Program Guide not populating

[Figsly]

Hello. Sorry if this seems like a repeat question, but I have spent hours Googling solutions and reading the wiki. I have tried everything to no avail. My EPG (program guide) does not populate with schedule information until I watch a channel. Then it populates for a few days into the future on that one channel(sometimes a group of nearby channels). From my research I’ve come to understand this is called “passive” EIT grabbing. I have gone into the settings for my tuner card (Hauppauge 955Q) and made sure that active tuning was checked. It still never grabs a schedule for me unless i watch that channel.
I have tried:
-Changing the time it takes before the backend enters standby
-Changing the time it takes before performing and EIT crawl
-Changing backend wake up settings
-Rescanning for channels
-Running mythfilldatabase over, and over

Is mythfilldatabase supposed to populate the guide? Because mine never has. When looking at the system information in the front end there is yellow text that says “Warning: is mythfilldatabase running?”. Running mythfilldatabase doesnt make this warning go away even though mythfilldatabase seems to execute properly.
I am somewhat new to Linux, I’ve played around with Debian in the past, and now I’m running Ubuntu mostly just for Mythtv. So please explain everything to me like I’m an idiot, because I am. Any ideas on how to solve my dilemma would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[bill6502]

If you intend to use mythfilldatabase, then turn everything EIT off.
It's for getting schedule information over-the-air.

Your mythfilldatabase log should be /etc/mythtv/mythfilldatabase.log

Attach the log here, or if it's too big, try putting it in pastebin.com.

[Figsly]

I should turn off EIT? What if I *want* over the air channel data? When it works it works fine, I just cant get it to do the EIT crawl automatically. I dont have schedules direct or any other online service. I will post the log when I get home.

[bill6502]

OK, I assumed you were running mythfilldatabase to get your listings
in addition to EIT. The two don't mix on a single capture card.

I'd go into mythtv-setup and in General->Program Schedule Downloading Options,
make sure it's turned off. I think that will get rid of your yellow warning.

Do this on your backend:

Code: Select all

mythbackend --setverbose eit:debug
tail -f /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log # control-c to abort
mythbackend --setverbose eit:crit # To stop the extra EIT logging.

For Mythbuntu/Ubuntu, then I believe it's mythbackend.real
in the above, not mythbackend (for the command, not the log file.)

You're looking for EIT related messages in the log, which
may give some clue on what's happening (like maybe EIT
isn't enabled on individual channels.)

And, if you get two days if EIT, that's good in America, I only got
two hours when I tried it years ago.

[Figsly]

Thanks for the assistance. I wont be home until tomorrow so I will post any potential anomalies that I find in the log after disabling program schedule downloading. Most channels I get EIT data two or three days out after watching the channel, so as long as I can get it to check automatically when my tuner is idle I should be all set.

[dizygotheca]

Only the 2nd item in your list will affect EIT.

mythfilldatabase is only for Schedules Direct & XML grabbers so there's no reason to run it.
You can't disable the warning though: learn to ignore it.

The debug logging may give extra clues but active scanning should be evident from a default log too.
You should see frequent reschedules every 90 secs or so, such as:

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TVRecEvent tv_rec.cpp:3718 (TuningFrequency) - TVRec[2]: TuningFrequency
Scheduler scheduler.cpp:2473 (HandleReschedule) - Scheduled 428 items in 0.6 = 0.42 match + 0.04 check + 0.12

Active scanning won't start until the backend has been running for about 5 mins (hard-coded). The EPG is slow to update also. So be patient when testing.
Sometimes it gets confused because its already cached the programs. Might be worth clearing the cache

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mythutil --cleareit