[OzSpeedway]

Hi all

I have recently (today!) installed 2 machines with the intention of running them as my htpc boxes. One is purely a MythTV backend and I am trying to run XBMC on the other.

I installed XBMC from source using this from the wiki:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=HOW-TO:_Inst...ep-by-step

and everything went well. However, playing MythTV anything is causing problems. Whenever I try to play something I get the "Playlist playback aborted, Too many consecutive failed items" error. Of course, the Myth recordings are across the network. I know for a fact that the backend can be contacted over the network and the recordings played as I installed a mythfrontend on the XBMC machine to test things. I can also access the same recordings via a Myth frontend on my OSX machine.

I have had XBMC working perfectly when both the Myth backend and XBMC are on the same machine but have never tried across a network. I even tried a build from PPC but that didn't work either.

I much prefer XBMC for it's superior looks and functionality and would love to get this working but may have to fallback to a Myth frontend if I can't get it working. I have searched and from what I can figure out is the past issues don't fit with the very latest code from SVN.

If anyone can tell me where I should be looking to diagnose these problems, it would be greatly appreciated by the XBMC newbie....

Cheers
Bruce

[dteirney]

Some others have had problems with the myth backend on a different machine. Can you pastebin the full XBMC log and I'll see how it differs to mine (although I have myth and XBMC on the same machine.)

[dteirney]

Oh, and perhaps pastebin the relevant section of the mythbackend.log file as well (for the time period that XBMC is running trying to play the myth content).

[OzSpeedway]

Thank you Sir, I will "clear" the logs and start afresh so they are easily legible.

One other thing I forgot to add to my original post. I am using MythBuntu on the Myth machine (v 0.21) and have 2 storage directories under "default" - one at /storage/recordings and one at /storage2/recordings. These represent the 2 drives in the machine.

Back soon...

Cheers
Bruce

[OzSpeedway]

FIXED IT!!!

I happened to start XBMC from the commandline instead of auto. After failing over and over while I watched "tail -f...." I exited from the app. Sitting on the command window was a whole lot of output from cmyth and one line caught my eye:

(cmyth)cmyth_connect: connect failed on port 6543 to 'htpc1' (110)

So I thought I would chuck htpc1 into my /etc/hosts file and retry. Result was bingo! played the recordings. I don't know how cmyth found 'htpc1' as in my Myth DB everything is set to 10.0.0.10 but anyway, it now works and my wife will be alot happier.

Cheers
Bruce

[spiderlane]

If I recall correctly, even though you set up your MythTV source using an IP address, and this is used to browse the media, database etc, once you play a stream, the Myth server sends a URL to be used which contains the MythTV host name (in your case htpc1). It seems to determine this at runtime rather than from any particular configuration.

If the client does not know how to resolve that name, then playing the file will fail. As you have found, putting a entry in hosts allows XBMC to resolve the name htpc1 and all is well.

[OzSpeedway]

If I recall correctly, even though you set up your MythTV source using an IP address, and this is used to browse the media, database etc, once you play a stream, the Myth server sends a URL to be used which contains the MythTV host name (in your case htpc1). It seems to determine this at runtime rather than from any particular configuration.

If the client does not know how to resolve that name, then playing the file will fail. As you have found, putting a entry in hosts allows XBMC to resolve the name htpc1 and all is well.

Yup, it worked out on my OS X install of XBMC as well.

Is there a wiki entry somewhere for myth on xbmc that needs updating with this info, might help others in the same situation.

Cheers

[rodercot]

FIXED IT!!!

I happened to start XBMC from the commandline instead of auto. After failing over and over while I watched "tail -f...." I exited from the app. Sitting on the command window was a whole lot of output from cmyth and one line caught my eye:

(cmyth)cmyth_connect: connect failed on port 6543 to 'htpc1' (110)

So I thought I would chuck htpc1 into my /etc/hosts file and retry. Result was bingo! played the recordings. I don't know how cmyth found 'htpc1' as in my Myth DB everything is set to 10.0.0.10 but anyway, it now works and my wife will be alot happier.

Cheers
Bruce

Bruce,

Did you add this to the host file on the master backend machine.

My issue is I have two machines one with a xbmc front and Myth Master Backend and then another with an xbmc front and myth secondary backend.

I have a tuner in the master and a Bell Rcvr at that machine and then in the 2nd machine I have a tuner and another Bell Rcvr (remote location). Of course with Myth there can be only one master and hence that is the machine I have to connect xbmc to from the 2nd machine, BUT what happens is if I do that and try to watch live tv on the 2nd machine it tries to grab the masters tuner 1st and it does start recording on it but will not display Livetv so then if I hit play on the same channel again (now the first tuner is actually recording) it will grab the tuner in the 2nd machine and WILL start playing liveTV. Then if I stop the livetv playback xbmc releases the tuner in the 2nd machine but not the tuner in the master backend.

If I set XBMC to connect to the 2nd machine's backend then it will play livetv from the tuner in the 2nd machine and leave the master's tuner alone BUT I cannot view any recordings stored on the master and this is actually a bad thing, as the secondary backend has no mythfill DB so the system for lack of a better term is mixing and matching backends, as it is using the source from the master backend BUT launching livetv from the secondary backend it is installed on.

Hope this make sense, as workaround I have loaded myth's fronted for now, with an XBMC launcher added to the main page. This is good anyhow as XBMC will suspend and resume both systems perfectly and I am still in the midst of writing a couple scripts for pm-utils to use for myth to suspend/resume properly which for some reason is harder than I thought it would be.

Dave

[OzSpeedway]

I added the address to the host file on the machine running XBMC.

In your case I suspect it is the operation of Myth with 2 backends that is confusing cmyth. As you mentioned Myth has only one master backend and the rest are slaves. A Myth frontend will talk only to the master backend and deal with what is dished up from there as the master consolidates all the various bits from around the network. Normally on a Myth frontend you can change tuners while watching LiveTV so cmyth would need to be able to do that too. I am not one to really talk on this subject as I don't really use Myth with LiveTV that much (only used to test signal) and rely mainly on recordings.

Not much help I know but all that I can think of.

Cheers
Bruce

[OzSpeedway]

... as workaround I have loaded myth's fronted for now, with an XBMC launcher added to the main page. This is good anyhow as XBMC will suspend and resume both systems perfectly and I am still in the midst of writing a couple scripts for pm-utils to use for myth to suspend/resume properly which for some reason is harder than I thought it would be.

Dave

If I could work something out to include/spawn XBMC totally seamlessly in a Myth frontend I would do it. Nothing matches a Myth frontend for TV with a Myth backend but everything else about it is sadly lacking. One day I might figure it out so for now the pleasureable XBMC look and feel will be my Myth client but I do miss commercial skip

Cheers
Bruce