Starting VDR

    • New

    OS: openSUSE Leap 15.6

    I downloaded and installed vdr and runvdr.extreme from Suse repository.

    Trying to start at least something I ran in Konsole:

    :~> runvdr.extreme
    Starting VDR at Fri Jul 4 12:40:23 PM EEST 2025
    /usr/bin/vdr -c /etc/vdr -l 3 -u vdr -v /var/spool/video -w 90

    ... and that's it.

    According to System Activity a process named vdr is running.

    Am I supposed to see something somewhere (like https://www.tvdr.de/osm1.jpg) ? Or, do I need to install something more to have some kind of interface to access vdr?

    Or, even better, is there a manual somewhere to get a new user started with VDR?

    • New
    Quote from J_IF

    Am I supposed to see something somewhere (like https://www.tvdr.de/osm1.jpg) ? Or, do I need to install something more to have some kind of interface to access vdr?

    You need at least an output device plugin. One the existing softhddevices is a good choice. Which one depends on your graphic card and driver: softhddevice, softhdcuvid, softhdvaapi, softhddrm, softhddrm-gles, ....

    If you have DVB devices installed (hardware) then VDR should work out of the box. But if you want to use satip, then you also need the VDR satip plugin.

    I don't know openSUSE very well. To be more precise, i don't know anything.

    • New

    Hi, and thanks for a quick reply!

    Ah, I should have mentioned - I do have DVB HW, and it's working (with Kaffeine at least) and can receive DVB-HD with it.

    That made me to expect I would see something happening at VDR start. If VDR should work out of the box, then I haven't completely misunderstood the concept of VDR. So need to start hunting some misconfiguration in my system-

    The term "softhddevice" is a bit unclear to me, need to search more info on that, however a quick search in my file system gives me:

    "/usr/lib64/gstreamer-1.0/libgstvaapi.so
    /usr/lib64/vlc/plugins/vaapi"
    .. and others, so maybe I have that requirement met?

    • New

    Have a look here

    https://github.com/ua0lnj/vdr-plugin-softhddevice

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    verderben
    beschädigen
    plündern
    behindern
    berauben
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    rauben
    zerstören [fig.] [verderben, verunstalten]
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    • New

    2025-07-04T14:25:21.853863+03:00 L61 vdr: [2971] ERROR (tools.c,521): /etc/vdr/themes: Permission denied

    Permission problem? But - /etc/vdr/ is writable for all??

    • New

    ...and trying to understand.

    If I get it even remotely right, if I download e.g. "https://github.com/ua0lnj/vdr-plu…s/v2.4.5.tar.gz" into

    a folder, extract it there, cd into that folder with Konsole and run make and then make install (hoping that all requires are met), I'll get it?

    One thing: who should I be doing that - user/root/vdr?

    For that part, I mean. Wrestling with file permissions seem to be ahead also, but that's another story.

    • New

    Zabrimus,

    Yes, because at first attempts I stumbled at several "permission denied"s and solved it in a quick and dirty way. The "-u" came from the script Suse recommends to use to start vdr, and reading "man vdr" I see it defines how vdr introduces itself. "drops all capabilities" went slightly over my head, though. Anyway, should I change it to "-u <username>"?

    BTW, starting with just "vdr" seemingly gives a similar result.

    Edited once, last by J_IF (July 4, 2025 at 2:37 PM).

    • New

    Do you have a filled channels.conf?

    MyVDR: yaVDR-Ansible (Ubuntu 20, VDR 2.4.8) - softhddevice-openglosd (ffmpeg 2.8) - epgd/epg2vdr (tvm) - skindesigner estuary4vdr (adaptiert) - 1920x1080@50 Hz | kodi 21 - xstream
    Aerocube M40 | 300W | ASRock H61M-GE | Intel G530 | Asus ENGT520 | 2 x TT-budget S2-3200 | ASRock Smart Remote (CIR) | 4 GB RAM | 120 GB SSD | 3 TB HDD

    • New

    Do you have compiled VDR by yourself or do you have used an repository containing packages with precompiled binaries? In the later case, i would expect, that also some other plugins are available and can be installed.

    To get an initial channels.conf you can consult channelpedia and download the desired channels.conf.

    Which log messages to you get directly just before starting VDR and shortly after the start? There are many hints, which could be wrong, which already works as desired.

    • New

    davie2000,

    No, I don't have a channels.conf, I figured I could search the channels with VDR setup.

    I think I can create one with e.g. w_scan2 if needed. Can absence of channels.conf prevent VDR interface from showing up?

    • New

    Zabrimus,

    I installed VDR from Suse repositories using YaST. It usually automatically installs all other packages needed by the one to be installed (along with a big load of other apps which it considers possibly needed / maybe useful / otherwise nice), so I thought I would get a working application this time, too. There were a couple of additional plugins I installed at the same go.

    About channels.conf, I can create one though not done it yet, see previous message.

    Log messages - some highlights below (a lot, sorry, not sure what all is relevant):

    "2025-07-05T10:01:09.692063+03:00 L61 konsole[15604]: message repeated 3 times: [ libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile]

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.352372+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] VDR version 2.7.4 started

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.352583+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] codeset is 'UTF-8' - known

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.380278+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] found 28 locales in /usr/share/vdr/locale

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.380424+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] no locale for language code 'alb,sqi'

    ...

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.381692+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/setup.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.381814+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/sources.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.381934+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/diseqc.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.382031+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/scr.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.382175+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/channels.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.384183+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/svdrphosts.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.384403+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/keymacros.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.384628+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/camresponses.conf

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.408751+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] registered source parameters for 'A - ATSC'

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.408917+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] registered source parameters for 'C - DVB-C'

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.409032+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] registered source parameters for 'S - DVB-S'

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.409136+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] registered source parameters for 'T - DVB-T'

    ...

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.409555+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] detected /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.409655+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] probing /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.409781+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] creating cDvbDevice

    ...

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.837791+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] DVB API version is 0x050B (VDR was built with 0x050B)

    2025-07-05T10:01:37.837916+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] frontend 0/0 provides DVB-T with QPSK,QAM16,QAM64 ("Realtek RTL2832 (DVB-T)")

    2025-07-05T10:01:38.572648+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] frontend 0/1 provides DVB-T,DVB-T2,DVB-C with QPSK,QAM16,QAM32,QAM64,QAM128,QAM256 ("Sony CXD2837ER DVB-T/T2/C demodulator")

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082143+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] found 1 DVB device

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082315+03:00 L61 vdr: [15672] frontend 0/0+1 tuner thread started (pid=15660, tid=15672, prio=high)

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082421+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] setting primary device to 1

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082514+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] device 1 has no MPEG decoder

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082603+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] assuming manual start of VDR

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082691+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] setting current skin to "lcars"

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082799+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /etc/vdr/themes/lcars-default.theme

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.082976+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] loading /var/cache/vdr/cam.data

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.083091+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] switching to channel 1 S19.2E-1-1089-12003 (RTL Television)

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.083209+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] setting watchdog timer to 90 seconds

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.083302+03:00 L61 vdr: [15673] SVDRP server handler thread started (pid=15660, tid=15673, prio=low)

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.083392+03:00 L61 vdr: [15673] SVDRP L61 opening port 6419/tcp

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.083479+03:00 L61 vdr: [15673] SVDRP L61 listening on port 6419/tcp

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.108528+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] OSD size changed to 720x480 @ 1

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.120169+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] no OSD provider available - using dummy OSD!

    2025-07-05T10:01:39.513929+03:00 L61 vdr: [15660] info: Channel not available!"

    ---

    To me it looks like VDR feels itself happy up to the line "no OSD provider available - using dummy OSD!"

    • New

    The absence of (for the time being) this "softhddevice" and "no OSD provider available - using dummy OSD!" - obviously have something to do with each other?

    • New

    > "no OSD provider available - using dummy OSD!"

    Clear indicator of missing output plugin

    nobanzai , can you explain how to install vdr-plugin-softhddevice on suse?

    • New

    MarkusE,

    Meanwhile, digging in the YaST offerings:

    vdr-plugin-xineliboutput - VDR xineliboutput plugin Xinelib-based software output device for VDR. Supports X11 and Linux framebuffer.

    Provides:libvdr-xineliboutput.so.6()(64bit)
    libxineliboutput-fbfe.so.2.3.0()(64bit)
    libxineliboutput-sxfe.so.2.3.0()(64bit)
    libxineliboutput-wlfe.so.2.3.0()(64bit)
    config(vdr-plugin-xineliboutput) = 2.3.0-lp156.1.7
    vdr-plugin-xineliboutput = 2.3.0-lp156.1.7
    vdr-plugin-xineliboutput(x86-64) = 2.3.0-lp156.1.7

    Can this be somehow related (with help from Xine?)?

    • New

    Hmmm... something.

    Once I figured out that you have to precisely tell the name of the plugin in a way that VDR understands, I get this far:

    This is progress, not the goal yet, though. I can get the channel name to change with keyboard, but that just about all.

    Seems I will have some studying to do...

    Edited once, last by J_IF (July 5, 2025 at 11:13 AM).

    • New

    You have a Satellite channels.conf, but your DVB is DVB-T or cable

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    to spoil
    verderben
    beschädigen
    plündern
    behindern
    berauben
    vereiteln
    rauben
    zerstören [fig.] [verderben, verunstalten]
    vergällen
    verhageln [fig.]

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