[mythtv-users] 0.25 Music & Videos Questions

Mike Perkins mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk
Sat Apr 14 09:39:58 UTC 2012


On 14/04/12 04:46, Paul Gardiner wrote:
> Scott&  Nicole Harris<snharris99 at live.com>  wrote:
>> This is a standalone frontend, which I (and more importantly the wife)
>> views as nothing more than an appliance.  You turn appliances off when
>> you're not using them, preferably with the remote that came with it...no
>> different than a TV.  You don't need to be "special" to turn the TV off,
>> you simply press the power button.  I'd think most people would expect to
>> be able to "press the power button" (exit and reboot) from the appliance's
>> on screen menu and have it do what ever it is it's supposed to do,
>> properly.
>
> This is one of the nice things about using minimyth. It runs on a readonly
> file system, with unionfs and tmpfs layered on top. Every night, I just turn
> it off at the power switch, without needing to shutdown, knowing that the
> underlying file system will be unaltered ready for a clean boot the next
> day.
>
Actually, minimyth does the right thing if you select "Exit and Shutdown" from 
the pop-up menu. It doesn't take very long either...

The big problem when you just push the power button is that you may leave the 
database in a non-consistent state*. As far as I am aware, Mythtv doesn't use 
transactions when updating the db, therefore some records may have been updated 
when you pull the plug while others haven't.

If you are on a menu when you do that it is unlikely you may cause much damage, 
but sod's law says that just this one time... you can guess the rest. Just shut 
down properly, it doesn't take long.

* Another thing: If the MBE hasn't been informed that the minimyth FE is 
shutting down, then it may keep streaming to it. Multi-gigabyte LiveTV files, 
anyone?

-- 

Mike Perkins



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