[mythtv-users] Remote backend wackyness

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/22/2009 01:05 PM, Josh White wrote:
> Assuming you've read the previous information, you'll have some idea 
> of what I'm trying to do...but feel free to ask if more clarifacation 
> is necessary. The problem I'm experiencing concerns the two backends 
> communictating with each other.  When I finally had both systems up 
> and running, and configured in a way that I believe to be correct, the 
> tuners in my remote frontend fail to work.  They fail to work 
> regardless of whether I'm attempting to connect to them from either 
> machine.  The remote backend in this case will be unable to display 
> live tv of any kind, but will be able to display videos & recordings.  
> The strange thing is that after a week or so, and a few 
> reboots/mythfilldatabase runs, the tuners begin to work in the remote 
> backend. I verified yesterday that all 4 tuners were working by 
> watching 4 different channels on 4 different frontends simultaneously. 
>  They generally continue to work for a while (days, assuming I leave 
> everything running), but at some point, one of the tuners on my master 
> backend will show up as "unavailable" but 3 tuners will continue to 
> work (I'm not sure how long it takes for this behavior to manifest 
> itself).  I'll reboot the master & the remote backends, and then I'll 
> be in the situation where the remote backend will fail to work, but 
> both tuners in my master backend will work...until all 4 start working 
> again, some time later.

I've seen similar issues where working capture devices just stop working 
with Myth due to broken capture card/input connections configuration.  
I'd recommend the first step in fixing it is the (capture card /and/ 
video sources portion of) 
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/264034#264034 (to 
ensure you have a clean configuration).

>   One issue that I'm unclear of, is what order the machines must 
> boot.  I would assume the master should be running first,

Yep, ideally.  Though the slave should try to reconnect if the master is 
not running when the remote backend first tries to connect.  However, if 
MySQL is unavailable when the remote backend tries to start, the remote 
mythbackend process will shut down.  (Actually, it's a bit more complex 
than that, but see 
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/370119#370119 for 
more--but not all--details.)

> so the remote machine has something to connect to.  It should also be 
> noted that while I am currently running Mythbuntu/Ubuntu 9.04, I 
> experienced the same symptoms/behavior while running 8.10.

Also, make sure you check that the remote mythbackend process is 
actually running.  If there's no network when it starts (which is a 
common problem with a certain distro's making networking reliant on the 
GUI), the backend will shut down.

Mike