[mythtv-users] FE instability - time to start fresh on new install?

Tim Draper veehexx at zoho.com
Fri Nov 17 18:51:59 UTC 2017




 ---- On Fri, 17 Nov 2017 15:20:53 +0000 Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote ---- 
 > On 16/11/17 20:18, Tim Draper wrote: 
 > > i've been doing a number of changes to my primary FE recently which includes the following: 
 > > - in place upgrade mythtbuntu 14.04LTS to 16.04LTS 
 > > - migrate from IR to bluetooth signal from myharmony remote 
 > > - move from power-off IR wake to s3 sleep/resume from USB (bluetooth module is classed as USB) 
 > >  
 > > unfortunately, thats shown a number of bugs. 
 > > 1) 16.04 has a 'wont fix' suspend bug where it appears to crash/freeze during the S3 state so is essentially useless to rely upon. 
 > > 2) i try to switch to keeping the FE on 24/7, but so far has resulted in it randomly freezing up between using the FE - no network connectivity or display on the TV. so far since change to always-on, if i leave it overnight+work and come home in the evening it means a hard power-off of the FE to make it useable. 
 > >  
 > > instead of trying to fix this, i think starting from scratch would be best - no residual stray hacky scripts running that i've forgotten about, and a fresh clean start on the OS to eliminate any potential upgrade related issues that may be causing the long term instability. 
 > >  
 > > problem is, which distro to move to? i've never been much of a fan of ubuntu since about 2years into my linux dabbling (i always seem to encounter long standing bugs). My current distro of choice is Fedora. but the high release rate is starting to grind a bit, so probably not the best for hassle free TV. 
 > > i'm thinking centos due to the long release cycles, but short of playing with each potential distro on the mythtv wiki (theres a big list of them), i'm not sure if this is the right way. I do use centos at work so fairly familiar with it and will likely use it for the BE when i rebuild that from a fedora26 build (yeah, in hindsight, fedora probably isnt the best choice for a server!) 
 > >  
 > > probably doesnt matter, but FE hardware is a 2820 celeron NUC. 
 > >  
 > Two thoughts: Your problems sound like they might be a hardware issue. You need to see if you can  
 > find anything before committing to an upgrade on a board you might need to replace soon - been  
 > there, done that. 
 >  
 > Secondly, what's wrong with just turning it off every night? A boot-up these days doesn't take long,  
 > even if you don't go down the systemd route. 
 >  

you might be onto something there. today the FE has been running . forced off/on and when it came back, no network. replugging cable didnt fix. reboot it and network comes back.
while rebuilding the OS does take a bit of time, it is something i typically enjoy and learn from, so i've no problem rebuilding to prove issues. a few hours rebuilding is cheaper than looking at a replacement. rpi3's are fine for secondaries, but i'd want something with a bit more grunt for the primary FE.

turning it off every night used to be done when i used IR comms to it which i did not experience any HW related issues with. possible it was masking a problem as the FE was only on for maybe 5hours max at a time. After 'upgrading' to bluetooth , the nuc doesnt do power-on via usb (BT hw module is detected as a USB device), so have to resort to S3 sleep w/wake-on-usb, or leave it on 24/7. since it's the 2820 nuc, idle consumption is around 6w iirc so not something i'm going to worry too much about if i cant get power-on/S3 working right.

based off the other replies in this thread, i think i'll try centos just to eliminate any software possibilities. I've always had good experience with that distro.
fedora is good, but based on my laptop and home server/mythBE, i'd feel like i'm upgrading things all the time. 



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