BETA: Channels DVR Server for Raspberry Pi 4 (USB BOOT IMAGE)

thanks, setting it up now.. I'll report back once completed

Wow you guys did a great job on this! Run flawless.. I would like a temp monitor so I could keep tabs on my fan and make sure it's keeping up, I set my fan for the quiet mode.

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I had an extra Pi & usb drive and wanted to give this a try. Your instructions worked perfectly for me first time! The Pi IP address changed and I had to update the port forwarding on my router to test out of home access, but other than that everything is perfect. Maybe once this is final, an easy way to import all my passes rather than re-creating them would be nice, but you guys make setting these up so easy, so it was a good housekeeping exercise.
Question: do I still need to do periodic apt update/upgrades on this Pi? If so, could you publish "maintenance" instructions?
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE this DVR - Keep up the GREAT WORK!! Thanks!

You can import your old passes and data using the restore option. See https://getchannels.com/docs/articles/how-to/migrate-dvr-to-new-computer/

apt upgrades are not required. OS updates for security and stability are planned in a semi-automatic one-click-reboot fashion similar to how the dvr itself updates.

Pretty cool! I am considering trying this out since I am not using my Pi4 for anything yet.

I have 2 questions: If I want to migrate, will I have to install the DVR, then unplug it, attach to my PC, move the data and recordings over, then reattach to the Pi?

Can I add my other TV Shows and Movies from my NAS over the network?

Yes.

You can by enabling ssh and using sftp right now. I would like to add network sharing in the future to make this easier.

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I will have a Pi4 delivered on Friday. I am currently running the server from a Windows laptop and a 10TB hard drive. I need that hard drive for other things, so I am planning to purchase another external hd for a dedicated device. Is my understanding listed below correct?

  • Follow steps on this thread to setup and configure the Pi4 and new external hard drive
  • I can add my home media TV shows and movies to the hard drive once it has been setup so I can stream them as well, correct?
  • When I want to add new TV shows/movies to the hd, I can use ssh and sftp to drop them onto the hd, without having to shut down and attach it to my Windows PC, correct?
  • Any issues using a 6TB hd? Looks like there are some good sales on them right now.

Currently, I am running my DVR Server on a dedicated Windows 10 machine with an i5-4570R CPU and 16 Gigs of RAM. It's a small Gigabyte Brick sitting headless next to the router. I only stream locally. Would I achieve better performance if I was to go with RPi4 instead? All other things being equal? TIA!

Ok, thanks. I think I will wait until I can add the other TV Shows/Movies via the web interface. I can do SSH but rather not.

Glad I read the forums today, I almost missed this. Excited to try this out, just need to order the pi 4. Thanks for the great work!

Chief

Same boat as @timstephens24 - black screen after booting. Screenshot below.

I have a western digital mybook usb3 drive so no funky enclosures.

I tried with a WD MyBook and Seagate and funky enclosures :stuck_out_tongue:

:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: yeah was more thinking a quirk shouldn't be involved - didn't mean to be rude lol

just a note - last thing i see is "recovery.elf not found" before it goes black.

I picked up a WD Elements 12TB during the sale. Seeing the same thing as @timstephens24 where it gets past the bootloader but then is stuck w/ a black screen.

@hancox The bootloader problem you're seeing looks to be something different. I found one reference that says:

The error code and type indicates a USB stall occurred whilst trying to do a bulk transfer. I suspect the drive enumerates but then responds to USB MSD SCSI commands with an explicit stall rather than responding with not-ready with TEST_UNIT_READY.

Oh I see so the bootloader shows that error but then does eventually boot, resulting in the same black screen problem.

Well I can reproduce it now so I'll see if I can figure out what's going on.

yeah, it's admittedly not crashing the pi hard like @timstephens24 had - my pi is still responding to ping from my pc, so this is a little different.

One thing I'm worried may be causing it is that i re-purposed my old ext4 drive (after wiping with utilities and seeing it as single exfat partition prior to applying the image). Any chance i should try formatting as something else more strongly, prior to applying image?

I can ping mine too. I guess that means it is getting further in boot than I thought.

i have an ooooooold external USB2 hard drive which i imaged, and same pi boots up now. Clearly something with these drives.

One thing i did notice when this drive was in use as ext4 - it extremely annoyingly would not use uasp. I hate how disk manufacturers make this a state secret.

Thought about returning it, and now might, depending on what you find.

Oh I didn’t take it as rude, no worries from me.

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The more i read about USB3 / quirks / uasp / failures on the RPI4, the more my head hurts.

I originally shied away from the hard drive rec in the thread here, as it was a little pricier (as it's a portable drive), with no wall wort, which caused issues on earlier pi's.
Knowing what i know now - if that drive 1) works and 2) uses uasp successfully, I might just buy it and forget about it. Is that drive known working?