[mythtv-users] Remote backend wackyness

[Josh White]

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>wrote:

> On 05/22/2009 01:05 PM, Josh White wrote:
>
>> Assuming you've read the previous information, you'll have some idea of
>> what I'm trying to do...but feel free to ask if more clarifacation is
>> necessary. The problem I'm experiencing concerns the two backends
>> communictating with each other.  When I finally had both systems up and
>> running, and configured in a way that I believe to be correct, the tuners in
>> my remote frontend fail to work.  They fail to work regardless of whether
>> I'm attempting to connect to them from either machine.  The remote backend
>> in this case will be unable to display live tv of any kind, but will be able
>> to display videos & recordings.  The strange thing is that after a week or
>> so, and a few reboots/mythfilldatabase runs, the tuners begin to work in the
>> remote backend. I verified yesterday that all 4 tuners were working by
>> watching 4 different channels on 4 different frontends simultaneously.  They
>> generally continue to work for a while (days, assuming I leave everything
>> running), but at some point, one of the tuners on my master backend will
>> show up as "unavailable" but 3 tuners will continue to work (I'm not sure
>> how long it takes for this behavior to manifest itself).  I'll reboot the
>> master & the remote backends, and then I'll be in the situation where the
>> remote backend will fail to work, but both tuners in my master backend will
>> work...until all 4 start working again, some time later.
>>
>
> I've seen similar issues where working capture devices just stop working
> with Myth due to broken capture card/input connections configuration.  I'd
> recommend the first step in fixing it is the (capture card /and/ video
> sources portion of)
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/264034#264034 (to
> ensure you have a clean configuration).
>
>  One issue that I'm unclear of, is what order the machines must boot.  I
>> would assume the master should be running first,
>>
>
> Yep, ideally.  Though the slave should try to reconnect if the master is
> not running when the remote backend first tries to connect.  However, if
> MySQL is unavailable when the remote backend tries to start, the remote
> mythbackend process will shut down.  (Actually, it's a bit more complex than
> that, but see
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/370119#370119 for
> more--but not all--details.)
>
> so the remote machine has something to connect to.  It should also be noted
>> that while I am currently running Mythbuntu/Ubuntu 9.04, I experienced the
>> same symptoms/behavior while running 8.10.
>>
>
> Also, make sure you check that the remote mythbackend process is actually
> running.  If there's no network when it starts (which is a common problem
> with a certain distro's making networking reliant on the GUI), the backend
> will shut down.
>
> Mike
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>

I'm pretty confident in my tuner configuration; I've checked that many
times, and whenever I do make a change, I delete and re-do all of it.

In general, what I gather from what you say is that my problem could likely
have to do with the order the backend process and the networking processes
start.  If the machine tries to load the backend before there's a network
connection, the backend process will stop itself because it cannot
communicate.  I believe I've seen this occur, and I was able to make it work
(accidentally) by running mythfilldatabase after exiting mythbackend-setup
(which stops/starts the backend process in the process).  Since the machine
was completely up and running, the network was present, and when the backend
process was restarted...ah ha!

So to me, it would seem logical to make sure the order in which these
processes start are what they should be.  This is something I'm not very
familiar with...the closest thing I've configured like this would probably
be the autoexec.bat file on my old 486sx running DOS 6.2.  Is there an
analogous file(s) that I could simply reorder to guarantee that things load
in the proper order?  One would think that the Mythbuntu people would handle
that, but I'm clearly unaware of all that goes into this.  If that's not
possible, then would it be possible to write a simple script to verify
mythbackend is running at the end of the boot cycle, starting it if not?

My hardware and software configuration isn't that exotic, it seems strange
that such a basic issue could be causing my trouble.
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