[mythtv-users] delaying backend startup until the network is up

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Tue Dec 18 00:44:18 UTC 2018


On Mon, 17 Dec 2018 16:31:47 -0500, you wrote:

>
>On 12/11/18 8:24 AM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> On Tue, 11 Dec 2018 08:17:33 -0500, you wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/11/18 2:04 AM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 17:03:02 -0500, you wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> on my production system I use without issue the systemd override provided by.
>>>>>
>>>>> sudo systemctl edit mythtv-backend.service
>>>>>
>>>>> [Unit]
>>>>> After=NetworkManager-wait-online.service
>>>>>
>>>>> When I built a test system using the same HDHR tuners but with the mythhdhrrecorder external recorder I used the same overide setup. However, if I boot my test system I get a lot of errors on 2-4 tuners and the errors are related to opening the tuner. This is solved by doing the following after boot:
>>>>>
>>>>> sudo systemctl stop mythtv-backend
>>>>> sudo systemctl start mythtv-backend
>>>>>
>>>>> What is special about mythhdhrrecorder and external recorder blackbox that makes this systemd override not work???
>>>>>
>>>>> Jim A
>>>> Looking at the source code for mythhdhrrecorder, I can see that as it
>>>> starts up, it tries to access https://my.hdhomerun.com/discover as
>>>> part of its discovery of the HDHR devices.  So it looks like you need
>>>> full Internet access up (including the name servers working) before
>>>> that will work.  So I think what is needed is a systemd unit that
>>>> first does a DNS lookup of my.hdhomerun.com (say once a second), and
>>>> when that works, does a ping of my.hdhomerun.com and when that works,
>>>> the unit startup succeeds.  Then you can have mythbackend wait for
>>>> that unit to be started before it starts.  However, there should be a
>>>> timeout (say 30 seconds) after which mythbackend gets to start anyway,
>>>> otherwise if your Internet access is down, you will be unable to start
>>>> mythbackend.
>>>>
>>>> I have never built a systemd unit like that, but I think it would work
>>>> if you wrote a script (or some Python) to do the DNS lookup and ping,
>>>> and put it in the ExecStartPre line to be run before the main
>>>> executable of the unit gets run from the ExecStart line.  The
>>>> ExecStart line would then need to do nothing.  I am not sure how you
>>>> are supposed to do nothing in systemd, but running /bin/true should
>>>> work.
>>>>
>>>> So a unit "full-internet.service" like this might work:
>>>>
>>>> [Unit]
>>>> Description=Wait for full Internet service to be available including
>>>> DNS.
>>>> After=NetworkManager-wait-online.service
>>>>
>>>> [Service]
>>>> Type=simple
>>>> ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/full-internet.py
>>>> ExecStart=/bin/true
>>>>
>>>> [Install]
>>>> WantedBy=multi-user.target
>>>>
>>>> and in your mythtv-backend override file, use:
>>>>
>>>> After=full-internet.service
>>>>
>>>> The full-internet.py script would handle the DNS lookup, ping, and
>>>> timeout after 30 seconds.  It might be a good idea if it took the DNS
>>>> name and timeout values as command line parameters, to make it more
>>>> generally useful.  I have a script I use for reloading the drivers of
>>>> an Ethernet card when the connection drops that I could use for a
>>>> framework to make a full-internet.py script.  It does regular pings to
>>>> see if the connection is up so it has most of the code I would need.
>>>> Let me know if you would like me to do this.  I think this is a
>>>> problem that has cropped up in various forms for years, so it would be
>>>> worth my writing this if it was going to be useful.
>>>>
>>> ---------------------
>>>
>>
>I created a delaying mechanism so mythtv backend would not run until 
>mythhdhrrecorder could "discover" the HDHR tuners requiring full 
>internet access.  As Stephen mentioned I added a full-internet.service 
>and a script. This is not elegant but with my poor programming skills 
>it's the best I could do for now.
>
>I put the following service file in /etc/systemd/system:
>
>"full-internet.service"
>
>Description=Wait for full internet service to be available including DNS
>After=NetworkManager-wait-online.service
>
>[Service]
>Type=simple
>ExecStartPre=/home/jim/delay-backend-till-network-up.py
>ExecStart=/bin/true
>
>[Install]
>WantedBy=multi-user.target
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Then I put this script in my home directory:
>
>"delay-backend-till-network-up.py"
>
>#!/usr/bin/env python3
># -*- coding: UTF-8 -*
>
>import os, sys, socket, struct, select, time, signal
>import syslog
>
>syslog.syslog("delaying mythtv-backend - starting")
>
>def check_ping():
>     hostname = "my.hdhomerun.com"
>     response = os.system("ping -c 1 " + hostname)
>
>     return response
>
>
>time.sleep(30)
>if check_ping() == 0:
>         syslog.syslog("ping worked after 30 sec sleep")
>syslog.syslog("delaying mythtv-backend - ending")
>
>------------------------------------
>
>I changed the override.conf file in 
>/etc/systemd/system/mythtv-backend.service.d to :
>
>[Unit]
>After=full-internet.service
>
>---------------------
>
>Don't forget the enable the full-internet.service: sudo systemctl enable 
>full-internet
>
>Make delay-backend-till-network-up.py executable.
>
>This basically sleep for 30 seconds and then pings my.hdhomerun.com.
>
>works for me so I can continue testing.
>
>Jim A

Last night I wrote a "wait-until-pingable.py" program that will wait
until a specified address can be looked up and pinged, or a specified
timeout is reached:

http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/wait-until-pingable.py

Use the -h option from the command line to get help on its options.

Warning: This is alpha software - it has not been tested in real life
yet, just from my command line.  It does not support IPv6 yet, and I
also want to add a log message that tells how long it needed to wait
for its first ping response.  But it should work well enough to do the
job for now.

I would recommend putting it in /usr/local/bin and using it by
changing the ExecStartPre line in the full-internet.service file to:

ExecStartPre=/usr/local/bin/wait-until-pingable.py my.hdhomerun.com 30

I will update the file on my web server when I get IPv6 working and
add the log message.


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list