Can't kill a non-numeric process ID at /usr/bin/get-iplayer line 2893

[John Evans]

The title says it all really, Hi Guys, I'm having trouble with this error.
I had it before but removing get_iplayer then re-installing it fixed it but
now it's back.

I can use the command line and --get things but I cannot use --pvr
otherwise I get the above error.

I had it on line 2811 from the version that Ubuntu installed using sudo
apt-get install get-iplayer.

The line I have now is from the version I found on the get_iplayer
automator site at
https://code.google.com/p/get-iplayer-automator/source/browse/trunk/get_iplayer.pl?spec=svn557&r=557

The code in question is in the lockfile subroutine.

# If the process is still running and the lockfile is newer than
$stale_time seconds
if ( kill(0,$lines[0]) > 0 && $now < ( stat($lockfile)->mtime + $stale_time
) ) {
main::logger "ERROR: Quitting - process is already running ($lockfile)\n";
# redefine cleanup sub so that it doesn't delete $lockfile
$lockfile = '';
exit 0;
} else {
main::logger "INFO: Removing stale lockfile\n" if $opt->{verbose};
unlink ${lockfile};
}

I am ok with web programming but I don't have time to pick this code to
bits to try and figure out how this script (or perl) works as I'm working
about 16 hours a day at the minute.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will say in advance that I'm not
sure where to get the latest code from etc and I'm not even sure how to
apply patches. That being said. I'm more than willing to do anything you
ask....look. I'm already standing on my head eating breakfast cereal...and
I don't normally do that sort of thing.

Thanks in advance.
John