[mythtv-commits] Ticket #11230: mythlogserver high cpu usage

MythTV noreply at mythtv.org
Fri Apr 25 15:14:47 UTC 2014


#11230: mythlogserver high cpu usage
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 Reporter:  cleanrock@…             |          Owner:  beirdo
     Type:  Bug Report - General    |         Status:  new
 Priority:  minor                   |      Milestone:  0.27
Component:  MythTV - Mythlogserver  |        Version:  0.26
 Severity:  low                     |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                          |  Ticket locked:  0
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Comment (by mdean):

 Because mythlogserver exits after a period of inactivity and because the
 mythlogserver process is started, again, by whichever process has new log
 messages to write when there is no process already running, mythfrontend--
 and any other MythTV process, including mythpreviewgen, mythtranscode,
 mythjobqueue, mythcommflag, mythmetadatalookup, ...--can (and will,
 eventually, depending on timing) start mythlogserver.  Therefore, the fact
 that you're running mythfrontend as a different user means this is most
 likely what's causing the problem.  The problem may also be exacerbated by
 different processes being started with different logging instructions
 (sometimes direct writing, sometimes syslog, as is shown in comment:14,
 above, by barth).

 Solutions:
 1) Don't use mythlogserver
 2) Use syslog logging (for every MythTV application, every single time
 it's executed) rather than direct logging so that a different process
 (which is always run as the same user--whichever user runs your syslog
 daemon) does the actual writing
 3) Run mythfrontend as the same user as every other MythTV application on
 the host and ensure permissions are correct for the direct-logging
 destination

 And, yes, we could have code to check for problems so that mythlogserver
 fails gracefully.  All it requires is for someone to take the time to
 write such code.  You may call it a bug that MythTV's mythlogserver fails
 (spectacularly) when the system is misconfigured, but some may call
 mythlogserver's inability to detect and recover from system
 misconfiguration a missing feature (mythlogserver, itself, was never
 finished due to lack of motivation caused by mass complaints against it).
 Note, also, that there are many other misconfigurations (of mythbackend,
 mythfrontend, ...) that cause catastrophic failures and we lack code to
 handle them, too.  If I had unlimited time, I'd write code to handle all
 the possible failures, misconfigurations, ...  Since I don't, I have to
 hope that someone else who feels mythlogserver's lack of graceful recovery
 from system misconfiguration (even in light of the future of
 mythlogserver) warrants their spending their own time to write code to
 handle it more gracefully.

 As it is, the rest of the development team has taken the view that
 throwing out mythlogserver is the approach to take, so there's no use
 writing new code for it.  (And, FWIW, if I were fixing things, I would rip
 out mythlogserver's "exit on inactivity" functionality (that was included
 so users wouldn't complain about an "unnecessary" extra process taking up
 resources when there's nothing to log) and make it a normal, always-
 running daemon process so it could be started once as a specified user and
 just work.)

--
Ticket URL: <https://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/11230#comment:21>
MythTV <http://www.mythtv.org>
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