How to run NextPVR as a process (without the terminal)

[mvallevand]

I had trouble installing dotnet 8 with the installer so using brew was easier for me, it just keep downloading aspnet etc. Other than that is just works here (on 15.2)

Martin

[Allan]

Weird. For me the dotnet installation was the smoothest part of the initial setup.

I had copied the user data from my default location running as a user /users/me/.npvr-data/ over to /var/opt/nextpvr and then changed the owner of the files to root:wheel and permissions to 644. I am going to try deleting these files and see what happens.

[Allan]

Well, I deleted the contents of /var/opt/nextpvr/ and loaded the launchdaemon. The backend ran for a second and aborted, but in that second, it started populating /var/opt/nextpvr/

IntelMini:nextpvr allan$ ls -la
total 184
drwxr-xr-x  10 root  wheel    320 28 Jan 12:34 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96 23 Jan 18:31 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  20986 28 Jan 12:34 config.xml
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  20989 28 Jan 12:34 config.xml.old
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel    160 28 Jan 12:40 logs
drwxr-xr-x  4 root  wheel    128 28 Jan 12:34 media
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  43008 28 Jan 12:34 npvr.db3
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel    64 28 Jan 12:34 scripts
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel    64 28 Jan 12:34 thumbs
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel    96 28 Jan 12:34 web

During this time, it also did a bit of logging, which may be informative. This is the whole log:

[...startup]
2025-01-28 12:34:16.781 [INFO][1] See LICENSE.txt for license information
2025-01-28 12:34:16.782 [DEBUG][1] No /var/opt/nextpvr/scripts/PreStartup.sh
2025-01-28 12:34:16.784 [DEBUG][1] Checking if upgrade required
2025-01-28 12:34:16.784 [DEBUG][1] master file is /opt/nextpvr/system/data/Config-master-dont-edit.xml
2025-01-28 12:34:16.785 [DEBUG][1] Doing database updates
2025-01-28 12:34:16.785 [DEBUG][1] Database: /var/opt/nextpvr/npvr.db3
2025-01-28 12:34:16.786 [DEBUG][1] missing db...copying from: /opt/nextpvr/system/data/empty.db3
2025-01-28 12:34:16.829 [INFO][1] Version 7.0.1.241229
2025-01-28 12:34:16.829 [DEBUG][1] Creating thumbs directory
2025-01-28 12:34:16.842 [ERROR][1] Recording directory does not exist: C:\Users\Public\Videos\
2025-01-28 12:34:16.843 [DEBUG][1] Defaulting to: /var/root/recordings
2025-01-28 12:34:16.848 [ERROR][1] LiveTV directory does not exist: C:\Users\Public\Videos\

[mvallevand]

That is all expected. Is your other instance running? If not maybe try brew with dotnet and use the right cask for v8

Martin

[Allan]

I was confused by the homebrew formulae, because they seemed to be indicating that dotnet 8 was only for apple silicon on sequoia.

Also, FYI, I actually did not exactly follow sub's instructions re installing dotnet. There was no installer in the ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.0.12 section, only binaries. I had no idea where the binaries belong, what their permissions should be, etc., so I used the SDK 8.0.405 installer instead. The notes said it included ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.0.12, and it worked fine. Once I identified where the binaries were installed, I deleted the sdk folders.

Anyway, for the time being, I have gone back to using a launchagent (modified to the good with your refinements, btw, with the binaries now in /opt/nextpvr/system/ and using the NEXTPVR_DATADIR_USERDATA variable). I want to figure out why I'm having trouble with the launchdaemon, but I'm out of ideas at the moment. I'll probably take another crack at it next weekend. Any ideas are welcome, because I'd really like to make it work, in which case I will post detailed instructions.

[mvallevand]

I am doing some maintenance on my machine to get ready for 15.3 and I noted a couple of things.

- Here is how dotnet got added to my settings when I created the launchdaeomon.  Do you have that and is it enabled?

- when I did the brew update to get dotnet 8.0.12  I noticed this message so I am not sure if that related to how you installed.  There are regular updates so using brew makes sense to me. The casks are here https://github.com/isen-ng/homebrew-dotnet-sdk-versions and I used dotnet-sdk8

Code:

Uninstalling the offical dotnet-sdk casks will remove the shared runtime dependencies, so you'll need to reinstall the particular version cask you want from this tap again for the `dotnet` command to work again.

Martin

[Allan]

Interesting. Mine is different, but evidently enabled. It is running, and has been running via a launchagent, for a month already, so I don't see how it's an issue with the installation. To be clear, I have not tried reinstalling with homebrew because the microsoft installer seems to have done the job and I am skittish about breaking something. I did not use an uninstaller related to the sdk - I just deleted the sdk folders in /usr/local/share/dotnet/ included in the full installation. I did this after I had been using the backend for a week or so, and there was no change in functionality.

The only substantive difference I can think of between what I have done and what you have done is that I ran various launchagents as a user before trying a launchdaemon as root, whereas you have always run as root. I'm wondering if it might be a cache thing. I have no idea how to clear dotnet caches, though, assuming there are dotnet caches. Maybe I will try a safe boot this weekend and give it another shot.

[Allan]

One more thought: On mine - system settings:privacy and security:Files and Folders I have dotnet with access to external drive (where recordings are stored). Does yours have full disk access, or access to something else?

[mvallevand]

Based on your post where it aborted on a bare install I don't think your issue is network drives.

Since there are regular updates to dotnet it still makes sense to use brew if you use it anyway rather then doing it manually as you described.

Martin

[Allan]

I don't think my issue is that I have permitted dotnet to access an external drive. I was wondering whether it might be something I have not permitted, hence my question of whether your system settings:privacy and security:Files and Folders settings are different.