[mythtv-users] MythTV and the "average" user...

[Carl-Magnus Björkell]

Sean Goodpasture wrote:
> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Nick F <nikos.f at gmail.com 
> <mailto:nikos.f at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On 5/15/08, *Colin McGregor* <colin.mc151 at gmail.com
>     <mailto:colin.mc151 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         So, the question is has MythTV with say Mythbuntu
>         reached the point where once set-up a "average" person could run the
>         machine? Basicly I want something that will make life easier for
>         her,
>         not frustrate her...
> 
>      
>     I love Myth, and my (non-technie) wife is able to use it fine when
>     I'm away for extended periods on business travel.
>      
>     The only thing is, my setup does crash every so often, and once my
>     wife learnt the basics of restarting the frontend, and if needed
>     ssh'ing to the backend to restart the backend when something went
>     crazy there, it's been fine.
>      
>     My setup is not yet at the consumer appliance level.  I personally
>     wouldn't do one for my (completely non-technical) mother.
> 
>      
> 
> You need to get Monit up and running for monitoring the backend.  Not 
> sure what to do about the front end crashing, but my uptime normally 
> runs in the 30 day mark before the boxes feel like they need a reboot.
> 
> 

SSH'ing is really not something that is easily taught to someone that 
doesn't like to dabble in computer stuff :) I myself have a crontab 
entry that runs a script that checks the backend every 5 minutes. If the 
backend has crashed for some reason, the script automatically restarts 
the backend service. It hasn't failed yet :)

As for the frontend I have it setup so that it's automatically started 
when X starts, and also automatically restarted if it dies. I think the 
instructions for doing that was in the wiki somewhere. I set that up a 
long time ago, so I can't recall exactly what I did.

In the event of a frontend lock-up, I also made the powerbutton on the 
remote "killall mythfrontend". This way (since the frontend is 
automatically restarted) you only have to press one single button 
whenever the frontend does something funny, and it's all restarted and 
working again.


-Calle