Maintenance Windows

The Dashboard’s Maintenance windows card finds gaps between known Channels DVR recording jobs. Use it to choose a quieter time to restart a service, update a host, or do other planned work.

Each enabled DVR is checked separately. Use the Dashboard DVR selector to focus on one server, or select All DVRs to compare them.

Filter the results

The card lets you set:

• the minimum useful gap, from 30 minutes to 4 hours
• how many days to inspect
• any day, weekdays, or weekends
• the local start and end hours to include, including an overnight range

Times use the timezone configured in ChannelWatch. Overlapping and back-to-back recordings count as one busy block. A recording already in progress stays busy until its scheduled end.

Read the status first

ChannelWatch only shows time it can bound with known recording jobs. If the returned schedule ends before the requested range, the card labels the result Known schedule only and does not mark the unobserved tail as free.

An unreachable DVR, an empty schedule response, or a malformed recording entry produces no suggested window for that server. These states appear as DVR unavailable or Schedule unknown.

Caution

Maintenance windows are advisory. They cover recording jobs only. They do not predict live TV use, recorded-content playback, guide work, other DVR activity, or another service’s needs. Check the DVR before starting disruptive maintenance.

Use the API

GET /api/v1/maintenance-windows exposes the same per-DVR results and filters for scripts and dashboards. See the REST API reference for the query parameters and response rules.