Reorder VDR channels.conf

[AndreyPavlenko]

This is a new feature that allows to reorder VDR channels list, before sending it to XBMC, with an external script or program. The feature is only enabled if the configuration parameter ReorderCmd is set, otherwise it should not impact on the currently implemented functionality.

I've tested it with this https://github.com/AndreyPavlenko/chorder script and below configuration:

ReorderCmd = /opt/chorder/chorder -X /opt/chorder/examples/channels.conf.exclude -F /opt/chorder/examples/channels.conf.fields -t /opt/chorder/examples/channels.conf.template

[pipelka]

I love geeky features ;-)

Yeah. This looks quite promising and opens a universe of opportunities. Before merging I want to test this for any possible side-effects (didn't see anything harmful, but who knows).

Maybe more detailed configuration instructions (maybe with a link to your repo) should go into the configuration / readme file.

Give my a couple of days to test and play around with it.

Thanks, Alex

[AndreyPavlenko]

Thanks Alexander. I'll also proceed testing this and let you know if find something.

[AndreyPavlenko]

Just discovered for myself... :) This feature allows having duplicate channels in different groups, which is not possible with VDR.

[n37]

I wonder if this could be done on the client side so that different clients connecting to the same server could be served different channel lists.

[pipelka]

How about adding the IP address of the client to an environment variable (e.g IP). The server-script could check $IP.

[AndreyPavlenko]

I thought about adding IP as script argument, but this solution, with env variable, seems much better.

[n37]

How about a new config file similar to allowed_hosts.conf, e.g. channel_reorder.conf, which contains the ip-script associations? Something like:

127.0.0.1 group_channels1.sh 192.168.0.0/16 group_channels2.sh 192.168.1.15 group_channels3.sh ...

Or even add the script name to allowed_hosts.conf and if there is no script name - no reordering.

[AndreyPavlenko]

I believe it's not difficult to implement in a shell script with single case statement. A separate config file would be redundant.

[pipelka]

Hehe,.. Andrey was faster. Yes. Thats exactly also my opinion.

[n37]

For me having different scripts for different clients seem more practical. If you want to disable reordering for some client you could either delete the association in the config file or delete the script itself (unless it is used by some other client). If you want to edit the reordering mechanism for a particular client, you just have to edit his script, instead of editing one single big script, which could potentially disrupt the viewing of other clients if you somehow mess things up.

[AndreyPavlenko]

You may have multiple scrits, but, instead of a separate config, one more script with a single case statement. Something like this:

reorder.sh:

!/bin/sh

case "$IP" in 127.0.0.1) exec reorder1.sh ;; .... esac

[n37]

This is no different from having a config file plus multiple scripts, only in this case the "config" file is a bit more complicated. Adding the script name as an optional field to allowed_hosts.conf does not even create a redundant config file. ;)

[pipelka]

We could add a "multiip" script mimicking the functionality n37 needs.

The config would be:

ReorderCmd = /path/to/scripts/multiip.sh /path/to/config/multiip.conf

With multiip.conf:

IP1 script1.sh
IP2 script2.sh
..

[n37]

Is there any development on this? Is it possible to use IP as an environment variable of the reorder script? The config options would be nice but the functionality is more important.

[niko2]

Hi, I cannot use it with xbmc. I thought my version was too old, but running "strings" on .so file confirmed me that channelfilter is compiled.... I found /var/lib/vdr/plugins/xvdr/channelcache.data so I removed it to be sure.

I deactived/reactivated/restart xbmc, nothing changes, I still have channels.conf in xbmc

perhaps it is not activated in vdr < 1.7.34 ?

I am running vdr 1.7.28, xvdr 0.9.8 and openelec 3.2.0

[AndreyPavlenko]

Have you tried to Reset PVR database in XBMC? If you've properly configured xvdr, you should find message 'Reordering xxx channels with command' in system log.

[niko2]

Yes I tried to. Nothing is logged concerning filtering (info, warn of error) Concerning xvdr configuration, I had to use a wrapper on chorder because ReorderCmd does not accept arguments (even with double quotes).Then I use : ReorderCmd = /usr/local/bin/mychorder $ cat /usr/local/bin/mychorder

!/bin/bash

/usr/local/bin/chorder -X /etc/chorder/channels.conf.exclude -t /etc/chorder/channels.conf.template

I have finally tried the main (I think) problem, but I don't have the solution : I tried to run mychorder with the same user as vdr daemon

sudo -u vdr /usr/local/bin/mychorder /usr/local/bin/chorder: 154: cannot open /dev/stdin: Permission denied /usr/local/bin/chorder: 254: cannot create /dev/stdout: Permission denied

I am running Debian squeeze (openmediavault) adding tty group to vdr user does not work in fact, no pts is assigned until user is connected through ssh. Then all users use /dev/pts/0 (or something symbolicilly linked to), wich is owned by root Even googling, I didn't find any solution to read from stdin and write to stdout

my very last solution was to chmod 660 /dev/pts/0, 1 and 2 (which works, but...)

[niko2]

right solution is to change TTYMODE in /etc/default/devpts and reboot :)

[niko2]

no more result, even if vdr has rights to access /dev/stdin and /dev/stdout (thanks to sudo)