[mythtv-users] Myth 0.27: Weird connection problems between front/backend

[Matthias Thyroff]

Hello list,

I have reported this problem before, but I have not been able to fix it. 
I am still trouble shooting and don't really know where to look. I hope 
somebody can help me with a hint in the right direction.

The problem is that sporadically, while being in the recorded programs 
list, or watching a recording, I get a popup message in my frontend: 
Mythcontext: Backend online. At the same time, the recording causing the 
problem is marked with the little cross showing that the recording is 
not available, then the cross dissapears again and the recording is 
shown as available, and so on... The frontend will also freeze for a 
couple of minutes when I leave the recording screen in this situation.

That only indicates that the connection has been lost before and the 
frontend has reconnected. Looking into the console output of the 
frontend, I see:

2013-10-27 16:24:51.622303 I  MythCoreContext: Connecting to backend 
server: 192.168.0.1:6543 (try 1 of 1)
2013-10-27 16:24:58.744041 E  MythSocket(7f6a1c00b870:-1): 
ReadStringList: Connection died.
2013-10-27 16:24:58.744086 E  MythSocket(7f6a1c00b870:-1): No response.
2013-10-27 16:24:58.744159 N  Connection to backend server lost
2013-10-27 16:24:58.744321 N  Event socket closed.  No connection to the 
backend.
2013-10-27 16:24:58.744436 I  MythCoreContext: Connecting to backend 
server: 192.168.0.1:6543 (try 1 of 1)
2013-10-27 16:24:58.747980 E  MythSocket(7f69ac00fec0:47): 
WriteStringList: Error, invalid string list.
2013-10-27 16:24:58.748023 E  MythSocket(7f69ac00fec0:47): Failed to 
send command.
2013-10-27 16:24:58.748157 C  Reconnection to backend server failed
2013-10-27 16:24:58.748182 E  PlaybackBoxHelper: CHECK_AVAILABILITY 
'myth://192.168.0.1:6543/13120_20120403015000.mpg' file not found

(The file mentioned is available) This happens with certain recordings, 
not all recordings. Last time I noticed, it happened with a recording 
which had a description with an incorrect encoding: Umlauts were all 
displayed as weird character sequences, so I thought, that's the reason. 
I deleted the recording's description with phpmyadmin and the error went 
away.

Now I have another recording which causes the problem, but here the 
encoding of the description is OK, umlauts are displayed correctly. 
Still I get the above error. (I have other recordings with incorrect 
encoding which do not cause the error)

And also here, the problem went away when I deleted the program 
description. It went away immediately after deleting the description 
from the database. The description was still shown in the frontend, but 
the error was gone. Only after restarting the backend, the description 
was gone in the frontend (and the error continued fixed, for this 
recording) .

This problem happens still the day I updated to 0.27.

What can I do?

Thanks and best regards,

Matthias