One thing that I found appears to help mitigate this problem was that I trimmed down my channel lineup to just the channels I actually use – I unchecked all my “garbage” channels in the DVR settings. I think this makes the size of the download for the Guide Refresh smaller, giving a greater chance to succeed. Obviously not excusing the problem here and it sucks that the guide disappears again every 4 hours when the refresh fails. But after 10 or 20 attempts, I can usually get the guide back again.
Not sure what you mean by trimming down your channel list. I only have 9 channels selected and it still won’t refresh. Did you reduce your selections to fewer than that? Just tried dropping to one channel and update still fails.
This should not happen - Existing data should remain when the incremental refresh fails and it should be only the additional data that does not get added.
If you can easily reproduce this - going from a complete guide to empty guide after an incremental refresh then please could you provide logs and copy of the EPG datanbase files when the guide is ok and when it is lost
Debug logging should be enabled - it is by default. See https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/
The database files for the EPG have names starting
tv.plex.providers.epg.onconnect-xxxxxxxxxxxx and file suffix of .db and db-wal and .shm
Please copy these out when the EPG is ok
and then when the EPG is lost, collect the database files again and logs
For logs see https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/
The location of the EPG database is within Plug-in Support\Databases within the Plex Media Server application data area
and please also zip the /Diagnostics directory and attach with the evidence - that would show the number of days refreshes have been failing. It is my understanding that you need refreshes to fail over a period of time before the contents of the guide disappear completely
I’ve got the same “Guide Is Empty” message that quite a few other people have reported – twice in the morning after night time scheduled tasks and again last night during prime time (which starts at 8:00 not 5:00 by the way). When that happened, the only fix was to close the plex server and restart it – there must be some initialization that occurs during server startup that fixes the emptiness problem. The problem is that I don’t want to restart the server when recordings are in progress. In all case, the guide had been completely populated and then it became empty again.
You guys really need to do some testing yourselves. This problem is happening to almost everybody. Given, the reaction (or lack of reaction) on other issues I’ve had with Plex, I’m not inclined to go out of my way to help on this further. My god, you guys think primetime starts at 5:00. It’s like your goal is to satisfy as few users as possible. And that would be such an easy thing to change. When I saw the prior posts on the prime time issue, it made it really clear that PLEX just doesn’t care.
2 Likes
Ok. My guide ends at 7pm. I have missing recordings. I know the guide was complete due to recordings that are scheduled to next week. I have 2 shows that will not record today but somehow set up for Saturday
- Manual recording must be put in. No more playing games and pushing new features.
- Provide the option to add our own schedules. If we choose to use schedule direct for our guide then add it before releasing any new features.
Media center as old as it was worked like a charm and using schedule direct you had no issues with EPG. Sad part it died in WIndows 8.
So your guide was running with just one day of data ? If that was the case then I would understand how it would get emptied when there are errors during each of the incremental refresh tasks that happen every 4 hours - so after a few of these the guide would empty if it only had a day or part of day data
If the guide was complete as you mention and had 7 day or 14 day data then after a day of failed I incremental updates, it should not empty. If it is, then would like to see logs and copy of the dB taken before and after
This is still failing for me this morning
Nov 12, 2018 10:49:40.933 [0x7f2937bff700] ERROR - EPG: JSON parse error. Wrote JSON data to “/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Diagnostics/EPG-onconnect-d9a8afc3-bad1-4d94-b2e1-4c2ebd524f86.json”
Nov 12, 2018 10:49:40.933 [0x7f2937bff700] WARN - EPG[onconnect]: Failed to load EPG.
I have data up to Tuesday prime time - nothing for wednesday or beyond
“message”: “Request forbidden by administrative rules”,
“__type”: “CloudSearchException”
}
I have tried refreshing my guide since yesterday afternoon. I believe I have tried it at least 6 times and it gets to about 60% and then quits. I just tried it about 5 minutes ago and it quit at about 20%. Has anyone at Plex got an update on this issue?
Plex Media Server Logs_2018-11-12_18-16-20.zip (3.6 MB)
I just uploaded the logs as requested. My recordings are set to 11/20 and I have no EPG now. I fail at 27%.
Yesterday I noticed a problem where the weekly shows for last night (that are part of a series) showed as not scheduled to record. The grid shows it as a new episode, but the recording scheduler shows no new episodes until next week’s time slot. Everything after yesterday seemed to still be set. I also realized it would let me set a single record on that episode so I was able to get it to record.
I checked it again this morning and today’s episodes were all in place. Then at 6:00pm I decided to check again and just like yesterday the evening shows were not scheduled again with the next new episode scheduled a week from tonight. The grid still has the shows labeled as new tonight, but apparently doesn’t think it’s part of the weekly series that is already scheduled.
This new glitch is really irritating.
What in the world happened that is so hard for Gracenote to fix? We are going on 4-5 days now.
Looks like same issue - which is being investigated by our metadata provider
Nov 12, 2018 13:23:45.555 [1676] ERROR - EPG: JSON parse error. Wrote JSON data to "C:\Users\HTPC\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Diagnostics\EPG-onconnect-92220db1-6f7a-496e-8093-843c413a51d7.json"
Nov 12, 2018 13:23:45.555 [1676] WARN - EPG[onconnect]: Failed to load EPG.
I do not have an update yet. It is still being investigated
I just noticed that all of todays scheduled recordings got deleted. I tried to manually added them back as a new series, but only two showed up. So I tried recording as “this episode” and a handful appeared, but still having trouble with two other ones. All of the morning and afternoon shows aren’t showing up…
Actually most of the morning shows for this week aren’t appears either.
NM, the two shows in question are already reruns
Not “4-5 days now”, it has been closer to two weeks as I have had the issue of not being able to get more than a few days of guide since I sent this up on the 1st. Possible you had the full listings buffered and it wasn’t until it got to be less than a week that you noticed the problem.
I’m having other issues as well such as 13.1 (Fox) and 13.2 which wasn’t loading any guide data though other channels were including 13.3, then dropped off the guide then came back at which time I have been able to schedule a recording from the guide but it won’t see anything to record, even though I scheduled it from the item in the guide (and it tunes just fine). Edit: tried another refresh, which surprisingly got to 80%, and 13.1 and 13.2 disappeared off the guide again but 13.3 is still there and 28.1, 28.2, 28.3 is gone but 28.4 is there…
Just waiting till they think the guide issue is fixed to see if the other issues remain. Certainly a bad time to have decided to finally switch off my Windows Media Center.
My guide fully update on November 8th, and I have listings in the database up until Nov 22nd. So
the full two weeks from the 8th. But the Grid list only shows anywhere from half a day to two days depending on how far the refresh gets.
I also have the problem of “todays” shows becoming unscheduled, if they are part of a series timer. Series shows for the rest of the week all show as scheduled, until the day of. I have to go and set each show to record as a standalone timer to get it to record. I first noticed that on the 12th.
The other weird correlation is that this guide business started happening the same day that Hallmark screwed up all their programming and had movies playing for an hour or so and suddenly changing to another movie mid time slot.
1 Like
Building on what others have suggested, I have come up with a “hack” that works for me. This may not work for others.
- In settings, scheduled tasks: Uncheck Perform refresh of program guide data
- In settings, troubleshooting: Press Optimize Database, then Clean Bundles
- In Live TV & DVR, select Refresh Guide. This will fail. press it again, it will load a little more before failing. Keep doing this until it reaches 100%. I think I had to do this about 20 times.
I don’t expect that this will work for everyone. If it does work, it may get you by until Plex has fixed the issue.
Note that you will have to go back and do steps 2 and 3 after several days have passed when you need to schedule further out.
You will also have to do this again if you restart the server.
Note that once Plex has fixed this issue, you will likely want to check Perform refresh of program guide data again (#1).
I THINK this is fixed now. I’ve managed to refresh my guide twice in the last hour and it came in completely on each try.
I got to 100% following @RichardYoder process. I just switched back and it failed at about 25%.
But looking at the guide I show programs to the 27th.
I just tried refresh and got to about 70% and then stopped.
Update: Just tried again on two systems after optimizing database and both refreshed.
Is there any explanation from Plex as to what caused the problem and what fixed it?
I am having the same problem. can not record shows. what are we supposed to do? who is fixing this?
Plex should not charge when the service is not working. this is happening more frequently lately.
