New installs die after a few days fixes/0.27 (v0.27 (v0.27.5-71-ga62fc0d)

[singogli@…]

New installs die after a few days ruuning fixes/0.27 (v0.27 (v0.27.5-71-ga62fc0d) with all updates per ticket #12611. System built on January 18th works correctly until January 21st. Symptom is- after scheduling and recording over days suddenly Media Library-Watch Recordings shows no recordings available. Backend log shows backend is continuing to record previously scheduled programs. Only backend error message around that time is:

Jan 21 13:47:00 mythbuntu64-2 mythbackend: mythbackend[2315]: E MythSocketThread(73) mythsocket.cpp:745 (WriteStringListReal) MythSocket(2603380:-1): WriteStringList: Error, called with unconnected socket  

Frontend errors around that time are:

Jan 21 13:45:38 mythbuntu64-2 mythfrontend.real: mythfrontend[2359]: E ProgramInfoLoader remoteutil.cpp:184 (RemoteGetRecordingList) RemoteGetRecordingList() list size appears to be incorrect.

Jan 21 13:45:39 mythbuntu64-2 mythfrontend.real: mythfrontend[2359]: W CoreContext playbackbox.cpp:1800 (UpdateUILists) PlaybackBox: SortedList is Empty

Memory usage seems high:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
steve     2359  2.9  6.0 5797776 491308 ?      Sl   13:45  12:31 /usr/bin/mythfrontend.real --syslog local7
mythtv    4171 24.2  0.9 1131292 75680 ?       SNl  20:05   9:43 /usr/bin/mythcommflag -j 102 --noprogress --verbose general --loglevel info --quiet --syslog local7
root      1362  0.0  0.8 336112 73416 tty7     Ssl+ 13:43   0:09 /usr/bin/X -core :0 -seat seat0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
mythtv    2315  4.8  0.8 4379796 68420 ?       Ssl  13:44  20:28 /usr/bin/mythbackend --syslog local7 --user mythtv --daemon
mysql     1187  0.2  0.6 1879336 50588 ?       Ssl  13:43   0:51 /usr/sbin/mysqld

Livetv continues to work fine.

A remote frontend running an earlier version connects to this backend and also shows an empty media library.

This symptom has occurred on multiple install attempts on different hardware with various tuners.

[sphery]

[Reset ticket defaults and fixed formatting]

Almost definitely one or more null characters in data for one or more channels or in program data for one or more recordings. See ​http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/562355#562355 and ​http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/562373#562373 and ​http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/562405#562405 .

While this is uncommon, to prevent issues due to bad (or just plain nasty) data from broadcasters and listings suppliers, we'd need to scrub any channel data discovered in channel scans or "Fetch channels from listings provider" downloads, as well as data from EIT and data downloaded from listings providers and remove--at minimum--any null bytes.

Please inspect your data in your database and see if you can identify any null bytes. Also, please attach full log files showing the errors you get when entering Watch Recordings. See ​https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Posting_Logs