Custom Channel groups

Quote from lippythelog

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

for VDR on dvb-s i use a e2 channel list then convert that into VDR for mat via this web address below

Code

http://twojeip.net/e2/vdr

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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

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

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

gets updated by kodi automatically while the channels.conf in

~/.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:

kodi:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config # ls -l
total 67
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         20016 Jan 24 18:37 channels.conf
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         26841 Jan 22 15:53 channels.conf.sort
kodi:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config # systemctl stop service.multimedia.vdr-addon
kodi:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config # cp channels.conf.sort channels.conf
kodi:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config # ls -l
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         26841 Jan 24 18:36 channels.conf
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         26841 Jan 22 15:53 channels.conf.sort
kodi:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config # systemctl start service.multimedia.vdr-addon
kodi:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config # ls -l
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         26841 Jan 24 18:36 channels.conf
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         26841 Jan 22 15:53 channels.conf.sort
kodi:~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.vdr-addon/config # ls -l
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         20016 Jan 24 18:37 channels.conf
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         26841 Jan 22 15:53 channels.conf.sort

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.

Please post both channel.conf files (in a zip archive).

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

# 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...