[mythtvnz] Backend fails to start

[Stephen Worthington]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:45:21 +1200, you wrote:

>
>Since upgrading to 0.25 I have discovered that when the system boots I get  
>a OSD message saying the FE
>can't connect to the BE and asking if the BE is running.
>I turn the system off each evening and it is a combined FE/BE setup.
>
>I can start the BE by going into BE setup and back out where it asks if I  
>want to start the BE.
>The I start the FE and all is ok.
>The funny thing is I used to get the same message prior to upgrading but  
>it didn't actually stop myth from
>working correctly.Now it does.
>I saw a post from someone experiencing the same problem but I can't find  
>it again.
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Cheers
>Paul

There are two versions of FE not connecting to BE that I have met. The
first is temporary - the BE is busy starting up and has not got to the
point where it can respond yet when the FE tries.  Getting the FE to
retry will succeed eventually - just go back out of the page where it
needs to connect to the BE and then back in again until it works. This
happens as your database grows when you have many recordings and
recording rules - the BE takes longer and longer to start.

The second is where there is a delay in the networking starting up and
the BE is started before there is a network for it to use.  I am not
sure if it retries, but it can simply stop again.  I can get this when
I have bridging configured in my networking to run OpenVPN, which
makes the networking take ages to start up.  But I thought that was
fixed in 0.25 as the "start on" line in /etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf
has been changed to add something like "net-device-up IFACE!=lo". This
is only a problem if you have the BE configured to run on other than
127.0.0.1, for remote FEs to use.

BTW In Mythbuntu, to start and stop the BE, use these commands:

  sudo start mythtv-backend
  sudo stop mythtv-backend

and this to see what MythTV tasks are running:

  ps -A | grep myth