[mythtv-users] Mythweb finds no remote controllable frontends

Ramon Hofer ramonhofer at bluewin.ch
Wed Jul 20 09:45:45 UTC 2011


On 07/19/2011 05:02 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 07/19/2011 09:28 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
>> Ah, thanks for the explanation!
>> So the frontends can have dynamic IPs if they can be resolved somehow in
>> the network, e.g. from bind9.
>> And the backends do always have to have static IPs.
> Or, more specifically, we don't generally store any IP address
> information about frontends in the database, so the closest we could do
> is piggyback off the backend IP address setting.  However, this would
> also require you to configure your DHCP server to assign static IP
> addresses to the frontend hosts.

My dhcpd.conf already contains all my frontends and assigns them static IPs.
So I'll just have to make it possible that my hostnames can be resolved 
and mythweb will be able to connect to all my frontends?

It works now when I write the frontend machines into /etc/hosts from the 
backend machine.

But I'd like to be able to configure a new machine in the dhcpd.conf and 
then witchcraft is used to make the resolving in the LAN.
I think the keyword here is dynamic dns which is described here:
http://www.semicomplete.com/articles/dynamic-dns-with-dhcp/

Unfortunately I haven't had luck with that yet since I don't have the 
time to get into bind9 and dhcpd3 now.
I'll have to wait until september to really get into it...

But I think this is the key to be able to resolve the hostnames?


>> If I understand you correct you want me to patch mythweb that it looks
>> in the mysql database to resolve the frontend IP adresses?
> Exactly.

I'm just about to start a master study in electrical engineering with 
computers and networks as the main subject.
So it may be an interesting semester thesis.
And I hope this won't be an impossible task for a non professional 
programmer...

But there's a little confusion here: On top you wrote that IPs aren't 
stored but still they are stored in the DB?
Are only the backend IPs stored and not the frontend's?
This must be your point... :-)
Sorry my English isn't good enough to understand piggyback, etc ;-)

Nevertheless it seems that I'm the only one that has difficulties to 
resolve linux hostnames.
I usually read in guides that it should be possible to point the browser 
to the address containing the hostname (e.g. 
http://mythtv-hostname:80/mythweb as written in the mythweb wiki page: 
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythWeb)

Then it would be more interesting to be able to extend the remote 
controllability with other functions.
E.g. the possibility to choose a recording from mythweb and directly 
play it on a frontend. When I do this now it only jumps to the Watch 
Recordings page and doesn't really play the recording.
Maybe I'm just doing something wrong?

In the end it would be great to have a nice way to use any device with a 
browser like a laptop, tablet, smart-phone etc. to control the frontend 
with mythweb.
Maybe with some kind of OSD in mythweb... I think it's not necessary to 
have the whole screen mirrored in mythweb especially when watching 
something (I only get a picture and nothing is moving).
And at the same time it would be nice be be able to control more than 
one frontend. Well this is possible now but when they don't start at the 
same place the commands create random results. E.g. when one frontend is 
in mythvideo and the other in mythmusic and I use mythweb remote control 
to choose a video with the direction keys from mythweb it's very 
unlikely that they will play the same thing.


>> But I still don't understand how I could run mythtv-setup on the
>> frontend since there's no mythtv-setup on my frontends?
>> I must understand it wrong that I have to set my frontends to
>> backend/frontend combos?
>>
>> Sorry for my slow understanding.
> You'd need to install mythtv-setup (from whatever package your packager
> makes it available).  This may well mean installing mythbackend, too.
> However, you won't make your frontend into a backend/frontend
> combo--that would imply you would actually /run/ mythbackend.  Instead,
> you will only install mythtv-setup, run it on your frontend host, then
> use that to set the IP address setting--as if you were configuring a
> backend on the host.

Ah, I see! Backends are of course only the machines that run mythbackend.

Do I get it right: I have to install mythbackend on my frontends, run 
mythtv-setup on each of them to set their IP addresses that they'll be 
stored in the DB? Then I can patch mythweb that it'll look the IP 
adresses up in the DB and uses them instead of the hostnames to connect.

But wouldn't it be easier and more logical to solve my hostname 
resolving problem?
Or even write the hostnames and IPs directly into the DB?


Ramon




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