Has anyone come up with a good way to not record at certain times of day?

[perfessor101]

Hello,

I do a scheduled daily reboot of my SageTV Server (5.04 running in program mode) installed on Windows XP MCE 2005 OEM with all current windows updates.

I do a daily reboot because windows xp doesn't seem to need reinstalling quite as often and SageTV seems to run much more stably.
I have been considering the Linux OEM version but admittedly haven't tried booting gentoo on the SageTV server yet to see how much of the hardware is compatable and easily detected.

I would like to tell SageTV not to record during this period so I don't get partial recordings or lost recordings because SageTV thought it could record something at that time.

I tried to set up four timed recordings at that time of day of 2 minutes in length (one for each tuner) but I would loose all four tuners after. (No more recordings of anything at any time of day in the scheduled future)
In the SageTV log files it would say it didn't have enough memory to start the tuners.
I finally had to reinstall Java and SageTV with a backed up wiz.bin before it would load the tuners properly again.

The last time I left windows xp running for two days straight I lost service mode of SageTV. After that weekend whenever I'd try to start SageTV Service it partially loads (about 18 -20 MB memory usage reported in Task Manager) and locks up. The only way to stop the service at that point is to reboot the system (End Process in the task manager won't even touch it, PS tools didn't help either).

So if any one has a way to set a Do Not Record during a certain time period in Sage I would be glad to hear it.

I have also considered using Neilm's Web Servers RSS feed to determine a time at which I can dynamically reboot my SageTV server system once at sometime between 2 am and 6 am each day, but I don't even have a clue where I would start in an atempt at that.

Thanks for your time,
Bobby

The Software:
Windows XP MCE 2005 OEM with all current windows updates.
SageTV Server 5.04
extras enabled
comskip added
Neilm's WebServer 2.8
Java 1.5_08, I think (tried the one Sage comes with, and each beta after)
Reclock 1.7b4

The hardware:
Abit AN7 motherboard Nforce chipset
AMD 2600 XP+
ATI 9600XT with Catalyst Drivers from August 2006
1 GB dual channel ram
2 x Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 MCE
Sabrent Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
Maxtor 40 GB boot drive
Maxtor 200 GB Pata video recordings drive
Seagate 300 GB Sata recordings drive

[GKusnick]

Presumably you're talking about Intelligent Recording, not scheduled recordings. Depending on how comfortable you are with Studio, it shouldn't be that hard to add a background thread that calls SetIntelligentRecordingDisabled(true) and SetIntelligentRecordingDisabled(false) at specified times of the day.

That said, your system shouldn't be so unstable that you have to reboot every day. I've been running SageTV on WinXp Pro for a year and a half and the only times I reboot are when I install software updates. And I've never had to reformat or reinstall Windows. So there's something screwy with your setup if you need to do those things very often.

[perfessor101]

I want to block SageTV from scheduling any recordings during the time the computer is rebooting and performing a chkdsk. I've had a few movies as well as shows missing 3 to 5 minutes in the middle.

I don't use Intelligent recording.

Intelligent Recording was the way I went when I first bought SageTV 2 (I think it was) but when ever I had recording issues I would have to set manual records on all tuners which seemed to confuse IR even if I only watched it for a moment (to check I had a picture) and then 'unwatched' it and set Don't Like in the Viewing History.

When I first started using favorites I had way too much fun trying to do my own conflict management with manual records so I just started adding shows and movies as favorites (and when I've watched it, if it was a movie I remove the favorite) allowing SageTV to do all the conflict management on it's own.

Generally I buy good quality computer parts from reputable computer dealers and although I know a lemon may get mixed in with the oranges (I recently RMA'd a 250 GB hard disk from my gentoo system) ... the only Stable computer running Microsoft Windows I've found is one that was never turned on and is still in the box (coffee table stable ;-). On my SageTV system the only software running is the 'bare' minimum software to run SageTV and do simple maintenance. No overclocking, no wild hardware, no wicked registry edits three cooling fans plus a Thermal Take Silent Boost for the CPU and a fan on the north bridge. Just Windoze XP and it's 65,500 bugs at release seems to be the bane of my existence.

Sorry for the rant at the end ... but I constantly have people at work bringing me their Windows Win 9x/XP computers to fix ... never Macs or linux boxes.

Thanks for your time,
Bobby

[blade]

I agree with GKusnick on the stability thing. My XP systems get rebooted once every few months and I have no problems with Sage slowing down or windows crashing.

The version of java you're using has a known bug that causes major problems. Anything above what comes with Sage, with the exception of some very new betas, have a handle leak I believe it's called. Where handles can climb from 600 or so to over a million in a short period of time.

[perfessor101]

When I reinstalled Sage and Java I put in 1.05_08 last week and have had no known problems with it since. I had b04, b05 and b06 installed before that which for the most part also seemed to give me no problems. Although it was probably b06 that was installed when SageTV was unable to load any encoders after setting 4 daily manual records of 2 minutes each.

I've had a few problems with my SageTV / XP server over the last year or two ... maybe it was more java than Windows or possibly even more the hardware. I have tried several toture / burn in tests in dos, linux and windows which generally report that I have no problems in the hardware. I was having problems a few months ago with that RMA'd drive but MaxBlast, SpinRite and HDD Regenerator all reported it ok at that time.

Most times I find SageTV itself to be quite stable, the hours It's worked beautifully for me are 100 to 1 over the hours it hasn't (although a lot can happen in an hour).

My issue with widows seems to be that the longer I leave it running the more small deviations in the OS I notice from the initial install. Little bugs or aberrant behaviors that crop up seemingly only when I leave a XP machine running for extended periods of time. I could reboot the systems every 48 hours (oe even only when it had to be) but every 24 seemed to be a rounded number. Reboot every day a few hours before I get home from work and I've got fresh systems when I get there. (That's it ... I'm bringing the gremlins home from work every morning and they're sleeping through the day away in my computers;-)

I just would like a simple way of keeping my XP machines clean ... so far that seems to be to reboot them before it (what ever 'it' may be) starts adding 'features'. As I don't know when they may creep in, 24 hours seems to keep me safe.

It could be brownouts also, I have surge protectors, but they don't save you from that and I've heard power here in British Columbia can be notoriously dirty, although I never noticed that to be a problem here before ... and I've had electricians talk several of my friends out of buying AVR UPS's.


Thanks to those who have helped and I'll try to both listen more, and humbly accept the advice given me ...


Bobby

That danged lack of sleep at night has given me a temper, either that or it's from being a shop steward ...

[nyplayer]

I use a simple Script that I set to go off every morning at 6:05 am. You can set it to run anytime you want and run any batch file you want. I am simply running the shutdown with reboot command.

It will check the drives and if no activity is happenning it will reboot. It will continue to monitor until it finds a time it can reboot.

do
'WScript.sleep(1 * 1000)
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

secondstowait=60
Set objDrive = objFSO.GetDrive("M:")
Set objDrive2 = objFSO.GetDrive("N:")
diskm1=objDrive.DriveLetter & "=" & objDrive.AvailableSpace
diskn1=objDrive2.DriveLetter & "=" & objDrive2.AvailableSpace

Wscript.Sleep (secondstowait * 1000)

Set objDrive = objFSO.GetDrive("M:")
Set objDrive2 = objFSO.GetDrive("N:")
diskm2=objDrive.DriveLetter & "=" & objDrive.AvailableSpace
diskn2=objDrive2.DriveLetter & "=" & objDrive2.AvailableSpace

if diskm1=diskm2 and diskn1=diskn2 then
'msgbox "equal will reboot"
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
objShell.Run "shutdown -r -f",2,true
else
'msgbox "not equal will not reboot"
end if
loop

[perfessor101]

Hey, thanks NYPLayer

That script works beautifully for shutting down SageTV and rebooting Windows after it's finished the days recordings and it's time to start anew.


Bobby

for those of us who need to reboot their systems periodically to maintain stability