[mythtv-users] MythTV recovery groups?

Ross Campbell ross.campbell at gmail.com
Wed Apr 25 18:48:14 UTC 2007


On 4/24/07, M@ <msheppard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a couple years into a very unsuccessful relationship with MythTV.  I've
> reached a low-bottom tonight - the backend crashed and failed to record
> Gilmore Girls which pissed the wife off - and when I went to watch the only
> Colbert Report it recorded for some reason and had the sound not work.  I
> have solved the sound problem at least a dozen times - and tonight the F10 +
> F11 keys no longer seem to affect the volume.  Why?  For the love of christ
> WHY?

Regardless of how mysterious any system problems seem to you, each one
has a clear cause and a solution. Keep that in mind. There's no voodoo
- it's all files and code.

If you're having problems with your setup and it's already "in
production" and your wife it turing into a mythtv hater, you need a
"plan B" to fall back on until your mythtv environment earns her
trust. Try a coax cable switcher for your TV or some other simple way
to switch back to boring old normal TV.

> I am close to the edge.  I need help.  I know this system can work - and I
> have had some glorious moments of streaming live TV to random computers -
> but it's just seeming to not be worth it!

You need to decide what mythtv is worth to you. Many of us have spent
a lot of cash on our mythtv systems and related storage and continue
to happily invest time and money into mythtv.

So back to debugging your problems, if you're not comfortable
performing surgery on yourself, I highly recommend having a dev/test
server to try things out on. Once you've solved a problem in your
dev/test environment, it's much easier and safer to make changes to
your "production" environment.

Now... debug your problems.

Make a list of your problems as you see them. Keep this as a text
file. Tackle them one-by-one. Research your problems. Keep notes. Test
your solutions in a test environment. Move fixes to production. Do
this when nobody wants to watch TV so mythtv doesn't get a "bad name"
for your tinkering. When mythtv is stable, resist the urge to muck
with it and apply package updates or kernel upgrades.

Here's my advice for debugging mythtv:

launch vncserver on your mythtv system at boot time on display :1
Change your mythfrontend start script to append log output of
mythfrontend to a logfile - something like
/var/log/mythtv/mythfrontend.log
using a laptop, connect to the vnc session. open 4 xterms.

In one xterm do a tail -f /var/log/mythtv/mythfrontend.log
In another xterm do a tail -f /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log
In another xterm do a tail -f /var/log/messages

Okay, now that you're logging all messages, cruise through all menus
in mythfrontend and watch the message fly by in all the windows.
Hopefully, you'll just see a lot of normal junk, but I bet you'll see
a few errors that you didn't know about.

If something looks like an error, research it.
search for "re: $ERROR_MESSAGE" to look for answers.

> I subscribe to this list, I comb the wikis and newsgroups - but I just can't
> take it anymore.  I call home and the wife says, "Myth crashed again" and I
> want to throw the phone into a lake and never use electricity again.

Do one or more of the following:

Have some process or script restart mythfrontend / mythbackend automatically.
Teach your wife enough about linux to "fix" this (a few commands)
Map a button on your remote to a script that kills and restarts mythfrontend

-Ross


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