@gadgetgeek2000 said:
I’m not sure why the devices would return a 503. Last night, for example, there was only one show being recorded (The Librarians), and everyone was in bed so all other tuners were idle.
The 05:58am one was still active when the logs were captured
so not sure exactly what time that screenshot was taken but may be the file size / date time are not being updated till the end
Yes, it’s possible that the file size isn’t being updated in real-time. I looked at the folder and Arrow (2012) - S02E01 - City of Heroes.TS is in the output folder, and is 1859478 bytes, as expected. My scheduled task ran the conversion to .MP4, and it was moved into the TV Shows library successfully.
That is something I have to be aware of before reporting a problem.. Not all zero-byte files are actually stuck. I’ll have to make sure to only report files that sit in the .grab folder longer than the recording time. In my case, The Librarians episode from last night is still there, stuck.
i’m having the same problems. I don’t realize it isn’t recording until I log in to catch up on shows, and realize it stopped recording days ago. I have one homerun tuner. I’ve also found that when the recording stop, I can go to settings and DVR and it also does the searching message but never finds it. The only fix is to restart. The guide also stops updating.
I’m running 1.4.1.3362 on Centos 6.2 (64bit). I didn’t notice these problems before upgrading to this release. my logs are attached. these logs are after my last restart.
@rostre said:
i’m having the same problems. I don’t realize it isn’t recording until I log in to catch up on shows, and realize it stopped recording days ago. I have one homerun tuner. I’ve also found that when the recording stop, I can go to settings and DVR and it also does the searching message but never finds it. The only fix is to restart. The guide also stops updating.
I’m running 1.4.1.3362 on Centos 6.2 (64bit). I didn’t notice these problems before upgrading to this release. my logs are attached. these logs are after my last restart.
I’m on 1.4.2.3400 now. The behavior changed slightly with this version. The app doesn’t seem to lockup now and if the system can record it will. For some reason the HD Homerun units I have are not returning the stream as expected. It could be an issue with the way the tuner management was designed in Plex. Waiting for developers to look into why I am getting the 503 errors from the tuners. When a 503 error is encountered that media is stuck in my .grab folder until I restart the Plex Media Server.
Don’t know if others have already mentioned this, but I’ve seen this behaviour if the HDHomeRun box changes IP address, which being DHCP only it can potentially do. Recordings fail as Plex can’t see the tuners. The PMS reboot then re-discovers it on the new IP and things proceed as normal. Unlikely to be the cause if it’s happening frequently, but can be avoided by putting a static reservation in your DHCP server for the HDHomeRun MAC address.
@lennier76 said:
Don’t know if others have already mentioned this, but I’ve seen this behaviour if the HDHomeRun box changes IP address, which being DHCP only it can potentially do.
If there is no network interruption, the DHCP renegotiation should happen with out loss of service. But with that said, I agree they could become a moving target with out a static IP.
In this case IP address changing is prolly not the problem since the device is responding with a 503 error.
That implies it is connected and communicating.
However, it is advisable to set up for static IP as has been suggested before anyway.
It is true, as I found out, if Plex cannot find the HDHR or tries to record a channel that no longer exists on the HDHR it WILL appear to be recording normally but the output file will be a very small if not a 0 sized file.
Some defensive coding needs to be implemented in PMS/DVR for these cases, IMO…
It is funny that if Plex requests a connection to a tuner on a channel that does not exist on the HDHR there is no error returned to DVR that Plex recognizes, as Plex seems to just go on merrily thinking it is recording,
@jjrjr1 said:
In this case IP address changing is prolly not the problem since the device is responding with a 503 error.
That implies it is connected and communicating.
However, it is advisable to set up for static IP as has been suggested before anyway.
It is true, as I found out, if Plex cannot find the HDHR or tries to record a channel that no longer exists on the HDHR it WILL appear to be recording normally but the output file will be a very small if not a 0 sized file.
Some defensive coding needs to be implemented in PMS/DVR for these cases, IMO…
It is funny that if Plex requests a connection to a tuner on a channel that does not exist on the HDHR there is no error returned to DVR that Plex recognizes, as Plex seems to just go on merrily thinking it is recording,
I agree on the defensive coding for loss of recording as well as at least e-mail notification of an error. The lack of error checking that leads to going days without recording with no notification or indication is a significant flaw in a DVR solution. This feature should really be in a beta release.
@rostre said:
i’m having the same problems. I don’t realize it isn’t recording until I log in to catch up on shows, and realize it stopped recording days ago. I have one homerun tuner. I’ve also found that when the recording stop, I can go to settings and DVR and it also does the searching message but never finds it. The only fix is to restart. The guide also stops updating.
I’m running 1.4.1.3362 on Centos 6.2 (64bit). I didn’t notice these problems before upgrading to this release. my logs are attached. these logs are after my last restart.
Can you please tell me what happened between Feb 23 and March 1 ? Was the server put to sleep ? There is a gap in the log file
Feb 23, 2017 07:33:07.956 [0x7fc92e7ef700] DEBUG - IVA: Downloaded 10 trailers for source 1.
Feb 23, 2017 07:33:08.179 [0x7fc92e7ef700] DEBUG - IVA: Downloaded 10 trailers for source 2.
Mar 01, 2017 20:58:00.864 [0x7fc95afff700] DEBUG - Auth: We found auth token (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), enabling token-based authentication.
Mar 01, 2017 20:58:00.864 [0x7fc95afff700] DEBUG - Auth: authenticated user 1 as rostre
Mar 01, 2017 20:58:00.864 [0x7fc95afff700] DEBUG - Auth: Came in with a super-token, authorization succeeded.
Mar 01, 2017 20:58:00.866 [0x7fc92f7f1700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.1.190:34523 (Subnet)] GET / (4 live) GZIP Signed-in Token (rostre)
After upgrading to the latest release and restarting Plex Media Server this morning, I had 1 show (Charmed S02E13 Animal Pragmatism) that has become stuck in the .grab folder. The other file in there is currently recording and gaining in file size as I refresh so looks fine.
@gadgetgeek2000 said:
After upgrading to the latest release and restarting Plex Media Server this morning, I had 1 show (Charmed S02E13 Animal Pragmatism) that has become stuck in the .grab folder. The other file in there is currently recording and gaining in file size as I refresh so looks fine.
It is the same old problem to do with overlapping recordings. You can check for it by searching the Plex Media Server.log files for HTTP 503
You had one recording in progress - starting at 08:50 and finishing at 09:02
and you had one scheduled for 08:58 which failed error 503
Mar 03, 2017 08:50:51.838 [9196] DEBUG - Media Grabber: Saving recording to D:\Plex Recorded TV\.grab\17d25779778e0965e439924c7c41285f3b6c035c
Mar 03, 2017 08:50:51.839 [9196] DEBUG - HDHR Grabber: Going to record for 669 seconds, final URL is http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=669
Mar 03, 2017 08:50:51.839 [9196] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Waiting for a tuner (3 available).
Mar 03, 2017 08:50:51.839 [9196] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Allocated a tuner (2 left)
Mar 03, 2017 08:50:51.840 [9196] DEBUG - HTTP requesting GET http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=669
Mar 03, 2017 09:02:01.263 [9196] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from GET http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=669
Mar 03, 2017 09:02:01.267 [9196] DEBUG - MediaRecorder: Recording completed with HTTP status 200
Mar 03, 2017 09:02:01.267 [9196] DEBUG - Activity: Ended activity a1ec2570-e243-4136-a9cd-f211e06adbb8.
Mar 03, 2017 09:02:01.267 [9196] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Operation for E12 - Awakened completed with status 3 (Success)
Mar 03, 2017 09:02:01.267 [9196] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Freed a tuner (now 3 available)
Mar 03, 2017 09:02:01.267 [9196] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Scheduling 'E12 - Awakened' for post-processing.
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:00.841 [8820] DEBUG - Media Grabber: Saving recording to D:\Plex Recorded TV\.grab\6e04964e0eb560f9ed0f5fb6f9c2fddf380ec360
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:00.841 [8820] DEBUG - HDHR Grabber: Going to record for 3840 seconds, final URL is http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=3840
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:00.841 [8820] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Waiting for a tuner (2 available).
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:00.841 [8820] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Allocated a tuner (1 left)
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:00.842 [8820] DEBUG - HTTP requesting GET http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=3840
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:05.899 [8820] DEBUG - HTTP 503 response from GET http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=3840
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:05.899 [8820] DEBUG - MediaRecorder: Recording completed with HTTP status 503
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:05.899 [8820] DEBUG - Activity: Ended activity e1d09c4c-1c02-4d63-8f2c-12b26d36abb8.
Mar 03, 2017 08:58:05.900 [8820] DEBUG - MediaGrabber: Operation for E13 - Animal Pragmatism completed with status 5 (The recording was aborted)
@gadgetgeek2000 I have discussed these with the development team.
Plex Media Server keeps track of number of tuners it uses and by specifying /auto on the request to the tuner - as in http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=669 - we are asking the device to pick a free tuner - and apparently whenever we have overlapping recordings - meaning we need more than one tuner at the time - the answer has been go away Error 503.
I would like you for a while to dedicate the device to Plex and not use it outside Plex or with any other application and we can monitor the situation.
That would be nice. Would you like to tell my wife she can’t watch TV?
She was likely watching TV this morning when Plex malfunctioned. That would be 1 tuner. Plex tried to record 1 show. That would be 2 tuners. I have 6.
I can try to catch something when the tv is not used, but the Channels app on my Apple TVs are the only way we can watch live TV since Plex doesn’t have a live stream option. I got rid of all the cable boxes in the house.
Plex Media Server keeps track of number of tuners it uses and by specifying /auto on the request to the tuner - as in http://172.16.10.25:5004/auto/v737?duration=669 - we are asking the device to pick a free tuner - and apparently whenever we have overlapping recordings - meaning we need more than one tuner at the time - the answer has been go away Error 503.
With that URL I looked at the .25 tuner status. 2 channels out of three are currently tuned and streaming:
Does Plex call directly to the one IP address and give up if it gets the 503 error? There is multiple tuner support, so why is it giving up when there are still other tuners available?
An error 503 should be handled more gracefully in Plex. It is a note from the device stating that it couldn’t deliver the media. Could be a content-protection problem, a decode problem, or all tuners in use problem. Plex should be able to handle the error without hanging. The user should get some sort of notification that a tuner could not be secured for their recording.
I wonder if this is a cablecard problem. When I scan the available channels on both devices, I get fewer channels on the unit that seems to be malfunctioning. I think I’ll take that cablecard back to Comcast and ask for another. I hate trying to activate these things, but it’s worth a shot. If that doesn’t fix it I will try replacing the HD HomeRun Prime device.
FYI, It was very helpful to learn this URL when testing doing my own testing. I can open up VLC, choose Media > Open Network Stream and then paste in the URL. Easy to diagnose once I knew the method.
When diagnosing tuner problems I would suggest taking Plex out of the picture altogether, and have the customer check to make certain they can stream all the expected media simultaneously.
Open VLC, open the network stream. Open another copy of VLC, open the network stream. Repeat once more to make certain that all 3 tuners are functional.
Looking at the device logs is also very helpful and could help identify where a problem may be. http://172.16.10.25/log.html
