Should Emby Server wake to record TV

[emg456 3]

4 hours ago, cayars said:

Did you try using Emby at all after it woke up?

It's all becoming a blur so I can't remember.

I've scheduled another couple of recordings for this evening which should kick off in about 40 minutes so I'll wait till the box wakes up and then initially connect with a client to see if Emby is running. Either way will then log on to server and see what's happening.

[Carlo 4330]

Sorry for all the questions like this.  I've tried to duplicate your results on a couple of machines  I have Emby setup on.  Mine wake up and record as usual.  I don't let my computers sleep as they run 24/7 so I had to test the functionality as it wasn't something I made use of before. 

[emg456 3]

17 hours ago, cayars said:

Sorry for all the questions like this.  I've tried to duplicate your results on a couple of machines  I have Emby setup on.  Mine wake up and record as usual.  I don't let my computers sleep as they run 24/7 so I had to test the functionality as it wasn't something I made use of before. 

No problems. Both of yesterday's recordings ran without hitch. I did connect to check on progress but even before I logged on I could see from the drive activity lights that the recordings were in progress. So far so Good. 

I set another test up for early this morning and that didn't go well. The server woke up and was awake for an hour which was long enough to record the programme but nothing was in the library. When I looked in the Embyserver.txt log, there are no entries between when I set the recording (remotely using the LG Tv app) at just after midnight and when I woke the server up manually to check it just now. Emby seems to have done nothing during the hour it was meant to record the programme.

Log attached. Scheduled task ran at 06:54 this morning and server was up for an hour thereafter. Emby did nothing.

Appreciate that maybe not a lot of folks use it in this way but it's kind of a deal breaker for me so hope we can get to the bottom of it soon.

embyserver.txt

[Carlo 4330]

That's good news!

[Luke 37085]

When it wakes up is your windows user logged in?

[emg456 3]

Yes but behind a lock screen.

It's usually accessed via RDP so credentials always given to connect. If I don't want to sleep the server when I leave it I just disconnect the session. If I want it to sleep I choose sleep from the power menu and the session is disconnected by force!

[Carlo 4330]

OK maybe the problem is Emby starts via RDP when you log in. I don't think that will work to well.

I'd make sure that Emby starts from the console and not when logged in via RDP.

Worth a check.

[emg456 3]

Timer set for this evening fired and successfully recorded with no interaction from me. It seems as if there is no problem when Emby is running and logging actions but for some reason sometimes when the server wakes, Emby seems to be still asleep - is that even possible?

[Carlo 4330]

How do you start Emby?

[emg456 3]

1 minute ago, cayars said:

OK maybe the problem is Emby starts via RDP when you log in. I don't think that will work to well.

I'd make sure that Emby starts from the console and not when logged in via RDP.

Worth a check.

What do you mean starts from the console? It is set to run on startup. It opens the web interface when you log on for the first time but thereafter it is running with the tray icon. The user is the same whether I log on directly or through RDP. As is normal, If you're logged on at the console, that screen goes black if you then log on via RDP.

Do you think I should try running Emby as a service? That's how NextPVR runs and it never missed a beat when it was performing the recording duties.

[Carlo 4330]

OK so what I'm saying is to restart the server.  From the console (NOT RDP) login and start Emby.

In other words test making sure that Emby Server didn't start from a login using RDP.

[emg456 3]

OK - I'll try this and come back tomorrow.

[emg456 3]

I restarted the server before the weekend and logged on locally. Some scheduled recordings have executed successfully  but a couple haven't. Although the computer has been to sleep and woken again, the same user is still logged in.

Last night the computer woke up to record. Emby was running at wakeup - the server log shows entries at that time - but no recording was made.

I think I'm going to try running it as a service to see if that's any better.

[emg456 3]

On 7/21/2020 at 10:11 AM, emg456 said:

I restarted the server before the weekend and logged on locally. Some scheduled recordings have executed successfully  but a couple haven't. Although the computer has been to sleep and woken again, the same user is still logged in.

Last night the computer woke up to record. Emby was running at wakeup - the server log shows entries at that time - but no recording was made.

I think I'm going to try running it as a service to see if that's any better.

OK - last ditch effort on this.

I set Emby up running as a service using NSSM as per the instructions.

When it was using the system account (default) it was unable to create the scheduled tasks to wake the server for recordings. Once set to log in with the user credentials, it created the tasks- so far so good.

First recording, server woke and recorded - good. Second recording likewise - good.

Third recording, fail. As usual, server woke on time, Emby did nothing (nothing in the server log at all) and server went back to sleep after idle.

I have the server log but it seems pointless to post it here as there are no entries between when the server went to sleep yesterday and when I woke it up manually this morning. It was definitely awake for the recording but Emby was missing in action.

Do I give up? NextPVR does this without missing a beat.

Is there no way I can use the Emby Guide data to instruct NextPVR recordings? That would answer my problems and I would continue with the Emby premiere service. Otherwise, looks as if Emby has to go- shame as I really like it when it works.

[emg456 3]

Forgot to say- last night's failed recording is still showing in the Live TV Scheduled page as scheduled to record, despite it having yesterday's date.

[Luke 37085]

On 7/21/2020 at 5:11 AM, emg456 said:

I restarted the server before the weekend and logged on locally. Some scheduled recordings have executed successfully  but a couple haven't. Although the computer has been to sleep and woken again, the same user is still logged in.

Last night the computer woke up to record. Emby was running at wakeup - the server log shows entries at that time - but no recording was made.

I think I'm going to try running it as a service to see if that's any better.

Can you attach this log file? thanks.

[emg456 3]

On 8/1/2020 at 6:49 PM, Luke said:

Can you attach this log file? thanks.

I don't think I still have that one @Luke

See below for where I am at the moment with this.

On 7/29/2020 at 10:22 AM, emg456 said:

OK - last ditch effort on this.

I set Emby up running as a service using NSSM as per the instructions.

When it was using the system account (default) it was unable to create the scheduled tasks to wake the server for recordings. Once set to log in with the user credentials, it created the tasks- so far so good.

First recording, server woke and recorded - good. Second recording likewise - good.

Third recording, fail. As usual, server woke on time, Emby did nothing (nothing in the server log at all) and server went back to sleep after idle.

I have the server log but it seems pointless to post it here as there are no entries between when the server went to sleep yesterday and when I woke it up manually this morning. It was definitely awake for the recording but Emby was missing in action.

Do I give up? NextPVR does this without missing a beat.

Is there no way I can use the Emby Guide data to instruct NextPVR recordings? That would answer my problems and I would continue with the Emby premiere service. Otherwise, looks as if Emby has to go- shame as I really like it when it works.

The server log for the above post is attached here. You can see that around about 15:27-ish on the 28th several timers were set, two of which were due to take place that evening/ night.

Scheduled tasks were created for them and the server woke to execute them however no recordings were made and there is no activity in the embyserver log at all until I woke the computer manually the next morning (29th).

I am around for most of this week so of you think we can sort it out I'm prepared to make any changes to the config and perform tests. At the moment I've gone back to using NextPVR for the recordings but as mentioned before this seems to screw up the Emby live TV screens making it not such a nice experience looking through the upcoming shows/ movies.

Let me know what you want me to set up and I'll do it.

embyserver (3).txt

[saturnaqua 4]

I think I have the same or similar issue. If I put my computer to sleep and then wake it up later (or it wakes up by itself to install Windows updates, etc), then recordings never seem to fire off. I think what is happening is that the amount of time the computer is asleep delays the timer (ie, the timer doesn't recalculate when it's supposed to fire when the computer wakes back up). For instance, yesterday it should have recorded Stargirl, but it missed recording for me.

2020-08-11 01:04:16.183 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, DC's Stargirl. Timer will fire in 1132.7302788516668 minutes
2020-08-11 01:04:16.254 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, DC's Stargirl. Timer will fire in 1132.7290910783333 minutes
...
2020-08-11 01:55:05.314 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, DC's Stargirl. Timer will fire in 1081.9114172883333 minutes
...
2020-08-11 23:46:14.568 Info LiveTV: Recording timer fired for DC's Stargirl.
2020-08-11 23:46:14.569 Warn LiveTV: Recording timer fired for updatedTimer DC's Stargirl, Id: 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, but the program has already ended.

Note that I had put my computer to sleep just about 01:55:31 and it woke up by itself at 05:44:49. The timer here says it should fire at 19:57, yet the timer fires at 23:46. The time difference between when it should fire and when it did fire was 3h49m which is the amount of time my computer was asleep.

If I restart emby after I wake the computer up it seems to work probably because it recalculates the timer when it's restarted. Hopefully this can be fixed easily, but since the TV season is practically over, I guess it won't matter much to me for several months.

[Carlo 4330]

@saturnaqua That is a very good analysis you just gave that very well could be the problem people are seeing.  @Luke can you take a look at this?

[emg456 3]

7 hours ago, saturnaqua said:

I think I have the same or similar issue. If I put my computer to sleep and then wake it up later (or it wakes up by itself to install Windows updates, etc), then recordings never seem to fire off. I think what is happening is that the amount of time the computer is asleep delays the timer (ie, the timer doesn't recalculate when it's supposed to fire when the computer wakes back up). For instance, yesterday it should have recorded Stargirl, but it missed recording for me.

2020-08-11 01:04:16.183 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, DC's Stargirl. Timer will fire in 1132.7302788516668 minutes
2020-08-11 01:04:16.254 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, DC's Stargirl. Timer will fire in 1132.7290910783333 minutes
...
2020-08-11 01:55:05.314 Info LiveTV: Creating recording timer for 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, DC's Stargirl. Timer will fire in 1081.9114172883333 minutes
...
2020-08-11 23:46:14.568 Info LiveTV: Recording timer fired for DC's Stargirl.
2020-08-11 23:46:14.569 Warn LiveTV: Recording timer fired for updatedTimer DC's Stargirl, Id: 242756dd43ff824065e8e90abb8aac9a, but the program has already ended.

Note that I had put my computer to sleep just about 01:55:31 and it woke up by itself at 05:44:49. The timer here says it should fire at 19:57, yet the timer fires at 23:46. The time difference between when it should fire and when it did fire was 3h49m which is the amount of time my computer was asleep.

If I restart emby after I wake the computer up it seems to work probably because it recalculates the timer when it's restarted. Hopefully this can be fixed easily, but since the TV season is practically over, I guess it won't matter much to me for several months.

Excellent sleuthing sir!

I confess I have gone back to using NextPVR for recordings - it never fails but if this can get fixed I'd be happy to come back to Emby for that task.

[Luke 37085]

@emg456 or @saturnaqua would you mind providing a new server log example of this, except with debug logging enabled? You can enable this in the server logs section.

Thanks !

[emg456 3]

@Luke I won't have time to set this up till Sunday but I'll do it then.

Cheers

[Luke 37085]

1 hour ago, emg456 said:

@Luke I won't have time to set this up till Sunday but I'll do it then.

Cheers

That would be great, thanks !

[emg456 3]

@Luke

OK Set it up again on Sunday- uninstall/reinstall. Set Hauppauge tuner as Live TV source and Emby Guide Data for the guide. Extra debug logging seemed to prevent the machine from going to sleep so put it to sleep manually.(Power/ Shutdown or sign out/sleep)

This morning woke the machine and set a couple of timers - one for 12:00pm - Air Warriors, and one for 12:15pm - Politics Scotland. Put the machine to sleep again at 08:40.

Machine woke itself correctly at 11:54:30 to record Air Warriors. No recording was made.

Machine was still awake at 12:15 for Politics Scotland but no recording was made.

Machine put itself to sleep again at 12:24:51 - unattended system idle timeout is set for 30 mins.

I woke the machine manually at 13:10:38 and it tried to fire the timer for Air Warriors at 13:10:40 but program was already finished.

It then fired the timer for Politics Scotland at 13:12:30. that program was still running and showed in the Emby browser as in process of being recorded but all that was left was a 23mb .ts file which won't play.

I have attached the Embyserver.txt log file and also a wee excel spreadsheet which shows the relevant timings for sleep/ wake and the program timers.

If you need any other logs, please shout out before they get overwritten.

Thanks

Ed

embyserver (4).txt emby server sleep issues.xlsx

[emg456 3]

Sorry- also forgot to say that obviously whatever processes were preventing the machine from sleeping once I had set the logging to debug level did not prevent it from sleeping after an unattended wake up. That may well offer another clue as to what is going on here.