[mythtvnz] [Mythtv] How to view the backend logs

[Daniel Hughes]

My mythtv system is having issues. If I try to use it it will play for
about 30 seconds to a minute then says:
"Could not connect to master backend MythContext Could not connect to
the master backend server. Is it running? is the IP Address set for it
in myth-setup correct?"

Obviously the IP Address is correct or how else does it play 30-60
seconds of live TV before breaking.

I seem to be able to do this twice before it says all tuners are
currently busy, and I also can't see any of my recordings.

I'm hoping that if I can see the backend logs it might give me a clue
as to what is going on. However I can't seem to find out how to view
them.

A little background:
This system has been working for years, however around the time of the
royal wedding we noticed that new recording showed red spinners on
them and they never stopped (they still have them) Usually they have
green spinners while recording and then red for a short period after.
Then this morning my wife noticed edge tv wasn't working (a blank
screen if you tried to watch it) so she closed mythtv did the ubuntu
updates (hadn't been done for ages) and restarted the machine. That
didn't fix the problem so she came to ask me for help. I ran the
backend setup and tried to do a rescan on the channels but the scan
didn't work. So I googled it and found out this can happen if the
backend is still running (the back end setup program should stop it
but obviously had failed to do so. I stopped the backend from the
commandline which took ages, and then ran the channel scan which
worked fine. Now the edge channel was on a different number, it did
work but only for 30 seconds, then showed the message as per above. So
I tried other channels and they all have the same problem.

My guess is that the backend is crashing but I need to look at the
logs to know why, and that does not seem to be documented.
https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Logging seems very complicated and doesn't
actually tell you how to see the logs assuming a default config.