[mythtv-users] link-local and mythtv

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 5 Aug 2015 09:46:25 -0400, you wrote:

>On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 5:07 AM, John Pilkington <J.Pilk at tesco.net> wrote:
>> Thanks for that, Stephen.  But if I set 127.0.0.1, the TV will display the
>> UPnP server menu with titles of the recordings, but doesn't show thumbnails
>> or play recordings.  If I set 169.254.10.241, everything works while the TV
>> is 'on' but I get complaints or worse when it's in standby.  The only
>> connection between laptop and TV is an ethernet crossover cable.
>>
>> ifconfig, and mythtv-setup, also show a wlan0, the wifi hotspot, but I don't
>> think I should let myth use that.
>>
>> No big deal, but I thought I would ask.
>
>You should be able to set up mythtv to listen on 127.0.0.1, then use
>iptables to NAT the 169.254.10.241 traffic to 127.0.0.1.  You should
>be able to configure your ethernet device to set this up automatically
>when the interface is configured.  Then it should just work whenever
>that interface is available.
>
>Eric

I am not sure that using NAT (not masquerading) rules would work, as
the lo interface normally runs with a big MTU (mine is showing 65536).
Any packets larger than the MTU of the ethernet interface (likely
1500) would get dropped, which would probably cause some quite hard to
track down type problems.

But I have just looked at the ifconfig output for my MythTV box
(Mythbuntu 14.04), which has static addresses on two ethernet ports
that are currently unused, with no cable plugged in, and the static
addresses are visible.  I could have sworn that even static addresses
disappeared when an interface was down, but maybe something has
changed since I last looked.  Anyway, if you can assign a static IP
address to the TV through its settings somewhere, then you can use a
static IP address on your ethernet interface and have MythTV listen on
that.  If your TV does not have a setting for a static IP address,
then you may have to run a DHCP server on the laptop and have it
assign the TV an appropriate address when it is on.  If the TV only
does link-local addresses, then you are probably out of luck, but that
is unlikely.