Prevent Frontend from starting automatically?

[bpmod]

I know that you can go to Mythbuntu Control Center and check/uncheck the option to start frontend on bootup.

However, once the option is selected and frontend starts automatically, is there any way to stop the frontend so that you can subsequently get to MCC and toggle the option?

Because the network is somehow failing to start on my frontend machine, the frontend cannot find the backend and is bringing up the "choose country and language" screen. Since there is no network, the credentials for connecting to the backend are moot. The biggest problem then is that there is no way to cancel that screen (choosing cancel somehow causes frontend to crash and restart) so that I can start a command prompt or browser or any other program to start to troubleshoot the network.

Please help!

Brian

[MikeB2013]

On Ubuntu You can start a new terminal (login) session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2 keys, this gets you to a command prompt to login (just enter your login id followed at the prompt by your password) at this point you can troubleshoot the network.

You can go back to the original (Xorg session) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7 (alternatively at the command prompt type "ps -A|grep tty" and look for the one that has Xorg (often tty7), and press the appropriate keys Ctrl+Alt+F<number from tty session>)

[diyhouse]

..also if you are running a full blown Ubuntu installation, ( ie not on a Rasp Pi or similar ).. you can type on the keyboard Crtl-Alt <Left and Right Arrow>.
This gets you to one of the alternative virtual graphic screens available in ubuntu. This provides a great way to access the backend with all the graphics tools available in ubuntu,.. although I generally just open a tty window, to check status etc.

If you are having trouble with myth frontend trying to start too quickly ie before network services are sorted,.. the simplest and quickest way to fix this is usually just add a small delay to mythfrontend starting... but it is possible to set stanza's to start Mythfrontend,..once network is stable.. but for this you will need to investigate 'udev statements'.

Hope that helps..

[bpmod]

Unfortunately, neither of these suggestions helps. The first suggestion (Ctrl-Alt-F2) doesn't give me a login prompt, but instead, gives a whole bunch of gibberish (that is, output I don't understand) down the left side of the screen, which, in turn, is partially hidden because of the TV's overscan which can not be turned off. The second suggestion (switching to a different workspace) might work on a system that had more than one workspace, but mine doesn't. Because I had trouble with things disappearing onto other workspaces, I got into the habit of deleting all other workspaces immediately after installing Ubuntu.

Brian

[wesnewell]

If the problem is the network doesn't come up fast enough, go to the frontend general setup and enable database wakeup. Then change the default 2 seconds to a higher number. 5 seconds did it for me when I replaced the HDD with a SSD boot drive.

[bpmod]

If the problem is the network doesn't come up fast enough, go to the frontend general setup and enable database wakeup. Then change the default 2 seconds to a higher number. 5 seconds did it for me when I replaced the HDD with a SSD boot drive.

No. It only happens when the network doesn't come up at all.

If the network comes up after the "select country" screen, the problem I encountered as described in the first post is only temporary and cycling through once or twice is all that is needed.

If the computer has failed to connect to the network for whatever reason, this creates an endless loop that cannot be stopped with any solution I have yet been able to find.

I would simply like to know of a way to stop that loop should it happen. I wouldn't think that that should be so difficult.

Brian

[wesnewell]

Do Alt tab and get to the desktop. Pull up a terminal and execute 'killall mythfrontend. real' and 'killall mythfrontend' several times in a row until the loop ends. You have to do this really quick to stop it.

[bpmod]

Do Alt tab and get to the desktop. Pull up a terminal and execute 'killall mythfrontend. real' and 'killall mythfrontend' several times in a row until the loop ends. You have to do this really quick to stop it.

In my almost 6 years of using Mythbuntu as my main OS, I have never been able to get to the desktop by Alt-Tab. Is there some sort of special thing I need to do to make that work that way? If I have something else running (besides frontend), I can use Alt-Tab to cycle between them, and, further, when I am on a computer screen with no overscan and I Alt-Tab to another running program, the taskbar (Panel) across the top will reveal itself and I can then use the mouse to start other programs. But my remote frontend's screen has overscan (which cannot be turned off) so I can never see the taskbar, and I don't have anything else running on bootup, so Alt-Tab does absolutely nothing.

Incidentally, I also know that I could set it up to not start frontend automatically, but since this is my mother's computer and she has no idea how to do anything with it, I want it to always run frontend (and nothing else) automatically.

Brian