[mythtv-users] Script to keep DCT-6xxx boxes alive

[Tom Flair]

How often do you run this?  What is your cron schedule?

On 6/28/07, Tom Greer <trgreer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've been using MythTV for a couple of years now.  I absolutely love
> it.  My thanks to the developers.
>
> In my home, I have four combo frontend/backend systems.  Three have
> Motorola DCT-6xxx boxes attached.  The fourth is connected to an
> HDHomeRun unit.
>
> At this point, the system is pretty stable.  However, my most frequent
> points of failure are the DCT boxes.  Every couple of days one of the
> boxes just decides to stop responding.
>
> Jim Westfall's firewire_tester program was a godsend.  Whenever one of
> the boxes would go to sleep, one or two shots of firewire_tester would
> bring it back to life.
>
> I figured that a good way to keep the DCT boxes alive was to run
> firewire_tester in cron.  The big problem was making sure Myth was not
> already streaming from the box.
>
> So I decided to write my first shell script to test whether the boxes
> were already busy, and if not, then to execute firewire_tester.
>
> I wanted one script that would run successfully on each of the three
> boxes.  In addition, I wanted it to be robust enough to determine
> which port connected to the DCT box (the assigned port may change on
> reboot).
>
> So the script, first gets the status report output in xml from the
> master backend (in order to determine which tuner is connected to this
> backend and whether it is busy).
>
> Then it runs plugreport to determine whether which port is active.
>
> Finally, it executes firewire_tester (if the tuner is not in use).
>
> I am posting the script here because it may be of use to people who
> are be experiencing the similar problems.  If you have your DCT boxes
> daisy-chained or if your node is not always zero, then you will need
> to tweak the script.  Otherwise, I believe it will work as it is for
> you.
>
> In addition, since this is my first shell script, I'd appreciate some
> constructive feedback on form.
>
> Tom
>
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