What to do about upstart in ubuntu 16.04

Question

So I have a [Myth]buntu system with master backend that started life as 10.04 and now has risen from 14.04 to 16.04. It is the only Ubuntu system I have and is pretty much ignored until it has a glitch. My other systems all use systemd.

So I'm upgrading mythtv from 0.28 to 0.29, and I seem to have done that but myth-setup has been problematic and now I discover that myth-setup does not stop mythbackend as it claims. Further snooping shows mythbackend running with PPID of 1 while systemctl status mythbackend shows failed (Result: exit-code). PID 1 is /sbin/init which should be systemd.

Furthermore, the mythbackend is running with arguments from /etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf (upstart) which to my understanding had been deprecated in 16.04. Now this leads me to suspect much more is also going on. I have very little understanding of upstart.

So how do I extricate upstart from my newly evolved 16.04, or should I?

Solution

While Upstarted is deprecated on 16.04, it is also installed and supported. The Q&A SysV, Upstart and systemd init script coexistence explains the relationship between Upstart and Systemd on 16.04.

That said, using both systemd and upstart together causes extra complexity to debug, as you've just run into. If MythTV provides a systemd unit file that can be used to manage/stop/start the service, prefer that and delete the Upstart config file you found to avoid confusion. If MythTV does provide a systemd unit file, encourage them to do so.

Comments

[Panther]

With all those upgrades and subsequent changes along the way I would advise you do a fresh installation rather than trying to remove upstart / init scripts. At least try a live flash drive and see if it works.

[keepitsimpleengineer]

I removed the '/etc/init/mythtv-backend.conf&.override', but when I boot, I get two mythbackends each with different calling arguments. I was surprised that removing them did not prevent the upstart from starting them. What am I missing?

[Mark Stosberg]

Your question was "So how do I extricate upstart from my newly evolved 16.04, or should I?", which has been answered. If you further questions about MythTV, you should ask a new question, and provide the output of systemctl status '*myth*', so the the status of all running Myth-related services is shared.