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Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 2:17 pm
by jimls
Had a utility outage of about 2 hours and when the power came back on the mythtv box is set to automatically start. It did and myth started. I looked at the status in mythweb on another PC and backend status showed the tuners not in use since it wasn't trying to record. Later in the day I noticed several recordings of 1 min length and no actual recording.

I checked the tuner from a windows PC with HDHomeRun app which worked fine.
I pinged the tuner from the myth box which worked.

I did not check the logs as I didn't know what I should look for. I suspect that this is a timing issue with the router, myth box and tuner all being powered up at the same time. Perhaps the units don't have IP address from the router or some such when myth tries to connect to the tuner.

I restarted the mythtv box and all worked normally.

Is this a known issue or what should I check? I can manually do the power interruption to test.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 2:48 pm
by wesnewell
It's a known issue with pretty much some/many tuners, not just hdhr's. The server booted too fast for the tuners to initialize.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:18 pm
by jimls
What is the work around? I suppose I could delay the server starting the backend somehow but would have to figure out how to do that. I'm still on Ubuntu 14.04 and some information I found using systemd apparently is for later distributions. Perhaps I should make another attempt to set up a newer system but the last time I got bogged down in details and gave up.

I looked to see where mythtv backend is started. I looked in crontab for root and user and didn't see it either place.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:21 pm
by bill6502
It's started by Upstart, if memory serves. Try looking in /etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf
or something like that. http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#pre-start

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:35 pm
by wesnewell
I haven't had this problem in a while, but it seems like I used the wait command at one point when a frontend machine had to wait for the network to be up when I first used an SSD drive to boot.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:57 pm
by jimls
Found the file at /etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf
I will try adding a sleep statement before it loads the backend.

Thanks!

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:04 pm
by gedakc
One of the MythTV PCs I support encountered this problem. I tried several different things, but never got a 100% working solution. Note that the PC is also running mythbuntu 14.04.

For a description of all the things I tried see WIP: How to Fix HDHomeRun Connect Not Starting MythTV Recordings or Live TV. 'Hope that helps.

I am interested if you are able to resolve the issue and if so then how.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:33 am
by heyted
Mythbuntu Control Panel has three options to choose from to solve this race issue for Ubuntu/Xubuntu 18.04 and 20.04.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:11 pm
by jimls
I checked and have Mythbuntu Control Center on my system currently in use. I didn't find any options related to the tuners. I installed the tuner manually and think I did a lot of the initial install manually as well - that was a long time ago.

I didn't know that the control center/panel was still viable and thought it had faded away when ISOs of mythtv and ubuntu already installed ceased. I am guessing the name changed to Mythbuntu Control Panel at some point.

Looks like I might want to try using that to set up my updated system. Is that the preferred way to set up a mythtv system these days? I looked at the wiki page for it. I have a partition with Xubuntu (18 LTS I think, will have to check) that I installed mythtv on but never got it running right. Thinking I should do a fresh install of Ubuntu rather than try to install myth control panel on the partially configured system.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:42 pm
by jimls
BTW, my system is an Athlon II X2 255 with 4G of ram. I have upgraded the tuner and hard drive but have been thinking I should do a more major upgrade of the main board and CPU. Running a newer OS is likely to negatively impact performance so will likely put off the OS upgrade until I get a new PC.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 1:54 pm
by Steve Goodey
Ted is referring to https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Mythbuntu_Control_Panel which is a new version of MCC.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 7:55 pm
by jimls
Steve, Thanks. Yes, I did find that. Maybe I didn't state it very clearly but that was the reason for my question about if that is the preferred way to set up a new system.

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 10:13 pm
by Steve Goodey
I think it's one way of setting up a system. You may prefer more control of the setup, whatever works for you. Being a bit dim I prefer something that's as simple as possible. :D

Re: Myth doesn't connect to Silicon Dust tuner properly after power outage

Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 1:13 pm
by jimls
For anyone else finding this thread I stumbled across another thread on the resurrection of Mythbuntu Control Center/Panel. Looks like it came to be fairly recently.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3789