[mythtv-users] Mythfilldatabase

[Bill Meek]

On 5/13/20 1:25 PM, Matthew Daubenspeck wrote:
> Just recently updated to mythtv 31.0 on Arch Linux. I moved the
> SchedulesDirect setup to tv_grab_zz_sdjson and am having a very strange
> thing happen which I can't figure out.
> 
> If I run mythfilldatabase manually at the commandline, everything works
> perfectly. If I add it to a cron job, it fails with the following error:
> 
> tv_grab_zz_sdjson  --capabilities failed or we timed out waiting. You
> may need to upgrade your xmltv grabber
> 
> Grabbing XMLTV data using tv_grab_zz_sdjson is not supported. You may
> need to upgrade to the latest version of XMLTV.
> 
> Again, it works perfectly, as long as it isn't run from cron and I can't
> figure out why. Any suggestions?
> 

This happens more often than expected. There's a warning and instructions
that suggest running the setup as the user that runs mythfilldatabase.

That user is usually 'mythtv' and the backend is run as that user (started
by root though.)

I don't speak Arch. But if the user running the backend and the user running
the grabber from the command line are different, things likely fail IF when
configured, the files (e.g. ~mythtv/.mythtv/SOURCENAME/.xmltv and ~mythtv/.xmltv/
SchedulesDirect.DB) aren't in the expected place. Typically, that's relative
to the HOME directory of the user running a mythProgramName.

Of course, there's always MYTHCONFDIR. https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MYTHCONFDIR
Be sure to see if the backend and/or user programs use that because it overrides
the value of HOME.

If the above isn't in play, then run the configuration program and
mythfilldatabase with this:

  sudo --set-home --login --user=mythtv ...

As to cron, see if the 6th field is the user that did the setup,
again, most likely user mythtv. If it's user root, then configuration
files aren't available. Sounds like yours are under your own user's
directory. Note that the user running related programs must have r/w
access to the involved files and rwx on .xmltv.

-- 

Bill