[mythtv-users] Power failure caused some odd errors...

[chris at cpr.homelinux.net]

On Sun, Jul 17, 2005 at 09:45:22AM -0700, Howard Cokl wrote:
> > We'll yesterday we got hit by a big storm here in
> > Waterloo,on (canada) and 
> > the power (as it often does) went out a bunch of
> > times.

> Sounds like you have a corrupt table in the database. 
> Try mysqlchk -r mythconverg.

And buy yourself a UPS.  They're not that expensive, and you'll keep 
your hair a bit longer.  The largest current draw is usually the CRT 
(you *never* plug a laser printer into a UPS) so if your back-end is 
headless or uses an LCD you'll probably double your off-grid running 
time.  My fileserver/MythTV-backend is attached to a APC Back-UPS 725 
ES, which gives almost an hour of running time for a 2.8GHz P4 box with 
capture card, RAID-5 drives, cable modem, LinkSys router and a 9" CRT 
(from a cash register).  If you get a UPS with USB status monitoring 
then you can get your system to do a graceful shutdown when the 
batteries are low, and some UPSs can be configured to wait for a 
certain charge level before they bring the outlets back online.

Interesting off-topic point: when Seattle was hit with the large 
earthquake a few years ago I was in Ontario.  The telephone lines were 
gridlocked, but I was able to ssh into my box to check the UPS logs and 
that alone told me everything was going to be alright.

Of course, if your cable company loses power you won't be recording 
anything, but at least your Linux filesystem and SQL tables will not 
get toasted.