[mythtv-users] Talking to more than one backend

[Brad Templeton]

On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 08:26:53PM -0800, Bruce Markey wrote:
> >Remember that when connecting to a remote database over an ssh tunnel,
> >you will not be on port 3306.   Well, not if that port is already in
> >use on your own system, which it is.
> 
> Not sure what you mean. A listener on foo:3306 is different
> than one on bar:3306. How would you connect to another web
> server over an ssh tunnel if you were using port 80 for a
> web server on your own host?


SSH tunnels work as follows.

On MY machine, there is an sql server listening on 3306.  It is
my own mythtv's mysql server.

On the far away machine, there is also an sql server on that port, it
is the mythtv mysql server for the myth box I gave my brother that
i want to configure.   However, this box does not listen on port 3306
out to the open internet, for security reasons, just locally.

I create an ssh tunnel.  This forwards a port on my machine, say 3300,
to port 3306 on the remote machine.  If I connect to port 3300 on my
local host, I am talking to the mysql server of the system I want
to administer.   Likewise to do this I must forward ports for the
remote port 80 (for mythweb) and would like to forward a port to the
backend as well, though most config doesn't generally require talking
to it.   And it wouldn't work well because mythfrontend asks the
database where the backend is and what port to talk to it on, and
that would return local addresses on the remote network, which are no
good to me.


I could create an entire vpn, but that's overkill and has other
troubles.


Changing the client entry in my.cnf (if mythfrontend listens to that)
would not be good, because all clients would suddenly be talking to
the remote server, not what I want at all.


Right now mythtv is not mature enough to give to people who are
not sophisticated computer users.   They need help administering it
from somebody else, and that's why this is a useful feature.


As noted, there is another way to do it, which is to create an X tunnel
and run mythfrontend on their machine.  However, that will alter the
cached window size unless you can be sure you have the same one, and
might have other problems if the frontend is already running.  (Haven't
tested what happens in that situation.)