"Enter" no longer reliably adds a recording from TV Guide (2 Viewers)

[doskabouter]

Hm, somehow I suspect mediaportal's loglevel is still not debug...
one of the first lines in OnRecordProgram is
Log.Debug("TVProgammInfnRecordProgram - programm = {0}", program.ToString()); and I don't see that one in your log...

 

[rsbrux]

just took a quick glance and this

[2021-03-17 16:30:56,299] [Error  ] [MPMain   ] [ERROR] - OnMessage exception:System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at TvPlugin.TVProgramInfo.OnRecordProgram(Program program)
   at TvPlugin.TVProgramInfo.OnClicked(Int32 controlId, GUIControl control, ActionType actionType)
   at MediaPortal.GUI.Library.GUIWindow.OnMessage(GUIMessage message)

seems like the cause.

Yes, that looks like what I posted at the start of this thread.

Nothing in the tvservice.log around that time so now to dig into mediaportalcode to see what's wrong.
btw, I do notice quite some errors in the tvservice.log, and a strange one in mediaportal.log about the gentle.config...

Thanks, I will be grateful if you can find a cause. I know it is tough when the problem doesn't repeat reliably.
The EPG errors from yesterday are a mystery to me. I went through the TV guide yesterday and today and didn't see any problems. There are channels for which no EPG info is available, but I have unchecked them all in the TV Epg grabber.
The gentle.config error in the MediaPortal log is just as mysterious to me. I am using SQL Server express because I repeatedly had connectivity problems with the built-in MySQL DB, often accompanied by gentle.config errors. At least with SQL Server, I don't experience blocking errors at the user interface level.

 

[rsbrux]

Hm, somehow I suspect mediaportal's loglevel is still not debug...
one of the first lines in OnRecordProgram is
Log.Debug("TVProgammInfnRecordProgram - programm = {0}", program.ToString()); and I don't see that one in your log...

Absolutely correct: I checked again, and my change to the log settings did not take effect. I know that such changes first take effect when MP (or TV service) is restarted, but I expected them to take effect with my daily reboot at 5 AM (configured in Power Scheduler),

 

[rsbrux]

While trying to turn on debug log level for MP, I came across an interesting peculiarity. I normally do my maintenance via RDP to an admin account on my HTPC to avoid interfering with the normal interactive use of the 10 ft. GUI. When I make changes to TV Server, some take effect immediately and some require a service restart. If the service is active (e.g. recording) I deny restart and the changes take effect at the next scheduled system reboot. MP client OTOH likes to be restarted after every change. I always deny restart in my RDP session, since that used to try to start MP in my RDP session (I don't know if that is still the case). Instead, I would then restart MP from the 10 ft. GUI or, again, just wait for the scheduled reboot. Up until now, this has worked for everything I have changed in mp Configuration. However, some changes to the General tab (Log verbosity and Watchdog enabled) would not "stick" if I made them while the MP client was running. To get them to take effect, I had to first stop the MP Client, then make the changes in MP Configuration and then restart MP. Curiouser and curiouser!

 

[rsbrux]

Finally got an incident with debug logs (attached).

 

[doskabouter]

I've added some logging to hopefully pinpoint where exactly it's going wrong.
just stop mediaporta, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\plugins\Windows, backup old tvplugin.dll (be sure to either move it to a completely different folder or change the extension so the old one isn't loaded by mediaportal) and put in the new dll
I suspect this is going to take a while to fix though...

 

[rsbrux]

Thanks! After installing your DLL and restarting MP, the problem isn't showing itself (a corollary of Murphy's law), but I suspect it will show up again in a day or two.

 

[rsbrux]

The problem still hasn‘t reappeared. If all you changed was the number of debugging messages. this suggests to me a timing problem. This might explain why the problem is intermittent for me and hasn‘t shown up with other users. Perhaps the timing is affeceted by the choice of TV Server DB: I am using SQL Server Express 2017.

 

[doskabouter]

Timing problems are very hard to debug....
I would be rather surprised if the log lines I added change the timing of things...

 

[rsbrux]

Indeed, as a former developer, I know how touhg it is to diagnose intermittent problems, especially if timing is a factor!
Just when I had given up hope of reproducing the problem, it happened again. Logs attached.
Many thanks for your help!

P.S: After restarting MP (not TV Server) the problem is gone again. ;-}