Lacie / Vista problems

[meisner]

I have been using GBPVR for a little while now and had everything setup quite nicely using WinXP and a Lacie networked disk (EDmini) to store the recordings. The XP system was part of the local Windows domain.

I had to rebuild all my systems and decided to take the plunge into Vista. I took the latest version of GBPVR and read up on using it under Vista. Everything went fine while I used a local folder to store the recordings. Then I decided to finalize the install and set the recording path to the networked Lacie disk. I can access it using \\lacie\videos no problem...read, write.

But GBPVR cannot create any files on the Lacie disk. I ran Wireshark to monitor the network and try to determine what's happening. GBPVR never even causes a packet to be sent to it.

The Vista system is not part of the domain...but that doesn't seem to matter since I can access the network storage no problem from the command line. Also, there are no entries in the system or application event logs.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be happening here? Is there any way to run GB-PVR in a command box as opposed to a service?

[sub]

You probably need to set the recording service to run as your user account instead of localsystem.

[meisner]

Tried it...no change at all. With the only exception being I couldn't start the web server anymore since the "Allow service to interact with desktop" checkbox was unavailable if you specifiy a user account.

Is there anything else I can try?

[sub]

Try doing a recording, then zip and attach the GB-PVR logs and I'll take a look.

[meisner]

I had a recording going (at least GBPVR thought so...there was no output file being created but the system tray icon was green) and then I restarted the service and got the following logs:

[sub]

2008-04-11 13:08:15.162 VERBOSE [5] Adding V:\TV\Worlds Strangest UFO Stories_20080411_13001400.mpg to parallel processing queue

You'd need to have specified you network path as a UNC path rather than a mapped drive, since the localsystem account wont know anything about "V:\". This drive is only mapped under your user account.

[meisner]

Oops...missed that. I had tried using the UNC name before, but I will try it again. As I mentioned, I had this working before. When I did this new setup, I also started with the UNC names.

Thanks for the speedy replies!!

[meisner]

Well, I believe you're onto something here, sub. I tried to browse to the Lacie disk, but I can no longer see it by browsing the network. Something has changed somewhere in Vista and I don't know where.

I had hope for Vista, but it's really becoming irritating to use.

I will get this network discovery issue worked out and try using the UNC instead.

Thanks again!

[meisner]

Found the problem...

I finally figured out a way to run the recording service interactively (by running the recording service on the command line with one parameter: GBPVRRecoringService run). When I did this, Windows Firewall popped up and said do you want me to allow this process thru? I clicked unblock and everything worked.

The really weird part is that I disabled Windows Firewall.

This explains why I saw no packets being transmitted with the network monitor when a recording was supposed to start.

List of all fixes (for future reference):
1. Could not browse Lacie Ethernet Big Disk from Windows network browser: The name I set in the admin page for the Lacie disk was mixed case (Lacie). To make it reliably browseable, use all UPPERCASE letters in the name (LACIE).
2. Enable guest account on the share that GBPVR will be writing to.
3. On the Lacie disk, create an administrator account and give it RW permission on the share GB-PVR writes to.
4. Open up Windows Firewall to allow access for GB-PVR to transmit (as decribed earlier).
5. Set the GBPVR service to logon as Local system and check Allow to interact with desktop (to enable web server).