Failed recordings, status "file not created"

sor vad

Hi, I've had my set up of raspberry pi 3, libreelec, 3 tuners (on their own powered hub) for about a month. But I regularly get failed recordings where TVheadend just reports "file not created" in the failed recordings list. This can be when only one tuner is use, so not suspecting any bandwidth issues. Today it failed on a programme it usually records without issue. Tried to manually record but would start and then stop. Checked channel and signal quality seemed great. Set it to record a different channel on different mux and was OK. But as I said it has recorded this channel fine in past.

So, my question is, are there any log files that I can check to see if there is more detail about the failure so I can hopefully fix the issue.

sor vad

OK, found a setting in the web based front end for setting the log file, I've set it to log into /var/logs/tvheadend.log. Seems to be working as I'm getting some info and errors posted there. So far only errors posted are because it cannot find what I think are channel images in "imagecache". Only annoying thing is the web front end tells me these settings (where the log is stored and using it) will be lost if tvheadend restarts. It shouldn't restart, barring a crash but does anyone know how to make these permanent? Or would that just end up with a massive log file over time if I forget to stop it to stop logging?

Mike Garcia

Hi, did you find a solution to this problem? I have been having the same problem for almost 2 months. In fact I can't get any recording at all. Whether it's a timer scheduled recording, or an instant recording, a popup shows the recording has started, and then a second popup shows the recording has finished. And sometimes a popup shows the timer has been deleted. I found a list of removed recordings. Nothing in the failed recordings. The removed recordings list shows the "file was not created" on every recording. HELP!!!

mpmc

Mike, it sounds like a permissions issue check that the user tvheadend is running under [usually hts] has permissions to the dvr directory [check the DVR profile settings].

A quick test with something like..

sudo -u hts bash touch /path/to/dvr/directory/this_is_a_test.file exit

If the above touch command fails you need to change the permissons so that the hts user can access it.

chown hts:hts /path/to/dvr/directory/ -R

Should do it.

HTH

Mike Garcia

Thank you Mark,

I had thought about checking and changing the permissions, in fact I had changed the permissions to that folder to make a backup to another directory. The folder was in /home/hts. After several searches and failed attempts to fix the problem I resorted to deleting the program via synaptic package manager and purge tvheadend in the command line, and reinstalling tvheadend via Ubuntu software. After the install I ran the setup wizard and all was well for a while. A day or two later I ran apt-get update and upgrade. That was fine. I ran apt autoremove and a lot of lib files were removed. Then the "a pop-up shows the recording has started, and then a second pop-up shows the recording has finished" behavior started again. I guess some or all of those files are needed by tvheadend.

Yesterday was the first day of using the tvheadend for the full day. I had a timer for 8am, Football at 12, and a few tv shows in the evening. At about 5pm west cost time, I saw that the second football game was not recording so I clicked for a manual recording. Then I went into the time and adjusted the end time for an extra hour. Everything was working well until I went to watch the second football game. That recording failed. The rest of the shows recorded for the night. Now all the recording fail in the same way as the second football game.

From the log

11:20:01.648 T:140004950355904 ERROR: AddOnLog: Tvheadend HTSP Client: pvr.hts - Command cancelDvrEntry failed: User does not have access

11:20:01.648 T:140004950355904 ERROR: PVR - DeleteTimer - addon 'Tvheadend:10.0.0.13:9982' returned an error: server error

Also, I noticed the folder to store recordings is "/root/snap/tvheadend/17". I'm going to create a new recording profile with the path to save recordings in /home/hts. And if that fails, I will uninstall and reinstall again.

Please feel free to advise and comment.

Thank You

M.G.

Mike Garcia

UPDATE:

Before uninstalling I checked the failed recordings. The football game was there and would not play so I deleted it. After testing the instant recording that failed twice I looked in the /root/snap/tvheadend/17 folder and see the test recordings. And they will play from that folder.

Mike Garcia

UPDATE 24 Jan 2019

I removed and purged TVheadend. Then I reinstalled TVheadend from this instruction page https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/AptRepositories

I ran the install wizard and set up the HDHomerun tuners. I got a two week free trial for cable channels like ESPN, MSNBC, A&E etc from HDHomerun. None of the "cable" channels are found during the scan. The channels play when using the HDHomerun software, but not from the TVheadend on Kodi. The cable channels play on Kodi using the HDhomerun add-on.

When I click for an instant recording I got a pop-up "recording scheduled" and then immediately a second pop-up shows the "timer has been deleted". No recording is made. I performed this test: "sudo -u hts bash" then: "touch /home/hts/.hts/tvheadend/dvr/test.file" The test.file was put in the dvr directory.

I am nearing the conclusion that tvheadend is not a viable solution to replacing the commercial subscription DVR.

mpmc

I'd be more than happy to look at this over teamviewer with you if you like, something very odd is going on!

Edit:

Without further debug it's going to be hard to tell what is causing this, are you able to watch the channels with no issues at all?

Joe User

What do you have set for your "Format string/Pathname specification:" for your recording profile? From the recordings in your picture, it looks like just the title, or in one case the channel name.

You need to have the "$n" (Unique number added when the file already exists) option or tvheadend will not create a file if the filename already exists.

mpmc

Joe User wrote:
> What do you have set for your "Format string/Pathname specification:" for your recording profile? From the recordings in your picture, it looks like just the title, or in one case the channel name.
>

> You need to have the "$n" (Unique number added when the file already exists) option or tvheadend will not create a file if the filename already exists.

Yes! This is something I completely overlooked, good catch!!

Mike Garcia

Thank you very much for responding to my post. I should be available most of the day, and I will check back often on this post to try to solve my issues. I don't have the expertise to go this far into the settings, but I found what I think are the default settings for my recording profile. Format string: $t$n.$x and Recording system path: /home/hts .

Also please see the attached screenshot.

Alex & Cats

Hi all,

I am having a similar issue. Followed the above guide but its not allowed me to to change the permissons

Sorry newbie here any ideas ? Screenshot shows what i am up to.

Alex

DaveH

You need to be root to use chown, and options need to come before the other parameters. So

$ sudo chown -R hts:hts /home/pi/Videos

I don't know why the need to be root isn't documented more widely (i.e. in the man page). ??!

Alex & Cats

Thanks Dave think im all sorted now :)