Tvheadend

Log file - syslog - will show you what happened. My guess is that the HDD isn't writeable to the tvheadend user, or whatever process you're running tvheadend as.#

Either have a look at syslog or post it to xbmclogs and post a link here and I'll take a look.

I've cut & pasted yesterdays session to xbmclog, which mostly consisted of me floundering around and attempting to make a couple of recordings! Hopefully you may be able to find something in the mire!
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=73286

Thanks a lot - go easy on an old timer (68) who knows enough about Linux to just about fill the back of a postage stamp!

Hey, you're sounding like my dad - he's 75 and constantly complains about his terror of the command line :-)

Right, you've got a load of problems early on that I can't fathom - why things were just "time missed". That may be a red herring, though, so let's come back to those.

More pertinently, you indeed have a permission problem: if you look around line 1705, you get this:

Oct 21 09:56:40 bedroomHTPC tvheadend[1237]: subscription: "DVR: The Cat in the Hat" subscribing on "CITV", weight: 300, adapter: "TurboSight TBS 62x0 DVBT/T2 frontend", network: "London", mux: "London: 506,000 kHz", provider: "", service: "CITV", quality: 100
Oct 21 09:56:41 bedroomHTPC tvheadend[1237]: pass: media/recordings/The Cat in the Hat.ts: Unable to create file, open failed -- Permission denied
Oct 21 09:56:41 bedroomwHTPC tvheadend[1237]: dvr: Recording error: "media/recordings/The Cat in the Hat.ts": Unable to open file

My guess is that the directory media/recordings either doesn't have the right/write permissions, or you've got the path wrong so tvheadend can't find it.

Make sure you have the full (absolute) path set in the web interface, e.g. /home/Perry/media/recordings or /media/recordings, whatever it's meant to be. The leading forward slash is important, as that tells the system to start looking at the very top of the directory tree (the root directory).

Also, do an ls -la on the directory (ls -la /<path>/<to>/media/recordings) and check that tvheadend can write to it. The permissions are described as rwxrwxrwx, which means "read, write and execute to user, group and other" - so rwxr-xr-x is "read, write and execute to user (the file owner), read and execute to group (users in the same group as the file owner) and read and execute to other (any other user)".

Good description here: http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/soest_web/soest.chmod.htm

If you've installed tvheadend normally, it will be running as user tvheadend, group video - if neither of these give it write permission to the recordings directory, it will fall back to the permissions of other. If you have this issue, you can fix it with a combination of chmod and chown/chgrp, it just depends on how sensitive you are to security - the easiest is chmod o+rwx /<path>/<to>/media/recordings, that makes your recording directory writeable to everyone. Your choice as to whether this presents a security problem; if it does, we need to do something with group ownership, I suspect.

And you have really eclectic televisual tastes :-)

Hey thanks for that - I might be some while! The programs were just convenient start times - no taste involved!!!
I'll be back when I've got something to report but it might be a couple of weeks - off to New York for a break.
cheers