[mythtv-users] Re: Multi frontend question

[Rob Booth]

>
>> I've got a question based on this setup.
>>
>> 1 backend server with 2 or more tuner cards.
>> 2 or more frontends.
>>
>> Now lets say the frontend 1 is watching live tv on tuner 1, what is in
>> place to stop frontend 2 from changing the channel that tuner 1 is
>> currently tuned to?
>
> If frontend 2 went to Live TV, it would be assigned to tuner 2.
> There is no sharing of tuneers for Live TV. Frontend 3 would
> get a message saying that there is no tuner available.
>
>> What about frontend 1 watching  a recorded show, and frontend 2 
>> wanting
>> to watch the same show but at a different place in the recording.  I'm
>> assuming that this isn't a problem since the file exists and could
>> easily be served to both frontends.
>
> Two different processes reading from different places in the
> file. Not a problem. If both users decided to "save and exit",
> the later bookmark would overwrite the earlier one.

That's too bad about the bookmark overwriting, maybe this will be 
addressed in the future to store multiple bookmarks for multiple 
frontends.

>
>> But given the above scenario, what if frontend 1 decides to delete the
>> show when they are finished watching it, but frontend 2 is still
>> watching the show?  Would the show be marked to be deleted?  Would the
>> user on frontend 1 be denied?
>
> This is basic Unix and not specific to MythTV. When a file is
> deleted, the unlink reduces the link count by one. The inodes
> and blocks are not cleared if a process still has the file open.
> Therefore 2 can continue to watch until she exits. At that
> point the file is closed and it's gone. The mysql "recorded"
> table entry would have been deleted when 1 chose to delete.
>
Ok, so what you are saying is the MythTV doesn't exercise any control 
in this situation.  It just passes the delete request on to the 
operating system.  So when user who is watching the show on frontend 2 
stops watching (I've not used MythTV so I'm not sure how this works, 
but on my TiVo I can just change to live TV and my bookmark is held and 
the show doesn't get deleted) and the show will now get deleted weather 
or not the user had completed watching it?

Rob