Kodi Community Forum

Hello everyone! Having a lot of fun trying to setup my OTA Live TV PVR using Raspberry Pi, openelec (5.0.8) and TVHeadend (backend version 3.9.2765). Using the HDhomerun extend in USA. trying to stop paying for cable since it has increased in price 2x over the last 8 months.

I'm trying to record to an external Western Digital My Book hard drive attached to the Rasp Pi (through a powered USB hub). The drive gets mounted in openelec as /var/media/My Book, and I created a folder called PVR in the drive to store the recordings.

in the configuration recording page of the web configuration, under "recording system path", I used "/var/media/My\ Book/PVR" for the path. Unfortunately, i obtain errors on the TV stating:

"tvheadend htsp client:
command failed: unable to stat path"

this error repeats.

I'm assuming that i'm addressing the my book incorrectly, but i have no idea how it should be addressed considering, when I SSH into the pi and CD to this folder directly i've addressed it above, it works properly.

Nevertheless, I tried something else. I tried using a symbolic link to this folder, and put the link in /storage/recordings/PVR. updated the recording system path in the UI to this path. However, then I received the following errors in the service.log file:

2015-11-04 12:24:25.565 [ ALERT] settings: Unable to create dir "/storage/recordings/PVR": File exists
2015-11-04 12:24:25.565 [ ERROR] dvr: Recording error: "/storage/recordings/PVR/Local 4 News at Noon.mkv": Unable to create directories

surprisingly, the PI would still record a show for a bit (maybe 2-10 minutes) but then i would receive the following error in the log on the web UI:

"there seems to be a problem with the live update feed. trying to reconnect..."
"reconnected to tvheadend"

sometimes it would reconnect, and sometimes it wouldn't and i would have to unplug and replug in the pi.

So I then moved the recording path to /storage/videos on the SD card (16gb). unfortunately, I still get recordings that only last for about 2-10 minutes with the same error message as above:

"there seems to be a problem with the live update feed. trying to reconnect..."
"reconnected to tvheadend"

i'm trying my best to try to solve this myself and by using the helpful forums and other posts here, but i've gotten stuck here b/c when this problem happens and tvheadend is reconnected, the service.log file starts again from scratch and i don't know where else to look that says what the issue was.

Is there a service log that holds previous errors (ie before restarting?). Do you guys have any suggestions to get me on the right path here? i feel like i'm pretty close. I had significant problems getting the EPG to work but was very happy when i figured this out. However, this problem has me stumped.

Thanks for any help that you can offer.

Lots going on there... let's take them thought at a time...

1. Don't escape the space in /var/media/My Book/PVR - it's not necessary

2. Check your permissions on the target directory - and on the link if you wish to use that. Assuming you've created it as bill:users, you're likely to end up with something like rwxrwxr-x bill users and yet hts:video is trying to write to it - which only has r-x permission

3. Permissions are also relevant if you're trying to create subdirectories by channel, date, programme type, whatever.

4. Switch on debug logging in the tvh web interface (bottom right, arrows, cog). That may give you something to chew on before it cycles the main log.

Hey - thanks for the reply!

regarding the permissions, i think you're probably right but i had previously tried multiple ways to change the permissions and i was unable. with openelec, i was unable to adjust the permissions of the hard drive recordings, as well as unable to do a lot of other things with SSH. After frustration, i decided to do a new install of OSMC. That has worked out well, so long as you do things in the proper order.

i found that i need to first enable hdhomerun in the addons. after that, go to the pi store (not easy to find for someone coming from openelec) to enable the tvheadend server. then enable live tv and install the tvheadend client.

thanks for the tip on the "My Book". that worked out great. also, your tip on the debugging was helpful too before i decided to make the change.

right now, osmc is working pretty good. a few hicups here and there but nothing compared to what i was dealing with.