[vdr] Re: epg2timer

[Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>]

Manfred Schmidt-Voigt wrote:
...
> One question is left by me. If VDR is doing a recording is it possible to
> delete the timerlist by SVDRP without stopping the actual recording or is
> the SVDRP blocked during recordings? The behavior of epg2times is that it
> deletes first the whole list and than does an update with the whole
> "Merkzettel" from TVTV. This could be a little dangerous if this stops also
> actual recordings.

There are two different ways available to run epg2timers:

1.  Run it in parallel to vdr and load the data into
    a running vdr via the "loadvdr.pl" perl script.
    
2.  Run it only when vdr has initiated the shut down 
    sequence.

Many people choose method 1 and start the update_timers
script in regular intervals via a crontab entry, an
ip-up.local script, etc.
As you also pointed out, there may be some disadvantages
to this method. 

Some people (myself included) have configured vdr to shut
down (using the -s parameter) when there is no timer event
in the near future and there has been no user activity for
a while. Rather than shutting down the machine, the runvdr
script runs update_timers.old and restarts vdr. 
update_timers.old accesses the timers.conf file directly 
and does not require an active vdr, so there cannot be any
conflicts.
Of course, this method does not work well if vdr is used
continuously without enough breaks to get the timer list
up-to-date.

For me, method 2 has always worked very smoothly.

The second advantage of shutting down vdr often is the fact
that the driver seems to work better when reloaded often.
For example (at least with some driver versions) AC3
recordings only work with a freshly loaded driver.

This has been discussed before. For example, see
 http://linuxtv.org/mailinglists/vdr/2001/12-2001/msg00550.html


Carsten.