[mythtv-users] database connection just stopped working

backuppc at sundquist.imapmail.org backuppc at sundquist.imapmail.org
Thu Oct 20 18:02:37 UTC 2011


On 2011-10-18, Newbury <newbury [at] mandamus> wrote: 

> Well! That should remind you not to fix it when it wasn't boken. 

<<warning, offtopic!>>

Interesting story that.  Of course, this was a new install (didn't find
that the busted pcHDTV 5500 was the problem until I reinstalled).  But
it was working for a few days.  What I "fixed" is this:

I started running Linux back in 1996 (downloaded Slackware 3.0 onto
floppies!).  On or about 1999 I set up my first home server.  It was an
old Northgate 386 with 8 MB of RAM.  Ran Debian with no problems, just a
little slow (note, I still have this sitting around and it still can
boot up; that northgate was a high end machine back in the day). 
Streamed MP3s and everything. No X of course.  Back then, Debian set the
default UID for the first user to 500.  Ever since, all my installs have
used UID 500 for my main install so that I can do NFS mounts, including
the MP3 player which was an old iopener converted to run Linux (off of a
16MB flash chip).  The distro for that
(http://jailbait.sourceforge.net/) had lots of stuff in a cramfs file
system (you make it then compress it) that couldn't be updated once it
was loaded onto the machine.  That UID 500 user (hard coded) loaded the
MP3 library by NFS.  Long story short, I've been stuck with this UID
ever since.

However, newer distros set up the base user at UID 1000.  So the first
thing I ever do after an install is do a search for files with UID/GID
of 1000/1000 and change them to 500/500, as well as edit the passwd
file.  I have to do this as root of course.  After I installed
huludesktop, I tried to make a XFCE desktop icon but it was coming up
owned by 1000.  Figureing I missed something, I quick fired off a chown
to my whole /home/user directory.  Unfortunately, since
/home/user/.mythtv/mysql.txt was symlinked to the one in /etc/mythtv,
the one over in /etc got chown'ed too.

Simple mistake; 2-3 hours I'll never get back again!

Jon S.


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