[mythtv-users] Long term stability?

[Tim Fenn]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 06:44:15PM -0600, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 05:49:48PM -0600, Greg Mitchell wrote:
> > >Does anyone have a backend that runs for a week or more under reasonably
> > >heavy use?  By run, I mean with no manual intervention or cron jobs
> > >resetting things/etc.  I still have to occasionally do
> > >a /etc/init.d/mythbackend restart although I'm not quite sure why...
> > 
> > My uptime was around 81 days until I had to reboot because something 
> > went wrong with ivtv and it wasn't recording anymore.
> 
> Everyone seems to be posting uptime stats, but I don't really see them
> as relevant to the original question.  He asked whether people have been
> able to keep myth running "with no... cron jobs" and mentions that he
> has to "occasionally do a /etc/init.d/mythbackend restart".  Cron jobs
> and running restarts out of init.d only work on systems that are up
> and running, so it seems clear that he's *not* asking about hardware
> or system stability, but rather the mythbackend daemon specifically.
> If your mythbackend started when you booted the system and has been
> running continuously without having to be restarted since then, please
> say so.  If it hasn't, then your uptime is irrelevant to the question.
> 

I've never had to restart mythbackend unless I'm playing with the ivtv
drivers (ivtv-0.4.0-98.rhfc3.at, mythtv-suite-0.18.1-55.at, PVR 500).
I only reboot the machine when fedora issues a kernel update
(2.6.12-1.1381_FC3, currently - usually a 30-60 day uptime per boot).
The backend seems perfectly stable to me, but are most folks using SVN
nowadays?

> As for myself, my frontend/backend combined system currently has an uptime
> of 35 day(s), 11:45:18, with the last downtime caused by a power outage.
> However, I usually have to restart mythbackend once or twice a week after
> it decides to stop talking to the database (it continues to run, but any
> function which requires access to the database hangs and eventually times
> out, plus any recording in progress immediately stops).  These problems
> appear to be caused by programs being deleted (either manual deletion or
> the deletion of the original MPEG2 .nuv when transcoding is complete)
> while another database update is in progress, although I haven't tried
> too hard to verify this.  I suspect that's the sort of situation (and
> the type of stability) that the original poster was asking about.
> 

I had a similar problem once when I forgot to cold boot my machine
after changing ivtv firmwares.  With the PVRs, I always have trouble
if I just "shutdown -r now" when switching firmware, and its exactly
like the problem you describe.  Why it manifests itself in this way, I
have no idea...

> And if anyone knows a good way to detect automatically when this happens
> so that I can set up a cron job to notice it and restart mythbackend,
> I'd love to hear about it...
> 

Although not what it was intentionally designed for, could
mythwelcome/shutdown (currently in SVN) be used for this:

http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/changeset/7571

?

HTH,
Tim

-- 
Morals?  I eat communism and $h!t America, brother.  --Seanbaby