Locked Out Of Tvheadend Web UI

Rickmoon

Hi,
I've accidentally locked myself out of my Web UI on Tvheadend v4.2 server running on a RPi3, Kodi 21.0 Libreelec 12.0.0.
I understand that I can generate a new Web UI with no login credentials by running Tvheadend with the -C, --firstrun arguement. However, I've had no success at all by trying this on SSH. Here's an example of the sort of commands I've been attempting

RMDRPi3:~ # systemctl start service.tvheadend42-C, --firstrun
systemctl: unrecognized option '--firstrun'
RMDRPi3:~ # systemctl start service.tvheadend42-C,--firstrun
Invalid unit name "service.tvheadend42-C,--firstrun" escaped as "service.tvheadend42-C\x2c--firstrun" (maybe you should use systemd-escape?).
Failed to start service.tvheadend42-C\x2c--firstrun.service: Unit service.tvheadend42-C\x2c--firstrun.service not found.
RMDRPi3:~ # systemctl start service.tvheadend42-C, --firstrun
systemctl: unrecognized option '--firstrun'

systemctl start service.tvheadend and systemctl stop service.tvheadend work fine.

I would find it much easier to reinstall an initial Libreelec backup via PINN, but I don't want to destroy the database I've built up which has info from finished recordings etc.

Can anyone advise please

Flole

Don't run systemd or whatever with that option but Tvheadend.

Rickmoon

Flole, thanks for your reply.
I tried tvheadend -C, --firstrun but it just gave a list of CLI arguements
Was that what you meant ?

davep

Rickmoon "-C" and "--firstrun" are alternative ways of doing the same thing. Use one or the other, not both.

Eg: tvheadend -C

Rickmoon

OK thanks davep. Running Tvheadend with both -C and --noacl arguements gave me a web interface that I could access, but the configuration was blank (no EPG, no upcoming/finished recordings, external storage not recognised). I didn't run the wizard when the -C iteration was run so as not to destroy any existing configuration.

Stopping and starting the server just reverted me back to the previous locked out login page for the Web UI

When I did have Web UI access, I was at least expecting to see my "locked out" web account under the configuration/users tab, but the only entry seemed to be for this one time temporary access account.

Is this now a question of reinstalling and starting from scratch or is there still a way to get back into my locked out account ? There's a lot of information about finished recordings that I would like to access.

davep

Rickmoon The documentation suggests that the -C option simply overrides the user access, however I suspect that it also initialises the file structure. Do you have a backup?

-C, --firstrun              If no user account exists then create one with
                            no username and no password. Use with care as
                            it will allow world-wide administrative access
                            to your Tvheadend installation until you create or edit
                            the access control from within the Tvheadend web interface.

Rickmoon

davep only the Libreelec backup before configuring the server ! I strongly suspect I'll have to start from scratch again but maybe I could ask a couple of final questions at this point.

What locked me out was changing the username of the account. I didn't set a password, but logging in with just the username and no password didn't work. Does the account have a default password, which might be set when you change the username ?

Is it possible to do configuration backups straight from the Web UI ? If not I'll know next time to back Libreelec up again before making any changes !

davep

Rickmoon What locked me out was changing the username of the account. I didn't set a password, but logging in with just the username and no password didn't work. Does the account have a default password, which might be set when you change the username ?

Ah. The username and password lists are entirely separate, and only linked by the user name. So for example in Configuration -> Users -> Access Entries you might have a user "Test" with a set of permissions. In Configuration -> Users -> Passwords you will have an entry for user "Test" which contains the corresponding password. If you only change the username in Access Entries then there will be no record in Passwords for the new name and so login will fail.

Rickmoon Is it possible to do configuration backups straight from the Web UI ? If not I'll know next time to back Libreelec up again before making any changes !

I'm not sure where Tvheadend configuration is stored under LibreElec, you may need to ask in their forum.

Rickmoon

davep thanks very much for this - all useful info !

If I could ask one last thing - although I don't have web access any more, my assumption is that the config / database still exists on the OS SD card. Is there any way of accessing this info (finished recordings is what I'm after) by accessing a particular folder / file on the SD card ? If so, I could do this by putting the SD card into a reader and exploring the file system using Rasbperry Pi OS.

I anticipate an issue with what I've suggested though - the external drive holding the media may have to be present (it certainly was required for the Web UI to populate), so the files folders may have to be explored / copied using SSH / command line into KODI while it's running.

davep

Rickmoon I'm not an expert on LibreElec though I have tinkered with it in the past.

If you're using ssh onto the running system the Tvheadend files are in /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42. If you're reading the SD card on another system you need to mount the STORAGE partition then look in .kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42. In either case all the files and directories are owned by root.

The recording data should be in dvr/log/.

If you do have to reinstall I suggest switching to the tvheadend43 addon - version 4.2 is now really old and will never be supported.

Rickmoon

davep - success ! Took a bit of learning SSH and chmod commands to get there.

Thanks very much for your help and will look at v 4.3 for reinstallation.

Cheers, Rickmoon