Nextpvr 5.0.1 on Elementary OS 5.1 Streaming Failed

[adwsail]

I havent checked yet but I will. Is there a way to view live tv without using a browser?

[adwsail]

GOT IT!!!! Your help has been absolutely outstanding and effective. If you need a dummy to aid in future testing I would be more than happy to contribute my time. As far as Im concerned this matter is solved.

[mvallevand]

Maybe explain what you did to solve for others.

Martin

[adwsail]

Sorry about the delay. I purged kodi and nextpvr-helper and deleted any and all associated folders just to see what it takes. Absolutely no problems doing what I've learned over the last 4 days. And it only took 90 minutes INCLUDING setting up the mapping on my 73 OTA channels. My utmost thanks to Martin for helping out and getting me looking in the right direction. So without further ado here we go.

First and foremost Nextpvr 5.0.1 is BETA software.
Second the following is for a debian based OS ONLY.

More specifically my install is on Elementary OS 5.1 and using the Brave browser, latest version. This is a relatively clean install, not an upgrade, with NO Kodi, NO Emby or any other live tv backend. Get Nextpvr FULLY set up before even thinking about a backend install. Be sure your OS is properly installed with password protected login.

1.  open a command line window
2. type in the following commands, one line at a time:

Code:

curl https://nextpvr.com/nextpvr-helper.deb -O
sudo apt install ./nextpvr-helper.deb --install-recommends

3. Create a video recordings folder, in my case it's a folder called "recordings"
 

Code:

mkdir /home/adw/recordings

4. Now to set appropriate file permission: (replace the words '/home/adw/recordings' with the full path to your video folder, in my case its

Code:

chgrp video /home/adw/recordings
chmod +775 /home/adw/recordings
chmod g+s /home/adw/recordings
setfacl -d -m g::rwX /home/adw/recordings

A more detailed explanation of the above can be seen at:  https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?tid=59576

5. Next we need to create a PreStartup.sh script and set it's permissions, I use Nano as my editor and initiate ALL commands from my home directory. This is not strictly necessary but it does ensure things are exactly where you think they are among other things. Also you should be comfortable using whatever editor you choose. 

This creates and opens the PreStartup.sh file for editing, it will be empty.

Code:

nano /var/opt/nextpvr/scripts/PreStartup.sh

And this is the code for the script, just paste the whole block in or, for a more secure technique, type it all in.. You may need to edit the wait time but we'll deal with that later.

Code:

#!/bin/bash

read -d. uptime < /proc/uptime
echo $uptime
while [ $uptime -lt  18 ]; do
      sleep 1
       read -d. uptime < /proc/uptime
done

In nano you would hit ctrl-o, enter, ctrl-x to save and exit the editor. Now to set the permissions, VERY IMPORTANT!

Code:

chmod 755 /var/opt/nextpvr/scripts/PreStartup.sh

and verify using

Code:

ls -lta /var/opt/nextpvr/scripts

it should look similar to this: (adw is my user, yours will be different; Tom, Jane, Masochist or whatever)

total 12
drwxr-xr-x   7  nextpvr  root        4096 Jan  7 09:42 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2  nextpvr  nextpvr  4096 Jan  7 08:39 .
 -rwxr-xr-x   1  adw       adw         147 Jan  7 08:39   PreStartup.sh

6. Reboot the machine, not a restart.
7. Now in your browser, I use Brave, type in:

Code:

http://127.0.0.1:8866

Your screen should be prompting you to login. The user is admin, password is password. Change at least the password as soon as possible.
You will now need to set up the Nextpvr environment, channel mappings from scans, etc which is all described elsewhere. I use an xml file from zap2xml using TVGuide, I'm in the US and this works well with TVGuide. Setting up the epg grabber is another subject that has many options. 

Once you have the epg data and mappings all set click on the TV Guide button near the top of the screen. You should see a fully populated guide screen. Clicking on a tv channel show will give you options for recording or watching now. Watching now should result in a live tv viewing. If a red error message shows up at the bottom of the screen, run

Code:

service nextpvr-server restart

and check for live tv. If still no video feed you will need to check the rights and permissions on the /var/opt/nextpvr/scripts/PreStartup.sh file. If they are ok then edit the file and increase the wait time (18 is default) to more, 30 or even 60 may be necessary. Reboot the server after changing from 18 to whatever. The nextpvr server CANNOT start before networking is active. The newer journelctl method of checking what gets loaded and when is a good tool to use but not really necessary and is not for newbs. Using 'sudo ps -auwx' will get you in the ballpark. Nextpvr should be near the bottom of the list.

If it seems to load but there is no image, just a dark grey screen,  there is a very good chance your browser is blocking the video feed. Brave is a very secure browser and I had to edit the page for 127.0.0.1:8866 to allow video. DO NOT make the necessary edits global. Only on the actual web page. In Brave and while viewing the 127... page click on the Brave Icon to the right of the address bar. Be sure 'Cross site trackers blocked' and 'Connections upgraded to https' are enabled. Change 'Scripts Blocked' to off. Other browsers have similar methods of controlling security on a per site basis.

And that is how I got Nextpvr 5.0.1 to work in Elementary OS 5.1 and the Brave browser, twice!

Now if someone can get Kodi on linux to play nice and use nextpvr 5.0.1 I would be very grateful. The whole lack of PVR's in the default Kodi install is just nuts and all the Kodi wikis saying jjust enable pvr addons or enable tv and such are rubbish. I have NEVER seen any of the kodi wiki install methods work for getting a pvr option in kodi. DO NOT install kodi-pvr-nextpvr, it WILL break 5.0.1. Enough of my ranting about the lack of linux support from Kodi.

[mvallevand]

Hi some comments

- the deb installer does steps 3 and 4 assuming you install as adw

- step 6 is unnecessary unless you want to test the restart

Kodi works fine with NextPVR 5.0.1 but it doesn't sound like you followed the steps needed to install Kodi on Debian based systems

Code:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo apt-get install kodi-pvr-nextpvr

I don't see how that could break 5.0.1

Martin

[adwsail]

I dont either but it did. I'll try it again and let you know. Re the additional steps I try to write what I actually did. The restart command is a very useful tool to check if the delay is good enough or not. If there is no video and a restart of the server gives you video you know the issue is the timing.

[adwsail]

LOL, I dont understand what changed but this time Kodi installed just fine. I did have to set 'adaptive stream' to get it to play but all is well at this point.

[mvallevand]

Could you give me a screen shot of the setting you changed? I've never had to do that.

Martin

[adwsail]

I havent messed around with this any but setting it seems to have eleminated several pauses and loss of sync between video and audio. Or perhaps the system ust settled down and decided to behave. What can I say, I'm 67 and never had any kind of computer class so this is all wingin' it.

   

[mvallevand]

I don't think that has anything to do with live tv playback, probably more a coincidence. I'm 63 so my first computer classes where on punch cards and paper tape before CRT's etc, not too relevant these days.

Martin