OpenDCT Network Encoder Walkthrough - V1

[SageWizdom]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Yes, it works, but I did notice opendct does not start at boot like sagetv does.
I did some digging to try to do it myself and kept running into issues. I noticed sagetv was using the old rc.d (system v?) style of startup, and opendct has a linked startup file in the same directory, so I tried to tell rc.d to configure opendct to start and got the following error.

I saw this as well, but had not gotten to dig into it.

Originally Posted by mikejaner

[EDIT]
I fixed it doing the following:
update-rc.d -f opendct defaults

Awesome, I'll add it to the instructions and script. Have you mentioned this to EnterNoEscape, or I can. He can probably update his .deb to do this automatically.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Hey, I followed your instructions for installing SageTV on Ubuntu(Thanks for these BTW), and now these OpenDCT ones. I am running into the following error after the step of starting the opendct service. Do you have any idea what this means. I am a linux wannabe.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mjaner@sagenix:/opt/opendct$ sudo service opendct start
Failed to start opendct.service: Unit opendct.service failed to load: No such file or directory.
mjaner@sagenix:/opt/opendct$


Edit: The install didn't complain. I even tried the beta before this, with the same results.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mjaner@sagenix:~$ sudo dpkg -i opendct_0.3.17-1_amd64.deb
Selecting previously unselected package opendct.
(Reading database ... 102121 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack opendct_0.3.17-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking opendct (0.3.17-1) ...
Setting up opendct (0.3.17-1) ...
To use the provided ufw rules type:
/opt/opendct/enable-ufw-ports

To delete the provided ufw rules type:
/opt/opendct/disable-ufw-ports

To start the OpenDCT service type:
service opendct start
mjaner@


Mike

same problem here, openDCT won't start and I'm on ubuntu 15 (not 14).

/var/run/opendct exists and has a pid file in it while running console-only.

console seems to capture tuners, per log, but where do i look for the property file for opendct tuners that were found?

[cat6man]

update

i moved to Ubuntu 16 LTS and opendct seems to run fine, the pidfile is created in var/run/opendct/ when the service runs, etc so i'm getting closer.

however, i do not get an opendct.properties file at all, not even the /conf/ subdirectory.
i therefore created the /conf/ subdirectory under /opt/opendct/ but still no properties file.

how long should i let console-only run before i terminate it with ctrl-c?
i see one post that says after 30s, another after channel lineups are downloaded............

any other suggestions?

==> MORE/BETTER INFO
partial cockpit error here. the opendct.properties file is in /etc/opendct/conf and i was looking for /opt/opendct/conf.............so it appears that the tuners are being found and opendct is probably running fine now that i'm on ubuntu 16 lts.

i've edited the sage.properties file so that they tuners should be discovered but no joy.
when i connect my hd300, i connect to the linux server, i see the server's name but the IP address still shows as 0.0.0.0 so i'm thinking that is why i can't see and configure the tuners from my hd300.

anyone know when/where the hd300 is supposed to get the ip address from the server when it connects? i'm happy to provide log files if someone can tell me what to look for.

[cat6man]

getting stranger..........and stranger

i turned on debugging from hd300, which required a reset of the server, after which the 3 hdhr-prime tuners showed up for the first time.

however, i can't set up the tuners. after entering the zip code, i get a 'cannot connect to server' message (perhaps related to hd300 thinking server is at 0.0.0.0???)

log info attached:

[EnterNoEscape]

Part of the reason you've having so much trouble is because Ubuntu 16.04 has moved to systemd. I don't believe that the SageTV package is able to operate correctly as a service on systemd yet and only the very latest OpenDCT release candidates support systemd on Ubuntu OS's. I highly recommended using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for the best experience with both OpenDCT and SageTV.

[SageWizdom]

I had not noticed the release of 16 (are you using the beta? nightlies? April 21 looks like official release) and have definitely not tried it yet.

Originally Posted by cat6man

getting stranger..........and stranger

i turned on debugging from hd300, which required a reset of the server, after which the 3 hdhr-prime tuners showed up for the first time.

Your server is probably seeing the HDHR Prime encoders directly (remember the script turns on network encoder detection). I know that mine will do this, but they then don't work (fyi) as the HDHR Prime is not natively supported in SageTV currently. If you can get this far though, you should be able to get the OpenDCT encoder to appear.

Originally Posted by cat6man

when i connect my hd300, i connect to the linux server, i see the server's name but the IP address still shows as 0.0.0.0 so i'm thinking that is why i can't see and configure the tuners from my hd300.

anyone know when/where the hd300 is supposed to get the ip address from the server when it connects? i'm happy to provide log files if someone can tell me what to look for.

I'm not sure I understand the question. You see 0.0.0.0 as the supposed IP of the HDHR Prime, or of the linux box? Originally I found that if you originally set up for DHCP, but then switched to a static IP, that Java could get mad about the ip of your computer, etc. However as OpenDCT uses its own code to discover and talk to the HDHR Primes, as long as you didn't configure an override in the config file you should be talking to the primes.

If you install the HDHR control software natively, can you talk to the primes?

"sudo apt-get install hdhomerun-config hdhomerun-config-gui"

"hdhomerun-config discover"

[SageWizdom]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I highly recommended using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for the best experience with both OpenDCT and SageTV.

I would echo this. There is very little to no testing for 16 yet, and so there is not too much support that folks will be able to offer. Is there something that is driving you to 16 versus 14?

[cat6man]

now life is good!

why was i on 16? well, first i couldn't get 14 to load on my NUC, failing at the install grub point where it seemingly couldn't find a partition it needed, so i tried 15 which installed ok but had some sagetv issues i couldn't resolve, so i tried 16 which also didn't bring final bliss................so, i went back to the beginning and installed 12, which created the proper disk partitions with grub, then upgraded that to 14 LTS and voila, i'm in business...........then installed sage v9 and opendct, configured my tuners, blew away my old wiz.bin (intentionally, don't need to keep 10 years of watched shows) and re-entered many of my favorites (still more to do)...........installed plugins and created my RedSox recording favorite with exclusions to ignore MLB Extra Innings broadcasts that are being blacked out due to local restrictions, updated my EPG this morning (they always wait until opening day to put the baseball games into the EPG) and my first week of RedSox games show up in upcoming recordings......tested an opening day game today and SRE is running...............mounted my windows NAS drives with cifs and my imported directories are all visible now, moved my 2 internal hard drives from my old XP machine and plugged them into the linux NUC server and have my old recording directories and old recordings back on the server

only things left to do are to put the drive mounting commands into fstab directly so they will be where they are supposed to be after power cycling the linux NUC, and adding the other hdhr tuner for the clear channels, but no rush since i rarely run into a limit with the 3 tuner hdhr-prime..........i'll let the server cook for a few more days then move it to the basement and blow away the old XP SageTV server machine, maybe use it as my linux test machine going forward............i want to do a benchmark to see how much faster the i5 NUC is than the 10 year old XP machine and see if the XP machine is even worth keeping alive as a linux test box.

so, thanks everyone for all the help........it is amazing how much i forgot and am slowly relearning about sageTV now that I am actively playing with it again.

happy opening day everyone!

[SageWizdom]

Originally Posted by cat6man

now life is good!

why was i on 16? well, first i couldn't get 14 to load on my NUC, failing at the install grub point where it seemingly couldn't find a partition it needed, so i tried 15 which installed ok but had some sagetv issues i couldn't resolve, so i tried 16 which also didn't bring final bliss................so, i went back to the beginning and installed 12, which created the proper disk partitions with grub, then upgraded that to 14 LTS and voila, i'm in business...........

If you have a few minutes, I would be interested in better understanding the difficulties you ran into and the solution so I can document them as possible problems in the linux quick start.

Was the failure similar to the below link?

http://askubuntu.com/questions/53254...o-install-grub

Thanks

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by SageWizdom

If you have a few minutes, I would be interested in better understanding the difficulties you ran into and the solution so I can document them as possible problems in the linux quick start.

Was the failure similar to the below link?

http://askubuntu.com/questions/53254...o-install-grub

Thanks

yes, it was similar to this with 14 after a format of the hard drive.

[SageWizdom]

Thanks, I saw several references to this issue. I'll try to read up on it and see if there is something that at least can be used as a link. "If this occurs, look here for help"

[Telecore]

Just experienced something weird with OpenDCT. Had multiple recordings going on at the same time. Tried to tune to a specific channel (CNN) and it started playing one of the recordings. I could sucessfully tune into other channels, but every time I tried CNN it started playing the same recording. Also, all of the simultaneous recordings had a playbar with small periodic red and green stripes, meaning that there were periodic chunks missing - in all of them. Let me know if there's any log files I can send or if this is just a fluke. I've been keeping up with the latest versions as they come out, so currently running the latest (4.43) x64.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Telecore

Just experienced something weird with OpenDCT. Had multiple recordings going on at the same time. Tried to tune to a specific channel (CNN) and it started playing one of the recordings. I could sucessfully tune into other channels, but every time I tried CNN it started playing the same recording. Also, all of the simultaneous recordings had a playbar with small periodic red and green stripes, meaning that there were periodic chunks missing - in all of them. Let me know if there's any log files I can send or if this is just a fluke. I've been keeping up with the latest versions as they come out, so currently running the latest (4.43) x64.

One thought I had was CGMS-A DRM. It's also possible OpenDCT couldn't overcome a resource related issue. If you were short on RAM or suddenly had prolonged spikes in CPU or hard drive activity, that could cause what you were seeing. Did you notice a lot of errors or re-tuning in the OpenDCT logs?

[Telecore]

I've edited the file wrapper.log to included only yesterday's activity and attached it as a .zip. Around approximately 8:30 PM, there are a lot of errors that are similar to below:

Producer thread has disconnected.
NIORTPProducerImpl - Producer thread has stopped
Returning AVERROR_EOF in readCallback.call()
PES packet size mismatch
Producer packet monitoring thread has stopped
FFmpeg transcoder ended with code -541478725
Fmpeg Transcoder consumer thread stopped

But there's so much in the log file, I am not sure how to identify the key info.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by SageWizdom

Thanks, I saw several references to this issue. I'll try to read up on it and see if there is something that at least can be used as a link. "If this occurs, look here for help"

by the way, i just blew away my old XP machine and installed ubuntu 14 with no problems at all.......not sure why the NUC was unhappy

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Telecore

I've edited the file wrapper.log to included only yesterday's activity and attached it as a .zip. Around approximately 8:30 PM, there are a lot of errors that are similar to below:

Producer thread has disconnected.
NIORTPProducerImpl - Producer thread has stopped
Returning AVERROR_EOF in readCallback.call()
PES packet size mismatch
Producer packet monitoring thread has stopped
FFmpeg transcoder ended with code -541478725
Fmpeg Transcoder consumer thread stopped

But there's so much in the log file, I am not sure how to identify the key info.

opendct.log will be a little more detailed. It looks like you're still using upload id. You'll want to shut that off; it's now off by default. I've seen it randomly just stop writing too many times to recommend it as a first choice. I don't know who's at fault with that one. It would be nice to get an OK after sending the data so you are at least sure the other end is writing it out. Just change consumer.ffmpeg.upload_id_enabled to false.

[Telecore]

Thanks - I did what you suggested on both SageTV servers. I think yesterday's log file got zipped to .gz format and put in a folder, so I didn't see it this morning, so I unzipped from .gz, re-zipped to a .zip and attached. It's much larger than the log files for other days with a bunch of interesting info at the end.

[EnterNoEscape]

Fortunately you didn't have any of the video correction issues. In fact, I can say with reasonable certainty that the data was being streamed to SageTV, but for one reason or another the file must have stopped being written without creating any errors because that's really the only reason SageTV would tell it to start another recording. Bytes were definitely coming in and being transmitted. I didn't see one time that OpenDCT detected a halt. That entry at the very bottom about the tuner not responding just means it took more than 5 seconds to respond. Without that timeout, it could hang for over 2 minutes. Something I've noticed about the InfiniTV devices is if you hit them with too much in a relatively short time frame, they get very unresponsive. That message was likely just the result of lots of re-tuning.

This is one of the reasons why I'm not a fan of upload id. I don't know what's really happening when it appears to break. SageTV needs to OK, the transfer when I tell it how many bytes I'm about to send, so from OpenDCT's perspective, everything is fine as long as SageTV continues to reply OK for each transfer. That and it also adds to your heap a little, so if you have enough streams going at once and a few placeshifters connected, you could be asking for trouble.

[LaoChe]

I also could not get opendct service to start on boot following the initial instructions (using update-rc.d -f opendct defaults) but after I did update-rc.d opendct enable it seems to start just fine.

[fresnoboy]

Originally Posted by cat6man

now life is good!

why was i on 16? well, first i couldn't get 14 to load on my NUC, failing at the install grub point where it seemingly couldn't find a partition it needed, so i tried 15 which installed ok but had some sagetv issues i couldn't resolve, so i tried 16 which also didn't bring final bliss................so, i went back to the beginning and installed 12, which created the proper disk partitions with grub, then upgraded that to 14 LTS and voila, i'm in business...........then installed sage v9 and opendct, configured my tuners, blew away my old wiz.bin (intentionally, don't need to keep 10 years of watched shows) and re-entered many of my favorites (still more to do)...........installed plugins and created my RedSox recording favorite with exclusions to ignore MLB Extra Innings broadcasts that are being blacked out due to local restrictions, updated my EPG this morning (they always wait until opening day to put the baseball games into the EPG) and my first week of RedSox games show up in upcoming recordings......tested an opening day game today and SRE is running...............mounted my windows NAS drives with cifs and my imported directories are all visible now, moved my 2 internal hard drives from my old XP machine and plugged them into the linux NUC server and have my old recording directories and old recordings back on the server

only things left to do are to put the drive mounting commands into fstab directly so they will be where they are supposed to be after power cycling the linux NUC, and adding the other hdhr tuner for the clear channels, but no rush since i rarely run into a limit with the 3 tuner hdhr-prime..........i'll let the server cook for a few more days then move it to the basement and blow away the old XP SageTV server machine, maybe use it as my linux test machine going forward............i want to do a benchmark to see how much faster the i5 NUC is than the 10 year old XP machine and see if the XP machine is even worth keeping alive as a linux test box.

so, thanks everyone for all the help........it is amazing how much i forgot and am slowly relearning about sageTV now that I am actively playing with it again.

happy opening day everyone!

I had a ton of problems on 14 LTS as well during setup as a guest VM under ESX 6.1. Once I went 16 LTS everything worked much better, and sage and opendct are running fine even after multiple updates.

I actually mount my NAS via NFS (it's a FreeNAS based system), with the UID/GID mapped to the appropriate windows users (Sage used to run on windows in a different VM), and it works great. Very fast and less grief than getting CIFS running well.

thx
mike