[mythtv-users] alt lightweight web servers for MythTV?

Fri Apr 10 12:12:49 UTC 2015

On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, George Nassas wrote:

> A Gentoo user might be able to come in with a brilliant pointer but if 
> not perhaps you could start with what have you installed and how have 
> you configured it and what directory has your copy of mythweb.

Thanks for your input, George. Some fundamental unclarities the 
inexperienced web-server installer confronts when trying to use the MythTV 
wiki article on nginx: 1) it references a /var/www/html/ directory, which 
did not exist on my system (neither did the directory 
/usr/share/nginx/html--also referenced--exist, though I'd installed nginx 
per the Gentoo wiki); 2) the directory can be created, of course--but what 
permissions is it, and files/folders below, to have? I suppose the wiki 
might be based on a system that already has Apache/MythWeb installed, and 
which therefore contains the referenced /var/www/html directory? Finally, 
the wiki does not address in any way the matter of my "copy of MythWeb." I 
do, after installing MythWeb under Gentoo, have 
/usr/share/webapps/mythweb: I presume it is that directory to which you're 
referring? If so, am I to move/copy/symlink to it or to some directory 
under it? Again here the issue of file/folder permissions, according to my 
past experience in dealing with files/folders located on web servers, 
needs addressing.

> The sequence I would test is first verify that nginx is running and 
> serving files, put a simple index.html in its default root directory and 
> see if you can retrieve it using a browser. By simple I mean an 
> index.html containing “<html><body>It works.</body></html>” and surf to 
> http://backendcomputer/index <http://backendcomputer/index>.html. When 
> you have that move on to having it serve mythweb files then sending them 
> to the php daemon and finally ensuring it can log into the database.

Per the Gentoo wiki article on installing nginx/php-fpm, after having 
installed and started nginx I ran "curl http://localhost" from my FE/BE 
machine and got the expected response. That confirms, as I understand it, 
that nginx is up and responsive--does it not? In my attempts at trying to 
determine where are the MythWeb files nginx is supposed to be serving, I 
ran across /usr/share/mythtv/html on my system, which contains an 
index.html. I put that file into a folder I'd created under /var/www/html 
and, after a bit of research on the web regarding file/folder permissions 
for web sites, made a guess at what sort of permissions might work on 
files/folders located there. Having done that I can, using the address 
http://localhost, view that index.html. This seems further confirmation 
that basic elements are in place and operational, correct?

> This plan is obviously abbreviated but start with what you’ve done 
> already and include nginx’s nginx.conf and if you’re using an additional 
> one for myth that one too.

I'm uncertain what you mean by "if you’re using an additional one for myth 
that one too," so I'll address the part that I do understand. 
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf on my FE/BE machine is essentially as shown on the 
Gentoo wiki (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Nginx, single-site access 
example), though with the fpm-php stanza the wiki also shows, added, and 
the line "root /var/www/localhost/htdocs;" modified to point to the folder 
containing index.html on my system. I did also fiddle with the 
"server_name localhost;" value in nginx.conf, changing "localhost" to the 
static IP my FE/BE machine is assigned on my LAN. I thought that might 
allow me to access, from a remote machine, at least something nginx might 
be serving on the FE/BE. But that revision did not permit such access: I 
can still only view index.html from localhost.

Any further assistance will be much appreciated.