[mythtv-users] Autostart frontend ONLY on manual startup?

[George Nassas]

On 6-Apr-05, at 8:03 AM, Ashley Bostock wrote:
> On Mar 3, 2005 10:39 PM, Lane Schwartz <dowobeha at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Has anyone figured out an elegant way to do the following:
>> - Have Myth frontend start up automatically if and only if the machine
>> was started manually
> Any one know if the funcationality was completely removed? or was is
> reimplemented in different way?  I have a feeling that instead of
> having to bodge together some script to guess, that you can just query
> mythbackend on whether it was started automatically or not.

I'm less familiar with the pre 0.16 releases but in 0.17 the frontend 
checks if you're using an idle timeout on the backend (ie, anything > 
0) and if you are it connects to the backend right away to prevent it 
shutting down. If the idle time is off (== 0) then it waits to connect 
until it needs to

To accomplish what Lane wants I started with a script that checks the 
current nvram/rtc wakeup time and if it's within the last 10 minutes I 
assume an automatic wakeup, anything else I figure it's a manual 
startup. This is signalled through the script's exit status. The other 
piece is a script that alternately shows mythfrontend and a hacky 
log-fed "myth is doing XXX press OK for myth" screen. When you come out 
of one you go right into the other. The autostart status decides which 
part of the loop comes up first.

I find this works well with the non-technical types I've built myth 
boxes for like my sisters and friends. They know if they see the myth 
menus then the machine will stay up until they're done and if they're 
seeing the status screen then the box will decide on its own when it's 
time to shut down. Oh, I'm using a 60 second idle timeout to make the 
connection/shutdown logic work the way I need.

The other observation I have is I found it more reliable to use the rtc 
for autostart status. When I was going to the backend I'd run into race 
conditions where the frontend was up before the backend and sometimes I 
would get the status wrong in hard to understand ways.

- George

P.S. Apologies if this shows up twice, my first send was from the 
address not subscribed to the list.