LiveTV does not start in new 9.10 & 10.04 installation

[Factor Three]

I have installed Mythbuntu 9.10 on a machine with 3 MPEG analog cards (Hauppage 250s) and a brand new hard disk. This machine is pristine and has no previous versions of Mythbuntu installed.

The installation has gone smoothly and I performed all the necessary setup for the backend. This machine is a frontend/backend combination, set up as a primary backend with no remote front ends.

Nevertheless, when the installation was complete and I perform the reboot, the front end comes up but attempts to view live TV fail. I get a black screen with "Please wait" for a few seconds and then the front end menu reappears.

I have checked the mythfrontend.log file and I am seeing messages like the following:

2010-3-17 20:48:29.069 GetEntryAt(-1) failed.
2010-3-17 20:48:29.069 EntryToProgram(0@Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969) failed to get pginfo
2010-3-17 20:48:29.069 TV Error: LiveTV not successfully started

I searched the Internet to gain information about this problem, but all information I have found appears to be based on problems that were supposedly fixed in this version. Furthermore, solutions suggested for this problem do not work.

Someone will correct me if I am wrong (I'm sure!), but I believe I have found a bug in the Mythbuntu v9.10. I have changed no directories, permissions to the directories are all correct (they should be since they were set during install and I did nothing except install, reboot, and attempt to watch TV!). It is clear that something in the installation is setting up the system so that "pginfo" (whatever that is) cannot be "gotten".

This bug makes Mythbuntu 9.10 unusable.

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

Howdy, and thank you for helping to improve Mythbuntu by opening this ticket. I'm marking this ticket as incomplete because it is missing information that the developers will need in order to analyze the problem further. Once you attach the requested information, you can change the status back to "new." In particular,

1. have you tested that the video capture device(s) work outside of Myth? Various pieces of software will open video devices, or you can use
cat /dev/video_device_name > /tmp/test-capture.mpg

2. Could you please add the output to the following command to this bug:
ls -laR /var/lib/mythtv

3. Could you clear out the frontend and backend logs, and after doing that, attach fresh copies of the backend and frontend logs showing the attempt to view liveTV?

4. If you schedule a show, does it record?

Countless people have not had this trouble, so if this is a bug, it is not a widespread one.
Thanks!

[Eric Keim (eric-keim)]

Hi Marc,

thanks for helping! You already got the right ideas.....hopefully :-)

1. cat /dev/video_device_name > /tmp/test-capture.mpg
works fine!

2. see attachement! After doing a chmod 777 -R /var/lib/mythtv
it works!

Irratating for me was that after I switched the storage directories in mythtvbackend to /home/...../Videos it was still not working because missing rights...which I didn't expect as I thought from a users point of view I have all the necessary rights....;-)

3. skipped because problem seem obvious

4. Yes and no...there is an entry but if I want to access the file I get an error message "The file for this recording can not be" the rest of the message is not readable. Also I can not find a file on the harddisk.

Summed up is was a problem with the access rights. But after this fixed the next problem is knocking at the door....

thanks for helping,
regards, Eric

[Eric Keim (eric-keim)]

What I forgot: I got this bug with V10.04 release version...

[Thomas Mashos (tgm4883)]

It seems that this can be closed since it was a permissions issue?

[Eric Keim (eric-keim)]

Yes&no...I think the reason for the wrong permissions should be fixed. Please take a look at:

Bug #584701

Bug #551268

For what I see mangling these three bugs all together into one solution would be a good idea.

[Eric Keim (eric-keim)]

....and this one Bug #505707

[Eric Keim (eric-keim)]

Fixed in 10.10

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Mythbuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]