Lost channels though the source has not changed.

[ab123ga 22]

As of this morning, my guide showed 250+ channels. My tv source is built from dispatchrr and nothing has changed there other than I may add more stream options to the channels there. For some reason by this afternoon 11ET, I checked and guide showed 3 channels. I rebooted emby and though the channels list shows all 250 channels, my channels screen shows about 100. Guide is gone, all of the modified images are gone, etc.  I've had this happen on a single channel once or twice but not on a grand scale. A guide refresh scheduled for 10ET notes as failed. Even if it fails, something wiped out all of my work. 

 

 

embyserver-63915563808 (1).txt

Edited May 28 by ab123ga

[ab123ga 22]

I tried to restore from last night's backup and it went from bad to worse. 

[ab123ga 22]

I restored from a backup and this is now what I get

Data path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server

Application pe(s) and 29 seconds

embyserver (5).txt

[ab123ga 22]

Based upon the SQLITE error above, I searched for issues in the forum and found how to check for corrupt DB. I downloaded the tool and ran an integrity check.   I'm not sure if it is a versioning thing but the documentation says I should get an "ok" but it does not say that. However it says it ran without errors. 

[ab123ga 22]

I just started /w a clean install. A nightmare the amount of work but the backup was no better than the previous issue. Thus, backups appear to be of no value. 

[Luke 42555]

HI, thanks for following up.

[ab123ga 22]

Something weird is continuing to happen with my system. After spending hours rebuilding my system, I got things back to normal. I have about 290channels off a proxy that I serve to emby. Sometime after a guide refresh (10ET), I was looking at my guide both on a firestick and web and only saw about 160+ channels. I refreshed the connection and saw the same thing. I see DB lock errors in the guide but not sure if that is causing it. About 30 minutes later, the guide now shows all of my channels. This is getting frustrating b/c 1) it appears that something is causing some failure to display all channels and 2) even if the channels return it was an issue and makes me believe I have more work to do. Note that around 11:45ET I did restart emby so not sure if the restart fixed whatever was happening. Two logs attached.

Added information an hour after original post. In reviewing the guide, the guide is there but all programming for those that were missing is gone. I will have to do a refresh and who knows what I'll end up with. 

 

 

embyserver-5.txt embyserver (8).txt

Edited June 1 by ab123ga

[sa2000 775]

Starting to look at the logs. In the initial logs the data folder path for Emby Server appears wrong

Wondering if you have some non standard setup with regards to the emby server folders

I am trying to figure out why the Emby Server Data path on the 28th May does not show folder programdata - Would you happen to have any embyserver logs from before 28th May 01:50 am? Anything specific you have done to result in this?

This path does not look right 

Data path: c:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server

It should be

Data path: c:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata

Similarly all these folders should be below programdata

2026-05-28 01:50:06.063 Info Main: Logs path: c:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\logs
2026-05-28 01:50:06.063 Info Main: Cache path: c:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\cache
2026-05-28 01:50:06.063 Info Main: Internal metadata path: c:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\metadata

At 2026-05-28 10:00:22 the database lock error started ? Do you have some tools/applications that may have accessing the database files then ? perhaps some system backup tool ?

The log goes up to 2026-05-28 11:16:48 when you selected server restart from the dashboard

On 28/05/2026 at 17:05, ab123ga said:

I tried to restore from last night's backup and it went from bad to worse. 

What time was this on the 28th May ? And how did you do the restore?

The server was launched again at 2026-05-28 12:15:40

Again the paths do not look right as there is no programdata folder showing

	Data path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server
	Application path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system
2026-05-28 12:15:40.610 Info Main: Logs path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\logs
2026-05-28 12:15:40.610 Info Main: Cache path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\cache
2026-05-28 12:15:40.610 Info Main: Internal metadata path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\metadata

First indication of database being malformed was at 2026-05-28 12:16:56

The latest logs from 1 June do show there being programdata folder !

	Data path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata
	Application path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system
2026-06-01 01:55:09.618 Info Main: Logs path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\logs
2026-06-01 01:55:09.618 Info Main: Cache path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\cache
2026-06-01 01:55:09.618 Info Main: Internal metadata path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\metadata

I presume this is because this was a new install

What is the history of your emby server - versions / installation / upgrades ?

 

 

 

[ab123ga 22]

On the 28th I did a clean install because the entire system crapped out and the restore option seemed to make it worse. It appears to have been some type of DB corruption so instead of fighting it, I started over. 

The history of the current install is everything was installed last thursday. There may have been 1 or 2 plugins installed over the weekend but for the most part it was all done on Thursday. 

The logs from today is specifically related to my question of why on a refresh the system first all 1/2 of my channels for about 1 hour then why that refresh killed the guide for the ones that were gone for an hour. 

[ab123ga 22]

@sa2000- The first log was probably pre new installation on Thursday. The folder is Use. rs\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\data

However, this does not answer why I keep losing channels. When I got home the number of channels in my guide was about 30. Something is severely wrong and its not clear what is the resolution to this issue. I had to restart emby and the more channels are showing up but not the 259 channels I have. After about another 45 minutes the rest of the channels show up however as noted before, the guide for the channels that were lost is now gone AGAIN. I have to do another refresh to get the data to show up. 

The most frustrating part is that one would assume a clean install would mean getting back to normal. Not here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

embyserver (1).txt embyserver-6.txt

Edited June 2 by ab123ga

[ab123ga 22]

Two other factors: 1) I use my own epg for some of the guide and 2) the loss of the channels always seems to occur after a scheduled guide refresh. The loss occured this morning after the 10am refresh and I had another refresh at 6pm today which was just before the loss of the channels in the guide. I'm going to shutdown scheduled refreshes to see if that alleviates the problem. 

Edited June 2 by ab123ga

[sa2000 775]

8 hours ago, ab123ga said:

However, this does not answer why I keep losing channels. When I got home the number of channels in my guide was about 30. Something is severely wrong and its not clear what is the resolution to this issue.

We need to establish why the database got locked and ended up being malformed, 

Is there a 3rd party product outside Emby Server accessing the emby server databases ?

Is it a plugin doing it?

Once you get locks and corruption - then outcomes would be indeterminate

[sa2000 775]

16 minutes ago, sa2000 said:

We need to establish why the database got locked and ended up being malformed, 

Is there a 3rd party product outside Emby Server accessing the emby server databases ?

 

11 hours ago, ab123ga said:

The logs from today is specifically related to my question of why on a refresh the system first all 1/2 of my channels for about 1 hour then why that refresh killed the guide for the ones that were gone for an hour. 

The logs from the 1st June show the database getting locked 

First was at

2026-06-01 10:00:38.582 Error LiveTvManager: Error getting channel information for ESPN U
	SQLitePCL.pretty.SQLiteException: Busy: database is locked
	SQLitePCL.pretty.SQLiteException: Exception of type 'SQLitePCL.pretty.SQLiteException' was thrown.

Last in the logs was at

2026-06-01 19:16:22.003 Error App: Error running postscan task
	SQLitePCL.pretty.SQLiteException: Busy: database is locked
	SQLitePCL.pretty.SQLiteException: Exception of type 'SQLitePCL.pretty.SQLiteException' was thrown.

We need to find out why this is happening

Is there an application that you run that accesses the database ?

If you don't know and the locks issue is predictable, we could look into running Microsoft SysInternals Process Monitor to filter accesses to the database 

Edited June 2 by sa2000

[sa2000 775]

Just noticed some clues in the last two logs you attached

You appear to have two instances of Emby Server running in parallel - which would explain the database locks 

A log file for an embyserver process started at

2026-06-01 13:55:14.147 Info Main: Application path: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\EmbyServer.dll

and ended at 

2026-06-01 19:51:07.778 Info HttpClient: Http response 200 from https://emby.tmsimg.com/assets/s93141_h3_aa.png?w=360&h=270 after 6ms

The other log file shows an embyserver process starting at

2026-06-01 19:37:24.885 Info Main: Application path: c:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system\EmbyServer.dll

so here we had two instances of emby server running at the same time

Do you have any scheduled tasks in windows configured to launch emby server?

Check windows task manager for embyserver.exe processes 

[ab123ga 22]

@sa2000I have nothing access emby but emby. If something else is that unbeknownst to me. To prove this statement out, prior to last Thursday the DBs were in a different folder under appdata. The new install moved it. Thus any system I have in place would have lost access to the DB that is no longer at the place it was originally.   I will add the tool and see if there's something I can get out of that. 

[sa2000 775]

thanks

could be the two instances of embyserver.exe that caused the problem

 

[ab123ga 22]

@sa2000 I answered the above and now I have another item. You may be onto something. I want emby to refresh every night and I use task scheduler to shutdown emby every night. It must not be shutting down the previous version. I will remove the execution and ensure 1 version is running. Will give an assessment of that later today. AND Yes... I just checked and 2 versions were running.

 

Thanks for spotting this. 

Edited June 2 by ab123ga

[sa2000 775]

7 minutes ago, ab123ga said:

I want emby to refresh every night and I use task scheduler to shutdown emby every night

My regular refresh is for windows itself - Task Scheduler weekly reboot of windows

To shutdown and relaunch an app your script could wait for the process and any child processes to disappear before re-launching.