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

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:51:19 +1200, you wrote:

>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
>I carried out Stephen's suggestion: adding a waiting period to
>mythtv-backend.conf:
>
># MythTV Backend service
>
>description     "MythTV Backend"
>author          "Mario Limonciello <superm1 at ubuntu.com>"
>
>start on (local-filesystems and net-device-up IFACE!=lo and started  
>udev-finish)
>stop on runlevel [016]
>
>#expect fork
>respawn
>respawn limit 2 3600
>
>pre-start script
>     [ -x /usr/sbin/mysqld ] || exit 0
>     for i in `seq 1 30` ; do
>        /usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf ping &&  
>exit 0
>        sleep .5
>     done
>end script
>
>script
>         test -f /etc/default/locale && . /etc/default/locale || true
>sleep 10
>         LANG=$LANG /usr/bin/mythbackend --syslog local7 --user mythtv
>end script
>
>
>
>
>Seems to work ok
>Paul

Ok, that verifies what the problem is.  With timing problems like
this, just adding a delay is not always entirely reliable.  It may
work most of the time, but if something happens that upsets the
timing, then the problem may occur again, occasionally.  And remember
that you will get the extra delay every time you start or restart
mythbackend, which may get annoying (eg after running mythtv-setup).

I think the best solution long term would be to make both your eth0
port and the HDHomerun use static IP addresses, if the HDHomerun can
do that.  Static IP addresses prevent most timing problems.  Or run a
DHCP server on the Myth box configured to serve addresses to eth0.