LinuxMCE Forums

General => Users => Topic started by: gazlang on June 07, 2008, 10:14:17 am

Title: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 07, 2008, 10:14:17 am
I managed to get my final install of lmce Up how i wanted it, got a channels.conf for my dvb-t and s cards and told vdr to use th dvb-t conf for now in lmce admin to see how it went.
I chose tv from th lmce menu and got a picture.
However, the channels list was incomplete and not in the order of the channels.conf. No epg either!
Anyway, i tried pausing and rewinding live tv (which did work after a few seconds) and then turned my media centre off for the day.
Next day when i came back to it, booted up, clicked tv and the screen froze. So i entered kde and ran vdr from terminal. It failed saying it could not read timers. So i cleared the line in the vdr timers conf that appeared to relate to the program i paused the day before. Vdr then restarted in konsole without errors.
Returned to lmce, selected tv, and the screen still freezes.
Tried rebooting, and then cleared timers from vdradmin web interface. But still tv in lmce wont work.
The only thing i can think is that something is messed up with the recording timer in lmce. So firstly, how can i clear the recording timers in lmce?
I can't rule out that it may be a xine problem either, so secondly, how do i run vdr to display on xine in kde or from the konsole?
Many thanks in advance
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: colinjones on June 08, 2008, 04:46:40 am
Can't help much but can say that I have seen instability numerous times with VDR - channel list seems to go back to the EU default, or just TV doesn't work at all (not so much freeze.. but...). I have found that just reloading the channels.conf file seemed to resolve it - but you might want to do a regen/reload before trying TV again just in case...

BTW, you can play TV in Kaffine to test. You should /etc/init.d/vdr stop beforehand to unlock the card, then start Kaffine and it will load the DVB files, then you can use the scan function built in to build your station list and try playing TV there. Don't forget to /etc/init.d/vdr start again before relaunching the orbiter...

Col
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: totallymaxed on June 08, 2008, 10:13:16 am
I managed to get my final install of lmce Up how i wanted it, got a channels.conf for my dvb-t and s cards and told vdr to use th dvb-t conf for now in lmce admin to see how it went.
I chose tv from th lmce menu and got a picture.
However, the channels list was incomplete and not in the order of the channels.conf. No epg either!
Anyway, i tried pausing and rewinding live tv (which did work after a few seconds) and then turned my media centre off for the day.
Next day when i came back to it, booted up, clicked tv and the screen froze. So i entered kde and ran vdr from terminal. It failed saying it could not read timers. So i cleared the line in the vdr timers conf that appeared to relate to the program i paused the day before. Vdr then restarted in konsole without errors.
Returned to lmce, selected tv, and the screen still freezes.
Tried rebooting, and then cleared timers from vdradmin web interface. But still tv in lmce wont work.
The only thing i can think is that something is messed up with the recording timer in lmce. So firstly, how can i clear the recording timers in lmce?
I can't rule out that it may be a xine problem either, so secondly, how do i run vdr to display on xine in kde or from the konsole?
Many thanks in advance

Hmmm... looks like your timers.conf has got some bad data in it. Stop vdr then remove timers.conf from /var/lib/vdr or edit it in a text editor and remove all the lines and then save the change and the restart vdr again;

From the console;

sudo su - <return>
**enter your password**

/etc/init.d/vdr stop <return>

rm /var/lib/vdr/timers.conf <return>

nano /var/lib/vdr/timers.conf <return>
**save the empty timers.conf**

/etc/init.d/vdr start <return>

tail /var/log/messages >return>

to make sure that vdr is happy.

Now go back to the Orbiter and press 'Live TV' or select 'TV' from the UI2 menu and vdr should be working. Set a timer or two to check recordings are ok too. Thats should be it.

There are some bugs in the vdr integration in the 0710 release that sometimes cause vdr to display a black screen (Orbiter & UI2 still work)... either do a reload or restart vdr from the console as above to fix this. These are going to be fixed in an update shortly... the fixes are in testing now.

Andrew
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: Zaerc on June 08, 2008, 12:42:38 pm
...
rm /var/lib/vdr/timers.conf <return>

nano /var/lib/vdr/timers.conf <return>
**save the empty timers.conf**
...

This can be done a lot easier in a single step:
Code: [Select]
echo "" >/var/lib/vdr/timers.conf Will overwrite the file with an empty one.
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 09, 2008, 05:18:55 pm
Thanks for the replies all,

I cleared the timers with
Code: [Select]
echo "" >/var/lib/vdr/timers.conf
and
Code: [Select]
tail /var/log/message
Didn't return any errors, and included the lines

Code: [Select]
Jun  9 15:59:03 dcerouter kernel: [  750.129445] DVB: registering new adapter (cx88[0])
Jun  9 15:59:03 dcerouter kernel: [  750.129450] DVB: registering frontend 0 (Conexant CX24116/CX24118)...

so my cards are there ok

Also got a tv stream with kaffine successfully.

Still I only get a frozen flickr screen when I press tv in the orbiter.

How do I get a picture through VDR in KDE (i.e. outside of LMCE)? I can test if VDR works. Or is there anyway to reset VDR? re-build from source?

Does LMCE have it's own timers file as well as VDR's?
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: Zaerc on June 09, 2008, 07:05:11 pm
Apart from overwriting that timers file, you did stop and start VDR like totallymaxed explained right?

Is there a "screen session" for VDR still running? You can check with "screen -list", one of the output lines should look something like: "XXXXX.VDR_35    (Detached)"
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 09, 2008, 11:24:49 pm
Yes, I stopped VDR, and restarted after clearing the timers, then tried rebooting.

VDR must be doing something because I have a VFD display with the VDR-LCDProc plugin, and it is displaying up to date channel and EPG data.

I have tried using some of the channels.conf templates already in LMCE, just to check that its not my dvb-utils generated channels.conf causing trouble, but again I get channel data displayed on the VFD, but only a frozen flickr screen on my TV.
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: totallymaxed on June 10, 2008, 03:15:27 pm
Yes, I stopped VDR, and restarted after clearing the timers, then tried rebooting.

VDR must be doing something because I have a VFD display with the VDR-LCDProc plugin, and it is displaying up to date channel and EPG data.

I have tried using some of the channels.conf templates already in LMCE, just to check that its not my dvb-utils generated channels.conf causing trouble, but again I get channel data displayed on the VFD, but only a frozen flickr screen on my TV.

Hmmm... ok sounds like plutovdr client is not happy. Do you see something like below if you ssh into your Hybrid and use top;

Tasks: 256 total,   3 running, 252 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s):  9.5%us,  7.1%sy,  0.2%ni, 81.2%id,  0.0%wa,  0.8%hi,  1.2%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1035584k total,   801816k used,   233768k free,    99420k buffers
Swap:  1959888k total,    38108k used,  1921780k free,   212368k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
29121 root      15   0  131m  20m  11m S   12  2.0   0:05.40 plutovdr
31119 root      15   0 60568 6252 4028 S    7  0.6   7:10.49 Generic_Serial_
 7442 vdr       15   0  180m  18m 3672 S    3  1.9   5:19.42 vdr
25297 root      15   0 10292 2716 2036 S    1  0.3   0:06.66 smbd
31376 root      15   0 51168 5316 3768 S    1  0.5   0:42.66 Generic_Serial_

Andrew
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 10, 2008, 04:06:31 pm
Can this be done on my hybrid?

Do I just run
Code: [Select]
sudo top???
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: totallymaxed on June 10, 2008, 04:37:37 pm
Can this be done on my hybrid?

Do I just run
Code: [Select]
sudo top???

Sure from the Konsole screen or from another PC ssh'd in.

In fact though you don't need to sudo yourself if you just want to see the process list and not kill any process...so just do;

top <return>

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 11, 2008, 09:52:46 pm
I did not get anything mentioning plutovdr in top.

However, if I enter

Code: [Select]
sudo plutovdr
into konsole then I get this output:

Code: [Select]
plutovdr 1.0.0~rc2-cvs-LMCE0710-8  (build with xine-lib 1.1.10, using xine-lib 1.1.7)


VDR server not given, searching ...
---------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING: MRL not given and server not found from local network.
         Trying to connect to default port on local host.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[9460] [vdr-fe]    Error: The name org.gnome.ScreenSaver was not provided by any .service files
[9460] [vdr-fe]       (ERROR (gnome_screensaver.c,113): Resource temporarily unavailable)
[9460] [vdr-fe]    Detected 2 CPUs
[9460] [vdr-fe]    Multithreaded video decoding is not supported in xine-lib 1.1.7
configfile: error - tried to update non-num type 0 (key video.processing.ffmpeg_thread_count, value 2)


Press Esc to exit

params.c:OpenConfFile() - Unable to open configuration file "/home/linuxmce/.smb/smb.conf.append":
        No such file or directory
added interface ip=192.168.0.4 bcast=192.168.0.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
Using netbios name DCEROUTER.
Using workgroup WORKGROUP.
[9460] [vdr-fe]    fe_xine_open: xine_open("xvdr://127.0.0.1#nocache;demux:mpeg_block") failed
Error opening xvdr://127.0.0.1
[9460] [vdr-fe]    Error: The name org.gnome.ScreenSaver was not provided by any .service files
[9460] [vdr-fe]       (ERROR (gnome_screensaver.c,113): Resource temporarily unavailable)
linuxmce@dcerouter:~$     

has the port for vdr changed? If so how do I change it back? Also is there something wrong with xine config file?
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: nite_man on June 12, 2008, 03:57:54 pm
I had similar problem a few times. One thing which might cause that is plug-ins. If you install some by your self check syslog carefully. Some plug-ins are not compatible with LinuxMCE VDR and might disable xineliboutput.
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 12, 2008, 04:06:22 pm
The only plugin I have installed is lcdproc for vdr (with your instructions niteman :) )

Did you just remove the plugin to get VDR woring again? Have you seen this problem after installing lcdproc plugin alone?
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: nite_man on June 12, 2008, 06:27:59 pm
Try to disable it by adding that row into /etc/vdr/plugins/order.conf
Code: [Select]
-lcdproc
Not sure. Yesterday I spend some time with similar problem. I installed prefermenu, weather, lcdproc, stream-server and sc. When I started live TV I saw just a picture from screen server. So, I disabled all plug-ins except xineliboutput and control. After that VDR started working. Finally I added sc, weather and stream-server (didn't have a time to test the rest) and it was ok. Tonight I'll try to add lcdproc and prefermenu.
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: nite_man on June 12, 2008, 11:52:34 pm
Tested VDR with all my plug-ins. It works fine. I just put them in the proper order in the /etc/vdr/plugins/order.conf :
Code: [Select]
xineliboutput
control
streamdev-server
weather
prefermenu
lcdproc
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 13, 2008, 12:01:57 pm
Cheers, I will try this later and let you know if it works for me
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 14, 2008, 05:24:26 pm
Thanks for the help, it worked!
I placed control and xineliboutput before lcdproc in the plugins/order.conf

Haven't had much chance to fully test VDR yet, but I got a picture in LMCE at least!

Thanks again
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 16, 2008, 09:43:11 am
I don't think it did work!
In true un-scientific fashion I altered 2 things in one session. Changing the order of plugis may have helped VDR, but when I rebooted and tried the following day I was back to square one - VDR wouldn't start.

The other thing I changed is the network settings. I have altered the internet connection to use a wireless card and disabled my eth connections. When I rebooted LMCE wouldn't load, so I changed eth1 to dhcp in /etc/network/settings and everything was ok untill I came to trying out VDR.

From my output of plutovdr (a previous post) it looked like the vdr port could not be reached, so as well as changing the plugin order I changed eth0 to dhcp in KDE network settings. I think this did something to make VDR work. However, I can't get it to work after a reboot.

I think I need to try making eth1 static on the local host IP and netmask. So first, what is the local host IP address and netmask?

EDIT: I think it's 192.168.80.1, 255.255.255.0 - I'll try this out

Also, I had changed my core connection line in lmce admin to just include ath0 and eth1 dhcp. So second, what format should this line be in for static eth1 and dhcp eth0? Perhaps provide an example of yours? (the line can be found by entering lmce admin, clicking show devices tree at the bottom of the left hand menu, then clicking core and look for something like "connections" half way down the page)

EDIT: Found other posts mentioning this line, so copying them its:

ath0,dhcp|eth0,dhcp|eth1,192.168.80.1,255.255.255.0

Let you know how this does!

Thanks
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: Zaerc on June 17, 2008, 09:44:57 pm
Riiight, so you figured: I don't have enough problems already, let's make a mess of the network setup as well?
Title: Re: VDR has died...
Post by: gazlang on June 18, 2008, 12:12:30 pm
Yup, well I needed to set up the wireless as my system is now in a different room to my router, and I didn't realise that the core/hybrid needs an eth port open (so disabled them thinking it would force my system to use the ath0 port for networking and make setting it up easier...obviously didn't)

Anyway, it's all sorted now. VDR works.

One thing I have noticed though is if VDR starts with the lcdproc plugin before lcdproc itself, then VDR does not work in LMCE, the same as if the lcdproc plugin is loaded before control and xineliboutput.

Putting the lcdproc startup script in crontab seems to work for ensuring it starts before vdr