GetIPlayer PVR not working from cron

[C E Macfarlane]

www.macfh.co.uk/CEMH.html

>     -----Original Message-----
>     From: get_iplayer [mailto:get_iplayer-bounces at lists.infradead.org]On
>     Behalf Of Jeremy Nicoll - ml gip
>     Sent: 25 June 2015 23:03
>     To: get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org
>     Subject: RE: GetIPlayer PVR not working from cron
>
>
>     On 2015-06-23 11:05, C E Macfarlane wrote:
>
>     > I still don't understand why the GIP perl script is not
>     picking up the
>     > path
>     > from its own options file, though.
>
>     If as a user you've
>     set options I think they'll be in the user options file, and hence
>     unavailable to cron if
>     it runs under a different user.

As already stated, it runs as root in both cases, and when running as a pvr
from cron it updates the cache files in /root/.get_iplayer, so presumably
that is where it is fetching the options from as well.

In fact, the problem lies in lines 932-935 of the perl script
	$bin->{rtmpdump}	= $opt->{rtmpdump} || 'rtmpdump';
	if (! main::exists_in_path('rtmpdump') ) {
		$bin->{rtmpdump} = 'rtmpdump';
	}

As you can see, even if told via the options exactly where the program
actually is, rather than check for its existence and executability, it
checks it against the PATH in the environment, and since as already
discussed that PATH is a minimalist one in the cron environment, it doesn't
find it, and so throws the information it had about its whereabouts away,
and replacing it with the default string "rtmpdump".  Similarly for all the
other external programs.  Utterly crazy!