Rants on technology

I've been playing with MythTV again. Configuring it still is a major pain in the arse - there seems to be something wrong with the channel scanner that throws you off the track. I think.

Anyway, after recording a few programs I wanted to burn a DVD. My first attempt failed because Mytharchive tries writing to /dev/dvd by default. I solved this problem by linking /dev/dvd to my DVD device.

Tried again and Mytharchive refused to enter the burn DVD menu, showing the error below:

Mytharchive: cannot burn a dvd, the last run failed to create a dvd

WTF? A bit harsh on the error flagging, I'd say. So after searching around I found some people with the same problem but none of the helpful people would tell how to clear the error. Here's what you do.

1. Quit mythfrontend
2. Open a command prompt and:

mysql -u root
use mythconverg;
update settings set data='' where value='MythArchiveLastRunStatus';
update settings set data='' where value='MythArchiveLastRunType';

3. Go back to mytharchive and try again. This time it will let you proceed to the DVD burn menus.

Labels: mythtv mytharchive DVD

Running rsync as a cron job is probably as popular as sliced bread. For small intervals, however, you risk having a second instance start before the first one has finished, beginning a downward spiral of bandwidth and processes.

To avoid multiple instances getting in each other's way there's a simple solution using flock. Example without lock (may cause overlapping instances):

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/rsync --delete -a source_server:/source/path/ /dst/path/

Example using flock:

*/5 * * * * flock -xn /tmp/example.lock -c '/usr/bin/rsync --delete -a source_server:/source/path/ /dst/path/'

In the second example, if a rsync instance runs for more than 5 minutes, flock will fail and thus not execute a second rsync process.

This can be used for pretty much any shell problem where locking helps. Have a read on the flock man page for other examples.

Labels: crontab, flock, linux, rsync