[mythtv-users] mythfilldatabase autorun config file location error

[Neil Sedger]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 10/17/06 09:56, Daniel Kristjansson wrote:
> 
>> I would think very few people run mythfilldatabase as root..

I reckon that everyone who's followed Jarod's FC howto/guide and installed from atrpms is doing so.

I do indeed have /.qt and /.mythtv directories (off the root of the fs), although I haven't noticed any issues other than mythfilldatabase failing. This is probably due to my MySQL db running locally with default settings :-)

I've just checked and the howto does suggest that you run mythtvsetup as the mythtv user, although I apparently didn't do this as my xmltv files are under /root/. Either way it wouldn't work as mythbackend will always be started as root.


Maybe many FC/howto users have given up on running mythfilldatabase automatically and gone for the cron method, or manually edited the parameters to point to the xmltv conf file - instead of mailing this list to ask why it doesn't work first time :-)


> But, as you were saying, running mythfilldatabase as root is not a good 
> idea.  So, by extension, figuring out how to run mythbackend as non-root 
> is a good idea.  :)

...a small investigate later...

/etc/init.d/mythbackend has a comment to the effect that running mythbackend as the user 'mythtv' does not work on RedHat because of missing audio/video groups, so it runs it as root.



So as I see it the potential solutions are:

a) Fix the 'missing audio/video groups' thing - is that possible to do as part of a mythbackend rpm update? - and put the initscript back to running mythbackend as 'mythtv'

b) Add an option to myth 'run mythfillbackend as user:' 

c) Enhance the RH initscript to setup root's (or mythtv's, even though it is running as root?) environment before launching mythbackend. 


Any of these changes would have to be accompanied with some sort of release note explaining why the change is necessary and that the user may have to move the /.mythtv dir to /root/.mythtv (or ~mythtv/.mythtv).


Cheers
Neil