[mythtv-users] mythbackend crashes / watchdog

[Andrew Dodd]

Quoting mythgnomer at rowelab.com:

> If the tire on your car blows out, why bother changing it until you've
> reported it to firestone?
An excellent analogy.

In a "daily use" Myth installation, if the backend crashes only once every three
weeks of heavy usage, we're not exactly going to run it in GDB all the time just
to catch that ONE crash.

If the backend is crashing often, then yes, it's a good idea to run it inside
GDB...  But if it's crashing extremely rarely, then the scripts being talked
about here are insurance.  The ivtv "Input/output error" problem I created a
script to work around has only affected me twice in two months - While it would
be nice to fix the problem, it's so rare and intermittent (read: not
reproducable) that the chances of it being fixed by anything other than pure
luck are slim.  So I have the script running to make sure I don't lose three
shows worth of recordings if ivtv barfs again.  Which may never happen again,
but better safe than sorry.

As far as the recording being broken into multiple parts - I'd rather have my
recording broken into multiple parts if the backend crashes than not have the
end of a show (and any subsequent shows) recorded at all.

In an ideal world, the backend would never crash, and this discussion would be
moot.  But this is the real world - People are actually trying to USE MythTV.