Purpose of EPG_listings folders in ehome directory

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nikleb

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Purpose of EPG_listings folders in ehome directory

#1

Post by nikleb » Tue Feb 23, 2016 12:21 am

Trying to trouble shoot my MCE freezing up every so often I had a look at the mxf files. Doing so, I noticed I have several epg listings folder: one plain, -2, -3, -4. In each folder I find at least one MXL file with a recent file stamp. Should I have several folders?

oakley516

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#2

Post by oakley516 » Tue Feb 23, 2016 1:42 am

nikleb wrote:Trying to trouble shoot my MCE freezing up every so often I had a look at the mxf files. Doing so, I noticed I have several epg listings folder: one plain, -2, -3, -4. In each folder I find at least one MXL file with a recent file stamp. Should I have several folders?
That happens. My setup has a bunch of them now that it's been running for a few years.

They are created when the guide database becomes corrupt. MC creates a new database in a new folder and downloads the guide data to populate it.

nikleb

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#3

Post by nikleb » Tue Feb 23, 2016 3:24 am

oakley516 wrote:
nikleb wrote:Trying to trouble shoot my MCE freezing up every so often I had a look at the mxf files. Doing so, I noticed I have several epg listings folder: one plain, -2, -3, -4. In each folder I find at least one MXL file with a recent file stamp. Should I have several folders?
That happens. My setup has a bunch of them now that it's been running for a few years.

They are created when the guide database becomes corrupt. MC creates a new database in a new folder and downloads the guide data to populate it.
What is interesting is that fields in the other folders still get modified. Is it safe to delete all folders with a number?

Space

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#4

Post by Space » Wed Feb 24, 2016 3:55 am

Normally you would just have two EpgListing folders, EpgListing and EpgListing-2. If there is corruption in the downloaded EPG update (not in the database) it will create a new folder with the last number incremented. Each time it downloads a new corrupted update, it will create a new folder (up to 7 I believe), once it gets a successful update, it goes back to using just the first two folders in a round-robin fashion once again. This round-robin seems to be per-lineup, so if you have two lineups, one will be downloaded to the first folder and the next to the second folder.

I doubt that deleting these folders will help with your problem, but I personally just keep the first two folders and delete the rest to keep things tidy (after the data update corruption issue that created them has been resolved, of course).

nikleb

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#5

Post by nikleb » Wed Feb 24, 2016 2:36 pm

how about the host file fix? After the guide change the XBOX guide was super slow. There was a fix on the forum to change the host file (on the HTPC) to fix the issue on the XBOX.
Is this still necessary?

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DavidinCT

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#6

Post by DavidinCT » Thu Feb 25, 2016 1:50 pm

nikleb wrote:how about the host file fix? After the guide change the XBOX guide was super slow. There was a fix on the forum to change the host file (on the HTPC) to fix the issue on the XBOX.
Is this still necessary?
It cant hurt...Dont think it will fix anything but, if DNS problems come into play, WMC should not have any problems getting guide info...
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

Space

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#7

Post by Space » Thu Feb 25, 2016 9:49 pm

I think the host file fix (in this case) was to prevent WMC from downloading the thumbnail pictures by changing the IP address for the domain name of the server that serves the pictures to one that is invalid (or something like that). You can try this, but you will lose the thumbnails.

In the early days of the Rovi switchover, these images were very large and were causing problems with extenders due to how much data needed to be transferred. I don't use extenders and I never had a problem. That includes the current problem we are talking about now. I started seeing this problem well after they reduced the sizes of the images again, so I don't think removing the images will solve it, but I guess it is worth a shot.

nikleb

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#8

Post by nikleb » Tue Mar 01, 2016 1:10 am

I disabled the host file mod. XBOX guide is ok. Still a bit slower. But the thumbnail pictures are hilarious. I think only about 20% are correct.

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