This file describes various things about the VDR contained in this package. Installation layout ------------------- As usual, "rpm -ql vdr" should give a fairly good picture where things are installed. The goal in this package is to make file locations be natural to people who are used to packaged software, which causes quite a bit of deviation from the upstream layout as of 1.4.x. Also, as usual, "rpm -qc vdr" lists configuration files. Configuration ------------- First, refer to "man 5 vdr" for general upstream VDR configuration stuff. Then, have a look at /etc/sysconfig/vdr. The file is fairly well documented, and among other things, is where one should specify command line options to VDR itself. The standard "vdr" init script invokes /usr/sbin/runvdr, which reads /etc/sysconfig/vdr. The init script and the runner load per-plugin configuration files from the /etc/sysconfig/vdr-plugins.d directory for each found plugin. Those files are sourced shell (bash) scripts, named like <pluginname>.conf (so eg. for plugin libvdr-foo.*, /etc/sysconfig/vdr-plugins.d/foo.conf is loaded). Configure command line options for each plugin in their respective config snippets, in the PLUGIN_OPTIONS environment variable. The vdr user should have access to the majority of needed hardware devices out of the package, either directly or through the video group. However some setups may need additional configuration in order to allow VDR or some plugins to use for example certain remote controllers or optical drives. See the /etc/udev/rules.d/*-vdr.rules and /etc/security/console.perms.d/*-vdr.perms files for some usual suspects and examples. Additional plugins ------------------ While there's a bunch of pre-packaged plugins available, not everything obviously is. The plugin rpm specfiles are pretty simple and very close to each other, so it is recommended to use them as examples and roll packages of extra plugins. If you wish to compile unpackaged local plugins, first make sure that the vdr-devel package is installed. Then, edit the plugin's Makefile in the dir you extracted it into, changing VDRDIR to /usr/lib/vdr, or /usr/lib64/vdr if you have a 64-bit system. That's about it, the rest should be set up automatically. "make all" (or "make all VDRDIR=/usr/lib*/vdr" if you don't want to edit the Makefile) in the same dir will usually build the plugin and try to copy it into VDR's plugin directory. You'll probably need root access for the copy to succeed. If the plugin needs command line options, add them to /etc/sysconfig/vdr-plugins.d/<pluginname>.conf into PLUGIN_OPTIONS (see previous chapter). The /usr/lib*/vdr/bin directory is in vdr's $PATH by default; additional VDR specific scripts such as those needed by some plugins, or things executed from commands.conf or reccmds.conf can be dropped there instead of having to pollute the usual system $PATH with them. Shutdown and ACPI wakeup ------------------------ A shutdown script, vdr-shutdown.sh, is shipped in the /usr/lib*/vdr/bin directory and enabled in the default vdr command line built by the init script. The script writes a time some time before the next configured timer (given by VDR, see the file INSTALL) as a number of seconds to /var/lib/vdr/data/next-wakeup, and shuts down the machine. See commentary in the script for how to enable it and how to grant the required permissions to the vdr user so it can carry out these tasks. To use the ACPI alarm feature present in many recent systems, adding a script like the supplied vdr-halt.local.sh (see same directory as this file) to /sbin/halt.local (remember to make it executable by the vdr user!) will cause the system to wake up at the time set by the above vdr-shutdown.sh, allowing one to shut down the system without having to manually start it for the next timed recording. /sbin/halt.local, if it exists, is automatically executed by the system shutdown/reboot scripts at appropriate time. Organizing recordings --------------------- A simple sample script for organizing recordings into folders, vdr-moveto.sh, is shipped in the /usr/lib*/vdr/bin directory. See commentary in it for usage information.
