Tvheadend

Sounds like Tvheadend is binding to a particular interface/IP, and when it changes Tvheadend becomes unreachable.

A fix to this might be a bridge adapter, when you create a virtual interface to hold all of your physical ones. Then Tvheadend may bind to your virtual adapter, which will then handle the fall over and activation of your other interfaces.

Robert - thank you for the reply - I have been digging into this and I think you are correct.

When I am in AP mode both the eth and wifi are disconnected but I do have a 'tether' interface - assuming that TVH is looking for eth or wifi then this would explain why it fails to start.

I have tried to create a dummy interface but failed as libreelec does not have the 'dummy' interface library loaded (modprobe dummy - and I cant figure out how to add it!) - i was simply hoping to create an eth0:1 and off we go!

As an aside when I SSH into the PI, I can manually start TVH but I get user access errors on the web interface (401/ cannot log in) which I figure is down to selecting the right user:group combo on the -u and -group at the cmd line.

best case I would like to bind the dummy adapter worst case I am guessing I could look at a script to start TVH when the PI boots

LE doesn't really do well with custom or advanced setups. I'm not sure what networking framework that LE uses, so I can't offer more help. The Arch wiki has a decent article on bridging: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_bridge

You can also follow the links in there to get info if LE is using systemd-networkd. However, without knowing what kernel modules the LE ships, your results will vary. Personally, I recommend moving away from LE for Tvheadend, and only using it on client devices, and only then if necessary.

taking on board what your saying I wonder if I need to prove this with another linux system (ubuntu ?)
What i am thinking is to try to replicate the same conditions - no network - and see what happens to TVH i.e. will it start with no network!

If im right in what im thinking I dont think it will start which then leads me to wonder if its a binding problem with TVH - is it waiting for a network - if it is then the next logical question is how would I change the behavior?

FIXED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I remembered looking at

.kodi/addons/service.tvheadend42/system.d service.tvheadend42.service

which has the following two lines:

After=network-online.service
Requires=network-online.service

I figured if I commented them out as follows:

#After=network-online.service
#Requires=network-online.service

then TVH would not wait for the network, start and bind itself to any available adapter - it works

Robert it sounds crazy but your input was just enough to get me thinking this through a little more - thx