[mythtvnz] hdhomerun doesn't connect on restart when connected directly to the lan port

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:16:42 +1200, you wrote:

>
>I'm slowly getting the bugs sorted out. Only two left that I am aware of.
>This one is regarding communication with the HDHR.I thought I had it  
>sorted on Saturday.
>The only way I could get the HDHR to work on ethernet port was to set the  
>network connections
>ipv4 settings to manual , no MAC address and 196.254.1.10 ; 255.255.0.0 ;  
>0.0.0.0 for the ip netmask and gateway settings.
>It seemed to be reliable but since a power outage upset things I can only  
>get it to work in a haphazard fashion.
>
>in Mythbackend the capture cards screen is set to use the device IDs:   
>11111EB-0 / 11111EB-1
>
>I tried the suggestions from Nick Rout in this forum thread :  
>http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2062279
>
>These are the symptoms: (from the forum post)
>
>" Nothing records and when you go to watch tv it tries to work then boots  
>you back to the main menu. Also, the light on the hdhomerun that turns  
>solid when it is connected, instead of being solid, continues to blink.  
>After running hdhomerun_config and restarting mythtv-backend recording  
>works as does watching live tv and the light on the hdhomerun stays turns  
>solid green and stays that way until the next time the computer is  
>rebooted."
>
>My network indicator says connected and HDHomerun set up talks to the  
>device.
>
>The original poster did not mark the thread solved and Nick's suggestion  
>won't work for me.

I have never liked link-local addresses - I always use manually
assigned static addresses instead if at all possible, as nothing can
go wrong with them.  Does the HDHomerun do static addresses?

It is also possible that there is a timing issue.  After the problem
happens, if you restart mythbackend ("restart mythbackend" from a root
prompt), does the HDHomerun start working?  If so, it may be that
mythbackend is starting before the HDHomerun has had its ethernet
connection come up.  If that is the case, a simplistic fix is just to
add some delay before mythbackend starts.  In
/etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf, find the line where it runs
/usr/bin/mythbackend and add a line before that with say "sleep 10" to
give a 10 second delay.  A better solution would make changes to the
"start on" line to make the startup wait for the HDHomerun being
visible, but that gets quite complicated and way above my skill level
with Upstart.