Special characters

DeltaMikeCharlie

etofi Yesterday, I had a problem where Tvheadend crashed because it tried to create a folder for a recording that contained a special character (a question mark).

I tried to recreate this on my system and unfortunately TVH did not crash. It continued to run, but produced an error in the log:

2026-05-14 05:47:41.129 [ ERROR] dvr: Directory '/blah-blah-blah/recordings/sub?directory' not accessible: No such file or directory

In the 'Removed Recordings' tab, I found a DVR entry with a status of 'File Missing'.

When I manually created /blah-blah-blah/recordings/sub?directory and tried again, it worked.

Can you please provide more details about your crash? Were there any error messages in the log? What version of TVH are you running?

Also, what file system type are you trying to record to? Perhaps that file system does not like the question mark. My test was performed on ext4.

etofi

I get this error

2026-05-13 00:34:33.221 [  ALERT] dvr: Unable to create dir "/recordings/The Hunt - Welcher Promi ist leichte Beute?": Invalid argument
2026-05-13 00:34:33.221 [  ERROR] dvr: Recording error: "The Hunt - Welcher Promi ist leichte Beute?": Unable to create file

and after that error Tvheadend (Docker) was no longer accessible.

DeltaMikeCharlie

I'm sorry, my system produced a recording containing a question mark and it remained accessible. I also don't use docker.

It looks like the format string that you provided tried to create a directory named /recordings/The Hunt - Welcher Promi ist leichte Beute?, so I don't think that the 'special character' is the ?, it is the /. Try to remove that character and see what happens.

etofi

For all other recordings, the subfolder works fine, but not for this one. It’s definitely the question mark, because my Docker is running on a Synology NAS, and on Linux, question marks in folder names are simply not allowed.
The question now is why Tvheadend doesn’t remove the question mark. Where can I configure which unsafe characters are replaced by an underscore? And ensure that this is done not only in the filename but also in the folder name.

DaveH

etofi on Linux, question marks in folder names are simply not allowed.

That's just plain wrong. I just created a directory called x?y

etofi

The recordings are stored on an external hard drive connected to the NAS via USB3. It uses extFAT, and with that format, special characters such as question marks are not allowed in folder names.

You’re welcome to try it out yourself, or we can just focus on my actual question: where can I set which characters are replaced, and ensure this is also applied to the folder name?

DaveH

etofi The recordings are stored on an external hard drive connected to the NAS via USB3. It uses extFAT, and with that format, special characters such as question marks are not allowed in folder names.

So as I said, your claim was just plain wrong.

DeltaMikeCharlie

See if this helps:

Your screenshot has this setting cropped.

From the help text:

Remove all unsafe characters from filename : All characters that could possibly cause problems for filenaming will be replaced with an underscore. See Help for details. Note, you may have to disable this option for certain languages/charsets - Hebrew, etc.

Use Windows-compatible filenames : Characters not supported in Windows filenames (e.g. for an SMB/CIFS share) will be stripped out or converted. Note, you may have to disable this option for certain languages/charsets - Hebrew, etc.

etofi

DeltaMikeCharlie
The settings aren't cropped and have already been set. They're just in German.

"Alle unsicheren Zeichen aus Dateinamen entfernen"
"Benutze Windows kompatibel Dateinamen"

Now that I’ve already set the options, the question is whether I can specify somewhere which characters are unsafe.

DaveH

etofi DeltaMikeCharlie
The settings aren't cropped

The settings very clearly ARE cropped and we can't see what they are. Its good that you have now confirmed their setting. It helps when people are precise and complete when submitting problem evidence.

DeltaMikeCharlie

etofi Now that I’ve already set the options, the question is whether I can specify somewhere which characters are unsafe.

It appears that they are hard-coded.

tvheadend/tvheadendblob/ae37453bcc51ccb4b500f3b2e08b56763c189575/src/dvr/dvr_rec.c#L244-L309

DeltaMikeCharlie

I think that this pattern:

does not match this file name:

/recordings/The Hunt - Welcher Promi ist leichte Beute?

I think that the leading $t/ is creating a directory name that contains ?. Because the filter only works on the file name part, the ? remains in the directory name causing the error.

etofi

Ok Then I have to solve that in the EPG file.