Power Timer - Reboot Failing to Reboot Daily

[CRMS]

This Gigablue box is getting rather tedious with its various repeated timer failures. This time it has failed to reboot and subsequently record any programmes.
On 31 Dec at 0935 I activated the Power timer to operate daily at 1740. After event "do nothing", so the box remains awake for the next event at 1745. The power timer log shows start prepare at 173940 31 Dec.
Additionally ABM set to update at daily at 1745. Crossepg at 1753. First programme timer 1800.

31 Dec at 1744 the log shows start prepare is now Wed 1 Jan 173940. So it worked 31 Dec at 1740 then.
There is no log entry on 1 Jan - so the power timer must have failed to reboot at 1740
And today 2 Jan the log shows start prepare Fri 3 Jan 173940 but only after a manual switch on from deep standby at 1812. So it again failed 2 Jan 1740.
epg.dat shows the last time stamp 31 Dec 2215.

The other Power timer I run is Auto Deep Standby set to 10 minutes - which seems to work correctly.

It is getting frustrating with its apparent timer unreliability.

[Joe_90]

Your experience with the GB box just doesn't match mine. I've used a GB Quad Plus for the past 10 years, with me putting it in deep standby each night at bedtime. It has powertimers booting it at 04.30 on a couple of mornings to run ABM and at 17.50 each evening to run an EPG update, followed by a recording of news at 18.01. It also boots during the afternoon to record various Australian soaps. It does this 99.9% of the time. The few failures were down to clock issues or odd system crashes due to me running experimental builds of the software.

I can only think that your box is completely losing power such that the internal "ticker" gets reset and loses time or restarts after a power failure and fails to get online to set the internal clock (or set the clock from a terrestrial/satellite transponder).

Without logs it's difficult to do remote diagnosis.

[CRMS]

Thanks. I assume the issue might be buried in the standard debug log.
I've left it on auto today - so in DS at the moment - and watch what happens at 1740 today. I changed the power reboot time to "go to standby" rather than "do nothing" .
Is there an ABM log which shows what that has done, like the timestamp on the epg.dat file??
Where should I look in the debug log pages??

[birdman]

Is there an ABM log which shows what that has done, like the timestamp on the epg.dat file??
Where should I look in the debug log pages??

If you go into the menus (Main -> Timers -> Power Timers), select the relevant Power Timer and press Info you'll see a log of what it has been doing.
Nothing particular will be in the debug logs.

[Joe_90]

@crms - just for information - ABM does not have anything to do with EPG. It reads the Freesat/Freeview/SKY home transponders as configured and then sets up your chosen bouquet lists. It does do some logging in the debug file, so you will see it checking timers and setting up the next run time and then running the home transponder read etc. As suggested by @birdman, the PowerTimer info log will show when it has been triggered. I still think that the root of your problem lies in the receiver losing power for some reason while in deep standby or being set to an incorrect time. Are you still operating on a boat or are you on terra firma

[CRMS]

I'm on terra firma and today power was on the device all day and it remained in DS.
The machine didn't do anything at Reboot time at 1740 And as I was dealing with the fire, I can't recall if I then switched it off and on manually. But at 1745 the GB screen did show AutoBouquetsMaker along the top. And went back to DS. Nothing evident at 1753 when CrossEPG should update, but epg.dat time stamp now is 1745. Does/should the EPG update show anything along the GB screen top.
And I am searching through the directories in Filezilla - but haven't spotted the Power timer log - where is that please??. I found pm_timers and that has some power timer settings at the bottom.
I have found debug logs and the 1742 log shows ABM schedule running at 1745, and then set for Sat 04 at 1745. So that seems to work.
And the 1752 log seems to show the ABM running again at 1753 followed by CrossEPG.

So I'll pay attention tomorrow at 1739.40 and not be fiddling with the fire!!

[Joe_90]

Your ABM settings, in conjunction with your CrossEPG settings seem wrong to me. You have ABM set to run at 17.45 (and CrossEPG set to run at 17.53) but you also have ABM set to put the receiver in deep standby after it has run. So, ABM runs and finishes and puts the box in deep standby at approx 17.45.15. The epg.dat file would show an update time of 17.45 as the system writes the in-memory EPG to the file at shutdown.

The box does not reboot quite in time to be fully ready at 17.53 for some reason, so CrossEPG misses its start time by about 5 seconds. As it is past its start time the CrossEPG scheduler sets its next start to Sat Jan 4th at 17.53. See the snip from the log below.

[CrossEPG_Auto] Schedule Enabled at  Fri 03 Jan 2025 17:53:05 GMT
<    39.283394> 17:53:05.2102 [crossepglib][CrossEPG_Config1] read self.db_root = /hdd/crossepg
<    39.284390> 17:53:05.2112 [CrossEPG_Auto] Time set to Sat 04 Jan 2025 17:53:00 GMT (now=Fri 03 Jan 2025 17:53:05 GMT)

If this happens regularly, soon the EPG will run out of populated days entries and then other scheduled recordings etc. will start to fail due to lack of EPG data.

I would suggest that you revisit your ABM settings and ensure that ABM does NOT put the box in deep standby after it runs. Then, CrossEPG will run successfully after ABM finishes and you will have a complete updated EPG. I notice that you have the in-built OpenTV zapper running also, but its schedule seems to be disabled. It would be better to disable OpenTV zapper entirely if you are going to use CrossEPG or else discontinue CrossEPG and use the facilities of the in-built EPG reader instead.

My PowerTimer regimen is to boot the box from deep into normal standby at 17.48 each day and do nothing. Then at 17.52 I have OpenTV zapper set to populate the EPG. This takes approximately 3 minutes. Then at 18.01 I have a record timer set to record the national news. After the news is recorded another PowerTimer will put the box into deep standby if I don't manually take it out of standby.

My ABM updates take place at 04.30 on Tuesday and Thursday. I let ABM control the boot from deep standby and put the box back in deep standby afterwards, but I don't have any other actions scheduled around that time of night.

[CRMS]

OK. I've fiddled with the settings and the box has now run through the complete sequence:

DS - reboot - standby - ABM - Sby - EPG - Sby - DS.
Which seems fine.

At the EPG update time I did get a screen asking me if I wanted to update the EPG, and then CrossEPG appeared on the screen. So slightly superfluous and could be disabled if I could find the setting??

I'm also not sure how I find and change the OpenTV zapper setting??

Hopefully, it will now do what it should be doing!

[Joe_90]

I'm slightly confused by "At the EPG update time I did get a screen asking me if I wanted to update the EPG, and then CrossEPG appeared on the screen. So slightly superfluous and could be disabled if I could find the setting??" . If the box is in standby, then there is no display. So, I'm assuming you took it out of standby between the ABM update and CrossEPG? The message (presumably from CrossEPG) is just to warn you that it will tune to the Sky transponder to retrieve the EPG data.

The OpenTV setting is available in Setup/EPG on my configuration. There you can enable/disable OpenTV zapper and furthermore can set up a schedule to run it. The default (non-scheduled Auto) setting with OpenTV zapper enabled is to run it about 5 mins after startup and thereafter at intervals of 9 hours. I have a "custom" setting enabled which is set to run at 17.50 every day. However, I control the receiver from a PowerTimer such that it boots about 5 minutes beforehand and is in standby. If I'm actually watching TV at that time, then OpenTV zapper will pop a message on screen telling me it's about to run.

If you are going to experiment with OpenTV zapper, then I suggest disabling CrossEPG.

[CRMS]

I'm using Crossepg. So in EPG settings I have only "Enable EIT" and "Enable ViaSat" set to "Yes". All others set to "No", including FreeSat - which seems counterintuitive.
In OpenTV EPG downloader, I've set "Enable OpenTV download" to "No". I hope that is correct. I haven't found any other OpenTV configuration in the EPG section.
When the EPG updates, the GB screen shows "Your EPG about to update. Do you want to allow this". And underneath "Yes". This remains for about a minute. Then blank and "CrossEPG" text appears with a small clock top right for a few seconds, then back to Standby.
Thanks for all your assistance.

[Joe_90]

Ah - penny drops! You need to have OpenTV enabled in your list of EPG providers for the OpenTV Zapper to operate. For 28.2 satellite, it's better to have Freesat set to NO if you have OpenTV set to enabled. The ViaSat option is for another satellite, the location of which I can't recall at the moment.
CrossEPG specifically tunes the SKY transponder and reads the EPG from there irrespective of whether you have OpenTV EPG set in the list of providers.

The reason why it's not a great idea to have OpenTV and Freesat providers enabled at the same time is that the EPG data is slightly different and you may get clashing info on programme start time and summaries. The Freesat EPG (if enabled) will download if you are tuned to a BBC transponder for about 20 minutes. Other transponders will take longer. Use OpenTV or CrossEPG - your choice.

[CRMS]

Thanks. I'll stick with CrossEPG only, so don't need the OpenTV stuff - is the OpenTV zapper a plug in?? If so, I haven't got it.
Currently the various EPGs are on the default settings from the GB factory in the EPG settings options eg the EIT - whatever that is or where it is from?
So should I enable just Freesat EPG and it will get a download from the BBC?

[Joe_90]

The OpenTV zapper is built in to the image. As I wrote, if you enable OpenTV EPG in the settings menu in EPG the OpenTV zapper will function if enabled.

I'm not sure what you mean by GB factory settings. As you are running Vix 6.6.010 it is those settings that would be default. Usually OpenTV EPG is enabled and Freesat EPG is not.

If you enable the Freesat EPG you will get all the Freesat channels EPG including radio channels carried on Freesat, but you won't get any EPG data for channels that are exclusive to the SKY bouquets.

It's best not to enable Freesat EPG and CrossEPG at the same time. Try both independently and see which you prefer. You can experiment by enabling Freeesat EPG, then clearing the EPG cache in the EPG menu and then tuning to a BBC 1 transponder for about 20 minutes. If you use a SKY bouquet for their FTA channels, then the EPG for their exclusive channels (e.g. Dave ja vu) will not show. The CrossEPG and OpenTV zapper will each do the same job of populating all Freesat and SKY channels EPG (except radio).

The EIT setting is the instantaneous now and next data and will update as programmes start and end. You should have this enabled.