Here’s a screencap of the errors with chown.
But when I put sudo in front of the chown, it completed without any errors. Maybe that worked?
@tmm1 So I confirmed that sudo chown did work, I can now enable my old DVR with the new USB Boot. Thanks!
How best should I consolidate these two DVR folders into one?
- Can I move the few new recordings from the DVR_New folder into the previous DVR folder (which I just ran sudo chown on, respecting TV / Movie folder structure)? I tried cutting / pasting from DVR_New —> DVR and it gave a Permission Denied error.
- Or should I move the old recordings into the Imported folder of the DVR_New?
Thanks again.
Sounds like it worked with sudo if there were no errors shown.
I would move the files from the new folder to the old one. Do it with sudo, then run that chown again at the end.
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Will do - thank you again for your help!
I had everything working on my EXT4 formatted USB drive for about a day before I noticed that recordings were failing with a permissions error (read-only file system).
The DVR Support web page gave the following error under Disk Permissions:
Could not write to recording directories: /media/EXT2TB/DVR, /media/EXT2TB/DVR/TV, /media/EXT2TB/DVR/Movies.
I believe the DVR Server updated at least one time between it working and not working, I don't know if that contributed to the read-only errors coming back.
I re-ran sudo chown -R 501:501 /media/pi/EXT2TB/DVR (several times for good measure) and that seems to have fixed things for now: I no longer get the Disk Permissions error on the Support page.
I submitted this log c20e9bff-a229-42df-89f6-4644d1d6c21a via email as well.
Thank you.
PS. In the near future I plan to get a new 4TB USB3.0 drive and format it to ExFAT so I no longer have to deal with EXT4 and the permissions errors it seems to be causing.
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Edit - never mind - got it handled. Philo is good on the Pi.
Did you have any issues getting Philo to work? I'm using the boot image and all other sources (Spectrum, HD Homerun, Locast) work fine, Philo refuses to authenticate any channels. Philo works great through the app, my Synology NAS (using Channels) and web login, just not on the Pi4.
Just loaded this bad boy up last night, very impressed!! I am using a SD card though, should I be using a USB?
Again, so awesome
Does this use Plex for anything?
Pardon the stupid questions. Do you NEED a USB3 drive? I have smaller USB3 sticks, but not a bigger drive. I have a 2 TB drive, but not USB3. Want to test it before I spend more money on the setup. Also, how would this setup compare to using a earlier generation Shield as the server?
Any USB drive is fine. You can test it out with a stick or USB2.
Thanks,
How would this setup compare to using an earlier generation Shield as the server?
Not sure but it should be comparable
Should the Raspberry PI 4 be dedicated as only a DVR? Or can I run a VPN (Client) on it also?
If you want to use the image that this thread pertains to, the Pi is a dedicated device just for Channels. However, you can also go the route of a regular Linux install on the Pi and then install Channels. It’s not nearly as “plug and play” as this image, but would allow the Pi to do other things as well.
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I just want to confirm that the DVR will run fine on a dedicated RPi4 with 2GB? I plan to use a 2TB USB3 HDD so will get the 3.5A power supply rather than a powered USB hub to minimize clutter.
And if 2GB is sufficient - will this setup allow simultaneous recording of 6 channels, like 4 channels over the air and 2 channels TVE? Everything will be hard wired ethernet for the RPi4, HDHomerun, and set top boxes, only using Wifi for occasional tablet watching.
Can anyone confirm this setup will perform Ok ?
2GB should be fine for RAM. I run several services on the machine I use for Channels, including some bloated Java servers, and have maybe only one or twice ever used more than 2GB RAM. On a dedicated machine, 2GB ought to be more than adequate.
I have a dedicated 2 GB RPi4 for my channels server. It works perfectly. I have never seen free RAM usage go under 80%. Channels DVR uses very little RAM.
I ran a test recording 2 OTA channels, 4 TV Everywhere channels, and 3 channels on my HDHomerun Prime. Free RAM available was 87% and load average for the CPU was around 1.8.
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I'm on 4GB, but i concur - channels is not a RAM hog at all, so 2GB should be fine.
For a hard drive - it's all about budget. You could easily go SSD, if your space needs are minimal. Channels doesn't continually buffer, so no worries about wear (if those are even relevant these days)
If you're going HDD, USB3 is a must. I would choose a self-powered one, too (i.e. not off of the USB port, its own wall wort).
The one open question for me (and other techies): UASP. Maybe @tmm1 can offer some guidance here with the dedicated image, but this protocol is meant to help I/O tremendously. Annoyingly, it's also very hard to nail down which enclosures have it, aside from BYO setups. If this is over your head, don't google it, it will make your head hurt.
I am using a 1TB WD easystore external hard drive.