How to troubleshoot TvService freezes due to bad EPG Data? (1 Viewer)

yahoodee

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  • July 17, 2006
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    MediaPortal Version: 1.1.1
    MediaPortal Skin: Blue3Wide
    Windows Version: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
    CPU Type: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 65nm
    HDD: Western Digital 160GB SATA 2,5"
    Memory: 3072MB DDR2-800
    Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
    Video Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4650 Ultimate
    Video Card Driver: Catalyst 10.6
    Sound Card: SoundMax HD onboard
    Sound Card AC3: coaxial out
    Sound Card Driver:
    1. TV Card: Digital Everywhere FloppyDTV C/CI
    1. TV Card Type: DVB-C
    1. TV Card Driver: BDA
    2. TV Card: Digital Everywhere FloppyDTV C/CI
    2. TV Card Type: DVB-C
    2. TV Card Driver: BDA
    3. TV Card:
    3. TV Card Type:
    3. TV Card Driver:
    4. TV Card:
    4. TV Card Type:
    4. TV Card Driver:
    MPEG2 Video Codec: SAF v4.00 stable unlocked
    MPEG2 Audio Codec: SAF v4.00 stable unlocked
    h.264 Video Codec: SAF v4.00 stable unlocked
    Satelite/CableTV Provider: UnityMedia
    HTPC Case: Silverstone LC-17
    Cooling: Scythe Ninja Mini
    Power Supply: beQuiet 350W
    Remote: Microsoft MCE Remote + Keyboard
    TV: Samsung LE-46M86BD
    TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

    Hi,

    I do have some problems with my setup when resuming from standby. The tvserice stops responding every now and then. I tracked it down to the idle epg grabber (didnt test the ts-epg grabber). The grabber gets the epg data for my working channels whitin two to five minutes. But there are transponders which run into timeout even when i set it to 30 minutes. My questions is how can troubleshoot this?

    Do i need your support for steps like this Debugging/TS-dumps - MediaPortal Manual Documentation or is there anything i can do by my own?

    Thanks in Advance,

    Jens

    edit: attached epg.log this intesting part is around 3:45
    tvservice crashes when pc is resumed from standby and the epg grabber ran into an timeout before the system went to standby

    edit2: Is there a hint how i can view the "raw EPG-Data"? New Logs attached.
     

    yahoodee

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    AW: How to troubleshoot TvService freezes due to bad EPG Data?

    Sorry for pushing, but i think my updated post won't get read on the sixth page...
    Probably an admin can move this thread to https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/electronic-program-guide-67/.

    thx in advance, Jens


    edit: all the epg-entries (for all channels) are looking pretty well, so the data cannot be that bad, or?! Of course i can disable epg-grabbing for all channels but one and add channel by channel til i find the bad one.
    but thats not my intension. i mean is it not possible to grab epg for all channels i am watching? my stupid stb is also able to grab all the epg. i'm sorry if i misconceive something... but this seems to be very weird.

    yesterday i started reading through the compiling/debug section of the wiki til i got over to the svn-server and are now reading through the sources but its a bit overwhelming for the moment.
    if someone could please comment on that i would appreciate that! just tell me if its worth the effort...

    thx!
     

    mars

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    August 1, 2008
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    AW: How to troubleshoot TvService freezes due to bad EPG Data?

    Hi yahoodee,

    I had a similar problem. Following a hint from this forum I have "EPG grabbing while idle" disabled and "EPG grabbing while timeshifting/recording" enabled in the DVB EPG section.
    That has made TV Server significantly stable
     

    sepp776

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    same problem here. For Germany (at least) the WebEPG is a good alternative. Maybe you want to give that a try.
    I only use the DVB EPG grabber for very few channels that are not available via WebEPG and have no problems with TV server anymore. EPG grabbing while timeshifting was not an option for me because it led to stuttering every now and then.
     

    kkendall

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    same problem here. there are other people in other threads reporting the same bug. As far as I know it's not in Mantis though so it will not be fixed soon...
     

    yahoodee

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    AW: How to troubleshoot TvService freezes due to bad EPG Data?

    Hi kkendall,

    I have read Dadeos MP Team Blog some weeks ago and started to do some structured testing. I documented all the steps that I have made in order to reproduce it . Only when you can reproduce the behavior the MP-Team will be able to fix this bug/error-by-design or whatever it is. I could not make a step-by-step instruction to reproduce my error! That's my problem atm. I would appreciate it when somebody else could get me a step-by-step instruction.

    When we have an instruction then I will post a proper bugreport so the bug will be getting fixed.

    When you cannot reproduce this bug but you experienced it, then please post me your log-files.

    Cheers

    Jens

    btw: the TS-EPG-Grabber is working very fine! But it's no solutions to the problem, because I'm only getting EPG-Data for the channels which I watch periodical!
    I will definitely post more info here as soon i get them so feel free to subscribe to this thread in order to get many people with this problem to test it when there will hopefully be a patch.
     

    mm1352000

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    Hi there

    You're correct - we really need instructions that allow us to reproduce the bug, or good logs that allow us to find the problem in the code.

    The grabber gets the epg data for my working channels whitin two to five minutes. But there are transponders which run into timeout even when i set it to 30 minutes. My questions is how can troubleshoot this?

    I looked at your first EPG log, and I see that you increase and increase the timeout. The idle EPG scanner doesn't re-read the setting until it starts scanning again, so the setting wasn't applied to the scan that was running at the time.

    edit2: Is there a hint how i can view the "raw EPG-Data"? New Logs attached.
    This is not possible.

    If you are still having this problem then please try the attached TsWriter.ax. Instructions for use:

    1. Stop TV Server.
    2. Take a backup copy of the TsWriter.ax in your TV Server install folder.
    3. Download and extract the attached TsWriter.ax into your TV Server install folder.
    4. Start TV Server.
    5. Test the EPG grabber again.

    New logs would be helpful if you still have trouble.
     

    Attachments

    • TsWriter.zip
      120 KB

    yahoodee

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    AW: How to troubleshoot TvService freezes due to bad EPG Data?

    Hi,

    after a lot of testing in the recent weeks i can make the following statements:

    Update to the Topic: I don't think that the crashes are related to bad EPG-Data.

    Steps to reproduce under the following circumstances:
    TVService:
    DVB-EPG: EPG grabbing while idle: activated
    Powerscheduler activated and configured as follows:
    Shutdown server after being idle for 2 minutes.
    Shutdown mode: Suspend.
    Prevent standby when grabbing EPG: disabled

    You have to make sure that you activate EPG grabbing for a specific amount of channels so that TVS starts grabbing EPG again after resuming the PC. (steps 4-5)

    I think that the TVservice crashes when it(you) do(es)
    1. timeshifting
    2. then grab EPG
    3. let PC suspend due to inactivity
    4. resume manually
    5. let TVS grab EPG
    6. then timeshifting fails and TVservice crashes


    And here a more specific step-by-step guide to reproduce.
    1. net stop tvservice
    2. Delete all EPG-Data from the database (ie MySQL Workbench: DELETE FROM [PROGRAM])
    3. net start tvservice
    4. start SetupTV->Manual Control->Start/stop TS->close SetupTV
    5. let PC get idle so it starts EPG grabbing automatically
    6. leave PC idle so it can suspend due to inactivity
    7. power on PC again
    8. let TVS grab EPG (it should start automatically because the last grab only ran for 2-3 minutes and didn't finish)
    9. start SetupTV->Manual Control->Start/stop TS

    Setup TV should now get inresponsive.
    net stop tvservice should not be able to definitely end the task so you have to kill it via taskmanager


    My HTPC runs rock-solid when i check "Prevent standby when grabbing EPG" or when i only use the TS-EPG-Grabber.

    Is somebody able to reproduce this issue with my guide?

    cheers

    Jens
     

    yahoodee

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    AW: How to troubleshoot TvService freezes due to bad EPG Data?

    Hi Guys,

    I could not track the progress of this problem because I were relocating...
    As I mentioned above "My HTPC runs rock-solid when i check "Prevent standby when grabbing EPG" or when i only use the TS-EPG-Grabber."

    Thats okay for me since I do it that way for months now. But I think many people start using MP and uncheck this setting and wonder why their HTPC got unstable. At least it was like that in my situation. I did not see the coherency between that setting and the effect it made...

    Probably some kind warning-message should be implemented into setuptv.exe that will warn the user that the system might become unstable.

    Cheers
     

    mm1352000

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    Hi again Jens

    I can see where the issue is in the logs from January, and I've seen this issue a couple of times with other people since December last year. It seems like TV Server gets locked up because it can't get a new subchannel from TsWriter. TsWriter won't allocate a new subchannel because this can only be done when no other threads are in critical parts of the code. Without getting too technical, this is what we would call a "deadlock". Reproducing such issues can be terribly difficult and finding the cause can be even harder...

    So how to proceed?

    I honestly don't know. I have tried before to insert debug to track down this problem, but the sheer amount of data makes the debug output overwhelming and slows down TsWriter enough to affect the actual behaviour of the issue.

    Are you still able to reproduce the problem at will with the steps you gave in January?

    mm
     

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