runvdr extreme


Written by:               Udo Richter <udo_richter(a)gmx.de>
Project's homepage:       http://www.udo-richter.de/vdr/scripts.en.html#runvdr
See the file COPYING for license information.



About
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runvdr extreme is a runvdr script, just like the runvdr script included in
the VDR distribution. Its just roughly 17 times bigger.

Some of the features of runvdr extreme:

- Loads default configuration from runvdr.conf
- All configuration accessible and overrideable from command line
- All VDR options handled
- Handles runvdr.pid file, acts on signals
- Restarts VDR in case of errors
- Commands to restart VDR and reload DVB
- Configuration file re-read on VDR restart
- Avoids endless loops if VDR crashes instantly
- Resets terminal to defaults after VDR terminated
- Add wrapper commands to VDR for debugging
- Waiting for the VDR process to be killed completey,
  hard killing after timeout
- Command line help
- Can switch console terminal
- Can set locale for VDR daemon
- Optionally supports pluginsetup-plugin



Quick-start
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- Copy runvdr to /usr/local/bin/ or whereever you like
- Copy runvdr.conf.example to /etc/runvdr.conf if you want to run VDR as 
  server, or ~/.runvdr.conf if you want to run it as user.
- Edit the runvdr.conf to match your needs

The runvdr.conf is pretty much self-explaining. All runvdr.conf options are 
also available on command line, see --help.



Details
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Options take this precedence:

1. Command line options have highest precedence
2. runvdr.conf file specified by -C or --runvdr-conf
3. If no -C and no --runvdr-conf specified, use ~/.runvdr.conf
4. If no -C and no --runvdr-conf and no ~/.runvdr.conf, use /etc/runvdr.conf
5. If none of the above, runvdr built-in defaults are used.

Only one of the runvdr.conf files is loaded by default, and only one -C
option is evaluated. However, you can load the contents of another runvdr.conf
file from a runvdr.conf by using the INCLUDE directive. For example, you can
load /etc/runvdr.conf from within ~/.runvdr.conf to just override some of
the settings for the current user.

Plugins added by the AddPlugin directive in the conf file and the --plugin
and -P command line option can be removed again from the list of plugins 
by specifying "AddPlugin -name", --plugin="-name" or -P-name. 
The name part acts as a pattern to the beginning of the plugin name, all 
plugins matching "name*" will be dropped. Especially "AddPlugin -" and -P- will
drop all plugins from the list. The same mechanism works for the -D device
parameter.

To pass parameters to VDR without parsing by runvdr, use -- as paramenter.
All parameters after -- will be directly passed to VDR. For erxample, 
"runvdr -- --help" will show the command line help of VDR instead of runvdr.



Dependencies
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Unix commands, that runvdr uses:

Command       Debian packet
 pgrep         procps
 ps            procps
 kill          procps
 sleep         coreutils
 date          coreutils
 chvt          console-tools
 getopt        util-linux
 setterm       util-linux



Examples
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assuming you've set up your defaults in /etc/runvdr.conf, here are some
cool things you can do now:


Start VDR in background (for example with TERMINAL=/dev/tty8 in conf file):

  runvdr &

Stop VDR and the runvdr script:

  runvdr --terminate

Dito, but wait until VDR is killed:

  runvdr --terminate --wait

Restart the already running VDR process because it is hanging, or because
the runvdr.conf has changed:

  runvdr --restart

Dito, but also reload the DVB drivers:

  runvdr --dvb-restart

Use the new fresh compiled VDR for the first time:

  runvdr --vdr=/usr/src/vdr-1.5.0/vdr --lib=/usr/src/vdr-1.5.0/PLUGINS/lib

For debugging, start VDR with no terminal redirection:

  runvdr --terminal="" --switchterminal=""

Load all plugins and also the hello plugin:

  runvdr -P hello

Load only the hello plugin:

  runvdr -P- -P hello

Load all plugins, but not the hello-plugin:

  runvdr -P-hello

Do a dry-run of runvdr:

  runvdr --wrapper=echo
  
Do a debugging session:

  runvdr --wrapper="gdb --args"
  
Start with a completely different setup:

  runvdr --runvdr-conf="/etc/runvdr-debugging.conf"