I think I just solved my problem. Pretty silly really. In the generate_preview_pixmap function, the modification timestamp of the thumbnail file in /var/video is compared against the modification timestamp for the recording in the database (as Niels already noted). Well for the nine files that were causing problems for me, the .png files were
<span style="font-style: italic;">owned by root</span>. So in all likelihood, mythbackend probably tried to recreate the png and overwrite the old copy, but repeatedly failed to do that because the old file was in the way. As soon as I chowned the file to mythtv, they got overwritten in /var/video at the reload of the Recorded Programs page (taking the usual lengthy amount of time). Reloading again, after the png files were updated in /var/video, took only a few seconds.
<br><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/1/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Andrew Kuan</b> <<a href="mailto:askuan@gmail.com">askuan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div style="direction: ltr;">So I did a bit of experimenting as well. I altered two files in my copy of mythweb from the end of the 0.19-fixes branch:<br><ul><li>I commented out line 207 in modules/tv/recorded.php so that "generate_preview_pixmap" wouldn't get called.
</li><li>I hacked up themes/default/tv/recorded.php so that it looks directly in my /var/video directory for thumbnails rather than checking its own cache. I then had to make sure that Apache could follow a symlink off to where those thumbnails (and all of my recordings) are stored.
</li></ul>After I made these two changes, the Recorded Programs page was suddenly loading in a couple seconds with all of the thumbnails showing -- except for shows that are currently being recorded.<br><br>While this solves it well enough for me, I do still have a few misgivings:
<br><ol><li>No thumbnail will be available for shows currently being recorded.</li><li>I don't like having my /var/video directory exposed to the rest of the world -- which is probably why the cache was set up in the first place.
</li><li>The next time I update mythweb, I'm going to have to rehack my files to keep things chugging along.</li></ol>It looks like the real solution would be to fix the generate_preview_pixmap function in the first place. It's in includes/mythbackend.php at line 226. I'm going to poke at it for a bit right now before I head off to work. Thanks for the feedback, Niels -- it's sort of reassuring to know that someone else is putting up with this behavior too.
<br><br><div></div><div style="direction: ltr;"><span class="e" id="q_10aefd36f4a65eee_1"><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/1/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Niels Dybdahl</b> <<a href="mailto:Niels@dybdahl.dk" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">
Niels@dybdahl.dk</a>> wrote:</span></span></div><div style="direction: ltr;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"></blockquote>
</div><div style="direction: ltr;"><span class="e" id="q_10aefd36f4a65eee_3">
<div style="direction: ltr;"><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"></blockquote></div><div style="direction: ltr;"><span>
> b) looking at the timestamps, a handful of .png files (nine to be<br>> exact) keep getting re-created everytime I view the Recorded Programs
<br>> page of mythweb.<br><br></span></div><div style="direction: ltr;">Mythweb checks the modification timestamp for the recording in the<br>database and compares it with the creation date of the thumbnail. If<br>the thumbnail is too old, it requests a new one from the backend. This
<br>means that either your database is somehow corrupt and has timestamps<br>set in the future, or you're changing (that include playing) the recordings.<div><br>
<br>
I have the same problem, so I checked in my mythweb/data/cache folder.<br>
I opened the recorded shows in MythWeb and 439 out of 528 thumbnails were regenerated.<br>
A couple of minutes later I refreshed the web page and this time 418
thumbnails were regenerated. I could not watch so many shows in such a
short time and I do not think that all these entries should be corrupt.
None of them have dates in the future.<br>
I just tried once more and all 418 thumbnails from second try were
regenerated, so the 21 (439-418) that were not regenerated in the
second and third try could have been played or new since last time I
used MythWeb.<br>
The 418 shows consists of all recorded with 0.18.1 and numerous recorded with 0.19 including those recorded today.<br>
<br>
</div>Niels Dybdahl<br>
</div><br>
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