[mythtv-users] Recommended Linux Distro post CentOS

[David King]

On 12/15/20 10:11 PM, Jeremy D. Eiden wrote:
>
> On 12/15/20 8:05 PM, James Linder wrote:
>>
>>> On 16 Dec 2020, at 7:07 am, Mike Perkins 
>>> <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ben <bkamen at benjammin.net> wrote:
>>>>> I'm wondering who is using what for their home servers for MythTV 
>>>>> (and Plex) on the same box.
>>>> Can't speak for the non-Myth stuff, but my backend and frontends 
>>>> all run Devuan now - what Debian would be if they'd not succumbed 
>>>> to the dark side of systemd.
>>> I have tried Devuan and it would indeed, be suitable for myth front 
>>> and backends.
>>>
>>> However...
>>>
>>> Despite telling you during installation that "everything is your 
>>> choice" the default install desktop is effectively forced to be 
>>> xfce, whereas I prefer LXDE.
>>>
>>> The "debootstrap" code was seriously borked when I tried it, and you 
>>> could not install the same version in, for example, a VM as the 
>>> version you were running, only the 'next' version. WTF? That killed 
>>> using it for a KVM server stone dead.
>>>
>>> As I also run LTSP here, and debootstrap is used for the clients, 
>>> that was a no-no too. I understand that the 'new' version of LTSP 
>>> will work properly, haven't tried that on Devuan lately.
>> I am not trolling, or standing in a copper vase full of water on a 
>> mountain top during a thunderstorm saying all gods are bastards 
>> (Terry Pratchette) but why the angst about systemd?
>> I find it to be different
>> Not particually hard to learn
>> Quite nice in principal, being all-in-one-place and consistant
>> (My RockPi 4 does xxx on boot, ah systemd stuff)
>> James
>> PS well 2 places, /etc/systemd /usr/lib/systemd
>> PPS and yup in context of mythtv
>
> Here is my issue with it - when it fails, it fails in really stupid 
> ways that can be hard to figure out and fix.
>
> For example, say you have a second non-system disk that you store 
> recordings or random things on (to keep the MythTV link).  Nothing on 
> the OS or even the users truly depend on, and it's mounted under /mnt 
> or /media.
>
> Disk fail?  You remove it to copy the data onto another computer? 
> Systemd will prevent the whole system from booting. It'll just hang 
> forever.  You need to boot a usb stick or figure out how to you 
> systemrescue to comment out the offending disk in fstab and reboot the 
> system.  Assuming you figure out that the disk failed.
>
> Systemrescue (or whatever it's called) isn't as intuitive as one might 
> think - and if you don't have a computer to search the right commands 
> on, you are toast.

Google finds this at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fstab. This 
article is also cited as a solution on multiple other web sites:

External devices that are to be mounted when present but ignored if 
absent may require the|nofail|option. This prevents errors being 
reported at boot. For example:

/etc/fstab

/dev/sdg1        /media/backup    jfs    nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms    0  2

The|nofail|option is best combined with 
the|x-systemd.device-timeout|option. This is because the default device 
timeout is 90 seconds, so a disconnected external device with 
only|nofail|will make your boot take 90 seconds longer, unless you 
reconfigure the timeout as shown. Make sure not to set the timeout to 0, 
as this translates to infinite timeout.

-- 
David King
dave at daveking dot com