Remote Scheduling for Foxsat-HDR Now Available

[MofTot]

I rebooted the box - waited half an hour - used the Webif Channel Editor - then pushed the channels - I think!

OK, you need to reboot the box after having made any changes in the WebIf Channel Editor (wait for the page to finish handling changes and then also wait for the page to fully render again first, before rebooting) - before pushing the channels.

Perhaps worth rebooting the box at this point, then go back into WebIf Channel Editor and check that your changes are there, and then try to push the channels again.

I've asked af123 to check whether he can find any clues regarding this on the RS Portal.

 

[Suzandii]

OK, you need to reboot the box after having made any changes in the WebIf Channel Editor (wait for the page to finish handling changes and then also wait for the page to fully render again first, before rebooting) - before pushing the channels.

Perhaps worth rebooting the box at this point, then go back into WebIf Channel Editor and check that your changes are there, and then try to push the channels again.

I've asked af123 to check whether he can find any clues regarding this on the RS Portal.

The box is tied up recording now until 9pm. I'll reboot then and follow your instructions. In the meantime I've remembered another issue (unrelated I assume). The last two fridays I used the brilliant 4HD function to record 8 out of ten cats does countdown. Both times it worked perfectly putting the relevant files into the correct series link folder and all played fine. But also, in each case it created a single empty hmt file in the root directory which then gets flagged as a broken recording via rs email notification. The Humax box itself does not "see" the file at all. I just manually deleted them via my pc. The time stamps indicated that they were created at the end of the programme.

 

[MofTot]

The box is tied up recording now until 9pm. I'll reboot then and follow your instructions.

OK, please wait doing anything more, I think there's something wrong with the RS Portal, but I'm waiting to hear from af123.

In the meantime I've remembered another issue (unrelated I assume). The last two fridays I used the brilliant 4HD function to record 8 out of ten cats does countdown. Both times it worked perfectly putting the relevant files into the correct series link folder and all played fine. But also, in each case it created a single empty hmt file in the root directory which then gets flagged as a broken recording via rs email notification. The Humax box itself does not "see" the file at all. I just manually deleted them via my pc. The time stamps indicated that they were created at the end of the program.

I haven't seen this issue before. Did the recordings eventually produce both the .ts and the relevant sidecar files (.hmt and .nts) with the same base names in the correct series folder? Did the .hmt file get patched up with the correct synopsis? Do you have the convertfiles plug-in installed and running automatically on the box? Did you see any errors in the rs log around the time where it says "Recorded: ", "Changed synopsis" and "Moved recording" for those recordings? What's your setting for "Create Freesat Dummy Recordings for Non-Freesat Wakeup" in "RemoteScheduling Plug-in Settings"?

 

[Suzandii]

Just rebooted - Exactly the same problem...

Regarding the 4HD issue - All three files were correctly created with the same base names in the correct series folder, but I think the synopsis was left as "No program information available" - so maybe it created the additional file in the root folder when it tried to patch? I don't have the convertfiles plugin installed.

Section of rs log (no errors):

21/08/2020 22:50:30	Updated disk stats: Total: 266.73 GiB, Used: 224.45 GiB, Usage: 84.15 %, Free: 42.28 GiB
21/08/2020 22:50:28	Updated disk contents: 148 recording(s)
21/08/2020 22:50:27	Updated disk contents.
21/08/2020 22:50:22	Recorded: ITV HD Fri 21 Aug 2020 20:03:15-22:02:00 Vera (118 minutes, 5.09 GiB)
21/08/2020 22:50:20	Moved recording "New_ 8 Out of 10 Cats Does____20200821_2100" to series folder "8 Out of 10 Cats Does___"
21/08/2020 22:50:19	Changed synopsis "...Countdown: A chance to watch top moments from the comedy game-show mash-up, with guests including Richard Ayoade, Aisling Bea, Alan Carr, David Mitchell, Katherine Ryan and Johnny Vegas." from "" in "New_ 8 Out of 10 Cats Does____20200821_2100.hmt"
21/08/2020 22:50:18	Recorded: Channel 4 HD Fri 21 Aug 2020 21:00:20-21:59:49 New: 8 Out of 10 Cats Does... (59 minutes, 4.05 GiB)
21/08/2020 22:50:16	Recorded: Channel 5 HD Fri 21 Aug 2020 19:01:12-20:01:19 New: The Gadget Show (60 minutes, 4.03 GiB)

 

[MofTot]

Just rebooted - Exactly the same problem...

af123 has fixed a few issues on the RS Portal, it should work again now. You'll need to make a little change to your channels before pushing again - the quickest way of doing this is to toggle a favorite in the WebIf Channel Lists (not the Channel Editor), click [Update] and then click [Push Channels] on the same page (calls the same functionality as in the RemoteScheduling Plug-In). You can then revert the favorite change and push again.

If that doesn't give you an EPG you can force an EPG upload by running the following command on the box:

rs_process now -pe

or simply wait for the box to do it by itself at some point within a few hours.

Regarding the 4HD issue - All three files were correctly created with the same base names in the correct series folder, but I think the synopsis was left as "No program information available" - so maybe it created the additional file in the root folder when it tried to patch? I don't have the convertfiles plugin installed.

Thanks - I'll have a look at this tomorrow.

 

[Suzandii]

af123 has fixed a few issues on the RS Portal, it should work again now. You'll need to make a little change to your channels before pushing again - the quickest way of doing this is to toggle a favorite in the WebIf Channel Lists (not the Channel Editor), click [Update] and then click [Push Channels] on the same page (calls the same functionality as in the RemoteScheduling Plug-In). You can then revert the favorite change and push again.

EPG is back - Many thanks to you and af123

 

[MofTot]

EPG is back - Many thanks to you and af123

Perfect, thanks a lot for reporting, this would eventually have affected all users!

 

[Suzandii]

Perfect, thanks a lot for reporting, this would eventually have affected all users!

No problem.

Yet another thing though - the BBC change to "shouting" the channel names has also made their channel icons disappear. Come to that, "Live 360" and "HOCHANDA CRAFT" are missing too.

By the way, what do the last two config options do? ("Avoid [SL] Events in Non-Freesat Series" and " Avoid Early Hours (01:00-07:59) Events in Non-Freesat Series ")

 

[MofTot]

Good point about the BBC channel name changes - I've asked af123 to have a look.

In general, channel icon detection on RS Portal for Freesat isn't as good as for Freeview.

Please check the documentation in WebIf regarding configuration questions: http://<your_box_ip_address_or_hostname>/cgi-bin/documentation.jim: Click on the |RemoteScheduling Plug-In Guide| tab, then click on the |Configuration & Logging| tab. All the configuration options are documented there.

 

[MofTot]

Regarding the 4HD issue - All three files were correctly created with the same base names in the correct series folder, but I think the synopsis was left as "No program information available" - so maybe it created the additional file in the root folder when it tried to patch? I don't have the convertfiles plugin installed.

I haven't forgot you. I've recorded about 30 non-Freesat programs from Cha4 HD without being able to reproduce your issue. I'm working on incorporating more instrumentation to be able to investigate the issue better, I hope I'll have a new version ready in a couple of days.

 

[Suzandii]

I haven't forgot you. I've recorded about 30 non-Freesat programs from Cha4 HD without being able to reproduce your issue. I'm working on incorporating more instrumentation to be able to investigate the issue better, I hope I'll have a new version ready in a couple of days.

Everything worked fine last night using the same repeating recording schedule entry. I'm sure it worked fine the first week too - so I think the pattern was that it worked fine once, then went odd the next two, then was ok again last night. You don't think that it may be a clash with Newk do you? It was also recording Vera on ITV at the time, although that was the same for all 4 weeks.

 

[MofTot]

Everything worked fine last night using the same repeating recording schedule entry. I'm sure it worked fine the first week too - so I think the pattern was that it worked fine once, then went odd the next two, then was ok again last night. You don't think that it may be a clash with Newk do you? It was also recording Vera on ITV at the time, although that was the same for all 4 weeks.

Thanks for the extra details. I think the issue is that it incorrectly identifies non-Fressat recordings that already have been moved to their series folder and tries to move them again from the root. The first step in the moving process is to change the absolute file path name in the root .hmt file, which will create an empty .hmt file if it doesn't exist already. The next steps then try to move all the files - these steps fail but the incorrect .hmt remains. That's my theory for now.

 

[Suzandii]

Thanks for the extra details. I think the issue is that it incorrectly identifies non-Fressat recordings that already have been moved to their series folder and tries to move them again from the root. The first step in the moving process is to change the absolute file path name in the root .hmt file, which will create an empty .hmt file if it doesn't exist already. The next steps then try to move all the files - these steps fail but the incorrect .hmt remains. That's my theory for now.

Sounds like a good theory.

I've just noticed another weird one. I set two films to record (I can't honestly be sure whether I did both on the box, both using the portal or 1 of each sorry) - 'Midway' for Monday 31st Aug on Sony Action and 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' for Tuesday 1st Sept on Sony Classic. They are both 2 part with a 5 minute interruption. The 'Visual' view correctly shows 'Midway', but only shows 'The Man...' as a single part. The other weird bit is the series CRID shows as 'www .movies4men.co.uk/X7487#01' for Midway on Sony Action and 'chartshow.tv/X10315#01' for 'The Man...' on Sony Classic!

 

[MofTot]

I've just noticed another weird one. I set two films to record (I can't honestly be sure whether I did both on the box, both using the portal or 1 of each sorry) - 'Midway' for Monday 31st Aug on Sony Action and 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' for Tuesday 1st Sept on Sony Classic. They are both 2 part with a 5 minute interruption. The 'Visual' view correctly shows 'Midway', but only shows 'The Man...' as a single part. The other weird bit is the series CRID shows as 'www .movies4men.co.uk/X7487#01' for Midway on Sony Action and 'chartshow.tv/X10315#01' for 'The Man...' on Sony Classic!

I suspect that you scheduled one of the movies on the box and the other via RS. Scheduling split events on the box doesn't always work properly - often you'll find that the box removes the schedules during the next Housekeeper boot. I'm not sure why that happens but it does from time to time. That's the reason why RS schedules split events by creating a manual event covering both splits if you have set the configuration "Change Split Events to Single Manual Event Spanning Both" to Yes (which you have).

 

[Suzandii]

I've deleted those films and then re-added via rs. They have now both been scheduled to a single recording spanning the 5 minutes section as they should, so I probably originally set them up on the box itself. The CRIDs have changed to movies4men and truemovies so I still don't know what that's about! I'll keep an eye on them and let you know if anything changes.

 

[MofTot]

Thanks for the extra details. I think the issue is that it incorrectly identifies non-Fressat recordings that already have been moved to their series folder and tries to move them again from the root. The first step in the moving process is to change the absolute file path name in the root .hmt file, which will create an empty .hmt file if it doesn't exist already. The next steps then try to move all the files - these steps fail but the incorrect .hmt remains. That's my theory for now.

I believe that I've finally found the culprit for this issue. I can reproduce if I start the Media List on the box whilst recording a non-Freesat recording or shortly after - before the RS recording management has run the postfixes and moved series recordings from the root to the appropriate series folder. If I then exit Media List and wait for the RS recording management to run (it runs every couple of hours) and start the Media List again, the .hmt files that have been moved are created again. I guess Media List has some kind of cache that is checked against HDD content that makes this happen. I've found no other way to fix this (ie remove the defunct .hmt files) than add code in the RS recording management that checks against various log files (some are new) in order to understand whether there are defunct .hmt files left and if so, it removes them. It can take a few hours so it's not perfect, but I've found no other way.

I've release a new version for this and a few other fixes, will announce shortly.

 

[MofTot]

I've released 1.4.5-16 with the following changes:

• Improved non-Freesat recording post processing and instrumentation. Can still leave defunct .hmt file owing to Media List cache but these are detected and removed within a few hours.
• Improved handling of large non-Freesat series schedules - could crash with Segmentation fault.
• Improved exposure of fully/partially failed recordings.

To the owners of the 22 Foxsat-HDR boxes that use RS but don't currently have a working EPG on the RS Portal owing to various things (incl. the recent BBC channel renaming) try to upgrade to this release and push your channels again.

 

[Suzandii]

I've loaded the 1.4.5-16 update and all looks good so far - thank you MofTot. Thanks also to af123 for the updated channel icons (including Sky Arts) - although they are only working in Raydon's custom firmware, not the rs website yet.

 

[emsquared]

I'm not getting channel 147 Sky Arts on the remote scheduling EPG (1.4.5-16). It's on my Humax HDR box and the 2 shows I set from the box itself show as scheduled on the remote home page as 147 Challenge+1 but there is no channel 147 in my remote EPG. I've tried manually pushing channel updates which the command line says it completed but channel 147 resolutely refuses to appear. No biggie but just wondered if that's just me? Apologies if this is a dumb question or in the wrong place.

 

[MofTot]

I'm not getting channel 147 Sky Arts on the remote scheduling EPG (1.4.5-16). It's on my Humax HDR box and the 2 shows I set from the box itself show as scheduled on the remote home page as 147 Challenge+1 but there is no channel 147 in my remote EPG. I've tried manually pushing channel updates which the command line says it completed but channel 147 resolutely refuses to appear. No biggie but just wondered if that's just me? Apologies if this is a dumb question or in the wrong place.

Is it included in the favourite channel list you're exposing on RS Portal?

Just tried on one of my boxes:

WebIf Channel Lists:

1. Included 147 Sky Arts on my favourite list Main Channels.
2. Clicked [Update] for favourite list Main Channels.
3. Clicked [Push Channels].

RS Portal Settings (https://rs.hpkg.tv/acct/):

1. Changed EPG Favourites Group to Main Channels.
2. Clicked [Save].

RS Portal EPG now has 147 Sky Arts for me.

After you've done this you might need to wait for the next EPG push for it to show for you, unless someone else has done that already for your region. Or you can push it manually by running this command on the box:

rs_process now -pe