The SQLite EPG Store
PLi® development tools for you to use
As of the release of "Flubber", you can choose where EPG data should be stored. Until now this data was always stored in memory. When large amounts of EPG data was read, performance of the box degraded due to lack of free memory. With Flubber you can choose between two stores:
* EPG Memory store: The conventional way of epg data storage. This is the default.
* EPG SQLite store: Data is stored in a SQLite database, which resides in a file.
The EPG SQLite store must be considered experimental!
Advantages of the EPG SQLite store:
* Memory consumption is better controlled.
SQLite takes memory, but it will not increase above a certain level when more data is contained.
* It is open. Data in the database is visible with the Enigma epg viewers and the version of MV included in Flubber.
The new part is that external applications also can feed and read the database. These applications need to be developed. Everybody is welcome to contribute. We are happy to help you getting started ;)
Disadvantages of the EPG SQLite store:
* Memory is fast, other media are slower
* SQLite makes use of flash or hdd or network.
Under some circumstances the response may be slower. We have put a considerable amount of effort in the optimisation.
Using the EPG SQLite store (experimental)
Switching between the stores can be done via the PLi setup plugin (blue button -> PLi image setup -> EPG settings). The SQLite store creates a directory /var/lib/sqlite. You can only switch to the SQLite store if there is more than 20 MB available in the partition where the sqlite directory is made.
For instance on a 7000 you should create a directory somewhere outside /var (assume that /var is not on your usb stick here), and make a symlink:
mkdir /mnt/usb/sqlite
ln -s /mnt/usb/sqlite /var/lib
The database file can also be stored on harddisk (will cause occasional spin up) or on a network share. Do not use NFS shares though! The locking mechanism of NFS is not compatible with SQLite.
CIFS is fine.
Manually updating the SQLite EPG store
The
db_epg tool is used to import UK Radiotimes or XMLTV files into the SQLite EPG database. Full details on the process are documented on the
dbepg wiki page.
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