Channels Install Setup Device, Virtual Machine and/or Docker

Channels DVR Server
#1

Channels so far has been wonderful, so I am moving from my testing phase of using Channels DVR and moving to a more permanent location. I have been testing on a raspberry pi 4, but I wish to move Channels DVR to my NAS server since it has substantially more space.

I could install directly on the CentOS 8 NAS server, but since I am not the most tech savvy of people and all I do is a bit of maintenance, I rather not necessarily install it directly in case something breaks. Also, channels install seems to require sudo privileges which concerns me a little bit (but this is just my ignorance).

I wonder if anyone here has Channels DVR installed and uses some form of Virtual Machine like VMware workstation or a vm under Virt manager (which uses qemu / kvm to virtualize)? Would there be any reason to not use a virtual machine?

The alternative is Docker, but I do not have much experience using Docker, and @tmm1 (A Channels Developer) mentioned Docker was not recommended in an earlier post. Though that was some years ago. Is that still the case?

What does the community think? Would going on the vm root be fine, or I should use linux installer or docker?

#2

Do you plan to use transcoding for remote access? That can be tricky (to use the GPU) via VM or docker.

Sudo is only used during the initial install, and the DVR server will run as your regular user on linux.

Lots of people are running the DVR in VMs and in docker containers successfully today, so it is really just a matter of preference.

#3

Thanks for the quick reply.

To answer your question, no, I was not planning on remote nonlocal access. That might change, but for now, I have alternative thoughts for access to recordings for later use.

I assume then the transcoding for remote access would be the only reason to not use a VM / docker? It is good to hear many use VMs to use Channels.

#4

I've been using Channels inside a systemd-nspawn container for some time, and haven't had any problems. Resource usage is quite low, and I'm using an external drive to house recordings, while imported movies are hosted on a network share.

While I manually installed Channels instead of using the provided install scripts, I don't think anyone with any terminal experience will have much issue managing the installation, or customizing it to your own needs.