Here is one pattern for people to try if interested. You may find some false positives though, where an email is sent but channels recovered gracefully after a retry
tail -F "$LOGFILE" |
grep --line-buffered "no such file or directory" |
@Fofer So in olive tin, you could try experimenting with the term "no such file or directory" as a search term
I haven't tried the cool email feature in olive tin yet.
Ah, thanks for that. Any idea what the error log would say when channels-dvr can't "find devices on local networks?" I'll keep an eye out on my system, certainly the next time this happens.
I don’t recall parsing the logs and seeing that specific term. The best I could do at the time that I set my email notification script up was to indirectly infer that the drive became unmounted or unavailable by the no such file or directory term.
The drawback is that there can be falls positives if for instance you move some of your personal media around or even rename you personal local media that you had previously imported into channels.
Let’s keep refining these search terms and scripts.
Now that I know that these pop ups are occurring during point updates of macOS I’ll try and take another look at the logs next time I get the pop ups and look for more specific error patterns for my custom scripts and for olivetin.
I’m in the middle of some code development at the moment. Once that is stable I’ll do another MacOs point release and I’m pretty sure I’ll see the pops again
Shouldn't CDVR report its status via some endpoint like /health ? This would make monitoring easy.
I posted a question to the forum some time ago asking if there was any benefit to moving from MacOS 14 to 15 on my M1 Mac mini DVR server. Most of the responses were "scolds" for not mindlessly upgrading with zero reasoning put forth. It appears there IS a benefit to not using MacOS 15 for your server OS at this point.
Nope, apparently not a sym link on MacOS.
Try
ls -l ~Library/Application\ Support/ChannelsDVR
does it show as a link
lrwxrwxrwx+ 1 root root 15 Aug 23 11:19 latest -> 2025.08.21.1637
^
l means link, d would be directory
Also try stat ~Library/Application\ Support/ChannelsDVR/latest
stat /volume1/docker/channels-dvr-8089/latest
File: /volume1/docker/channels-dvr-8089/latest -> 2025.08.28.2100
Size: 15 Blocks: 0 IO Block: 4096 symbolic link
Device: f901h/63745d Inode: 104628268 Links: 1
Access: (0777/lrwxrwxrwx) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2025-08-29 21:04:21.635446359 -0700
Modify: 2025-08-28 20:06:07.790632961 -0700
Change: 2025-08-28 20:06:07.790632961 -0700
Birth: -
Sounds like the dot releases may also affect the network privacy settings
Nope, on MacOS it's a directory
ls -l ~/Library/Application\ Support/ChannelsDVR
total 16
drwxr-xr-x@ 23 doug staff 736 Aug 31 07:32 data
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 doug staff 2840 Dec 16 2024 install.sh
drwxr-xr-x@ 9 doug staff 288 Aug 24 13:56 latest
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 doug staff 774 Dec 16 2024 uninstall.sh
Well, here's some good news. I've updated quite a few pre-releases of CDVR server since I started this thread, and also a few point releases of macOS Sequoia on this Mac mini, and I have NOT encountered these two Privacy & Security pop-ups again. There were pretty frequent a few months back, very noticeable, and at least twice, it proved to be a literal showstopper. And now, I'm not seeing them at all, despite doing manual updates regularly and sometimes remotely, just as before.
I even upgraded my Mac mini to macOS 26 Tahoe, then to 26.0.1, and the Channels DVR server is still launching automatically without any additional or unexpected pop-ups after restarts or reboots. So I think that was just an unfortunate bug with some earlier versions of Sequoia, an aberration perhaps? Fingers crossed that it's a thing of the past!
Felt like the tables had turned for awhile:
I still havent forgot about this issue. Im still holding off on upgrading to MACOS 26 , but will definitely report back my results as well once I do. Hopefully these pop ups from updates have been taken care of!
Thanks for the update - it’s encouraging.
@Fofer Well today I finally saw something very similar what you were seeing months ago. I updated to the latest beta prerelease (2025.12.12.0245) - without updating MACOS. Im still on Sequoia 15.6.
I only saw the "channels-dvr" would like to access files on a removable
volume prompt. I did not see the other local network access prompt that you observed.
I was prompted by MACOS to authenticate and enable a second channels-dvd radio button located in
MAC settings ->Privacy and Security -> App Management
Now heres another data point. I was upgrading at home, using a networked iPAD browser. On the iPAD I observed Channels think it was a new install. I got the welcome splash screen on the web browser. When I got to the actual server machine, my Mac mini , I noticed the popup and needed to authenticate. I also got a notification for a Chrome Browser helper, and "allowed" whatever that was. Ive never seen that before either.
Any ideas @Maddox @Eric ? How do I cleanly know which channels DVR instance in the Privacy submenu to get rid of - or would you recommend keeping both.
I also have multiple channels DVR entries in security settings many of which I cannot delete and appear to be rogue old entries. Has anyone else found a way to delete these manually as mine don’t appear in the finder when I click on them…
I'm seeing this on Tahoe 26.2 for local network access.
I have two channels-dvr listed also.
I just setup a mac mini and installed CDVR.
I got this notification popup when I first installed it and then again each of the two times I updated prerelease versions.
This will keep CDVR from running when it does an automatic stable release update and I'm not logged in to see the popup.
I'm wondering if installing CDVR as a system service would avoid these notification popups?
I just reinstalled CDVR as a system service and haven't seen the permission popup after doing a prerelease update. Will post back if I do. I was getting them when it was running as a user agent.
FYI in case you didnt see this post earlier in this thread:
I just updated to MACOS 15.7.3 this morning. I run channels as a LaunchAgent. So far I have not seen the pop up, including after a reboot. I have seen them with earlier point updates. I have not made the leap to MACOS26 yet, as I am waiting for it to completely stabilize - Im in no rush.
My 2 cents worth, perhaps mitigate the issue by disabling auto software updates on your MAC Mini, and always do them when you are nearby? Thats what I do.
Keep us posted
Thanks, I did read that post.
When I had it running as a user LaunchAgent, I was getting the permission popup every time I did a prerelease update to CDVR. Haven't done a macOS update since I installed CDVR.
That's how I have it set. No auto-downloading or auto-updates. I prefer manual control.
Oh very interesting..
This is the other security popup Ive seen only ONCE, after one particular CDVR prerelease (2025.12.12.0245) about a month ago, which resulted in similar duplicate entries in my app management settings. I dont have the duplicate entries in the local network that you have run into..
Ive done a bunch of prerelease updates since then, and have not seen that particular security popup after DVR prerelease updates...
I'm not a developer, but this makes sense.
Appears when you install Channels DVR Server as a System Daemon, it doesn't require permission for Local Network access.
macOS automatically allows local network access by:
- Any daemon started by
launchd- Any program running as root
- Command-line tools run from Terminal or over SSH, including any child processes they spawn
Now that I have a MAC I can confirm that.
chDVRuser@chDVRusers-Mac-mini ChannelsDVR8089 % ls -FOPahl
total 40
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 chDVRuser staff - 320B Jan 13 17:31 ./
drwx------+ 41 chDVRuser staff - 1.3K Jan 12 19:56 ../
-rw-r--r--@ 1 chDVRuser staff hidden 8.0K Jan 13 17:58 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x@ 8 chDVRuser staff - 256B Jan 10 19:49 2025.10.30.0047/
drwxr-xr-x@ 9 chDVRuser staff - 288B Jan 10 20:19 2026.01.11.0154/
drwxr-xr-x@ 9 chDVRuser staff - 288B Jan 13 16:33 2026.01.13.2217/
drwxr-xr-x@ 13 chDVRuser staff - 416B Jan 12 20:09 data/
-rwx------@ 1 chDVRuser staff - 2.9K Jan 12 19:32 install8089.sh*
drwxr-xr-x@ 9 chDVRuser staff - 288B Jan 13 17:31 latest/
-rwx------@ 1 chDVRuser staff - 843B Jan 12 15:56 uninstall8089.sh*
Appears when it downloads an update, it downloads to the YYYY.MM.DD.HHMM directory and then renames it to latest before restarting CDVR in latest?
Not sure exactly how it works on Apple. How does the version you were running as latest become YYYY.MM.DD.HHMM after an update?
I'm still learning macOS, but latest does appear to be a directory, and not a symlink.
I still haven't dove into what an alias in macOS is yet.
Definitely a learning curve going from Synology/Windows to macOS 