Can't get TV to work

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mbliss
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Can't get TV to work

Post by mbliss »

Trying to install MythTV v32 in Ubuntu 22.04 using Mythbuntu Control Panel and HomeRun Connect tuner, I got the frontend to display TV quite nicely, but couldn't get program listings from my Schedules Direct account. So I followed the XMLTV instructions to run tv_grab_zz_sdjson --configure to get the listings. That worked just fine, and I was then able to see listings in the frontend Program Guide. Unfortunately, I was then unable to watch TV: clicking on "TV" in the frontend, I get "Please Wait" for a fraction of a second, then I just get back to the main menu.

I suspect there is an issue with permissions here: now if I run MCP as mythtv user, the frontend won't connect to the backend, and when I exit MCP it wants to restart the backend, but won't recognize my user password.
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bill6502
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Re: Can't get TV to work

Post by bill6502 »

Hi,

I'd start here: https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Config.xml#Troubleshooting
The comments apply to both the frontend and backend.

Looking at the log files is also recommended. cd to: /var/log/mythtv and
there should be some obvious programname.log files.

I'm running 22.04 and v33-Pre (master) build from source - good news, it works as does v32.
I don't use MCP but its author frequents the forum.
mbliss
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Re: Can't get TV to work

Post by mbliss »

I did look at that link, and since the two config files were different, I copied the mythtv config over the one in my directory, but that didn't accomplish anything. Looking at the logs confirmed my suspicions about permissions. I was getting things like this in the backend log:
Nov 25 08:57:25 OptiPlex-3020 mythbackend: mythbackend[7013]: E TVRecEvent threadedfilewriter.cpp:106 (Open) TFW(/home/dad/10601_20221125165725.ts:-1): Opening file '/home/dad/10601_20221125165725.ts'.#012#011#011#011eno: Permission denied (13)
Nov 25 08:57:25 OptiPlex-3020 mythbackend: mythbackend[7013]: E TVRecEvent tv_rec.cpp:4563 (GetProgramRingBufferForLiveTV) TVRec[1]: RingBuffer '/home/dad/10601_20221125165725.ts' not open...
So after some other fiddling, I took the shotgun approach: sudo chmod 777 /home/mythtv and sudo chmod 777 /home/dad
That now allows me to watch TV! Not elegant, but I'm just using this as an appliance, so (hopefully) not too concerned about security issues here.

I think the problem is that MCP sets things up to operate for the mythtv user, but I can only launch the FE from the Ubuntu home screen as a regular user, thus setting up a nearly irreconcilable conflict between the BE as mythtv user and the FE as a regular user. And then, most of my experience is with openSUSE, so Ubuntu is foreign territory for me ....
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heyted
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Re: Can't get TV to work

Post by heyted »

Sorry that you had trouble doing the setup with MCP. If you find a reproducible issue with MCP, please report the issue here.

The user should not be switched to mythtv when running MCP (please see wiki here). I am not aware of any part of MCP that would want to start the MythTV backend. MythTV Backend Setup (mythtv-setup) will prompt the user to start the backend upon exiting. Select no when prompted (please see wiki here). The user for the backend being mythtv and the user for the frontend being the logged-in user other than mythtv is normal and expected.

When testing MCP and setting up Schedules Direct using mythtv-setup, it was necessary to create a video source, and save the video source before using mythtv-setup to cofigure the grabber. This is shown in a YouTube video starting at time index 3:41 to configure the video source, and starting at time index 5:55 to configure the grabber. The opton to configure the listings grabber is within the video source menu. If the user proceeds with the grabber configuration without saving the video source first, the grabber will fail when it runs at a later time. At time index 4:11, there is a note in the video to "do nothing in here for now" for the listings grabber.
Ted | My blog
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