[AtwoodWilliam]

I have Kodi 17.6 on RPi, with libreelec 8.2.5, connected to MythTV on Ubuntu.
While I can watch pre-recorded shows, if I select TV (on left side), then Channels, then a specific channel, I get a page (in the background) that says "Channel Unavailable".

Previous tries have shown that this is independent of the channel that I select.

At the time, nothing is being recorded, so I am not aware of anything that could conflict with the desire to watch live TV.

The log is at http://ix.io/1yIE .

Any help will be appreciated!

[janbar]

I can see the logged line in error: MythTV PVR Client: (CPPMyth)__connectAddr: failed to connect (22).
It means the addon failed to connect to the backend for an unknown reason. I guess the network is down or the backend can't be joined.

You should check the network connection from your backend by pinging the kodi host when that happens.

EDIT: Errata, it seems your backend isn't configured correctly: You have to set the real IP address of the backend in myth-setup.
This address is provided by the backend to the addon to connect the live recorder.

[AtwoodWilliam]

This seems strange to me, as Kodi is well able to find the backend and play previously-recorded episodes.  The IPv4 addresses of the kodi processor and the mythtv backend are both assigned (to fixed values) by the DHCP server on my router.
kodi processor = 192.168.1.19 (Local Host Name = FamilyRoom)
Mythtv backend = 192.168.1.18 (Local Host Name = willow)

Question: Is Kodi expecting to stream from the Mythtv backend, or is it expecting to stream from a device directly on the Kodi processor?  Certainly, the program listings are coming from MythTV, and they work fine (both in the ``Channels`` page and in the ``program Guide`` page.

Do you know where the Kodi configuration file(s) are that contain the parameters relating to the backend processor?  If so, I could upload them to this post.  OR, if the setting is sent by MythTV, where does MythTV store it?

[disaacso]

Is mythtv set up to allow remote frontends? what version of mythtv are you running?  prior to v29 you had to edit the bind-address in th my.cnf file from 127.0.0.1 to your backend ip.

[janbar]

The master backend sends the right address of the recorder to watch the livetv. It is useful when you have one or more slave backend. In this case the master backend decides which slave can provide the stream depending of conflict etc. Even you have only one backend the addon try to connect to the address returned by the backend. If you have configured a fake address as 127.0.0.1 in your backend setup , then the addon will try to connect to 127.0.0.1 to retrieve the live stream, that isn't a valid mythtv backend.

You can configure the "Primary IP address / DNS name" with mythtv-setup in General menu. See MythTV WIKI - Host Address Backend Setup (v29)

The Primary IP address of this backend server: You can select an IP address from the list or type a DNS name or host name. Other systems will contact this server using this address. If you use a host name make sure it is assigned an ip address other than 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file.

[AtwoodWilliam]

Disaacso:
MythTV is currently set up to allow remote frontends.  I am successfully using Kodi (on RPi) to access the backend, and I can play previously-recorded programs.  I can also see the current entries in the Program Guide, and the current program on a channel if I select that channel.  So it appears that Kodi has the correct address of the backend.

My current version of MythTV is v0.28.2-6-g9031599.

In what folder is the my.cnf file located?  I am positive that this address is correctly set in the mythtv-setup pages, but if I can find out where this file lives, I can view it and report what I see.

Janbar:
I have only one backend (willow), and it has a single Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-955Q on it.  As noted above, I have configured the backend with its IPv4 address (and not 127.0.0.1), so that it can be accessed by the frontend.  The frontend is well able to see it and retrieve information from it.  Thus the only issue that I have is that watching Live TV is not working.

Thank you for the detailed link to the 0.29 instructions, but I am still running 0.28, which has much less flexibility.

All:
I will look at mythtv-setup tomorrow morning, when the backend is not recording a program, just to confirm that address setting, but I am positive that it is set to 192.168.1.18.

Note that both machines also have valid global IPv6 addresses, as these are provided by my ISP, and reflected through the router.  I hope that this does not make a difference.

[janbar]

Maybe you pointed your issue: ipv6.

You should replace with the default values in mythtv-setup: "::1", and it will work as expected (that will disable usage of IPv6).

If you enable DEBUG logging you will see the full details of what happen before getting the connection error 22.

[AtwoodWilliam]

The IPv6 issue was indeed the cause.  A classic example of "a little knowledge..."

As can be seen below from the output of "ifconfig" on the backend, the backend has six (!) IPv6 addresses.  (Why my ISP assigns 5 global IPv6 addresses remains a mystery to me...)

Since I have no control over the global addresses, and since they are subject to change at the whim of the ISP, I chose to use the Link Local address, reasoning that it would not vary over time.  Since I did not at that time know that the Master Backend sends the appropriate address to a requesting frontend, I was not concerned about the fact that the address is written as the concatenation of the actual address and the interface name: fe80::10fa:8dce:82a4:bfcf%enp9s25.  This, of course, is not valid on the frontend, as it does not have an interface with this name.  Perhaps someone will modify the code on MythTV to strip out the interface name before sending the address part.

bill@willow:~$ ifconfig
enp0s25   Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:21:70:ac:98:f4
          inet addr:192.168.1.18  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: 2607:f2c0:927c:4f00:ad6d:abaa:3a45:c6f7/64 Scope:Global
          inet6 addr: 2607:f2c0:927c:4f00:35d7:117c:de28:b480/64 Scope:Global
          inet6 addr: 2607:f2c0:927c:4f00:dbd0:6288:bc29:22a3/64 Scope:Global
          inet6 addr: 2607:f2c0:927c:4f00:d949:204d:f601:7c30/64 Scope:Global
          inet6 addr: fe80::10fa:8dce:82a4:bfcf/64 Scope:Link
          inet6 addr: 2607:f2c0:927c:4f00:b00c:2846:ca96:3c8e/64 Scope:Global
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:852063 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3853112 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:120649045 (120.6 MB)  TX bytes:5251846347 (5.2 GB)
          Interrupt:22 Memory:f6ae0000-f6b00000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:785915 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:785915 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1
          RX bytes:176000191 (176.0 MB)  TX bytes:176000191 (176.0 MB)

bill@willow:~$

Replacing the bad Link Local address with blank caused the viewing of channels in real-time to work properly.

I may try putting a golbal-scope IPv6 address in the right place as an experimen, at some point when I have time, but for now I consider this problem solved.

Thank you all very much for your help.

  Bill

[kiwiwayne]

A few years later and this still seems to be a problem. This was the post that gave me a hint to solve this for me. My backend was configured with the hostname rather than the numerical IP address. I could play recordings on my kodi frontend perfectly well, but live TV came up with an immediate "Channel Unavailable". After trying a hundred different things, I finally put the actual IP address in the backend setting (i.e. 192.168.2.118) and it works. Very annoying, but relieved to finally solve it!
Don't forget to set your backend's address as a static IP, otherwise mythtv will stop working at all if the address is renegotiated.