[mythtv-users] mythfrontend startup freezes

[David A. De Graaf]

I cannot start mythfrontend on an ACER laptop;  instead it spews some
lines into the startup terminal window, then freezes the current Xfce
Workspace.  Keyboard and touchpad are inoperative, except that
CTL-LARROW will switch to the adjacent Workspace, which is still
functional.  Then I can  'pkill -9 mythfrontend'  and recover.
mythbackend is running happily on another machine and several other
frontends around the house play TV from it without issue.

I have noticed a similar annoying freeze-up when starting mythfrontend on
other client machines.  But after a few seconds, the window opens and
activity resumes.

mythtv-setup behaves the same.  It freezes the Workspace;  it can be
killed from a different Workspace.  Neither mythfrontend nor
mythtv-setup manage to open their characteristic X display.

Now here's the crazy part:   If I create a new user, dumtest, with a
pristine HOME directory, log off, log on as dumtest, and start Xfce,
mythfrontend works perfectly.

My HOME directory has been carried along through many Fedora
generations, currently at Fedora 27, so there's likely something
lurking there that's blocking the mythfrontend startup sequence.
But what???  Mythtv has many secret configurations and hides them
well.  Obviously, I have compared the various hidden files in
/home/dad and /home/dumtest, but not found the culprit.

Suspecting .config, .cache, and .mythtv, I renamed them (NOT.config,
etc.) and tried again.  No luck.  Some of the displaced directories were
recreated, but mythfrontend still locked up.

I have some large log files, created by
     mythfrontend | tee mfe.out.1
both for dumtest which worked, and for dad which failed, but haven't
found them to be helpful in deciphering my problem.

Google hasn't helped either.
I'm hoping some of the geniuses on this list will.

-- 
	David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hendersonville, NC
	dad at datix.us         www.datix.us