EPG not populating from saved data after deep standby

[adm]

Xtrend ET10000, Vix 5.2.17, skin VIX-night-HD (1280 x 720)

Satellite reception from 28.2E (Freesat)

I’ve been noticing that on the last few builds that my Graphical EPG is not always populated as the box boots from deep standby. The EPG is blank and populates afterwards as if it is gradually getting the EPG over the air.

I have the options to auto refresh the EPG every hour and to auto save every hour. I get the EPG over the air with EIT EPG enabled and Freesat EPG enabled. Both Cross EPG and EPG Importer are disabled.

If I try and test by going into deep standby and then re-starting the box a few minutes later the EPG still seems to be populated but if the box is put into standby each night and then left in this state for, say, 12 hours I’ve noticed that the EPG will be blank on the next boot-up.

If at this time I go to Menu/Setup/EPG/Load-save-delete and select Load EPG is still remains missing. Actually if the EPG is a tiny bit populated from re-fetching the EPG over the air before the Load EPG option is selected it doesn’t change this partial information.

So far it’s only a general observation as I haven’t systematically checked each time I’ve switched on the box. The only other variable that I haven’t checked is the difference between manually putting the box into deep standby and leaving it in this state for 12hours and leaving the box on and letting a power timer put it into standby after a few hours of not touching the remote followed by another power timer that then switches the box into deep standby 10 minutes later.

Just in case its related to a corrupt file I’ve stopped Enigma and deleted the EPG and then let it fully re-populate. For this I have used the two methods detailed in:
https://www.world-of-satellite.com/showthread.php?52890-Remove-EPG.
This doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

The 3 screen shots show my configuration.




In case its related there is also a long standing annoyance with the Graphical EPG.

I have 4 tuners, 2 terrestrial for UK Freeview and 2 satellite for Freesat. 99% of the time I watch via satellite where all the relevant channels are in my Favourites Bouquet. On a day to day basis I go into the graphical EPG for this bouquet and its fully populated (apart from the start-up condition reported above).

If I then decide to go to my Freeview Bouquet and select the graphical EPG it will be completely blank. However selecting any TV channel from the EPG and then immediately re-selecting the graphical EPG it will now be fully populated. It as if if just selecting a new bouquet doesn’t load the relevant EPG until a program is selected. The box has obviously got a full 7 day copy of the EPG but doesn’t immediately load it into the EPG screen when it is first selected after a bouquet change.

I change Bouquets by having the first screen on pressing my EPG button bring up the list of Bouquets and on selecting the Bouquet it goes to the Graphical EPG screen.
menu/setup/EPG/GraphicalEPG/show bouquets on launch = yes

[ccs]

I can't say I've noticed any problems, my ET10k (freeview only) goes into deep standby for around 18 hours every day, either via the power button or end of recording.

I check the epg everyday, usually only the HD bouquet with a startup channel of bbc1 hd, I'll keep a closer eye on it from now on.

[adm]

Probably solved. I've only left the box is deep standby for 3 hours and not the usually 12+ hours.

I should have followed my own advice I sometimes give by giving the box a cold boot by turning off at the mains for a few minutes.

What appeared to be happening was that the EPG.dat file was being deleted either during the shutdown or boot-up and therefore there was no EPG information to be loaded on boot. As the box was configuration for saving the EPG every hour a new EPG.dat file was only being created/saved 60 minutes after boot. Also the EPG save/load/delete menu function didn't seem to work for a least 5 minutes after boot. An attempted manual save of the partially populated EPG within this 5 minutes resulted in a window asking if the save was to be to /media/hdd/epg.dat but it didn't result in an EPG.dat file being generated.

A cold boot appears to have changed this erroneous behaviour.

I’m now running 5.2.018 and have also disabled the Automatic Refresh option in the EPG settings menu.

[ccs]

You've got refresh every 1 hour and save every 1 hour. If the refresh happens before the save, the epg.dat file will hardly change, just the new eit data which comes in between the refresh and the save

These are my settings...

[birdman]

You've got refresh every 1 hour and save every 1 hour. If the refresh happens before the save, the epg.dat file will hardly change, just the new eit data which comes in between the refresh and the save

These are my settings...That's roughly what I have too.
epg.dat is saved on GUI shutdown anyway, so the regular save is just to protect against a power cut.

PS: Freeview ITV HD (at least from Sandy Heath) has no data until tomorrow morning, so anyone running an AutoTimer that is meant to kick-in this evening may be disappointed.
SD is OK.

[bellejt]

my epg for ITV HD is populated full ( by rytec)

[ccs]

That's roughly what I have too.
epg.dat is saved on GUI shutdown anyway, so the regular save is just to protect against a power cut.

PS: Freeview ITV HD (at least from Sandy Heath) has no data until tomorrow morning, so anyone running an AutoTimer that is meant to kick-in this evening may be disappointed.
SD is OK.

What does refresh actually do? I can't see the point unless epg.dat has been updated by something else.

[ccs]

PS: Freeview ITV HD (at least from Sandy Heath) has no data until tomorrow morning, so anyone running an AutoTimer that is meant to kick-in this evening may be disappointed.
SD is OK.

Missing on Belmont as well.

[ccs]

What does refresh actually do?

Is it "refresh" as in "tidy up"? Maybe the eit based epg gets very fragmented over time and benefits from a clean up?

[bellejt]

maybe first delete EPG and reload.Made a differance here by populating or not.

[birdman]

Is it "refresh" as in "tidy up"? It's "refresh" as in "reload the epg.dat file".
Presumably with the intent that you may have some external process updating epg.dat from time to time and so may wish to load the latest version automatically.

Doesn't make much(any) sense do do this if you are only using EIT data.

[adm]

It's "refresh" as in "reload the epg.dat file".
Presumably with the intent that you may have some external process updating epg.dat from time to time and so may wish to load the latest version automatically.

Doesn't make much(any) sense do do this if you are only using EIT data.

It doesn't make any sense if you are getting the data over the air. I originally didn't read the one line of help when highlighting this option and mistakenly though that it was a mechanism for a periodic forced re-collection of the data from over the air. When playing around the other day I realised that it just read the epg.dat file. However, irrespective of the setting it didn't make any difference to the problem in the first post which eventually a cold boot fixed.

[birdman]

However, irrespective of the setting it didn't make any difference to the problem in the first post which eventually a cold boot fixed.If by "cold boot" you mean you disconnected the power, that won't have made any difference. As far as the file-system is concerned a reboot (of any sort) is a reboot.

epg.dat will be deleted as the GUI shuts down if it finds the data is corrupted (which would be the in-memory data that it's trying to write out). Apart from that it should be there at start-up.

[adm]

If by "cold boot" you mean you disconnected the power, that won't have made any difference. As far as the file-system is concerned a reboot (of any sort) is a reboot.


I disagree. In my experience a cold boot (removing the mains power) does "cure" problems that a reboot from the menu doesn't (menu/standby and restart/reboot). I have found this to be true expecially after some image updates which have already have a software initiated reboot as part of the process, and have resulted in some problems in the past.



epg.dat will be deleted as the GUI shuts down if it finds the data is corrupted (which would be the in-memory data that it's trying to write out). Apart from that it should be there at start-up.


As the epg.dat file was consistantly missing on start-up that indicates the copy in RAM was corrupt on shut down. Surely then a deep standby should have killed/flushed the data in RAM? This appeares to have happened as the EPG was blank on start-up and then slowly populated afterwards - over the air. This should have resulted in a new clean version in RAM which would then be saved on the next shutdown. This didn't happen as on next switch-on after a long deep standby the EPG.dat file was missing and the EPG blank. A constantly repeated corruption of RAM data was resolved by removing power.

[ccs]

I can't believe that a power shutdown fixed the problem. Power to ram is totally off in deep standby, surely?

And if you refresh the epg before updating it, you'll get an old (or even empty) version of the epg?

[birdman]

I disagree. In my experience a cold boot (removing the mains power) does "cure" problems that a reboot from the menu doesn't (menu/standby and restart/reboot).That might affect some electrical components, but it won't affect the contents of a file-system. which would be the issue here.


As the epg.dat file was consistantly missing on start-up that indicates the copy in RAM was corrupt on shut down. Surely then a deep standby should have killed/flushed the data in RAM?Yes, ut if the EIT data being collected was somehow odd (why was ITV HD missing a day?) such that it corrupted the in-RAM data structure each time then the file would be deleted at each shutdown. (It is possible to have apparently-full EPG data but for it to be corrupt on write-out)
And if you were tuned to Freesat at start-up you won't be collecting any data for Freeview at that time, so it would be empty when you switched to it, which you would see immediately. The Freesat would have had several seconds ot populate before you could see its EPG.