[robca]

There's a thread where someone installed ActivePerl to the user directory, then symlinked it or something.. as perl normally needs to be installed in the root directory, but that's locked down in openelec. If you have another pc, you can run zap2xml on it, then copy the *xml file to openelec when the old one expires.. 2 weeks or whatever you set it up for. This is why I chose to install Ubuntu on my Pi, then build kodi on top of that. Even with Raspbian.. you have more control over the system. I have zap2xml running on the same system as kodi, even using the web browser in the os to configure the backend.

Thanks for the pointer. After a bit of fiddling, I finally managed to make everything work, capturing the info here for anyone else who needs to do it.

You can download and install ActivePerl on OpenElec (once you know how, rather siple, actually), then add all the necessary Perl packages and finally downloading/running zap2xml

Code:

mkdir -p /storage/downloads/activeperl
cd /storage/downloads/activeperl

# if necessarym replace the download with the latest version
wget http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePerl/releases/5.22.1.2201/ActivePerl-5.22.1.2201-x86_64-linux-glibc-2.15-299574.tar.gz

tar xzf ActivePerl-5.22.1.2201-x86_64-linux-glibc-2.15-299574.tar.gz

cd ActivePerl-5.22.1.2201-x86_64-linux-glibc-2.15-299574/

./install.sh --prefix /storage/ActivePerl --license-accepted --no-install-html

# done installing perl

#add ActivePerl to PATH
PATH=$PATH:/storage/ActivePerl/site/bin:/storage/ActivePerl/bin

# install some extra perl packages (not sure if all are actually needed, but this works... you can try to run the script and see what dependencies are missing)
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install TermReadKey
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install Date-Manip
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install XML-LibXML
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install XML-Writer
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install XML-Twig
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install File-Slurp
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install TimeDate
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install DateTime-Format-Strptime
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install XML-SAX
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install XML-NamespaceSupport
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install IO-stringy
/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install HTTP-Cache-Transparent

/storage/ActivePerl/bin/ppm install JSON-XS

# I decided to store the resulting xmltv.xml file in /storage/xmltv directory, you can use anything else
mkdir -p /storage/xmltv
cd /storage/xmltv
# the current version of the download link for zap2xml for me was at http://zap2xml.hosterbox.net/?h=c61rsa you can find it here: http://zap2xml.awardspace.info/#dependencies)
wget http://zap2xml.hosterbox.net/?h=c61rsa -O zap2xml.pl

Assuming you have a zap2it account, after this, you would usually run a cron job to periodically refresh xlmtv.xml. Here's how you can test it works:

Code:

perl /storage/xmltv/zap2xml.pl -u username@email -p your_password -o /storage/xmltv/xmltv.xml

Since it was the first time I was setting an EPG in tvheadend, I first had to select the xmltv.xml file location in the tvheadend addon UI (from Kodi), then use the tvheadend Web UI to select the right xmltv.xml setting (Configuration, Channel/EPG, EPG grabber, select Internal grabber and there should be your file... it took me a couple of reboots for everything to work). Then Configuration, Channel/EPG, Channels, and one by one map the EPG grabber to the right channel (use Edit, if everything works, you should see a list of your channels in the EPG Source drop down)

Now I just need to make sure that my cron job runs when expected