I think you were too fast to call the MBE/SBE setup a "kludge" just because you didn't understand how it worked and/or how to configure it.

I think the HOWTO's and other webpages are not too bad - other than some of the details are based on older packages. I haven't looked at the Wiki lately to see if it was out of date - it may be in need of an update for R5E50.

That looks like it is set up right.

The only think I can think of is - did you mistakenly do the NFS part of the Wiki instructions? (i.e. is /myth/tv mounted on bigcat from bigdog)

If so, remove the bigdog NFS line from the slave's /etc/fstab line, reboot bigcat, and see if that helps?[/i]

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

On bigdog, I have in the /etc/fstab file:

root@bigdog:~# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda3 /myth ext3 defaults,auto 0 2

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hda2 none swap defaults 0 0
bigcat:/myth /mnt/bigcat nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,soft,nfsvers=3

On bigcat, in the same file, I have:
root@bigcat:~# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda3 /myth ext3 defaults,auto 0 2

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hda2 none swap defaults 0 0
bigdog:/myth /mnt/bigdog nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,soft,nfsvers=3

As far as I can tell, I have them correct as per the wiki.

Nope. In my opinion, it's still a kludge. Mythtv, as great as it is, wasn't designed with multiple machines in mind. The mbe/sbe design is a bandaid patch to get around it.

New information, given to me in this thread, indicates that the mbe *changes* when an sbe is added. Making an error on the sbe can royally screw up the mbe, or at least muck it up enough to require adjustment.

A true non-kludge design would have each machine incapable of harming any other machine merely during configuration. You don't affect existing servers on the network by adding or configuring a new server, do you?

The fact that it's taken me 4 days to configure the sbe and figure out the major problem, and I'm still mucking about messing with trying to get them to share drives doesn't suggest to you that it's a kludge?

MythTV is great. Being able to do so much with tv and media, especially for a homebrew system like this is wonderful. That doesn't mean it's not a kludge.

I'm sorry if you got offended by the term, but it doesn't mean it's not correct.

Yes, adding the modifications makes for great advantages. I LOVE being able to use all 4 tuners as if they were all one one system. But there's still a kludge factor.

But thinking about the problem, it has to do this.
I'll ask a simple question, how does the system know which tuner to use when someone schedules a programme? Unless the MBE is modified, all it would know is about it's own tuners. The only alternative is to have completely separate systems.

It's obvious you have no experience in setting up a SMB Domain with PDC/BDCs.
Though, using MSFT as an example is probably not a good idea.

No, it says to me <barbie>"Networking is hard"</barbie>

It comes down to the fact that connecting PCs together for basic file/print/internet access has gotten so easy, that people tend to forget how fracking difficult it is to get 2 (or more) machines talking to each other over a wire.
Nevermind that NFS has never really been an end user networking protocol, but something that Universities and Sun used.

It might be a good idea for scripts to be written to help in this situation, possibly even added to the KM installation option, for instance having options for MBE only, SBE only, SBE+SFE where the system is configured to point to the MBE by entering the values as part of the installation script. But I would expect that to be fairly involved task.
Maybe even a script to reconfigure an existing BE(+FE) to become a MBE(+FE).

If there is a limitation of 4 tuners per backend, it might be worthwhile getting in touch with the main MythTV list to see what would be required to increase this limit. Considering now, that dual tuner cards are becoming more available so it could be possible to have 6 tuners on 3 PCI slot motherboard.

Bruce S.

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SATA DVD-RW Asus DRW-24D5MT , NVIDIA GeForce GT1080
Hauppauage Nova-T 500, Nova-T LinHes R8.6.1

You can design a system around the concept without having to alter an mbe just to get it working.

It doesn't take a complicated design. P2P recording would simply require that each backend machine keep a port open to listen for a recording requests and update the requesting machine's request table accordingly.

Machine 1: (writes the request details in it's request table)
Hey All, I need a tuner to record for me!
Machine 2: no tuners, so does nothing
Machine 3: 1 tuner, so checks the machine 1's request table to see if it can record at that time. Nope. Has a recording conflict in that timeslot at the same priority. Doesn't update table.
Machine 4: 2 tuners, so does the same as #3. Fortunately, no conflict, so can handle the recording request. Updates the table to tell the machine 1 that it will record at that time, sends a call to all machines that it has updated for request X, and updates it's own database for it's new upcoming recording.




MSFT? Where did I bring up MSFT?

You have 3 servers. You add a fourth. Why would you need to update any of the other existing servers to get this one working?

If you're claiming that this is required when setting up SMB Domains with PDC/BDCs, then all I can say is that THOSE are kludges too.



And WHY is it so difficult? It's not like networking is anything new. 2 or more machines talking to each other *should* be easy.



Maybe scripts would help a lot, but I'd really like to see mythtv drop the master/slave concept and go with a more p2p design. There's no hardware reason why one couldn't drop in a new myth box (fe, be, or fe/be) and have it automatically recognized by all the other myth boxes on the local network.

One basic problem I have with local networking is that adding a new machine to the network requires updating the list of hosts. If I give a machine a host name. which every machine MUST have, it seems weird that I can't ping that machine using it's hostname without editing files.



I was told here that there is no 4 tuner limit per machine.

Please don't get me wrong though. I think MythTV is great.

It's like being given a free car that gets 200 mpg, goes 300 mph, and is covered in paint that makes it invisible to police radar.

But the only thing is that there's no passenger seat on the right, nor a door there. But someone wrote a wiki on how to rip open a hole on the right side of the car, push up a backseat so it's sort of in the passenger spot, and cover over the hole with a plastic so that it's almost as good as having it designed with 2 doors.

Yes, but the Wiki assumes you want all the recordings stored on your MBE. It is mounting /myth from bigdog, which means it that it can't see the local drive to put its recordings on.

If you comment out that line on bigcat and reboot, your SBE will use its local /myth/tv for its recordings, and this will be added to your "pool" of recording space.

Note that, after making this change, any recording you previously made on bigcat may be inaccessible. If this is the case, you may need to either edit the SQL records for those recordings, or copy the files like this on bigcat:
where 1004_123456789 is replaced by the real file's name.

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

It is getting there. The backend has supported uPnP for about 6 months, and in the next few weeks the frontend uPuP support should be committed.

But until the MythTV developers finish that, a script to set it up a KnoppMyth SBE should be possible.

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Well, I don't know about you, but I think I prefer the master/slave idea better. If you want completely separate, then do separate 'all-in-one' installs (and remote mount the other's media directory). However, I want a single database server and a single web server. If they are on a backend, then its really a master backend and one without these would be a slave backend. So, I'm kinda in agreement with the way MythTV does it. Sure, there are some improvements that could be made.

Having duplicate databses goes against usual computing practice, unless you use transaction based processing.


It was me that brought up MSFT.

That's why I said it was a bad idea to compare the two.




Because it's a fairly intricate subject and Unixy type networking relies on an infrastructure that most people don't have on their home networks.


That sounds like a good idea, but they will need to get a robust protocol in whatever way they implement it.

That's what DNS is for, the ideal situation is you set up on DNS server the names of static IP hosts, then any additional host should be able to resolve those names. The unfortunate thing is, most DNS servers on most home routers do not have that facility.
Also IIRC, NIS/NIS+ is able to specify what NFS exports and mounts a particular user needs.

I didn't think there was, I just noticed in a couple of recent posts it being mentioned. It's good that that meme gets stamped on.


You've not seen the various "If Operating Systems were airlines" posts around the 'net.

Bruce S.

_________________
Updated 2019/10/26: AthlonII X2 265 Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P
16Gb PC 1866 DDR3, 500GB+2TB+4TB SATA HDD,
SATA DVD-RW Asus DRW-24D5MT , NVIDIA GeForce GT1080
Hauppauage Nova-T 500, Nova-T LinHes R8.6.1

Thanks. I appreciate the help, nigel. I think for now I'm gonna leave it alone though, since it works and I'm not hurting for the space.

Ok. I'm certainly not going to insist that my way is necessarily the best or only way. It was only ever my opinion anyway.

That's the thing. They *aren't* duplicate databases. It's not like creating a database for every recording. It's just a database for each machine. There are plenty of good reasons to do it, as well as good reasons not to.

Usual computing practices means nothing in this regard, since usual computing practices has never involved setting up something like mythtv.

Consider a tivo product, for example. It would be designed to be dropped into an existing network with other tivo's. Removing the oldest shouldn't mean that the rest of them would stop working.


Ok. Then your statement "It's obvious you have no experience in setting up a SMB Domain with PDC/BDCs. " makes more sense to me now.



Unix is probably more accustomed to networking than any OS since. I kind of hope that over time, basic requirements such as networking would be made more automatic. Most good developers, in my opinion, prefer to make setups simpler and less prone to user installation errors. (mythtv for example is getting more automated, and Cecil's KM has done much of the rest.)

People build p2p based programs more and more every month, especially distributed processing.

Networking is getting easier, not harder. MythTV already does plenty of network coding as it is. It's just a matter of changing the premise from slave/master to p2p.



Of course. But the existing system already has a robust protocol for how it currently works. I'm not sure it would need much redesign.


Yes. Windoz boxes do it automatically by picking a machine to act as a dns server. Linux has no equivalent option, afaik. However, Windoz implementation sucks royally, so I'm not too upset.

But I can sort of see a few different ways of getting around it without keeping a dns service running. An announcement feature announcing it's hostname and ip address, or maybe detecting of traffic on the network for ip addresses not currently listed. None of these are ideal though.



Yeah. I was mostly trying to show that I'm not ripping on mythtv. But I suck at analogies.

I still don't think the master/slave setup is a "kludge".

I had no major issues getting my setup to work - I did try several different setups changing where recordings are stored etc... I appreciated having the ability to completely fine tune the setup...

That's fine. If you're happy with it, that's great. I won't try to change your opinion.