[MythDora] MythDora 4 Final

[gchris]

Dennis Hand wrote:
> On 6/9/07, gchris <gchris at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> Guys, I'm gradually recovering from knee surgery and haven't yet been
>> able to get much computer "seat time", but I have gotten just enough to
>> grab a copy of MythDora 4 Final and get it installed.  This is without a
>> doubt the very best Mythtv package I've ever seen or ever expected to
>> see!  It is incredibly smooth and slick in appearance, the menus are
>> clear and straightforward, and a total install took me 35 minutes
>> including filling the database.  To my mind this is what Mythtv always
>> should have been but never was until now!  Congratulations on a job well
>> done and and an outstanding collaboration!
> Well Thank You very much Chris. Jarod and I put in alot of hours
> getting things just right. A few choice words may have also been said
> in the process ;-) We're also proud of the way things turned out. I
> myself think it's the best and most solid version of MythDora.
> 
I'd go a step further and call it the best and most solid of any Mythtv 
distro I've ever seen and believe me I've seen a bunch!
> 
>> On three occasions the box booted with no audio.  Twice it started
>> working after I escaped out to the desktop and then restarted Mythtv.
>> Once it started working after I cycled through the three tuner cards.
>> Once working it seems to continue to work.
> This has been posted on the site since version 3.2. I noticed it
> myself when Myth went to version 0.20. The fix is (at least for me) to
> change the audio output device from /dev/dsp to ALSA:default. Also
> make sure you change /dev/mixer to "default" without the quotes. This
> works for me everytime now.
> 
Where is the script that defines that?  I haven't had much occasion to 
tune alsa stuff previously.

>> On two occasions the box warned that it was unable to contact the
>> mythbackend after it booted.  If I selected something like "display
>> system status" I found that if I hit the Enter key several times it
>> would occasionally get status from the backend successfully, but then
>> fail again the next time with a "Unable to contact backend" message the
>> next time Enter was pressed.  Clearly, backend was running but frontend
>> was not able to communicate with it reliably.  Once I cured this
>> behavior by running Mythtv setup without changing anything and then
>> restarting Mythtv.  The second time it resolved itself when the machine
>> was powered down and later restarted.
> I myself have not experienced this but I have heard of just a few
> saying something vaguely similiar. Anytime you start the frontend from
> the desktop shortcut, the backend gets checked then started if it's
> stopped.
> 
I just experienced something even wilder.  I just booted the box and had 
no audio (but normal video) in Watch TV.  I escaped out and ran dmesg in 
a terminal window to see if I could spot anything.  Nothing amiss.  Went 
back into Mythtv and now I had normal audio and video.  Tried changing 
tuners - I had one and two but no three.  Escaped out of Watchtv and 
went to System Status to view Tuner Status and got the Mythbackend not 
accessible error!  Hit enter several times and could occasionally see 
Tuner Status appear interspersed with unable to access Mythbackend 
errors.  Could no longer Watchtv, it was now blocked by unable to access 
backend errors.  Clearly the backend had been up and running normally 
after boot but my ability to access it went south when I went from 
watching TV to displaying System Status!!!

>> A third glitch was that my PVR-350 (third tuner) couldn't be selected in
>> WatchTV for the first several days after MythDora was installed.  System
>> Status showed that the tuner was there and not busy but cycling through
>> the tuners with the "Y" key would give me Tuner 1, Tuner 2, Tuner 1,
>> simply skipping Tuner 3 as though it didn't exist!  Today I booted the
>> machine and all three tuners are working normally.  I haven't changed
>> anything and dmesg and /dev looked perfectly normal when I couldn't
>> access the third tuner.
> Can you confirm that this happened during your mythbackend snaffu that
> you just mentioned? And has it happened since and how long has it been
> since. Sounds like your backend may have just been in a funky state.
> 
No, I was able to view and record and playback programming from the 
HD3000s at the same time I was unable to access the third tuner so I 
wouldn't tie the backend access problem together with the third tuner 
problem.

>> I have yet to see anything in logs or messages to explain any of this
>> weirdness and the system seems to be perfectly stable once it is up and
>> running so I haven't a clue other than a suspicion that something
>> strange may be occurring during boot.  Like I said, not complaining,
>> just observing.
> So you do get bad symptoms still on a reboot then?
>
Yes, randomly.  After any cold boot, any one or more of these problems 
may be present.  Just now I went into setup using the desktop icon (to 
stop mythbackend) and then escaped out and went back into mythtv (to 
restart mythbackend) and this time it did not fix the connection problem 
so I'm completely at a loss as to what is going on here.  BTW, this is 
the same hardware I've been using all along and I've never seen any of 
these problems before this final release so I'm thinking this has to be 
something in the final release software.

>> One other observation related to the kernel.  I'd mentioned a while back
>> that I'd noted an intermittent failure related to anachron during power
>> down.  That is still happening.  On power down, Init going down stops
>> anachron.  Sometimes but not always, when killall starts toward the end
>> of power down it sometimes also tries to bring down anachron.  When that
>> occurs, anachron shows FAIL, probably because it is already down.  When
>> killall starts without mentioning anachron, there is no failure
>> indication.  This may be a "don't care" thing because it doesn't seem to
>> be causing any problems, it just looks funky.
> I'll leave this one for Jarod ;-)
> 
If I were Jarod I'd ask if it happens with Core 7? :-)

Chris