Hi,
I just finished a major hardware upgrade on my KnoppMyth system. I am running R4V5 and it works well. I replaced the motherboard/CPU/memory and had to update the IP address in the combined frontend/backend system.

That system is R4V5, ip address 192.168.3.157. It is a dual tuner system and works OK as far as I can tell. All tuners work and I can see the recordings in the database, etc.

All is well until I try to set up a remote frontend only system!

So, I had a working system left over so I wanted to configure it as a frontend only system (192.168.3.150) . I followed the instructions at and did a bunch of searches in the forum but no luck.

http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page ... nlyInstall

I know the frontend system can see the backend because I can see the shows names in the database with I go to "watch recordings". When I click on one of the shows though nothing happens.

So I kill the frontend (mythfrontend) and restart it from an xterm and look for error messages.

I get "Error: File missing" whenever I click on a show to watch or it tries to show a little preview in the "watch recordings" window. It also says it cannot find /myth/tv/[long filename of numbers].nuv even though it exists on the backend. I suspect the front end is confused somehow.

I also tried to boot the frontend off the KnoppMyth R4V5 cd and configured it to see the 192.168.3.157 backend and it seemed to work until I clicked on a show and then the frontend just quit unexpectedly.

I am fairly sure the backend is configured properly since I use it with the dsmyth filters on the winXP boxes and send them to the 192.168.3.157 backend and it sees the backend database just fine.

I am stumped. Please someone help me out. Thank you.

Andrew Lynch

I just tried this again with a completely separate system booting off the KnoppMyth CD and configuring as a frontend only system. The new frontend did the same thing the last one did. It started just fine and then displayed the recorded shows on the backend but when I went to play one the frontend quit completely back to the X window manager.

I now suspect there is something wrong with my backend configuration. I swear I had this working before by booting off the KnoppMyth CD and configuring a temporary frontend to the old frontend/backend machine.

from the knoppmyth wiki:


You need to enable networking for MySQL on the backend system. All this entails is commenting out a line that reads 'skip-networking' in the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file on the backend system, and restarting MySQL (/etc/init.d/mysql restart).

I did this and rebooted the new frontend/backend

You will also need to make sure you change the IP address in the 'General' section of mythtv-setup on the backend system. Change both instances of IP numbers from the loopback address (127.0.0.1) to the actual IP number of the backend. If you are setting this up after you have had a working backend system, remember to restart mythbackend (/etc/init.d/mythbackend restart).

I did this too so that the new frontend/backend is 192.168.3.157

I am stumped. Why is the backend not sharing/streaming the nuv file to the frontends?

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Search around a bit for the skip networking stuff, I know that recent debian packages don't use that anymore, I'm not sure if they have made it into knoppmyth yet or not. try looking at the config file and see if it says something about not using skip networking anymore. Also I don't remember the format right now, but tjc has posted a couple of times a command to see what is listening on each port that you could use to see if the backend is actually bound to a port and listening.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Thanks for the reply,

Both the new frontend/backend (192.168.3.157) and the new frontend (192.168.3.150) have the skip-networking uncommented in the /etc/mysql/my.cnf (?) file.

I have been doing some digging and found some leads. The new frontend/backend mythtv-setup always gave a "Segmentation fault" error although it did apparently change most or all of the configuration it was supposed to. That will take some more investigating as I think it is a root problem. I manually updated the /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt and /usr/share/mythtv/mysql.txt to force it to have the mythconverg database on its IP address (192.168.3.157) with DBHostName=192.168.3.157.

Next I converted the new frontend (192.168.3.150) back into a frontend/backend to run its own database and it works OK. I changed its mysql.txt files to DBHostName=LocalHost. So now I have 2 separate frontend/backends running independently. Not what I wanted but good position to debug from.

With the new arrangement I was able to get the WinXP machine to boot off the KnoppMyth R4V5 CD as a frontend using the new frontend/backend (192.168.3.157) as its backend. That worked so things are looking up there.

So I did the same thing for the new frontend (192.168.3.150), booted of the KnoppMyth CD and aimed it to the new frontend/backend (192.168.3.157) and that worked to. With this we know (I think) that the new frontend/backend works OK as a backend.

As a test, I rebooted the new frontend (192.168.3.150) and changed the mysql.txt back to DBHostName=192.168.3.157 (so it will use the new frontend/backend as its backend) and I was back to having the same problem I started with. I think this means that the new frontend (192.168.3.150) has some sort of problem launching the internal video player. It still gives error messages from mythfrontend saying it cannot find the nuv file.

Any clues why the new frontend (192.168.3.150) would not be able to play the video recordings? It seems to have partial functionality as I can see the shows recorded in the backend but I cannot get them to play on the new frontend.

I can live without the frontend but I have to preserve the frontend/backend at all costs since my wife and family have tons of stuff on there. I was able to back up the most critical of it but still the prospects of losing over a years worth of goodies is not appealing.

Is there a script or command to launch the internal video player on the frontend to play a backend recording?

Is there a more "verbose" mode on the mythfrontend to help debug what is going on here?

Thanks for the help!

Andrew Lynch

I am having the same problem. I've setup my backend using Jarod's guide and mythfronend works fine on that system. However, remote frontends cannot find the .nuv files.

you have to use NFS to make the backend export /myth to the frontend so it can see the files.

Do a quick search on knoppmythwiki for the NFS howto. Follow those instructions and it will work just fine.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

PS http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=NFSHowTo