Dev With Imagination

A few months ago I was working on a project which involved building an application estate on the AWS platform, with all the infrastructure scripted using CloudFormation. Part of this included a Jenkins server for building and deploying the applications.

This Jenkins instance was an EC2 server, and part of the install process was using the cloud-init definitions to include plugins if they were not already installed, as well as adding the Jenkins jobs themselves.

One thing I was trying to get working, and failed on, was using the Jenkins CLI to configure the credentials plugin. Each attempt to run a command would have the same result, a return code of “255” with no errors displayed on the client.

MacBook:temp dhutchison$ java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -s http://procent.local:8080 -auth jenkinsuser:supersecurepassword list-credentials system::system::jenkins
MacBook:temp dhutchison$ echo $?
255

I revisited this the other day, and encountered the same issue when using a fresh Jenkins docker image and configuring it through the quick start wizard. After a bit of investigation, the solution to this was frustratingly simple.

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In part 2 of this series we tried, and failed, with the direct approach of passing the USB tuner straight through to the Plex Docker container and seeing if it would work anyway.

In this part, we will build a set up which does allow Plex to use the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner.

Nothing in this approach is new, but this does bring together the work of many projects.

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Part one of this series lay the groundwork of what I set out to achieve, to get Plex to use the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner.

The first avenue of investigation with an unsupported setup has to be: does it just work?

In order to answer this question, we needed to pass through the USB device through to Plex running in the Docker container.

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I have been using Plex as the software powering my media server for around two years now, and recently opted to pay for a lifetime Plex Pass. It does get used daily, and some of the features of the paid version looked particularly useful, such as the offline mobile media sync and the (beta) Live TV & DVR feature.

Since I dropped my subscription to satellite television 6 months or so ago, I have been without the ability to record anything which shows on TV, and need to rely on catch up services. In reality, this is not much of a problem as I do not watch a lot of television, but there are a couple of programs I watch which I would like to keep.

My home antenna does have a cable terminating in to the same room as my server sits and, while not on the supported hardware list, I do have a Microsoft Official Xbox One Digital TV Tuner lying about unused.

The setup I am starting with is:

• HP Gen8 MicroServer running Centos 7
• Plex running as a Docker container
• Microsoft Official Xbox One Digital TV Tuner

It was worth spending a bit of time trying to get this tuner device working, as I already had it, and it is a cheap USB tuner compared to the devices which are officially supported (~£8, vs the cheapest of the supported devices being the Hauppauge Freeview HD TV for Xbox One at ~£40). Also, the host OS I use rules out the Hauppauge Freeview HD TV for Xbox One anyway, as the only operating system listed for Linux support is Ubuntu 16.4.

This is the introduction to a series of posts documenting the journey to getting Plex DVR working with this unsupported device. The approach has been rife with failures, but has been a learning experience and, while a bit less clean than I would like, it works.

This is a quick post mostly so I remember how to solve this problem if I come across it again, as I have seen it a few times now when running a bundle update on my local jekyll install.

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