Does SageTV create a zero length recording file before recording starts?

[michaeldjcox]

I'm testing my Web feed encoder network encoder on linux.

WFE runs as under my account.

It spawns VLC sessions than also run under my account.

But SageTV runs as root.

And when a tune a zero length file is created owned by root and VLC cannot overwrite it.

Can this feature be selectively turned off?

(yes I tried running WFE and VLC as root but VLC refuses to run as root and does nothing)

Michael

[thelinuxman]

I just wrote a small script to launch VLC from root but run as my user account. (Not really recommended because of security and storing your user account password in plain text, but ...)

#!/bin/bash
cd /usr/bin
echo password | su yourlogin -c ./vlc

replace password and yourlogin with your user account information, save that as a shell script and point WFE at your script to start VLC

Seems as though it might work if WFE is run as root. I see there are patches to allow VLC to run as root also. No more time to play right now though. Good luck!

[tmiranda]

Michael,

I think you will find some users run sage as root and others do not, so to ensure compatibility you must be able to deal with both situations.

In my CommercialDetector plugin I use "sudo" to make sure the spawned process runs as the proper user.

Tom

[drewg]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

But SageTV runs as root.

And when a tune a zero length file is created owned by root and VLC cannot

Rather than trying to run VLC as root, why not change the file's ownership to the user running WFE? Eg, 'sudo chown $RECORDING_FILE $WFE_USER'

FWIW, I don't run SageTV as root. I don't trust binary blobs running as root.. I created a "sagetv" user for it.

Drew

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by drewg

Rather than trying to run VLC as root, why not change the file's ownership to the user running WFE? Eg, 'sudo chown $RECORDING_FILE $WFE_USER'

FWIW, I don't run SageTV as root. I don't trust binary blobs running as root.. I created a "sagetv" user for it.

Drew

Yeah guess I will wait for SageTV to create the file and then try and change ownership.

I believe that VLC will not run as root. There are long trails in the VLC forum with VLC developers arguing with users and basically saying their not going to allow VLC to run as root and all other daemons that run as root are wrong and should change.

Michael

[drewg]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

I believe that VLC will not run as root. There are long trails in the VLC forum with VLC developers arguing with users and basically saying their not going to allow VLC to run as root and all other daemons that run as root are wrong and should change.

They are 100% right. A daemon should never run as root..

Drew

[michaeldjcox]

In answer to my own original question.

I disabled my encoder so vlc never runs

SageTV is creating an mpg file for the recording - owned by root with:

-rw-r--r--

permissions.

So VLC running as vlc-wrapper cannot access it.

vlcs vlc-wrapper process runs as root but works as another user so it tries to access a root file as "michael" and fails.

So I could try chmod the fille to open up access before I launch VLC

Unless anyone knows of any SageTV hidden settings.

Michael