[mythtv-users] delay backend start til USB tuners initialize

[James Miller]

Among several other issues I'm confronting while trying to get my MythTV 
set-up finalized, I'm experiencing an issue which I believe is related to 
USB tuners not being initialized and present prior to the backend 
starting. I have 3 USB tuners, and the system routinely does not see one 
or more of the three by the time the frontend appears (e.g., if I select 
"watch live TV," then try to switch input to another tuner that I know is 
hooked to the system, I find it not present in the menu). I've tried 
introducing some delays (using sleep arguments) into the start-up of both 
the backend and frontend, but it still seems to happen that, at times, one 
of the three tuners is not present. If I kill the frontend and backend, 
then restart them, all tuners are now present. I should mention as well 
that I've created udev rules which symlink my tuners to names under /dev 
that are readily recognizable by me.

It seems to me what I need to do is to introduce some sort of system check 
that will delay the start of the backend til those tuners and/or their 
symlinks are present. I've run across such a solution at 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1522827. But that solution is 
geared toward Mythbuntu, while I'm using Gentoo (openrc), so it cannot 
work in that form on my machine.

I'd therefore like to solicit some input on this list. First, does it seem 
that my understanding of what is at stake here is correct? In other words, 
that the reason all tuners are not available through the frontend once it 
comes up, but that they do all become available if I kill, then restart, 
both frontend and backend, is because not all are initialized before the 
backend starts? If so, does anyone have any suggestions for how to make 
the backend wait to start til all tuners are available? And, further, how 
to ensure that the frontend gets accordingly delayed as well (so I don't 
get complaints when the frontend starts that the backend is not running)?

Thanks