Troubleshooting:mythbackend: Problem with capture cards: Card 1failed init

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If this sounds like you:

Mythtv-setup worked fine (capture card was detected correctly) and from the frontend, everything seems ok until I would try to watch live TV (then the frontend claims the inputs are in use, but there are no active recordings!).

or

When I try to schedule recordings, I can see the program guide but selections don't stick.

You might take a look in /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log and see something like this:

Channel(/dev/v4l/video0)::Open(): Can't open video device, error "No such file or directory"
mythbackend: Problem with capture cards: Card 1failed init
ERROR: no valid capture cards are defined in the database.
Perhaps you should read the installation instructions?   
mythbackend: No capture cards are defined: Please run the setup program.

Assuming you actually did setup your capture card in mythtv-setup, your problem may be that you are starting the Mythbackend too soon during startup.

I had this problem and after I moved the startup script later in the boot sequence and it works properly:

> su
# cd /etc/rc5.d
# mv S86mythbackend S99mythbackend

Note that the startup script might not be linked by S86mythbackend as in my example. That part is distribution-dependent (this data is accurate for PCLOS 0.93a). If you aren't sure, just do a long listing on /etc/rc5.d and see what is pointing at /etc/init.d/mythtbackend.