Dominique Dumont schrieb:

Hello

I'm trying to setup vdr with a budget card (only, no ff card) and softdevice.

When I launch vdr and softdevice from a terminal, everything is working fine (with xv)

But I'd like to set up vdr as a daemon (i.e. launched by init.d) so recording can begin even if I'm not logged.

So far, I've managed to run vdr (from debian package) and softdevice after some crude hacks:

• I've added and 'export DISPLAY=:0.0' in /etc/init.d/vdr
• I must be logged in and perform a xhost local:

I'd like to be able to run vdr as a daemon with softdevice plugin loaded. For this I need softdevice to not try to connect to X11 until a command is sent to vdr daemon (either through the remote control or SVDRP).

This command would need to contain the display name to connect to.

Does this sound reasonnable ? (or did I miss something ?)

I think it is not impossible to do it like this, however the softdevice would have to be changed accordingly, so if you want to do this or find someone who volunteers to do this there should be no problem.

If not you could set up a second X server to be used with vdr which is started at startup of vdr and use Marko Mäkeläs suspend patch to suspend the output while your not watching. I plan to do it like this once I have my vdr only box.

Or you use vdr-xine which is probably more what you are looking for.

Martin

On Sonntag, 11. September 2005 21:30, Martin Wache wrote:

Dominique Dumont schrieb:

...

Hello

I'm trying to setup vdr with a budget card (only, no ff card) and softdevice.

When I launch vdr and softdevice from a terminal, everything is working fine (with xv)

But I'd like to set up vdr as a daemon (i.e. launched by init.d) so recording can begin even if I'm not logged.

I think it would be easier to start vdr with streamdev (server mode) as the backgound deamon, and connect later a vdr with streamdev (client mode) to your server. The screenshots on softdevice homepage with two vdrs running, were done this way (vdr with streamdev client+server on the local maschine).

...

So far, I've managed to run vdr (from debian package) and softdevice after some crude hacks:

• I've added and 'export DISPLAY=:0.0' in /etc/init.d/vdr
• I must be logged in and perform a xhost local:

I'd like to be able to run vdr as a daemon with softdevice plugin loaded. For this I need softdevice to not try to connect to X11 until a command is sent to vdr daemon (either through the remote control or SVDRP).

This command would need to contain the display name to connect to.

Does this sound reasonnable ? (or did I miss something ?)

I think it is not impossible to do it like this, however the softdevice would have to be changed accordingly, so if you want to do this or find someone who volunteers to do this there should be no problem.

I think we should reject a delayed allocation of the output device.

If not you could set up a second X server to be used with vdr which is started at startup of vdr and use Marko Mäkeläs suspend patch to suspend the output while your not watching. I plan to do it like this once I have my vdr only box.

Or you use vdr-xine which is probably more what you are looking for.

Stefan Lucke stefan@lucke.in-berlin.de writes:

I think it would be easier to start vdr with streamdev (server mode) as the backgound deamon, and connect later a vdr with streamdev (client mode) to your server. The screenshots on softdevice homepage with two vdrs running, were done this way (vdr with streamdev client+server on the local maschine).

Thanks for the tip. I'll try streamdev first.

...

I think it is not impossible to do it like this, however the softdevice would have to be changed accordingly, so if you want to do this or find someone who volunteers to do this there should be no problem.

I think we should reject a delayed allocation of the output device.

ok.

Thanks for your help.

Hello Marko

Sorry for the previous unfinished message. I've hit ^C to stop a process but forgot that my mouse was focused on gnus. :o|

Marko Mäkelä marko.makela@hut.fi writes:

...

But I'd like to set up vdr as a daemon (i.e. launched by init.d) so recording can begin even if I'm not logged.

I'm doing exactly that. There are no X11 related packages installed on the system. Instead, I'm using DirectFB output on a Matrox G450 card.

... DirectFB is a nut I've yet to crack...

If you are interested in such features, please see my VDR related patches at http://www.funet.fi/~msmakela/software/vdr/.

You have an intestering setup. My concern is that my home PC is my only machine at home. It's used for a lot of other applications besides vdr. So I'll first try streamdev plugin.

...

This command would need to contain the display name to connect to.

Can't you just set DISPLAY=:0.0 in your runvdr script?

I often run 2 sessions at the same time, one for me and one for my wife. So setting up DISPLAY anywhere in a file owned by root is a temporary hack.

It does. I guess XFree86 or X.org runs on more cards than DirectFB. I'd use DirectFB, as it allows the computer to start up faster, and you can use the virtual consoles on top of the TV picture (at least on the Matrox G450).

I'll keep that in mind, but for now, I'd rather run plain vanilla xorg so my son will still be able to play tuxracer.

Thanks for your help.

In 20050914220423.GD71839@kosh.hut.fi, Marko Mäkelä wrote:

Hi Dominique,

...

You have an intestering setup. My concern is that my home PC is my only machine at home. It's used for a lot of other applications besides vdr. So I'll first try streamdev plugin.

I see. Generally, I think usability can be improved by reducing the set of features. It's easy to use a dedicated VDR box with a small remote control unit. If you want to have a general-purpose PC in your living room, you will need a clumsy keyboard and mouse too, and you can't expect a random visitor to be able to use the system. For instance, if you control vdr with a wireless keyboard+mouse unit, you will have to map some keys to unintuitive places, such as using the function keys as the color keys.

My VDR box is connected only to my TV with no keyboard or mouse, and I use the DVB card's remote to control it when I'm watching things on it. But I don't want it playing TV all the time, because I'm only watching it for a fraction of the time it's switched on, because I also use it for long downloads, running it remotely with VNC and ssh. As the system has a budget DVB card and Matrox G450 I would normally use softdevice [1], and the significant CPU usage would be a nuisance and possibly enough to make a difference to my electricity bill. So I'd really like a suspend feature. There is the suspend-output plugin, but I don't think you can make it start up suspended, and it hasn't caught up with recent changes to VDR, at least not of last week.

[1] I can't even do that for now, because I use it for watching downloaded TV programmes too, and softplay isn't working with those ATM. So I use the xine plugin for output without running xine and just use vdr as a recording daemon with vdradmin; or would vdr function without an output device at all? To be able to browse files to play with MPlayer on my hardware I've had to write my own menuing software using DirectFB for display and input device for control.

On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 11:24:03PM +0100, Tony Houghton wrote:

My VDR box is connected only to my TV with no keyboard or mouse, and I use the DVB card's remote to control it when I'm watching things on it. But I don't want it playing TV all the time, because I'm only watching it for a fraction of the time it's switched on, because I also use it for long downloads, running it remotely with VNC and ssh. As the system has a budget DVB card and Matrox G450 I would normally use softdevice [1], and the significant CPU usage would be a nuisance and possibly enough to make a difference to my electricity bill. So I'd really like a suspend feature. There is the suspend-output plugin, but I don't think you can make it start up suspended, and it hasn't caught up with recent changes to VDR, at least not of last week.

So, essentially you have the same hardware as me. I do have a keyboard connected for quick hacking tasks, but it is normally not used.

Have you given my suspend patch a try? http://www.funet.fi/~msmakela/software/vdr/vdr-1.3.32-suspend-0.3.patch.gz is the newest version. The previous version of the patch controls the suspend flag with a command-line option. In the new patch, the flag is a setup.conf option.

I'm still using the previous patch myself, because I haven't written a relay-control plugin yet. (On my box, the monitor and speakers remain powered off when playback is suspended.)

[1] I can't even do that for now, because I use it for watching downloaded TV programmes too, and softplay isn't working with those ATM.

I haven't tried softplay, as I only have DVB recordings, not even DVDs.

So I use the xine plugin for output without running xine and just use vdr as a recording daemon with vdradmin; or would vdr function without an output device at all?

Yes, vdr does work without an output device, and even without a DVB tuner card, although it will keep complaining during live stream view in the latter case. Without an output device, you can enter commands via svdrp. When my dxr3 card died this spring, I made some recordings in this way until I migrated to a more powerful machine that could run softdevice.

Marko