Sigh… EPG Dead as usual (using Zap2It plugin for Canadian listings)

[FreeBSD4me]

Well, for the 5th time in 4-weeks, the EPG has crapped out again. Went to check my shows, and nothings been recording. Channel guide just shows a bunch of No Data’s. Restarted the machine, flushed DNS (just for good measure), but it just tells you to check your Internet connection. If there’s one reason I’d never do this again, it’s this flaky EPG thing.

I mean.. I can handle a system that freezes occasionally, or other glitches that come and go, but THIS? Without the EPG guide, you’re dead in the water… Squat… Nothing. I wouldn’t even mind paying for it, if it was actually reliable, but at this rate, the whole thing is becoming a wash. So now, I’ll need to baby-sit the machine, checking several times daily to see if the EPG has died or not. Oh well…

Dave H

[FreeBSD4me]

The problem appears to be with Sage. I grabbed the java based TMSDataDirect Application from Zapit and successfully loaded my entire channel guide onto this workstation. Sage is still choking with erroneous Internet error messages when you try to initiate an EPG update. So what am I supposed to do now? I really love the way Sage develops these weird problems out of nowhere. You leave the thing alone, don’t mess with it, yet somehow or another it’ll manage to break itself. Great.

[korben_dallas]

If you're running XP, make sure to add SageTV.exe and SageTVservice.exe to the exception/unblock list. This seemed to speed up some slow EPG updates for me at least.

[FreeBSD4me]

Thanks Korben.

I’ve never heard of that before. I’m not sure how to add things to that list, as I have yet to use it. Thing is, when you force an update, it should be calling the server. Running Netstat- A shows that the connection is open and ready, but Sage just sits there and does nothing. What bugs me is that I haven’t messed with the machine at all, and the last time I checked, programming doesn’t just break itself. Without proper error messages, it’s very difficult to even begin to trouble shoot. At least with Unix, you can control various debugging and logging levels, but not with this

Dave

[FreeBSD4me]

Here are the relevant bits:

Upon restarting, or doing anything else for that matter, you all looks normal on the networking front. This is all you see:

TCP sagetv:1071 freytechnologies.com:7760 TIME_WAIT

Ok, so it’s calling Frey, which is probably that license checking thingy. All seems fine here.

The URL used to call the EPG guide: http://datadirect.webservices.zap2it...gs/xtvdService has been tested and works just fine.

Well you got me… This thing just dies out of nowhere and when it will come back up is anyone’s guess. Nice.

[nielm]

You are using Lester's DigiCasa EPG plugin for canada, right?

Originally Posted by FreeBSD4me

TCP sagetv:1071 freytechnologies.com:7760 TIME_WAIT

Ok, so it’s calling Frey, which is probably that license checking thingy. All seems fine here.

It should *never* contact Frey Tech if you are using an EPG plugin. There is no online licence check/activation.

And the 'There was an error connecting to the SageTV Server.' message is a generic failure message which means that the EPG plugin could not return the lineups.

Have you updated your Java JRE recently (there was recently a Java update to 1.5.0_02)?
If so have you copied over the JAR files needed for the Zap2It plugin from your old jre_x.x.x/lib/ext to the new one (if there are any)?

This is something that always catches me out with the XMLTV plugin...

[Fluffdaddy]

All I can add is my DigiCasa EPG plugin for Canada is working great an have been for two months now. I'm using the updated Java.

This thread is making me nervous................Don't need this kind of problems. Have anyone else had the OP's problem ?

[FreeBSD4me]

Originally Posted by nielm

You are using Lester's DigiCasa EPG plugin for canada, right?
It should *never* contact Frey Tech if you are using an EPG plugin. There is no online licence check/activation.

And the 'There was an error connecting to the SageTV Server.' message is a generic failure message which means that the EPG plugin could not return the lineups.

Have you updated your Java JRE recently (there was recently a Java update to 1.5.0_02)?
If so have you copied over the JAR files needed for the Zap2It plugin from your old jre_x.x.x/lib/ext to the new one (if there are any)?

This is something that always catches me out with the XMLTV plugin...

Ah Nielm… A hero to many here as he restored faith in TV by ridding it of Spam. He da man..

Yes, using Lester's Plugin. As for calling Sage upon startup, it’s always done that from day 1. I know it’s not the EPG doing it, but something in Sage is initiating that call, since Sage is the only thing running on that machine.

As for the Java files, refresh my memory…. Um… Not the actual Java engine, correct? I can vaguely remember adding jar files to something in Sage when I first set it up. You mean those? If there are new ones, where do I grab them from? You really think that's going to help in this case? Did everyone update?

Funny you should mention the Java thing though. This dumb reminder from the Java console kept bugging me to download updates for it. In an act of desperateness last night, I went ahead with the update last night. OOOPS… It killed Sage completely –It would just crash with an error upon starting up. So I reverted back to the original Java.

Funny, as all updates on the Sage machine are tuned off. As a result, I’m a little baffled as to how anything could change this dramatically and all by itself.

Thanks,

Dave

[FreeBSD4me]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

All I can add is my DigiCasa EPG plugin for Canada is working great an have been for two months now. I'm using the updated Java.

This thread is making me nervous................Don't need this kind of problems. Have anyone else had the OP's problem ?

Nah.. I thinks it's just a problem on my machine, but what makes it hard to fix is when you haven't actually been messing with anything --it just breaks by itself.

Dave

[nielm]

Originally Posted by FreeBSD4me

As for the Java files, refresh my memory…. Um… Not the actual Java engine, correct? I can vaguely remember adding jar files to something in Sage when I first set it up. You mean those?

yep:
From the forums post in the canada forum
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=3916
go to the Digicasa page
http://www.digicasa.com/prod_sagetv_plugin.htm
and the 4th line of the installation instructions, there is a Java Library Package to be installed:
http://www.digicasa.com/jars.zip
Check that the contents of that zipfile is in the Program Files/Java/jre_x.y.z/lib/ext directory, if not, put them there!

[FreeBSD4me]

Ok, so you’re saying there’s been an update to the jar files. I’ll go and make those changes and see what happens. It’d be nice if an email update option was provided if this stuff changes, or is there? It'd sure save a lot of trouble

Thanks all,

Dave

[nielm]

Ok, so you’re saying there’s been an update to the jar files.

no (not since May 9, 2004 anyway), I am saying check that they are there, and that they have not disappeared due to a java update..

[ServerError]

He is not alone in this problem.... I am not using canadian listings, and have simply been using whatever ths default EPG service is (Zap2it, from my info), and awhile back all my channel info disappeared. I just realized this a couple days ago when I tried to watch the most recent episode of family guy, and to my despair it was not recorded. I tried installing the most recent version of Sage, no luck for me either. I have not yet tried messing with the java files.

-Wow, I just realized how old this thread was, my mistake.

[FreeBSD4me]

Well… My problem never went away. Despite trying every possible fix, Sage’s channel guide poops out after 7 to 9-days. All I can do is reload the entire hard driver image every two weeks, which allows me to update the guide again again, thus buys me another 7 days or so. Updates are turned off, and nothing else is accessing or changing files on the system. The image I’m using is the one I originally started out with back in September. Sadly, this is the only way I can maintain a channel guide.

Dave

[Hardtarget]

i'm now also having thsi exact problem for the past couple weeks. the Canada listings just plain arne't there. No Data for everything. I had hoped upgrading to teh beta 3 version would fix the problem but no. I have no idea what to do.. I didn't touch anything and it stopped working.

[Lester Jacobs]

Another thing to check is whether the account you've set up at Zap2It (labs.zap2it.com) has not expired. It expires every three months and you'll need to log in and reactivate it. Zap2It usually sends an email out around 7 days before account expiry.

Just for the record, I have had no hiccups with the plugin in my setup. So I suspect those with problems have soem sort of configuration issue.

Regards
Lester

[aoehlke]

my canadian EPG also is dead... expressvu... it used to work... suddenly stopped

[nielm]

have you done any of the checks listed above? -- zap 2 it account, JAR files, etc?

[cclayton]

I was having problems with my EPG Plugin as well - Sage would just stop updating it. Thread Here. When I upgraded to the latest (2.2.8 I think) that fixed it.

In my case, when I would add/remove a channel from the line up, it would kick Sage in the head and a new download would happen. Did that for a while until I got around to upgrading.

Just an FYI, the forum for troubleshooting the Plugin is Here

Hope that helps a little,

Cheers,
Corey