[mythtv-users] What are these connections?

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

Replying to myself:

On 06/11/17 23:36, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> On 06/11/17 23:16, Stuart Auchterlonie wrote:
>> On 05/11/17 00:06, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
>>> While tracing another issue I noticed requests for
>>>      http://alcor.mythtv.org/themes/repository/0.28.1/themes.zip
>>> which returns a '404 Not Found'.
>>>
>>> Is this from the mythtv backend that is running here? I did not expect
>>> any connections
>>> to be made from the server - what is this?
>>>
>>> TIA
>>>
>>
>> It's requesting the available themes.
> 
> Thanks, I thought something like this too, but I never requested for this to be done.
> I expected themes to arrive as mythtv updates using the usual distro system,
> so why repeatedly request it?
> 
> I do not recall an option for this in the setup either - how do I disable this access?
> I searched the MythTV wiki and made a few 'net searches but did not find an answer.

I decided to look into it myself.

$ sudo strings -a /usr/bin/mythbackend|less
/tmp/remotethemes
%1/%2/themes.zip
ThemeRepositoryURL
fixes/0.28
fixes/
trunk
HouseKeeper: Error creating %1 directory for remote themes info cache.
http://themes.mythtv.org/themes/repository
HouseKeeper: Failed to download %1 remote themes info package.
HouseKeeper: Error extracting %1 remote themes info package.

So this is a HouseKeeper task. Did a bit more digging and located:

$ sudo strings -a /usr/bin/mythbackend|grep PeriodicHouseKeeperTask
_ZN23PeriodicHouseKeeperTaskC2ERK7QStringiffi16HouseKeeperScope18HouseKeeperStartup
_ZN23PeriodicHouseKeeperTask9SetWindowEff
_ZN23PeriodicHouseKeeperTask10SetLastRunE9QDateTimeb
_ZN23PeriodicHouseKeeperTask13UpdateLastRunE9QDateTimeb
_ZN23PeriodicHouseKeeperTask10DoCheckRunE9QDateTime
_ZN23PeriodicHouseKeeperTask10PastWindowE9QDateTime
_ZTV23PeriodicHouseKeeperTask

Not knowing of how to control this task I turned to the database.

$ sudo mysql -p
MariaDB [(none)]> use mythconverg
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

Database changed
MariaDB [mythconverg]> select * from housekeeping;
+--------------------------+--------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| tag                      | hostname           | lastrun             | lastsuccess         |
+--------------------------+--------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| JobQueueCleanup          | NULL               | 2006-10-31 00:12:19 | 2006-10-31 00:12:19 |
| JobQueueRecover          | e7                 | 2009-08-08 20:01:16 | 2009-08-08 20:01:16 |
| InUseProgramsCleanup     | NULL               | 2006-10-31 00:12:19 | 2006-10-31 00:12:19 |
| BackupDB                 | NULL               | 2017-09-18 02:49:09 | 2017-09-18 02:49:09 |
| JobQueueRecover          | e7a.eyal.emu.id.au | 2009-08-15 23:30:38 | 2009-08-15 23:30:38 |
| JobQueueRecover          | e7.eyal.emu.id.au  | 2017-11-07 23:40:12 | 2017-11-07 23:40:12 |
| DBCleanup                | NULL               | 2017-11-07 21:46:12 | 2017-11-07 21:46:12 |
| MythFillDB               | NULL               | 2017-10-06 06:49:58 | 2017-10-06 06:49:58 |
| LogClean                 | NULL               | 2017-11-07 23:52:12 | 2017-11-07 23:52:12 |
| ThemeUpdateNotifications | NULL               | 2017-11-07 23:04:12 | 2017-11-07 23:04:12 |
+--------------------------+--------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [mythconverg]> update housekeeping set lastrun='2027-11-07 23:04:12',lastsuccess='2027-11-07 23:04:12' where tag = 'ThemeUpdateNotifications';
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0

MariaDB [mythconverg]> quit
Bye

I will now see if this stops the probes.

Still, I would like to know
1 - is what I did safe?
2 - is there a proper way to stop these probes?

TIA

>> There are some oddities in the way it's hooked up which means
>> it starts at the version it is and then downgrades through the
>> earlier releases, which leads to some 404's as it requests
>> themes.zip for versions which don't have one.
> 
> What I see is just that one failed access and no further "downgrades".
> 
>> It's something i'd like to change, as the 404's in the server
>> logs annoy me. Sadly it's on the long term todo list, as part
>> of reworking the themes part of our infrastructure.
>>
>>
>> Regards
>> Stuart
> 
> Regards

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)