Any solutions for disappearing mythtv frontend?

[madboo]

I haven't noticed a difference when I changed it, but I noticed myth is configured to use alpha blending which my video card does not support...  Anyone have any luck changing this setting?

[efiniti]

I'm having the same issue.  Grey screen with UI2 + AB and it goes back to the main screen with UI1. 

I've been messing around with the mythtv frontend settings, but I keep getting the message saying that MythTV cannot connect to the main backend.  What should the ip address be for the mythtv-setup page?  Is it the dhcp server that LinuxMCE makes when installing?  Is there a way to find out exactly what that is?  I installed the media director on the same core.

[madboo]

Not being sarcastic, have you tried 127.0.0.1?

Run a netstat -an and see where myth is listening, it appears to be defaulting to 0.0.0.0 which would indicate all interfaces are listening.  I have eth0 and eth0:0 and a remote mythfrontend (mac) works on both interfaces.  Albeit I can't watch tv on the remote interface either...

Also I attempted to have myth record a program last night and it failed, I'm not quite sure whats going on here.  Has anyone run mythfrontend on the LMCE box without LMCE running e.g: kill LMCE, startx, run myhtfrontend?

[madboo]

So in looking at the mythtv plugin device template, it is not listed as an audio visual device.

I listed it as an av device and there was no change other than myth staying on screen a little longer...

[corwin]

New (useless) info:

1) Starting mythfrontend from the command line (whether OrbiterGL is running or not), it works fine.

2) When starting mythfrontend from the orbiter, the logs show nothing useful. the mythfrontend simply quits, no error messages show up anywhere.

This is getting painful... starting to feel like the good old Pluto days.

mythfrontend is started by /usr/pluto/bin/MythTV_Player. Is anyone familiar with this code able to say anything about what might be going wrong there?

[madboo]

I think not useless!  So we are narrowing the problem down to certainly not mythfrontend.  I notice in the process listing there is something called 'SCREEN' before each device running.  I am thinking that mythfrontend kicks off and whatever is supposed to keep it running in focus (though I'm hesitant to use focus) loses it and it may be trying to go back to pluto.  Part of the issue may be that myth likes to take control from window manager and there is a struggle between pluto and myth over the xserver.

Does anyone have myth working correctly???

[corwin]

I think not useless!  So we are narrowing the problem down to certainly not mythfrontend.  I notice in the process listing there is something called 'SCREEN' before each device running.  I am thinking that mythfrontend kicks off and whatever is supposed to keep it running in focus (though I'm hesitant to use focus) loses it and it may be trying to go back to pluto.  Part of the issue may be that myth likes to take control from window manager and there is a struggle between pluto and myth over the xserver.

A few thoughts on this:

1) It's not a focus issue, because you can see the mythfrontend process starting up, and then disappearing at the same time the display goes grey.

2) LMCE runs mythfrontend with the '-w' switch (run in window), and in this mode myth doesn't do anything unusual with the window manager.

Also, I don't think it's an issue of LMCE ending the mythfrontend process, because then the orbiter would return to the screensaver and the default control layout. The fact that we get a grey screen, and that when you return to the orbiter you see the myth controls menu, means that the orbiter doesn't even know that myth died...

BTW, after myth dies and you're in the grey screen, just hit F7 to get back to the orbiter. Then select "quit" from the menu to end the myth control process and return to normal.

Does anyone have myth working correctly???

How I'd love for that to be answered...

[1audio]

I have Myth running at a 50% confidence. I'm using the SiliconDust tuner which runs stand alone so its more isolated from the rest of the system. I still find live TV chancy at best. I usually watch recorded programs which work OK. When Live TV crashes 50% of the time a router reload will recover it. Otherwise a reboot is necessary. I have found that a router reload is necessary after a reboot to get Myth started. Sometimes I need to go through the Myth backend to wake it up. I wish I knew what was really working in this ritual but I know little about Myth.

You should be able to access Mythweb in the core from a browser in another computer on the network- 192.168.80.1/mythweb  . The backend status will give some idea if the backend is running. You can schedule recordings from Mythweb as well.

[madboo]

1audio, what video card are you using?

[1audio]

Onboard nVidia 6150 in Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard. I have used an nVidia 7300? but it didn't offer any advantages. The MD has 512 MB of ram w/ video set to 256MB.

[madboo]

I am using a PNY Verto GeForce FX5500 Graphics Adapter AGP - 128 MB.

I will try to pick up a new video card and see if that changes anything.

Are you using alpha blending in the UI?  I think a 6xxx nvidia is required for the OpenGL extensions, I wonder if that has anything to do with it...

Did you install the nvidia drivers specifically or did you have a vanilla install?

[1audio]

Its a completely dumb install. I didn't go out of my way to set up anything with Myth. I discovered playing with Pluto that I stood a greater chance of balling things up when I did. I did go throug the back end and front end setup and confirm all of the settings.

[webpaul1]

This is really bizarre.  It happens a lot to me too, but I can't figure out why.  I don't know enough about myth.  What happens is that the MythTV_Player, which is the LMCE program inherited from Pluto, is really just a wrapper that sends commands to the myth frontend in a socket.  mythfrontend is just spawned like normal.  This is not a modified version of myth in any way.  If you tail DCERouter.log, you'll see the command Spawn Application is sent to App Server, which is the device that does the spawning.  And, as someone pointed out, whenever app server spawns an application, that apps output is logged to Spawn_[pid]_[name].log.  So, you should see the logged output for myth frontend.

Here are the things I've been looking into:  apt-get install wmctrl   and then use wmctrl (window manager control) to confirm that mythfrontend's window is active.  As far as I can tell, it is, and the gray/black screen is actually the myth front end.  One could also kill Orbiter (killall OrbiterGL or killall Orbiter) to see if someone Orbiter was hiding mythfrontend; note: when you kill Orbiter, it will automatically restart in about 10 seconds.

When the spawned mythfrontend process exits, App Server sends a commands back saying the spawned app terminated, and that's what causes lmce to know that tv is over.  I'm going to be working at this more intensely as I'm trying to get lmce 1.1 out for feisty, and it fixes a ton of issues and has a new installation method.

[madboo]

Let me know if there is anything I can do to assist!

[efiniti]

Please give us updates or let us know if you need logs or anything!  Oh and btw, you rock.