mythtv 0.19 backend troubles

[lord_ph]

Has anyone come across problems regarding the masterbackend?

Everytime i try to run a mythfilldatabase i get this error:

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2006-02-15 23:35:13.932 DataDirect: NextSuggestedTime is: 2006-02-17T04:47:46
2006-02-15 23:35:13.940 DataDirect: Provider suggested running again at 2006-02-17T04:47:46, but MythFillPeriod is 1.  Next run time will be adjusted to be 2006-02-16T04:47:46.
2006-02-15 23:35:13.950 
===============================================================
| Attempting to contact the master backend for rescheduling.  |
| If the master is not running, rescheduling will happen when |
| the master backend is restarted.                            |
===============================================================
2006-02-15 23:35:13.973 Connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543 (try 1 of 1)
2006-02-15 23:35:13.975 Trying to wake up the MasterBackend now.
2006-02-15 23:35:13.994 Waiting for 5 seconds until I try to reconnect again.
2006-02-15 23:35:18.996 Error rescheduling id -1 in ScheduledRecording::signalChange
2006-02-15 23:35:18.998 Connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543 (try 1 of 1)
2006-02-15 23:35:19.001 Trying to wake up the MasterBackend now.
2006-02-15 23:35:19.032 Waiting for 5 seconds until I try to reconnect again.
2006-02-15 23:35:24.050 mythfilldatabase run complete.

Ontop of this, my frontend can never seem to connect to the backend. Everytime i try to access something on mysql, the frontend says that it cannot connect to the backend. For the schedule stuff though, the information is there... but for my saved shows, its always empty.

I have the feeling that the error is in mythbackend, but i'm not sure.

I really miss my mythtv!!! Please help!!! I don't want to go back to the 9 month old .18 when .19 is out.

[dschobel]

can you post the contents of /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log ?

[soccerman]

I had that problem at first. Check and make sure the backend is even running. A simple test is:

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ps auxw | grep mythbackend

If nothing appears or the ps process appears then the backend isn't running. If it is then I would probably need more information. Mine wasn't running and my problem stemmed from the fact that after running etc-update the /etc/conf.d/mythbackend config file changed. It previously contained a setting to tell the backend what user to run as. By default it was set to run as root, however now (most likely for security reasons) it runs as your mythtv user. If it ran as root before the upgrade then the file nfslockfile.lock in your recordings directory most likely exists and is owned by root or whatever user the backend ran as before. If this is the case the mythtv user most likely doesn't have permission to modify this file so the backend fails to start. Check the owner of that file by navigating into your recordings directory and doing

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ls -l nfslockfile.lock

If it is owned by any user other than your mythtv user modify it or delete it as the backend will create it if it doesn't exist. To modify it replace mythtvuser and mythtvgroup with the ones for your system and do

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chown mythtvuser:mythtvgroup nfslockfile.lock

After this we need to restart the backend which previously failed. The init scripts are not that great yet and don't detect when the process didn't start up so you will most likely have to zap it. First try

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/etc/init.d/mythbackend stop

and if that fails or gives you an error about the process not existing then do

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/etc/init.d/mythbackend zap

Now you can start it back up again and check to see if it started properly. If it did you should be good to go. If not include your log file from /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log so me or others can have a better idea of what is going on.

Hopefully this helps. Now back to me figuring out why mine is not loading the program guide and consequently crashing out. The error tells me something about not having any channels defined in the database which is clearly not accurate.

Good luck

[lord_ph]

Thanks Soccerman, There wasn't a backend running, and it was due to the nfslock file not being read & writeable. I changed the file permissions, and BAM, i'm back up and running.

I & my girlfriend can't thank you enough!!!!

[soccerman]

I'm glad it worked. You shouldn't have any other problems however if you can't delete previous recordings and things like that you may want to change ownership on that whole directory. I'm not sure off the top of my head what files would be conflicted or not. But if you run into problems do

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chown mythtvuser:mythtvgroup -R /path/to/mythtv

Glad it worked out for you.

[lord_ph]

Do you happen to know where the setting is for the directory that when you pause live tv, it drops the file into that directory? I can't see it in the settings anywhere, and i have specific space allocated for it.

Thanks again! And i'll keep that in mind.

[soccerman]

Do you happen to know where the setting is for the directory that when you pause live tv, it drops the file into that directory? I can't see it in the settings anywhere, and i have specific space allocated for it.

Thanks again! And i'll keep that in mind.

I don't know off the top of my head. In the previous version I believe MythTV kept your recordings and the buffer in seperate directories but I do not believe that is the case anymore. I looked through all of my settings and could not find reference to a buffer anywhere. Maybe it keeps that information in the recordings directory now?

[lord_ph]

NEVERMIND!!!

i went to try and watch some live tv... and all i could get was fuzz. I know my cable & hardware work because it worked just fine with .18. And i have a spare line running directly to the tv. PLUS, when i rebooted the machine, the problem was back?!?!?!

Being i'm a student, I don't have time to fiddle with this, i'm downgrading back to .18 WHERE EVERYTHING JUST WORKED! I'm going to wait till .19-r1 or .2 before i try this again!

Thanks for your help again soccerman!

[trilexx]

you might have to re-setup your tv-cards in mythtv-setup again after upgrading.

what cards do you use? hauppauge pvr? got bt848 support in the kernel?

[lord_ph]

Ok, i lied, i didn't give up, but i'm really pissed off!!

I was having ivtv issues... even though ivtv (for my hauppague 250's) is suppose to work with 2.6.15, i haven't gotten that to work right, so down granded back to 2.6.14... yeah, i get tv again.

Now mythtv-0.19(which was still installed), has something wrong with the init script, so i can only get a backend to run when i call it from the commandline (no error in the log file... that's why i know its the init script). SO got that fixed... watched live teli... works, YEAH, told it to record a show... waited... HD light started to blink. Went to watch the show, FILE NOT FOUND error... checked the directory, file was there and growing. WTF!!!! To make things even stranger, i went through the database, it has the right file in the database. So i am VERY confused and VERY VERY angry.

No errors about this have shown up in the mythtv-users list... so yeah... anyone got any ideas on this one???

[lord_ph]

UPDATE:

the root user (through SSH) can see the video previews of the file... So that means that its a permission issue... but everyone can read the file. So root can view the file through the frontend, but the user running mythfrontend can't, and it gets a file not found error.

ARGH!

[lord_ph]

OK, i sorta figured it out...

its the jfs file system, its not allowing non-root users to read or write to the harddrive. I heard that it was good with large files, and i know mythtv creates large files... oh well, back to ext3 for me.

sorry for my id10t error.

[linuxtuxhellsinki]

Maybe you'd try XFS or even Ext2 (but ext3 is just fine, if you need journal)

[Hobbes-X]

Do you happen to know where the setting is for the directory that when you pause live tv, it drops the file into that directory? I can't see it in the settings anywhere, and i have specific space allocated for it.

Thanks again! And i'll keep that in mind.

Live TV was re-worked for .19. The single ringbuffer file method that was used has been replaced so that each show is now considered an individual recording. This makes it so that you can set a program to record in the middle of a live showing, or go back and keep something that you watched an hour ago

Live TV files are now kept in the recordings directory, and are the first to auto-expire once myth decides you need space for additional recordings.

[lord_ph]

Yeah, i learned about the way that mythtv handles livetv files. I'm not exactly excited about this, as this is going to (temporary) suck up space on my second hard drive that was setup to hold recordings. I think this new feature has a lot to offer, but at the same time, keeping live/temp recordings seperate from longterm recordings would be more advantages (IMHO). Or at least having the ability to seperate them would be nice.

And yes, the problem was with encoding in JFS with 1.1.10-r1, reencoded the partition with 1.1.8, and everything worked just fine. Going to file a bug report next.

Thanks again everyone who tried to help!!!

[Nicias]

I was also told that the livetv recording expire after 24 hours is this correct?

[Hobbes-X]

I believe there's a setting to adjust how many days live tv recordings stay around (1-5, IIRC). Autoexpire will take them more quickly if it needs the space for recordings though.

[opqdan]

I was also told that the livetv recording expire after 24 hours is this correct?

Mostly. This may get a little bit ranty: There is/was a lot of discussion/childish arguing about this on the mythtv-dev mailing list. In short, whenever you watch livetv, it is saved as a file on the harddisk, whether or not you record. In .18, these files were deleted when you changed channels, exited or whatever. In .19 and later, these files stick around until they auto-expire (there is a setting), or if there is not enough room for another recording.

In short, this is okay, because although it may look like your disk is filling with useless files (and I find them exceptionally useless), space will be made for any new recordings. Apparently this is more like a commercial PVR (I've never own one, so not sure about this). To see the livetv recordings, youll need to look at that group in the recordings menu (but like I said, they're pretty useless).

For the life of me I cannot figure out why this was done. Sure it does not cause problems when the PC is used as a PVR only, but it does when the PVR is also a server for other things. It is not nice when your file server is filled with recordings you have no intention of using. The easiest way to get by this problem is to force a certain amount of free space within Mythtv and set the autoexpire livetv to really short. You could also separate your recordings onto another partition, but I don't want to go through the hassle of backing up and dividing my disk. Don't tell the developers that you want the option to turn this "feature" off, they will tell you that you could not possibly have a reason to. Of course I was always under the impression that features were added to software because there was a need, not becasue there was lack of a reason not to.

And thank you to soccerman for solving the lock file problem. I had been using mythtv svn until last night (last update in january), so I was behind in the times and could not figure out why te heck the backend was not starting.

[Hobbes-X]

Don't tell the developers that you want the option to turn this "feature" off, they will tell you that you could not possibly have a reason to. Of course I was always under the impression that features were added to software because there was a need, not because there was lack of a reason not to.

Well, the previous versions used one file to write out all of the live TV, regardless of the channel, length of the show, etc. So whatever actions you took during your live TV session, those were lumped together as a single file.

Say you watched an entire show, and then decided you wanted to keep it, but not before the next show started. There wasn't a (simple, clean, and not-resourse intensive) way separate out that one show to store, since it was all held in the ringbuffer along with everything else. I see it as a six of one, half a dozen of the other situation. Before .19, the complaints were about not being able to save past live recordings, and the lack of separation of shows in the ringbuffer. Plus, the ringbuffer was slower.

Recordings under 2 minutes still get expired right away, so doing things like browsing channels doesn't keep a large number of short recordings around. You can also delete the entire Live TV group from what I've read, but I've almost completely stopped watching live TV, so I haven't it yet.

[greg]

I had some troubles with my Myth box recently. I have upgraded to 2.6.15 and was able to compile ivtv 4.2 driver and get it working correctly. I noticed lord_ph mentioned having trouble.. As I understand it you require 4.2 or better on 2.6.15.

The init script to launch mythbackend has been changed it seems, it ignores most options set in the /etc/conf.d/mythbackend... I modified it a bit to get it to run as the user defined in the conf, but I got the file not found error. I'm pretty sure that I change the permissions on the myth directory to the user the backend is running as, but I didn't have time to look into it so I manually ran mythbackend as root for now.... I may install .18 and copy the old init file and use that...

Oh and to top it off I had some db issues and I was able to read the recorded table. I was able to correct it with:

mysqlcheck -u<login> -p -r <database>

Figured I'd mention it just incase someone down the road has the same problem...

[mean]

Weird as i have a problem very similar to the one of lord_ph

Before, running 0.18 with ivtv -> no problem

Updated to 0.19, ran into misc troubles that were fixed (thanks to the hints of this forum )

Now the weird part.
All files that i recorded before upgrading are there through mythfrontend, on the disc and using mythweb
All files that i recorded after upgrading are there through mythweb, ON THE DISK, but do not appear in mythfrontend

They have all mythtv as owner and the disk is XFS

Any hint welcome

[opqdan]

Don't tell the developers that you want the option to turn this "feature" off, they will tell you that you could not possibly have a reason to. Of course I was always under the impression that features were added to software because there was a need, not because there was lack of a reason not to.

Well, the previous versions used one file to write out all of the live TV, regardless of the channel, length of the show, etc. So whatever actions you took during your live TV session, those were lumped together as a single file.

Say you watched an entire show, and then decided you wanted to keep it, but not before the next show started. There wasn't a (simple, clean, and not-resourse intensive) way separate out that one show to store, since it was all held in the ringbuffer along with everything else. I see it as a six of one, half a dozen of the other situation. Before .19, the complaints were about not being able to save past live recordings, and the lack of separation of shows in the ringbuffer. Plus, the ringbuffer was slower.

Recordings under 2 minutes still get expired right away, so doing things like browsing channels doesn't keep a large number of short recordings around. You can also delete the entire Live TV group from what I've read, but I've almost completely stopped watching live TV, so I haven't it yet.

Excellent explanation, thank you. I actually don't mind it as much as I used to. Now that I set it to leave a portion of the disk free, everything works out fine (and has for a while now).

[Hobbes-X]

Weird as i have a problem very similar to the one of lord_ph

Before, running 0.18 with ivtv -> no problem

Updated to 0.19, ran into misc troubles that were fixed (thanks to the hints of this forum )

Now the weird part.
All files that i recorded before upgrading are there through mythfrontend, on the disc and using mythweb
All files that i recorded after upgrading are there through mythweb, ON THE DISK, but do not appear in mythfrontend

They have all mythtv as owner and the disk is XFS

Any hint welcome

Is there any chance that you have mythfrontend's program listing set to filter by a recording group? I've accidentally changed to viewing a group in mythfronted and thought I deleted a lot of shows. I think the key to filter by group is 'M'.

[mean]

yes, that was it
Thanks a bunch, i have now a chance to survive tonight "Of course your recorded my show ?, wanna watch it now"

[Obsidian_MH]

I'm having the same issue in that the backend isn't starting when I run the init script. If I try to stop or restart, it says no such process.

/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log is blank, so I don't know what else to post here. Everything else seems to be working fine.

If I run mythbackend from the command line:

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2006-03-22 10:33:51.116 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2006-03-22 10:33:51.141 New DB connection, total: 1
2006-03-22 10:33:51.152 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2006-03-22 10:33:51.159 Current Schema Version: 1108
2006-03-22 10:33:51.160 Newest Schema Version : 1123
2006-03-22 10:33:51.162 New DB connection, total: 2
2006-03-22 10:33:51.163 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2006-03-22 10:33:51.164 Setting Lock for Database Schema upgrade. If you see a long pause here it means the Schema is already locked and is being upgraded by another Myth process.
2006-03-22 10:33:51.165 New DB connection, total: 3
2006-03-22 10:33:51.166 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2006-03-22 10:33:51.169 Upgrading to schema version 1109
2006-03-22 10:33:51.170 DB Error (Performing database upgrade):
Query was: ALTER TABLE oldrecorded ADD COLUMN generic TINYINT(1) DEFAULT 0;
Error was: Driver error was [2/1060]:
QMYSQL3: Unable to execute query
Database error was:
Duplicate column name 'generic'

new version: 1109
2006-03-22 10:33:51.171 Database Schema upgrade FAILED, unlocking.
2006-03-22 10:33:51.172 Couldn't upgrade database to new schema