[mythtv] Possibility of adding a watchdog?

[Michael J. Pedersen]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 05:52:10PM -0400, Isaac Richards wrote:
> > I'm still having crashing issues, and I was wondering if there would be
> > any arguments against having a 3rd process started  to act as a
> > watchdog.. basically, it would query the mythbackend via it's tcp ctrl
> > ports to verify that it's up and restart it if it's not responding.  The
> > same would apply to mythfrontend, but we'll need to add support for it
> > to listen to a tcp socket and respond.
> > Any thoughs/objections?
> Yes.  It's always better to fix the source of the bug, and not bandaid it.  
> Since you can't get gdb working on your distribution, I'd suggest switching 
> to another distro.

Isaac, I've got to chime in on this one. Having such a watchdog function
would be VERY good, for one simple reason: If MythTV crashes at 2pm, and
I don't get home until 6pm, I've lost any recordings that would have
occurred during that time window. Having a watchdog which would restart
the backend would be an excellent idea, so that I don't lose said
recordings.

I'll agree, fixing the crashes is ALWAYS better, and a program should
absolutely never ever crash, but that doesn't change reality: For some
people, crashing happens. A watchdog would at least allow them to use
the program they so desparately want to use, without compromising the
integrity of the system.

This could be especially true if something like a crash-reporting
feature could be implemented in Myth, allowing for useful crash info to
be retrieved even without a gdb backtrace.

I, for one, wholeheartedly support the idea, and hope it will be
implemented and incorporated.

-- 
Michael J. Pedersen
My Jabber ID: pedersen at jabber.org.uk
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