[mythtv-users] Forcing the backend to acpi suspend with a frontend connected

[Marc MERLIN]

[While I read the list, Cc on replies are appreciated]

I read http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/ACPI_Wakeup and I understand that due to
old mythtv design, the RTC wakeup code was meant for when the backend is
physically powered off and rebooted, as opposed to now using suspend to RAM.

In my case, I do have a recent PC, suspend to RAM is working and if I kill
mythfrontend on my htpc, then mythtv-backend goes idle and triggers the right
scripts to suspend to RAM and resumes on its own.
I also know about mythwelcome.

But, this is not my question: I just want my htpc to suspend if mythfrontend
is runnind and nothing is playing after timeout X, or if something is
playing but paused for more than Y seconds.
>From what I read, while this would be the desired behaviour with current
ACPI sleep capable hardware, there is no support in mythfrontend/mythtv-backend
for that.

Am I correct?

If so, I'm looking at 3 solutions

1) use strace/lsof to monitor mythfrontend and kill mythfrontend from an
outside shell script if it meets my definition of idle, which in turn
will allow mythtv-backend to timeout and trigger ACPI sleep

2) Is there a hook into the mythtv-backend idle code where I can could just
tell it 'go to sleep now' from an outside shell script?
I realize I can just suspend linux from the shell script, but that will not
update the RTC clock to wakeup the PC when the next recording is scheduled.
I do need some way to get mythtv-backend to dump its 'wake up at X' timer in
my RTC.

3) Better even, does more recent mythtv code just allow mythtv-backend to go to
sleep even if mythfrontend is connected (either when it's not playing at
all, or if it's been paused for too long)?

Thanks,
Marc
-- 
"A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in" - A.S.R.
Microsoft is to operating systems ....
                                      .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/