[Sussex] lircd problems

Sat Jan 27 23:44:19 UTC 2007

On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 02:18:46PM +0000, James Smith wrote:
> Afternoon all,
> 
> I have a quick question to run by you, particularly those of you
> running MythTV, and even more particularly those of you doing that
> with a Sky box...
> 
> Right, if there's anyone still listening, here's my setup:
> 
> Shuttle PC running MythTV, video into a PVR350 from my sky box and out
> to the TV. MythTV controlled via a universal remote using the IR input
> on the PVR350. Sky box is controlled by a IR transmitter connected to
> the serial port of the PC. So, I have one instance of lircd to receive
> the remote signals, and a second instance to provide control for the
> sky box. The problem is this..
> 
> Whenever I start the machine, the first lircd daemon start
> automatically, and works fine. The second (sky) one starts, and works
> until I actually try to send something, and then it crashes. Starting
> it manually after this works fine ever after. I have a "service lircd
> restart" in my rc.local to try to recover from this, but it doesn't
> happen late enough - only when MythTV first tries to use the daemon
> does it actually crash. 

Weird...

Two things:
- Obviously, the cause of the crash needs to be investigated more.
  Reading between the lines, I suspect that you've drawn a blank here.
  If so, then it's time for more eyes on it. Log entries, test case
  etc...

- If the crash itself cannot be fixed another approach may be warranted.
  After all, if the crash is reliable, that is useful too...

  It should be possible to add an init script that deliberately provokes
  a crash and then immediately restarts the (sky) lirc daemon. 

  This assumes that the daemon is reliable after having been resurrected
  milliseconds after being declared dead (which sounds different from
  your "normal" scenario with a manual restart several minutes/hours
  later)

  I assume that sending something innocent to the Sky box (volume
  down + volume up? mute+unmute sound?) should crash the daemon. And if it
  doesn't, the Sky box should still be the same state afterwards...

> This is, needless to say, a complete pain in
> the arse, especially as the power to my house appears to be connected
> via a kitkat wrapper and keeps going off at regular intervals,
> requiring a manual restart of the daemon every time.

Obviously this is a problem. Kitkat is american, and thus geared for
110V. Since we use 220V in the UK, an upgrade to a Thorntons product
appears to be sensible :-)

> Does anyone have a similar setup, or have similar problems? Any
> suggestions on what to look for, or how to debug lircd to find out why
> it's crashing?

I haven't got experience with using lircd for *sending* I/R commands,
but there *should* be hints in /var/log/syslog*:
- if there are entries relating to the crash, they're very interesting.
- There should be syslog entries from both the 1st and 2nd start of
  the (sky) lircd daemon. Any differences in what lirc logs could point
  towards the problem.

> I can provide version numbers later, but I'm nowhere near the machine
> at the moment...

apt-get install ssh :-)

Regards
-- 
Karl E. Jorgensen
karl at jorgensen.org.uk  http://www.jorgensen.org.uk/
karl at jorgensen.com     http://karl.jorgensen.com
==== Today's fortune:
Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
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