Two TH Servers sharing recordings AND settings

Patrick Aldag

I want to setup a quite strange TVH infrastructure.
Hello,
I have a Wetek Play running LibreELEC in my livingroom.
As this Hardware can't wake up for recordings i set up a TVHeadend-Server running on Ubuntu 16.04.3 which i want to use as recording source.

Third i have an Odroid U3 which provides the recording space via SMB.

I want to run both TVH machines as full servers - so that i don't have to switch on the recording server if i just want to watch TV in the livingroom.
But i want to access the recordings (done by the sever on the SMB Drive) through Kodis TV > recordings menue.
So far i managed to record to the SMB drive with both machines.
But my knowledge is to poor for sharing the ./tvh dirctories (not the ones that responsible for the hardware) on both machines.

My idea is either to mount the folder to smb for both machines or transfer them periodically from the server via the odroid running 24/7 to the Wetek.

Hope you get my idea and that you are able to help me.
Sorry for my english - i am german......

and my Linux knowledge is not even basic.

Regards
Patrick

Patrick Aldag

I got the advice to work with symlinks - but i don't understand how to do this

Em Smith

I'm not sure I understand since you say you can record to smb but have problems sharing.

On LibreElec, if you login there is a directory ".config/system.d" that contains "cifs.mount.sample" (cifs is a new name for smb). You copy that file to a new file ("storage-rec.mount"), alter the "Where" and "What" lines. Then you run "systemctl enable storage-rec.mount" and "systemctl start storage-rec.mount" and it will mount the cifs share for you.

So you would mount cifs on your wetek and the "What" would be the share from your odroid.

However I think sharing the settings between machines might cause you problems. For example if Wetek and Ubuntu are both turned on then both would think they have to record and would conflict, since Wetek has no DVB it would then set your recordings to "failed".

Could you perhaps run tvheadend on Odroid U3? Then set Ubuntu (which is only machine that has access to DVB?) as a "sat>ip" that sends the tv signal to your Odroid U3 (which I assume runs 24x7). So on ubuntu you install "minisatip" and that talks to your DVB and sends it to tvheadend on Odroid U3

Patrick Aldag

As i said in miy first post: the setup is somewhat strange.

The Wetek has DVB-S tuners. I want to keep them used. I think it is use less to run a TVH Server plus the Wetek whenever you want to watch TV.

But for recordings i like the idea of having a server waking up only for recordings.

You are right, sharing also the timers will cause problems.

i would like to achieve that i can see the recordings in the TV / Recordings on the Wetek even if they where recorded by the server.

The main problem is to share the settings folders as i don't know how to cifs.mount something to ~/.kodi/userdata the dot is the problem......

At the moment i think of transferring the folders from the server to the odroid (rsync should do the job)

Or to mount a folder on the odroid to the server to /home/hts/.hts/tvheadend.

So i have the required files available 24/7 for the Wetek.
But how to make the Wetek read those? cifs mount to . (hidden) folders is not possible (?)
So cifs mount the odroid folder to storage an do a symlink from this folder to ~/.kodi/userdata/.....

But how to do that - i don't get the idea of symlinks.

Hope this clarifies my idea ?

Em Smith

If you want to mount a dot file then for symlink then I guess what they mean is you would mount the folder to /storage/kodiuserdata and then do something like this:

cd ~/.kodi mv userdata userdata.old ln -s /storage/kodiuserdata userdata

But, I don't think it would be a good idea since Kodi's userdata includes things like display resolution.

So you could possibly symlink a sub-directory such as the Tvheadend log directory(inside dvr/log) which contains information about recordings. Thatmay work.

But, I would still go for the scenario of running Tvheadend on the Odroid and just running "sat>ip" clients on the other boxes to pass the DVB data to the Odroid.

Joe User

I am not sure how/if you solved this, but maybe my post in another thread may help you...

https://tvheadend.org/d/6128-help-with-unusual-setup-needed-two-th-servers-sharing-recordings-but-no-settings