PVR manager is starting up

    Hard drive failure caused a need for a new main drive. Elected to use an SSD. Install was going OK until the system stuck on "PVR MANAGER etc". Tried clean Install of most of the available issues of libreelec generic. Same results. New plan, used the storage hard drive for the installation and the SSD for storage. Installation worked perfectly with no problems. The SSD and the HD are identical except for speed. This suggests that this long standing and often reported problem is a timing issue. Looking though previous reports, the hang has occurred on a wide variety of systems , produced miles of log files but no solutions. Note that as I have reused my SSD, no log files are available. I would be interested to hear of any successful installs on SSDs and any special procedures needed for success.

    For PVR I use tvheadend. Lebreelec is the most recent generic series 10 version. Skin changed to quartz with no art. The unattended media computer is a home brew with an Asus motherboard, 3TB storage and two TV cards. This programmed remotely from a tablet accessing TVhe directly. The recordings can be accessed via the LAN from any local tablet or phone using VLC. The two tvs have rpi3 units also running libreelec with quartz skin. These are used to access the file manager in the recording computer. This way I can organise the file structure to suit myself.

    I’m just guessing here but sounds like your client is not connecting with your server hence the PVR Manager starting message and then nothing. Check that the lan address configured on the client matches that on the server.

    Thanks for your interest but I do not think the mechanism you describe exists in my media pc. Tvheadend and back end coexist in the same pc. No other parts of my system have any part of pvr installed so there are no remote headends.

    This is a very odd fault. Web search shows the the same problem is reported on at least twelve forums covering a wide variety of pvrs and operating systems, including windows, Linux variants and firestick, dating from 2015 to date. The problem is always the same and no solution found. The question is, what is the common link between all these disparate systems. In my case, the media pc using a hard drive installed with no problem while the otherwise identical computer with an SSD as the main drive would not. It would be nice to know.

    Athough I happy to help solve the pvr manager is starting problem in principle, my need is to have a media centre I can trust. My understanding is that nightly builds do not meet this requirement even if I knew how to obtain them. Also my SSD is redeployed as storage. I seems to me, that the problem occurs after the starting message is issued and before the % counter is updated. In which part of the software does this occur and how is that the same problem is found in pvrs that do not use kodi, libreelec or tvheadend?

    I’d say if you were a little clearer on your physical hardware setup and how you have your setup configured you might get a more positive response, otherwise you’ll get the stock response , please supply logs. It may well be that it is not even an LE issue.

    Nightly builds are here: https://test.libreelec.tv and the images are quite stable to use (whatever you're using at the moment isn't working either, so we're unlikely to make anything worse). I'm asking for logs for two reasons: a) we don't know what hardware you have and pastekodi content will reveal that, b) if there are problems where things don't start, there are normally useful contents in debug logs that hint to the problem. The info you've shared so far isn't enough to diagnose the issue.

    Quote from frakkin64

    I have no issues with tvheadend & kodi & libreelec, so it's probably something unique about your setup.

    Just me and the many folk who have reported this problem since 2015!

    Quote from petediscrete

    I’d say if you were a little clearer on your physical hardware setup and how you have your setup configured you might get a more positive response, otherwise you’ll get the stock response , please supply logs. It may well be that it is not even an LE issue.

    I am not sure what additional information I can give further to post #3. The media computer is a pc with generic libreelec as a standard installation now on a 1T hard drive. The pvr add on is TVHeadend. It has a keyboard and monitor and is on my LAN. It has two receiver cards. It stores the recordings on the hard drive or a second storage drive as set by the recording instruction. The recording can be viewed at the pc but is more convenient to access the storage drives remotely using smb file sharing. I do not use any of Kodi's sorting features but remotely access the file manager. No logs exit since the SSD has been reformatted as storage.

    If I use the SSD for the main drive I get the "pvr manager" problem, with a hard drive as now, all works as it has for many years.

    Although the same problem has been widely reported since 2015 in numerous systems nobody seems to know who's issue it is!!!

    Quote from chewitt

    Nightly builds are here: https://test.libreelec.tv and the images are quite stable to use (whatever you're using at the moment isn't working either, so we're unlikely to make anything worse). I'm asking for logs for two reasons: a) we don't know what hardware you have and pastekodi content will reveal that, b) if there are problems where things don't start, there are normally useful contents in debug logs that hint to the problem. The info you've shared so far isn't enough to diagnose the issue.

    Thanks for the link. In fact having changed back to a hard drive, my media system works perfectly as before so I am reluctant to interfere with it. As I said, it is an enigma why a bug reported over around eight years by so many people remains unresolved.

    Edited once, last by postproducer: Merged a post created by postproducer into this post. (January 23, 2024 at 10:33 PM).

    Quote from postproducer

    Just me and the many folk who have reported this problem since 2015!

    Where are all of these people? You are trying to describe this as a software problem that affects everyone, yet I am telling you I use the same software and it works fine here. Not only that, I used to use MythTV with LE, and guess what it also worked fine.

    In any case, what your doing isn't going to solve your problem. If you want meaningful feedback then you have to provide debug logs, if you don't want to do that then I really don't see how your going to get any help.

    Kodi start already depends on service.tvheadend.service but if you modify the service.tvheadend43.service with the "ExecStartPost" command as above (and then "systemctl daemon-reload" to set the change) it should add a 10 second delay between Tvheadend starting and Kodi starting. In theory Kodi should be tolerant of the PVR back end being offline, but perhaps there's a racy condition that allows a bug to cause problems or perhaps Tvheadend is up but not fully running and responds badly. Adding the sleep value should force enough time for Tvheadend to come up and settle before Kodi starts and PVRManager tries to connect.

    You’ve continued to use generic responses when describing what hardware/tuners and configuration you are using. You neither name the brand of PC nor the tuners you use so I’ll hazard a guess that it’s SSD v hard drive performance on boot. A generic reference point would be something like this https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/394558-ssd-vs-hdd-boot-time-comparison#

    So you clearly need adjust your network wait time as suggested above or generically as explained here waiting for all services to come online that depend on your PVR manager.

    systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

    Maybe do a little more research outside of LE to explain things clearer to yourself with closer emphasis on the SystemD services.

    Ref frakkin64: "Where are all these people?" Try a web search on PVR manager is starting up 0%. Also nowhere do I suggest that this problem affects everyone so do not see what your "it works fine" for you had got to do has got to do with it.

    Ref Petediscrete: brand name of PC? It does not have one, I assemble my own computers as I said in post 3. The media centre dates from 2017, uses an Asus motherboard with an Intel core i3-7100 cpu. The tuner cards are DVB Sky T9580 and the configuration may well be unique. Nevertheless it has been running Tvheadend and libreelec until the main Western digital hard drive died without any problems.

    Ref chewitt: Many thanks for the code. As I said in post 1, this, as you say, looks like a race condition. Currently I have libreelec back on a hard drive so the manager start up problem is not occurring. Noted that on restarting the computer, the event log shows "Kodi successfully started", followed by " Server does not repond properly TVheadend HTST Client (127.0.0.1)" six seconds later followed by connection established after a further 15 seconds. This looks like to same mechanism as the problem. I assume the with the much faster SSD, the timing difference is too much for the software to handle so your delay looks promising? I may have to come back to on implementing the code,

    Quote from postproducer

    Try a web search on PVR manager is starting up 0%.

    You do understand how search engines work, right? Wow.

    By the way, I don't think you read any of the search results, which I did. The problems varied, ACL problems, missing user problems, connectivity problems. But what really annoys me about you is you exaggerate the problem for attention, then provide no logs, and act like you don't have the time to investigate it. Why are you here then? Is it just to air your grievances for software you did pay for, support you don't pay for? I feel bad for folks like chewitt who try to help users like you. Honestly it's all a bit insane and at this point I just ended up blocking you and not going to waste another second on you or this thread. I hope you figure out your problem, good luck.

    Edited once, last by frakkin64 (January 24, 2024 at 11:01 PM).

    It eventually came down to a hardware issue, ssd v hdd performance and not an LE issue as was originally intimated. No idea what level of expertise the OP possesses but I’ve no doubt examining the logs himself or even posting them would have quickly narrowed down the problem. The devil is in the detail and the LE message PVR Manager starting in the UI and nothing else always pointed to a server/client connection issue.

    I think it’s safe to say, issue resolved as far as LE is concerned.