[mythtv-users] Ticket #9704 Hang/Deadlock locked

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 18:20, John Drescher <drescherjm at gmail.com> wrote:

I am not a mythtv developer, take my answers with a grain of salt....

> I believe I have ticket #9704 with a recent 24.2 git +
> mythtv-0.24-backport_reconnect_fixes.patch (and previous git revs)
> however the ticket is locked at the moment. I am not sure if the
> locking of the ticket means that this problem is supposed to be fixed
> or that it means discuss it on the mailing list or possibly just
> upgrade to the 25 development release and your problems will go away.

In a large number of cases, locking of tickets occur because
"me toos" are not assisting the developers with additional
information.

In general, with a description of the form "deadlock", there may
actually be lots of independent issues.  The developers want to
focus on the specific issue.  From reading of the text of that
particular ticket, it seems like some independent issues were
being conflated, helping no one.

In addition, the particular issue (not reconnecting) was
resolved with a patch (which was backported).  And then
someone appended that they considered the patches
to be "critical", and the ticket was locked (that is what
I considered to be a "me too" append, which did not, in
any way, add useful information to the ticket).  I believe
many distributions have included the particular patch,
but you need to check with your packager.

No one would disagree that other deadlocks may exist
(and there are other such tickets).  This ticket particular
issue (reconnect) has been fixed (or at least it is believed
to be fixed).

> I have posted to the list for help with this two Sundays in a row but
> I have not received a single reply. I am not sure if that means my
> emails are nonsense / too long not enough details or what.

Only those that do not answer could answer why they choose
not to answer.  However, with all user forums, people may
choose to answer, or choose not to answer for any reasons
they themselves choose.  One should respect their choices.

>... Did I mention I despise my cable company.

Irrelevant (although you are not the first, nor will you be
the last, to not be a fan of your service providers).

> I have a few questions.
>
> 1. How do I debug this so that someone possibly can give me advice?

Debugging is documented at:
   http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Debugging

If you are not familiar with the tools (as you suggest later in
your post), and the description in the above is not adequate,
help yourself now, and others in the future, by pointing out
what is not clear in the wiki (personally, having used all the
tools, it is clear to me, but I understand that what is obvious
to someone with experience in the field may not be clear to
others).

> 2. Is it better to just move to 25.x development?

The development is development, and is not considered
stable.  At any particular moment everything you
want to work may work perfectly, while at the same
time everything someone else wants to work may be
broken.  That might all change at the next commit.
Running master means any problems will be
expected to be reproduced on the latest master
(and not something committed 24 hours ago).

*Personally* I do not recommend anyone move to the
development branch that does not understanding all
the implications of running a development release
(and since you mentioned the WAF, running
development is not assured to have a high WAF).

The developers have announced the 0.25 release
schedule, and (I presume) actively deciding which
features are stable/reliable/adequately tested to
make the cut.  If the target release date (and it is
only a target) of early April meets your needs, I
would certainly consider waiting for it to be released.

Gary