[te36]

gentoo linux with vdr-1.7.35, vdr-plugin-vnsiserver-0.9.0_p20130105, DVB-S with one FF card for local viewing, and second budget-dvb-s card. Disabled all plugins except for dvbsddevice and vnsiserver. Local (FF) watching of live TV works fine.

VNSI clients: raspbmc, MacOS/xbmc, local XBMC on vdr linux system all with Frodo-rc2. All expose same behavior: VNSI seems to work in general, eg: watching of recordings via VNSI plugin from VDR works fine, but the list of live TV channels is empty. In adition, when going to settings->plugins->vnsi on the VDR OSD, VDR crashes.

I have tried to troubleshoot, re-create channels.conf on VDR, compile vnsiserver plugin with DEBUG, but can't figure out why all clients receive only empty channels list. The vnsiserver debug is kinda useless because there just are no DEBUG statements in any of the vnsiserver code dealing with live channels. On the clients, the best i have seen in debug is:

DEBUG: PVRChannelGroup - Load - 0 channels loaded from the database for group 'ORF2 St'
16:14:13 T:4654256128 DEBUG: PVR - GetChannelGroupMembers - get group members for group 'ORF2 St' from add-on 'VDR-Network-Streaming-Interface (VNSI) Server:...

Aka: the clients seems to ask for every TV channel for a channel group and that doesn't seem to work. And when i change XBMC config to not use channel groups, then the clients look for a channel group "All TV channels", but tha returns 0 from the vnsiserver too, even though i tried to name all channels tht way by adding a ":All TV channels" as the first line into VDRs channels. conf.

So i am a bit out of idea what to try next. Suggestions ?

Thanks!

[FernetMenta]

please post FULL xbmc debug log and syslog of vdr machine.

[te36]

http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=28669

[FernetMenta]

Looks like the VNSI addon is not compatible with the version of XBMC. It calls:

00:04:47 T:4644401152 ERROR: PVR - PVRTransferTimerEntry - cannot find channel 1998052056 on client 1
00:04:47 T:4644401152 ERROR: Previous line repeats 1 times.

instead of updating channels. Your version of XBMC is rather old, where did you get the vnsi addon from?

[te36]

Sorry. Didn't check that the XBMC on the mac was a tad outdated, it was jjust the one most easily useable to draw a log. I upgraded to RC3 from www.xbmc.org, no changes:

http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=28769

I also updarted my RPI to nightly build (also RC3 based), no change either.

I have no idea how old the VNSI addons inside of the XBMC clients is. Should i not expect that it will work with the VNSI adon included in RC3 and nightly builds are decently recent ? If not, then what's the process to get a newer VNSI client ?

On the linux XBMC i use the latest media-plugins/xbmc-addon-pvr-0.0.1_p20130110

Thanks

[FernetMenta]

That sequence is completely wrong:

Code:

17:07:48 T:4611837952  NOTICE: PVRManager - starting up
17:07:48 T:4612374528  NOTICE: Thread PVR manager start, auto delete: false
17:07:48 T:4612911104  NOTICE: Thread PVR add-on updater start, auto delete: false
17:07:48 T:140735240978816  NOTICE: initialize done
17:07:48 T:140735240978816  NOTICE: Enabled Joystick: Virtual PS3 Joystick
17:07:48 T:140735240978816  NOTICE: Details: Total Axis: 4 Total Hats: 1 Total Buttons: 10
17:07:48 T:140735240978816  NOTICE: Running the application...
17:07:49 T:4612911104  NOTICE: AddOnLog: VDR VNSI Client: Logged in at '1358525276+3600' to 'VDR-Network-Streaming-Interface (VNSI) Server' Version: '0.9.0' with protocol version '3'
17:07:49 T:140735240978816  NOTICE: ES: Starting event server

should be:

Code:

16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: RegisterClient - registering add-on 'VDR VNSI Client'
16:07:42 T:139704003581824   DEBUG: ADDON: Starting service addons.
16:07:42 T:139704003581824  NOTICE: initialize done
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: PVR - Create - creating PVR add-on instance 'VDR VNSI Client'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: ADDON: Dll Initializing - VDR VNSI Client
16:07:42 T:139704003581824  NOTICE: Running the application...
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: SECTION:LoadDLL(/home/xbmc/progs/src/xbmc/addons/pvr.vdr.vnsi/XBMC_VDR_vnsi.pvr)
16:07:42 T:139704003581824   DEBUG: ExecuteXBMCAction : Translating ReplaceWindow(Home)
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: Loading: /home/xbmc/progs/src/xbmc/addons/pvr.vdr.vnsi/XBMC_VDR_vnsi.pvr
16:07:42 T:139704003581824   DEBUG: ExecuteXBMCAction : To ReplaceWindow(Home)
16:07:42 T:139704003581824   DEBUG: Activating window ID: 10000
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: AddOnLog: VDR VNSI Client: Creating VDR VNSI PVR-Client
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'VDR VNSI Client' requests setting 'host'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'VDR VNSI Client' requests setting 'port'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'VDR VNSI Client' requests setting 'priority'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'VDR VNSI Client' requests setting 'convertchar'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'VDR VNSI Client' requests setting 'timeout'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'VDR VNSI Client' requests setting 'handlemessages'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'VDR VNSI Client' requests setting 'autochannelgroups'
16:07:42 T:139703574972160  NOTICE: AddOnLog: VDR VNSI Client: Logged in at '1358521656+3600' to 'VDR-Network-Streaming-Interface (VNSI) Server' Version: '0.9.0' with protocol version '3'

Please search your disk for the vnsi addon and delete those. Then re-install the addon. Maybe you have an old version somewhere. Could you also backup and remove your XMBC databases or delete ~/.xbmc

[te36]

I reinstalled everything, this time on the gentoo linux client, but nothing changed. Still empty channels list. Not sure what else i should do. Latest emerge with latest vnsi plugin, rc3 xbmc.

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=29352

IMHO: With multiple so different clients such as raspbmc and gentoo xbmc on linux and MacOS all behaving the same, either i am clicking consisitently something wrong, or its really a problem on the vdr vnsi plugin side. But the VNSI plugin just has very little debug and i have no doc for the protocol, nor is three another server or another client, so its really hard to figure out whats going on *sob*.

Thanks!

[FernetMenta]

Code:

LoadUserDefinedChannelGroups - 118 new user defined TV channel groups fetched from clients

You don't have 118 channel groups defined on vdr, do you? Maybe your channels.conf is borked. Can you post it?

[te36]

As i said, i tried various different channels.conf, including one i got from a widely used VDR distribution. Here is a channels.conf i stripped down to just have ~20 channels and xbmc.log when using it (again from linux client xbmc with rc3).

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=29374

I think i could help better to find the bug if i could get some better understanding of how VNSI works, but i can't find any documentation. Maybe you could answer a few questions:

a) What is a channel group for VNSI ? How would i even define a channel group in VDR ? Is that a group of channels separated by a comment line ": <group-name>" in vdr ? there are a few of those, but i haven't seen a difference for VNSI if i remove those lines.

b) How should i click in XBMC VNSI config on the following option, eg: which one enable or disable:
1. "Synchronize channel groups with backend"
2. "Always use the channel order from the backend(s)"
3. "Use backend channel numbers (only works with 1 enabled PVR addon").
I tried various combinations. and i couldn't make it work with an config. Right now i have 1. and 3. enabled, which i think was the default.

c) Is there anything i could try to do to help you fix the bug that the VDR vnsiserver plugin crashes when going to its config in VDR OSD ? Is there anything useful in that OSD config ? Because it crashes VDR i can never see it.

[FernetMenta]

Those odd problems smells like incorrectly built plugin, either against wrong headers or with different compiler flags than vdr itself.

I tried 1.7.35 today and the build system was borked. This is already corrected in 1.7.36 which is out since yesterday.

a)
a channel group for vnsi is the same as for vdr. (yes, they start with a colon) Those get synchronized with XBMC if you check the option.

b) http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Settings/PVR
1. see a) I have enabled this
2: I have enabled this because I want to have the channels in the same order as I have in channels.conf
3. I have disabled this

c)
Can you build vdr and the plugin yourself using any other version than 1.7.35?

[te36]

I'll see when i can get vdr rebuild. Its a productive system, so limited time slots ;-). Hope gentoo/portage will include 1.7.36 soon.

Btw: Should VNSI work in Eden, or is it Frodo specific (just had another issue with Frodo that has me wonder if i can still downgrade to Eden).

Thanks

[FernetMenta]

Eden bits are all in this repo: https://github.com/opdenkamp/xbmc/tree/Eden-pvr/xbmc
XBMC pvr, vnsi addon, and vdr plugin

[jmarcet]

I have just switched back from yavdr to gentoo and I also hit this. It is caused by the big integrated set of patches applied by gentoo, unless you use the 'vanilla' use flag.

I haven't had yet the time to debug it further

[te36]

Thanks, jmarcet. Got it to work as well emerging vdr with vanilla flag. Not sure how to best post this back to whoever is responsible for the ebuild. Any ideas ?

[jmarcet]

I have not yet tried to find out where the real problem lies. In Gentoo's vdr ebuild there is a single patch which encompasses all the available ones (within Gentoo). At build time they are individually enabled or not, based on the USE flags selected.

I tried various combinations of flags and even with only two which force !vanilla, the build was broken. I also tried building it manually, to make sure the problem was not in the build phase. Still no luck.

Only when I avoided the integrated patch altogether I got it working. Hence, I suspect that integrated patch, but have not still ruled out whether it is caused by some specific USE flag.

Anyway, to be used with xbmc there is really no need to patch vdr IMHO (well, the vnsi patch is still mandatory). I think they are more suited towards vdr as standalone player.