http://bb.labs.zap2it.com/viewtopic.php?t=139
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/m ... sers/72785

As root:

In the Frontend:
Setup -> General
Go to the forth screen and select "Automatically run mythfilldatabase"
mythfilldatabase Path:/usr/bin/mythfilldatabase
mythfilldatabase Arguments:
mythfilldatabase Log Path:
mythfilldatabase Run Frequency(Days): 2
mythfilldatabase Execution Start:12
mythfilldatabase Execution End:0

In my case, I have it run every 2 days any time between 12 PM and 12 AM. Logging is disable because, if I go check the backend status that will tell me when mythfilldatabase was last ran.

Please change the time you have mythfilldatabase run and consider having it run every other day. A minium of 11 days should be plenty(remember before it was 9).

Thanks,

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

mythfilldase doesn't seem to run as I've described above... Investigating.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

i needed to mkdir /.xmltv to get it to work, wasnt able to give it any other path, even tried to edit the default path in the perl file, didnt work either.

maybe only for xmltv (germany)

I noticed this last night after discovering that the system was down to "only" 7 days worth of program info, but didn't have time to dig into the details and debug it. I did searched all the obvious log files but didn't see any interesting diagnostics. Of course, since it was past midnight my eyes and brain weren't at their sharpest.

Much poking around in logs files reveals a whole lot of nothing... I'm going to put a dummy command in place of mythfilldatabase and see if it turns up anything.

However I suspect that the command is never run however so my expected symptom is no output to speak of... 8-/ Cesman, any clues from your end?
OBTW - I've been searching in the Myth user mailing list archive but haven't found anything that seems related...

I removed the mythtbackend cronjob and setup the internal myth setup to do the mythfilldatabase as instructed with cessman's post, but it still keeps running at about 6:30am.
I want to help out Zap2it, but not sure what more I need to do?
Anyone figure this out yet?

I have not figured out why it isn't running yet... ElGordo, please change the time to have it run to later in the day.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I spent a lot more time digging at log files, testing with dummy scripts and the like, and it flat out wasn't being run as far as I could tell. Very frustrating... With no diagnostics to go on, or related messages over in the MythTV User mailing list, I gave up and fell back on the following hack:

As root:

- Make a copy of your old mythtv-backend file. Call it something like update-program-listings.sh and make sure it's executable.
- Edit the file and add the following line in front of the fill database command This will spread your requests over about a 9 hour period.

- Save your changes and copy the file to /usr/local/bin/

- Run and add a line which starts your new script at an appropriate time.

I'll edit this later when I get home and add the exact details.

I think we'd even out the load on their servers just as much if everyone picks a random time and runs their cron job at that time. It doesn't really matter if a single person runs at a random time every day.

True, if people really picked random times. They don't. There are a number of famous "mind reading" tricks based on how NON-randomly people pick numbers or times or whatever. At least this way if I'm part of a usage peak it'll be a very broad and diffuse peak.

If I were feeling truly clever I'd have tossed in another randomizer for the start time like the last 2 digits of your postal code % 24 for the hour and your phone number % 60 for the minute. However given how hard it is to find good sources of randomness, I'd guess that at least one of those two isn't really all that random. Not to mention the chances of people actually following those directions... Much better to use something simple and automatic.

Cesman,
How/where/what program to change to get it to do this? I deleted the cron job for mythtv-backend and have it setup in the menu's as you have described, but it still runs at 6:30. What exactly is being ran at 6:30 and what is kicking it off? I assume that mythfilldatabase is being ran at 6:30, but what is triggering it? If I know that much I can change it easily. It doesn't look like the menu entries affect anything, and the cron job is deleted so it isn't being called from cron.....?

Try editing /etc/crontab as root. Edit the time for cron daily.job.

More info for those who haven't given up on the internal housekeeping task yet. It looks like there may be a DB issue involved. See these threads in MythTV Users:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/75377
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/75402

Hope this helps...

I tried the fixes listed in those mailing list messages. Didn't help.

Here's another data point though. Like ElGordo, I set up the internal "run mythfilldatabase" as originally described, and set it to run between (I think) 6AM and 10AM.

It usually runs at 6:30AM and is successful. Sometimes, however, it does try to run at 9:30 but always seems to be unsuccessful when doing so.

Just thought I'd mention it in case it helped track down what's going on.