A minimal docker container for running easyepg either on demand or permanently with built-in cronjob

This section is not for users with a GUI interface for docker on a NAS system like Synology, UnRaid or OpenMediaVault (see here for details) but for people having a dedicated host running TVheadend directly but wanting to run easyepg as docker on this host.

You will need to have docker installed on your system and the user you want to run it needs to be in the docker group.

Switch to the user you want to run the container with and issue the following command to get everything up and running

sh -c "$(curl -s -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dlueth/easyepg.minimal/master/init)"

Note: The image is a multi-arch build providing variants for amd64, arm32v7 and arm64v8 - the correct variant for your architecture should^TM be pulled automatically.

Note: If the init-script successfully detects a valid xmltv.sock it will default to "yes" and provide the correct path automatically. Otherwise it will default to "no".

Switch to the user you want to run the container with and start the admin container and enter it via

docker start easyepg.admin
docker exec -ti -u easyepg -w /easyepg easyepg.admin /bin/bash ./epg.sh

to start easyepg's setup and configure it. When your setup is finished return to the shell and issue exit to leave the container followed by docker stop easyepg.admin to stop it.

Note: If you did run the init-script as root user the container will not have an easyepg user and you will have remove the -u easyepg from the line above. I do not recommend this for security though.

Simply run the following command while logged in as the desired user

docker start easyepg.cron

There already is a crontab in the container that will run easyepg at 2:00am every night.

Note: Skip this section if you decided to go with Variant A (e.g. you are running the container on a NAS)

Simply run the following command while logged in as the desired user

crontab -e

Append the following line to the file that should have been opened

0 2 * * * docker start easyepg.run 

If you did not set a path to xmltv.sock during installation you might need the following two lines in addition.

0 4 * * * cat ~/easyepg/xml/[your file].xml | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/home/hts/.hts/tvheadend/epggrab/xmltv.sock
10 4 * * * cat ~/easyepg/xml/[your file].xml | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/home/hts/.hts/tvheadend/epggrab/xmltv.sock

Replace [your file] with the filename of your generated XML.

Save and exit the file and you are done!

To learn how to manually start the container or about available parameters (you might need for your GUI used) see the following example:

docker run \
  -d \
  -e MODE="admin" \
  -e USER_ID="1099" \
  -e GROUP_ID="1099" \
  -e TIMEZONE="Europe/Berlin" \
  -e FREQUENCY="0 2 * * *" \
  -e UPDATE="yes" \
  -e REPO="sunsettrack4" \
  -e BRANCH="master" \
  -v {EASYEPG_STORAGE}:/easyepg \
  -v {XML_STORAGE}:/easyepg/xml \
  -v {XMLTV_SOCKET}:/xmltv.sock \
  --name=easyepg \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --tmpfs /tmp \
  --tmpfs /var/log \
  qoopido/easyepg.minimal:latest

The available parameters in detail:

Frequently used volumes:

When passing volumes please replace the name including the surrounding curly brackets with existing absolute paths with correct permissions.

If you decide to remove XML_STORAGE the finished XML files can be found in the xml subdirectory of EASYEPG_STORAGE instead.

Note: XML_STORAGE can, e.g., be used to directly write finished XMLs into the directory you pass into a separately running TVheadend docker container.

 ┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
 │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
 │ │ ┌───────────── day of month (1 - 31)
 │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
 │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday;
 │ │ │ │ │                                       7 is also Sunday on some systems)
 │ │ │ │ │
 │ │ │ │ │
 * * * * *  /command/to/execute