[mythtv-users] Problems with backend setup

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sat, 4 Aug 2018 17:31:13 -0500, you wrote:

>On 08/04/2018 03:46 PM, Douglas Peale wrote:
>> 
>> Up pops an error message "Unable to create file "/var/lib/mythtv/recordings//.test" - directory is not writable?
>
>As long as the mythtv user or group can write the the Storage Directory,
>you're golden. Typically, it's owner and group are mythtv:mythtv.
>
>Could by that you're running mythtv-setup as yourself, not user mythtv.
>You can safely ignore the message if mythtv can write to the directory
>(and needn't make it world writable.)

You can not ignore that message - it means that MythTV is unable to
write to that directory, or is able to write to it but unable to read
from it.  You do have to watch for old .test files.  If MythTV was
able to create a .test file, but was unable to delete it, there is
still a problem.  And having an existing .test file makes it unable to
create a new .test file.  So when you get this problem, and think you
have fixed the permissions on the storage directory and the
directories above it, check if there is a .test file present and
manually delete it before running mythtv-setup or mythbackend again to
see if you really fixed it.