[mythtv-users] Can't watch LiveTV with the Hauppauge HD-PVR

[Ian Engelhardt]

Hello Everyone:

I am writing to this newsgroup in hopes there is a kind soul out there
that can help me with my MythTV and HDPVR problem.

I am amateurish MythTV user, and have a MythTV standard definition box
in my basement which works great and I love it.  Recently I decided to
make the leap to a High-Defintion MythTV box, and purchased a new HTPC
with the Hauppage HD-PVR and have it hooked to my satellite receiver.
 I have been struggling with what I am now thinking is some sort of
permissions or hard disk setup problem with my LiveTV folder, but I am
not totally sure if thats it.  This is where I am at:

- I installed the MythBuntu flavor of MythTV, from the link on the
MythBuntu page, onto a Ubuntu Karmic installation.
- The Hauppage HD-PVR is correctly installed, the driver loads on
startup, and I can record off of the component output of my satellite
box with the CAT command, and play it back in Mplayer.
- Mythbackend launches on startup, and I can launch MythFrontend without issue.
- I currently have my channel change script set to /bin/true while I
am testing in the MythTV setup.

The problem comes with watching LiveTV in the MythFrontend.  Using the
gnome desktop, I launch MythFrontend from a terminal.  When I choose
Watch TV from the main menu, it just displays "Please Wait..." and
then quits.  This is the error that I see repeating ad nauseum in the
the terminal window:

Error: Invalid file descriptor in 'safe_read()'
2010-03-26 18:38:40.846
RingBuf(/home/iengel/Videos/LiveTVcache/1391_20100326183818.mpg)

followed by:

2010-03-26 18:38:40.871 NVP::OpenFile(): Error, couldn't read file:
/home/iengel/Videos/LiveTVcache/1391_20100326183818.mpg
2010-03-26 18:38:40.871 TV: StartPlayer(0, Watching WatchingLiveTV,
main) -- end error
2010-03-26 18:38:40.871 TV Error: LiveTV not successfully started
2010-03-26 18:38:40.873 ScreenSaverX11Private: DPMS Deactivated 1
2010-03-26 18:38:40.874 ScreenSaverX11Private: DPMS Reactivated 1

Also I believe part of this problem, when quitting the Mythfrontend,
it stalls and takes like 3 minutes to eventually quit. The program
outputs messages like these while its apparently trying to look for a
drive it can write to:

mount: can't find /dev/sdb in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
2010-03-26 18:38:41.521 Failed to mount /dev/sdb.

it then trys this with /dev/sdc, then /dev/sdd, until it eventually quits.

Under storage groups I have the path to the folder,
/home/iengel/Videos/LiveTVcache/.  I have done a chown mythtv to make
the mythtv user the owner of this folder, and chmod 777 to the folder,
but the mythtv backend still cannot write to this folder.

Being at my wits end here, has anyone with the HD-PVR fought this war
before, won and can therefore make a suggestion?

Many thanks for your time and attention here