Custom Channel groups

    Hello all

    I'm currently running Kodi Jarvis, titan media browser skin with VDR as a back end PVR client and VNSI - TBS Freesat card installed and all works pretty much flawlessly apart from the channel custom group that I set up keeps going 'missing'.

    I had set up a custom tv station order group - via the kodi group manager option (that is a real pain to do manually) - showing only the freesat channels I want, in the order I want.

    Ocassionally the box will suffer a 'freeze' which means a hard reset - switching off and back on - to get kodi running again. What then happens is if I go back in to the live tv option the custom group will no longer be present to select and this means a manual set up of a group again.

    I have set up an edited channels.conf file, I then stop kodi (via remote ssh from my mac) and paste the edited file in to kodi where the original channels.conf file was located (addon_data>service.multimedia.vdr-addon>config) and then restart kodi from the command line, but no joy as kodi over writes the edited channels.conf file with all the freesat channels and the order the satellte has the channels in.

    Any ideas as to why kodi does not retain the tv custom group set up information or how to get the edited channels.conf file to stop been overwritten?

    Its very frustrating to say the least - any help would be greatly received.

    Lippy


    then i just wincp into the right folder and send it over from laptop
    once its been sent i turnoff live TV in settings , reboot then clear data within setting live tv and re enable live tv
    after this it should stick :)
    hope it helps

    Edited once, last by H0nch0 (September 4, 2016 at 2:19 PM).

    Quote from H0nch0


    then i just wincp into the right folder and send it over from laptop
    once its been sent i turnoff live TV in settings , reboot then clear data within setting live tv and re enable live tv
    after this it should stick
    hope it helps

    Cheers I will give that a go later in the week :)

    Quote from lippythelog

    Cheers I will give that a go later in the week

    Hi H0nch0 there yes the above worked, many thanks - I have done some further information gathering on the internet and have a more detailed steps proceedure to get this done if people want to ssh from OSX in to the libreelec box.

    I got the steps from H0nch0 and other kodi / openelec / libreelec forums, so I cannot claim to have come up with the steps just pulled them in to a single task flow and show the steps many people do automatically but dont articulate in the solutions.

    This information covers VDR and TV Headend clients only, make sure you only have one of the PVR clients enabled. If you have two PVR clients running this will cause problems.

    If you have switched from one PVR client to another, make sure the previously used PVR client is fully disabled. There are instructions on the forum on how to do this.

    Before doing any of the below please save a copy of your channels.conf file and keep in a safe folder.

    Your channel.conf file is normally within linux folders Userdata > addon_data > service.multimedia.vdr-addon > config
    ____________________________________________________________________________

    VDR PVR

    • For live TV with VDR you need these add-ons enabled and configured:
    • VDR PVR Backend
    • VDR VNSI Client
    • VDR Configuration
    • In the VDR VNSI Client within the configuration option turn on "Create channel groups automatically on the server”, otherwise it gets disabled again after a short time.
    • There must be a channels.conf, without the channels.conf VDR will stop if you try to tune to a channel with VNSI.

      • Your channel.conf file is normally within linux the folder Userdata > addon_data > service.multimedia.vdr-addon > config
    • A good place to start looking for a place to edit you channels.conf file is as H0nch0 shows for DVB-S or channelpedia.yavdr.com or personally edit your channel.conf file with one of the tools available - the only one I could find and used was for windows which i used via boot camp on my mac.

      • once you have edited the channel.conf file check its content via a text edit program to check it has only your channels in the channel group order you want.
      • When I opened the channels.conf file with the text edit program I personally could see all the channels I had selected in the order i wanted but there was also the other channels not wanted showing in the channels.conf file so I removed/deleted all the channels i did not want and then resaved the channels.conf file
    • Once you have located your edited channels.conf file you need to stop Kodi.

      • open terminal or other command line tool and ssh in to Kodi by typing [email protected] - XX been the IP number of your kodi set up - and enter your Kodi password

        • Then enter the text in bold systemctl stop kodi and press return/enter
    • Copy your edited channels.conf file and paste in to the place the channels.conf file is stored in Libreelec

      • normally within linux the folders Userdata > addon_data > service.multimedia.vdr-addon > config
      • now re start Kodi via ssh by entering the text in bold and press return / enter - systemctl start kodi
    • Now enable Live TV in Kodi

      • System >Settings >TV >General >Enabled
      • Settings >TV > General > Synchronize channel groups with backend(s) - disable, otherwise the TV entry in the main menu disappears after scanning for channels.

        • By default VDR scans for channels in the background. It continuously updates the channels.conf file
        • This needs to be disabled via System >Settings >TV > Client specific > Client specific settings > VDR OSD
        • In the OSD Setup > DVB > Update channels > set to ‘no’
    • Reboot system
    • Turn off VDR in TV settings
    • Clear data in TV settings
    • Turn on VDR in TV settings


    TVHeadend PVR

    • For live TV with tvheadend instead of VDR you need these add-ons enabled:
    • TVheadend from the unsupported unofficial OpenELEC repository
    • TVheadend HTSP Client configuration is done via a web frontend, browse with for example Firefox to <ip of your Librelec Box>:9981 or your port number if it has been changed
    • Disable VDR PVR Backend and VDR VNSI Client.
    • TV channels must be mapped (web frontend), otherwise enabling TV in the Kodi settings will not work.
    • Enable Live TV in Kodi. System->Settings->TV->General->Enabled.
    • System->Settings->TV->General->Clear data may be necessary.


    ______________________________________________________________________________________________

    Before doing any of the below to update the list of channels please save a copy of your channels.conf file and keep in a safe folder.

    Please note that if new channels are added to you will need to manually re-scan by changing the setting Synchronize channel groups with backend(s) to enable.
    VDR will perform a default rescan for channels in the background and should update the channels.conf file, then you need re-edit your channels.conf file following the above steps.

    Hope this helps people.

    Edited once, last by lippythelog (September 10, 2016 at 1:34 PM).

    Hi,

    I have the same problem howto setup VDR VNSI with a presorted channels.conf. Unfortunately your documentation does not work for me. Is it still working for you? I'm using LibreELEC 8.0.0 with Kodi 17.0 and VDR. Maybe something has changed for this version and you can adapt your documentation?

    I've stopped kodi (systemctl stop kodi) and then tried to place a presorted channels.conf to /storage/.kodi/addons/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config/channels.conf but it is ignored after starting kodi again. When I open the channel manager all channels are still unsorted. My sorted channels.conf is untouched and ignored. Even after "clear data" and deleting .kodi/userdata/Database/TV29.db I have the complete unsorted channels list.

    Any ideas?

    Quote from orclex


    Hi,

    I have the same problem howto setup VDR VNSI with a presorted channels.conf. Unfortunately your documentation does not work for me. Is it still working for you? I'm using LibreELEC 8.0.0 with Kodi 17.0 and VDR. Maybe something has changed for this version and you can adapt your documentation?

    I've stopped kodi (systemctl stop kodi) and then tried to place a presorted channels.conf to /storage/.kodi/addons/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config/channels.conf but it is ignored after starting kodi again. When I open the channel manager all channels are still unsorted. My sorted channels.conf is untouched and ignored. Even after "clear data" and deleting .kodi/userdata/Database/TV29.db I have the complete unsorted channels list.

    Any ideas?


    Just from reading the thread it looks like you're putting the channels.conf in the wrong place - it needs to go in addon_data rather than addons (which makes sense).

    Great! That's it! I did not see that there is another directory service.multimedia.vdr-addon and putting the presorted channels.conf to that directory is working! Thank you very much!

    7 years later this problem appears again with LE11. Maintainng an own presorted and nicely grouped channels.conf for VDR seems to be impossible. Wherever I place the channels,conf, it won't work. The channels.conf in

    Code
    ~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config

    gets updated by kodi automatically while the channels.conf in

    Code
    ~/.kodi/addons/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/

    is ignored.

    Unfortunately the channel manager and the group manager in Settings/PVR and TV are not really useful when you have a list of +350 channels. As I said I already have a working channels.conf but cannot use it!

    Any help to solve this is very much appreciated!

    The VDR backend is managing the cjhannels.conf and overwriting it when needed and e.g. at exit. Kodi is having no access to it.


    To update the config files below the addo_data folder stop VDR by disabling the addon in Kodi settings or with systemctl stop service.multimedia.vdr-addon and start it again afterwards.

    I've already tried this to no avail:

    This is really frustrating. I think it has to do with the channel manager and group manager.???

    Quote from arcasys

    This is really frustrating. I think it has to do with the channel manager and group manager.???

    Possible. Test with stopped kodi (or disabled VNSI client) and replace vdr channel.conf.

    If the test succeed you can try to reset Kodi PVR settings. In worst case remove TV*.db.

    Nice ideas. Most of it I've already tried, see my previous post.

    Neither replacing the channels.conf nor removing TV*.db while kodi is stopped works. TV40.db is rebuilt. channelgroups are created from the bouqet names in the channel.conf. The channel,conf is then overridden.

    I can't find anything that would leave my channel.conf intact.

    Still frustrating. I'll try to find and contact the VNSI client developer.

    The solution is as simple as that:

    Instead of stopping the vdr-addon or even kodi and copying the presorted channels.conf.mine to channels.conf simply do

    Code
    # cd /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config
# cat channels.conf.mine > channels.conf

    Then reboot.

    Why does this work?
    I think owerwriting the channels.conf using '>' does neither change the original file date date nor the file dscriptor while a copy command does.

    Actually it's sometimes not that simple:

    While the channels within the groups are ordered like in the channels.conf, the groups are always ordered alphabetically. I solved this for me with preceding the group names with 1_, 2_, etc.

    Take care of the correct configuration:

    In Setting / PVR & Live TV -> Channels set

    • Synchronize channel groups ..
    • Use channel order from backed

    In ~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config/setup.conf setting UpdateChannels = 2 is a good choice.

    If you want to start with a clean database ~/.kodi/username/Database/TV40.db, you can delete this file- In that case you better stop kodi and service.multimedia.vdr-addon before deleting. If you don' do this existing channel groups remain in the database but you can safely delete these groups in the channel manager.

    I'm glad all this is not an everyday's task...