.27.20151025-1 MythDownloadManager |
> | MythTV v0.27.20131107-1 MythDownloadManager |
> | MythTV v0.27.20140520-1 MythDownloadManager |
> | MythTV v0.27.20140719-1 MythDownloadManager |
> | MythTV v0.27.20141016-1 MythDownloadManager |
>
> Some are fairly recent (I assume compile) dates.
>
> I'll look into contacting a few users to see what I can figure out.
tl;dr version:
What 0.27/0.27-fixes users can do to work around the breakage is simply
go into mythtv-setup and change "Guide data program execution start" to
0 and "Guide data program execution end" to 23 on the last screen
(labeled "Program Schedule Downloading Options" of the General Settings
section. For users on all other versions of MythTV, running at the
suggested time should work.
-----
Details:
OK, so it looks like the scheduler code rewrite that went in with 0.27
forgot to ignore the specified run window when run at the suggested time
was enabled. This was reported by Frank Phillips in
https://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/12101 and fixed with his patch
(committed by JYA) in
https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/commit/ff22b7199e6bf77105d2206a7945c2dd5b06b697
so that in master the run window is ignored when suggested times are
enabled. It seems that patch was never backported to 0.27, so 0.27 is
broken.
So, that means that users with small run windows (i.e. smaller than the
default "unlimited"/24-hr run window) whose suggested time occurs
outside the run window will, instead of running when suggested, run
mythfilldatabase at the start of the next run window (within 5mins of
the start). For those users who have been running their MythTV systems
since (created their databases with versions) before 0.25 was released
(or development versions before Jul 19, 2011), the default window was
set to 2am-5am ( https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/commit/d915ef7ab3ee
). So, since 0.27 is incorrectly using the run window, it seems many
users are running at the start of their run windows, and based on the
2am spike, it seems many of those users are users who have been using
MythTV for a long time--and for whom mythfilldatabase runs were always
working properly in the past (i.e. those least likely to notice problems).
What 0.27/0.27-fixes users can do to work around the breakage is simply
go into mythtv-setup and change "Guide data program execution start" to
0 and "Guide data program execution end" to 23 on the last screen
(labeled "Program Schedule Downloading Options" of the General Settings
section.
Ideally, though, someone will backport the fix (that ignores the run
window when suggested times are enabled) in
ff22b7199e6bf77105d2206a7945c2dd5b06b697 to 0.27-fixes.
Mike
More information about the mythtv-users
mailing list