Xpluz310 deleted preview channels

[belboz]

Tivolater 3.1 and xpluz310. Tried to add multiple locals with xpluz #60 while I was on channel 100. Immediately I lost channel 100. I now get "Channel not available" for the preview channels (100/200/500). How can I bring them back?

[superzap]

Try running a reset #61 or waiting a while to see if chan 100 will show up again. Don't know why that would happen and don't know why you would even want chan 100. ;)

[belboz]

Thanks for the reply Superzap. I tried the #61. It didn't help. The channels have been out for a day so I doubt they're coming back on their own.

There is something strange about the 3.1 software. I tried installing it a couple of times with different configurations. In one configuration I had mvchannels set up and did a mvchannels -main dumpall. Set up a channels.dat file and running mvchannels reset the mvchannels script died with an error message. It choked on one of the entries created in the new main.dat. I had to revert to the main.dat that shipped with mvchannels 1.36. Not comforting.

In one of the files in one of the configurations (can't remember which one at this point) either the main.dat or the channels.dat from the dumpall had the 100's listed in there. I have to assume that somehow mvchannels has disabled my preview channels when I ran it. Now if I could just figure out how and why maybe that would lead to an answer as to how to get the channels back. Since mvchannels took them away, there must be a way to tell it to get them back? Some matching entries in main.dat and channels.dat followed by a reset maybe?

Do you have any other suggestions on where I can start to gather information to help me figure out what's happening? Is there a way to dump the channel database other than with mvchannels. mvchannels seems to not be 100% with the 3.1 software.

[superzap]

This might be drastic but try the Clear Program Data & To Do List from the Reset menu. Take note that by doing this you will lose your season passes, thumb ratings and other settings.

Mvchannels, as implemented with xPlusz does nothing with chan 100. On both my dtivos running v3.1.0 I have chan 100. I really think it might be something to do with your access card.

[belboz]

I did the Clear Program Data & To Do List as you suggested. It brought back the preview channels. After a while the locals for my area came back but I lost the extra set of locals that I had enabled. Now running xplusz from the dial prefix won't enable multiple locals. I like the Tivo 3.1 software but I never had this much trouble with 2.5x. I may revert back. Thanks for your help.

[swinokur]

Hi,

I just made the preview channels come back. (I have 2.5.2 and xPlus 3.10, if anyone is counting).

Here's what I did:

1) Hand edited my previously automatically created channels.dat file:

(cd /var/hack/xPlusz; vi channels.dat)

I added the following four lines to the end, so that it now looks like:

DTV:99:99:55227:939:1\
DTV:100:100:55227:165:1\
DTV:200:200:55227:211:1\
DTV:201:201:55227:212:1\
DTV:500:500:55227:157:1\
"}

saved the file.

2) did a mchannels reload by doing xp #63 from the command line.

3) took a look at reload.log (also in /var/hack/xPlusz) directory, which contained:

Sun Apr 20 03 16:20:08 Channel entry is good: DTV
Sun Apr 20 03 16:20:08 Channel entry is good: DTV
Sun Apr 20 03 16:20:08 Channel entry is good: DTV
Sun Apr 20 03 16:20:08 Channel entry is good: DTV
Sun Apr 20 03 16:20:08 Channel entry is good: DTV

went and took a look, and the previews were in the channel guide, and were tunable.

On a vaguely offtopic note - is there some flag in the DTivo software that will allow me to tune *any* channel, without guide data and if there's a signal there, show it to me? (e.g. behave like a "normal" ird?) It's somewhat odd that the preview channels were "there" but not tunable until there was something valid in the guide data. Anyway, if anyone knows how to do this, that would be a cool hack to have available - and a toggle in xplusz would be nice too. :-)

thanks!

[belboz]

Hey swinokur, thanks! That was the magic.

The numbers may be slightly different on different systems but this worked for me. The 55227 in yours seems to be some incrementing database ID. Mine was a lot lower, maybe because the software was installed recently. I didn't try 55227, maybe it would have worked for me too. I got channel 100 in with your 165 but I had done a channel dump with mvchannels previously and the ID on mine was different so after getting it in with 165 I switched to whatever mine was before and that worked too.

Now that the channels are back I think I have a better handle on the problem. I think it caused me to lose all channels with a name of DTV. Once I got one DTV channel back I think they all came back at once. Maybe this will help somebody working on tracking down the cause of the problem with mvchannels.

[captain_video]

I ran into the same problem of losing the preview channels when doing mvchannels reset in 2.5.2 using xPlusz. I was having all sorts of problems trying to get my locals back. I had recently upgraded to 2.5.2 which seemed to work initially but then the locals started dropping off about once every 24 hours. rebooting got them back but then they started dropping off more frequently.

I bit the bullet this weekend and re-Xtremed both DTivos and installed the 2.5.2 updates. No matter what I tried to do, my locals just wouldn't show up. Then, it finally dawned on me. I hadn't gone through guided setup again to establish my locals market by entering the zip code (Doh!). After going through guided setup again and resetting mvchannels (I couldn't begin to give you an accurate accounting of which commands I used or in what sequence because I tried all of them many, many times to no avail), the locals and preview channels reappeared in the guide.

I had also tried using midupdate.tcl to get the locals to show but I kept getting an error message that the file didn't exist even though I had uploaded it to my /var/hack directrory and chmodded it. It finally worked after doing guided setup and uploading a different copy of midupdate.tcl to the DTivo.