SQL error: database disk image is malformed (1 Viewer)

[Basz]

After having worked flawlesly for about 3 months, I was starting to regain faith in mediaportal as the ultimate Home Theater. Lots had happened; total freezes, inability to discover and/or use my well-supported tunercard, total and sudden loss of channels, recordings resulting in 2kb 'big' moviefiles, etc... But this was al in the past. Mediaportal has come a long way and since the last releases, things really started to get better and better. And with the upcoming of the everpraised TVengine version 3, I decided to forgive the team and accept any shortcomings for now and just wait for the ultimate leap since my experience with mediaportal.

Then things started to go wrong;
A skin for MP was released, a very well promising skin. A skin that would help mediaportal loose it's geeky impression, a skin that finally made mediaportal look like what a user would expect from an application called so. But suddenly it dissapeared. Leaving a huge gap behind.
Numerous refreshing attempts further, I was disappointed to discover the miraculous 'tvengine3' got postponed, and postponed and postponed. Not beeing released up to today.
My patience was running out slowly...
How great my disappointment was when i found out yesterday, the guide info in TVguide was suddenly missing :-S. Still trusting in mediaportal's possibilities and strengths, I immediately blamed my girlfriend for pushing the 'wrong' buttons. But to no expense, she didn't do it (no really, she didn't even touch it the days before..). A little 'study' into SQLite, revealed the errormessage noted in the title of this post. I was surprised. A mechanism always having worked fine (slow, but fine) suddenly, with no reason for me to find whatever, stopped working completely. Because of a corrupt database. (an event which would indefinitely have got me fired if I pulled a stunt like that with my employer's numerous databases)
It wouldn't be such of a big problem if the database in this matter (tvdatabasev21.db3) wouldn't contain a whole lot of other data, somewhat or some not, related to EPG data. The result of this database failing is as follows;
- Recordings are inaccesible
- Scheduled recordings are all lost (and that were a LOT)
- All channels are lost completely. After my hard work of perfecting channelicons and such things, this is a great loss too.
- EPG import has to be re-configured completely, because of the disappearance of all the channels.
- My confidence in mediaportal has shrunken to 0. (And the team's attitude contributes to that for a major part too)

Don't get me wrong, this is not (intended to be) a flame. The failing in the tvguide made me just want to write down how I experienced the proces from beeing a mediaportal-lover to becoming the dissapointed person I am today. I suggest the team does with this info what it likes to it's own best interest.

So much for this loooong story, back to the original intent of this post.
My question; could anybody help me and repair my database so I can continue to use mediaportal as the main attraction in my living room and substitute for any VCR's, paper guides, etc I had ever had?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Spagbol]

If you want help to repair/recover database, it might be wise to post what version of MP you are running etc., and the corrupt database file(s). From what I've read, a different version of SQLite browser may possibly help.
As it was working fine and seeing as no-one else seems to have had a malformed database problem, I would tentatively suggest that the data corruption is not due to MP. Have you scanned your HDD for physical errors? Have you added software recently? Have you turned off the PC without shutting down, or has there been a power cut/surge? Are you virus free? Did another piece of software suddenly run when the database was being updated/accessed?

- Recordings are inaccesible

Your recordings are accessible - just not through MP. They haven't been deleted just through a corrupt db, they will still be on your hard drive.

My patience was running out slowly...

You seem to miss the point that MediaPortal is in Beta and is not a finished product. There are bugs (not that I think this issue is one) - they will be fixed, others will be found and they will also be fixed in time. Patience is a necessity when developing a product like this. Case in point is the new TV Engine - you are pissed that it hasn't been released yet, but I guarantee that if it was released today half-cocked you'd be moaning about the bugs they should have found before releasing it.

Anyone who knows they would "be fired for pulling a stunt like that [like what? - ed.] with their employers numerous databases" would keep backups to cover their ass in case anything went wrong, even more definitely if they were using a beta piece of software - did you backup your MP databases?

I decided to forgive the team...

Very big of you given that they spend hours programming this for your benefit for free. Sheesh

 

[jawbroken]

If you fix your database issue and point the recording folder at the current recording folder then you should be able to play your recorded files. They won't have pretty names and dates and lengths (which probably should be parsed in from the file name, since the information is there), but they will be accessable. I suggest that, if this database is not recoverable, that next time you get everything set up how you like it you make a backup of your "database" folder. This will allow you to quickly recover from such issues in the future.

 

[mbuzina]

He Basz, please complain also to the Guys over at Microsoft, since they created the operating system, which just might have corrupted a file. Or you could check out who build your HDD and complain to them.

To those companies you paid money to give you a product, which probably just killed your Datafile. Just tell them that your confidence with their products is down to 0 (also based on their teams, which you probably have not and never will be able to contact). You also might slip in that up to now their products worked fine with (slow, but otherwise fine), tell them that you lost a lot of data in the file their products just destroyed and then wait for the answer.

Maybe because you paid them money they might react more friendly and send somebody over to your place to start repairing the database file. At least they were not saying that their products are currently in a Beta status and may contain bugs. They advertise only their great features, so good luck.

If you succeed in that, please post the contact details in this forum, because there are many many people who would be able to get such a result.

In the mean time, you are asking people who spend a lot of their time setting up a piece of software, that you abviously enjoyed for 3 months, for which you have paid (and contributed) nothing, to help you out of this problem, which is OK. But you could stick to the rules of communication:
- Be nice to somebody you want something from (you could be nice to other people also, might be a good start)
- Try talking on a normal level. You are not a customer of MP, because you did not provide anything to MP. So I guess the team should not need any of your "forgivenes" or other forms of your patronizing speak.
- Disregard the rules of this forum (this is a support question, so your post should be there)
- Disregard the request of the people that can answer your questions (read the stickies in the support forum)
- quit the whining tone in your post.

When you keep to these rules, you might get an answer (people are quite nice here, so you may even get an answer anyway, but probably later).

 

[mbuzina]

Basically it seems that the DB is corrupted.

You could check at http://www.sqlite.org/ if there is a tool that can repare sqlite databases.

 

[Basz]

Basically it seems that the DB is corrupted.

You could check at http://www.sqlite.org/ if there is a tool that can repare sqlite databases.

Thank you for your suggestion, but I already tried that url and many more for finding a tool of such sort. To no expense yet though... I guess I'll have to revert to the previous backup I made when things were all set up to my likings. But that backup off course doesn't contain all the recordings since then, let alone the scheduled recordings..
I know, the recordings will be visible, only w/o pretty names.. That's fine for now, I guess...

side note; I'm using MP as complete front-end for my HTPC and a keyboard or mouse isn't even attached, so this db-error is much more of a problem then most people would think. (sitting in front of the TV with the keyboard and mouse on your lap is not so comfortable..)

 

[brainbone]

Won't help with the DB corruption, but I use logmein ( http://logmein.com ) for remotely configuring my HTPC that's connected to a TV. Doesn't work well when MP is open, but works good otherwise. VNC is another option, but more difficult to help my wife out remotely via PDA when away from home.

Also, for backing up things like the DB, logos, etc. (not recordings), I use http://mozy.com -- For backing up Photos, I use http://amd.streamload.com . Don't have a good backup option for recordings. I run raid5, but that doesn't prevent file system corruption, just hardware failure.