MythTV on Ubuntu Edgy
Ubuntu Edgy is out! What’s more, it has MythTV 0.20 available as standard, so getting it all working is easier than ever…
I’ve posted an updated guide: Ubuntu MythTV HOWTO.
The guide focuses on Freeview (DVB-T) for the UK, but should help anyone trying to get a terrestrial DVB card working with Myth.
December 3rd, 2006 at 3:25 am
Garry,
Your ubuntu guide for myth is awesome. One minor problem I have has to do with the way that the myth with ubuntu creates the mythtv user. I would like to have my system automatically login the user, however the autologin feature in gnome doesn’t recognize the mythtv user. Have you noticed that problem?
Thanks,
Tony
December 3rd, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Hi Tony,
I seem to remember that the mythtv user doesn’t appear as an option in the GUI for configuring auto-login. However, if you add him to the gdm.conf-custom file manually it works fine. See this link for details:
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_tips.php
December 6th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Followed the guide everything seemed well but when I ran mythtv-setup it complained of no database and presented these results in a terminal window and then said it could not find database
Any suggestions
tY
2006-12-06 23:29:11.197 Unable to connect to database!
2006-12-06 23:29:11.198 Driver error was [1/1045]:
QMYSQL3: Unable to connect
Database error was:
Access denied for user ‘mythtv’@'localhost’ (using password: YES)
QSqlQuery::exec: database not open
QSqlQuery::exec: database not open
2006-12-06 23:29:11.253 DB Error (KickDatabase):
Query was:
SELECT NULL;
No error type from QSqlError? Strange…
2006-12-06 23:29:11.309 Database not open while trying to load setting: GuiResolution
2006-12-06 23:29:11.309 Unable to connect to database!
2006-12-06 23:29:11.310 Driver error was [1/1045]:
QMYSQL3: Unable to connect
Database error was:
Access denied for user ‘mythtv’@'localhost’ (using password: YES)
.
.
.
QSqlQuery::exec: database not open
QSqlQuery::exec: database not open
2006-12-06 23:29:24.017 DB Error (KickDatabase):
Query was:
SELECT NULL;
No error type from QSqlError? Strange…
2006-12-06 23:29:40.450 User canceled database configuration
2006-12-06 23:29:40.467 Failed to init MythContext, exiting.
$
December 7th, 2006 at 6:55 am
Hi Garry,
Awesome guide – worked great for me, using Kubuntu on a EPIA M12K with a Dvico Dual DVB card. Two quick questions:
– I haven’t been able to get sound working (wasn’t a problem with Myth on FC4), the chipset is found and I believe the snd-vtxx driver loaded, but Myth says no sound device found?
– When watching Live TV Myth streams “NVP: Buffering Pause” with some slight picture degradation – this disappears for recorded TV. Any hints on where to look from your Epia experience?
Thanks, David
December 7th, 2006 at 9:24 am
Hi David,
Regarding the live TV question, are you using XvMC? Live TV takes more processing power and might push your CPU over the edge if you aren’t.
The sound issue is more tricky. My board uses the snd_via82xx chipset, which worked out-of-the-box. Does sound work outside of MythTV, such as in Gnome, Xine, etc?
December 7th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Hi Peter,
It looks like your MySQL password is wrong for the mythtv user. You can find the password (it’s usually auto generated):
grep DBPassword /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt
Also, check the following file and make sure the password is the same:
/home/mythtv/.mythtv/mysql.txt
Set it correctly in MySQL:
mysql -u root
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR mythtv = PASSWORD(‘xxxxxx’);
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> quit
Then run mythtv-setup as the mythtv user.
See this thread for more info:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=219133&page=2
December 8th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Hey Garry,
Thanks for making this How To.
I noticed you decided to leave the one hard drive on the bottom of the case. Since the tower isn’t meant to be moved, this is an excellent choice for most people. However, if you have grabby little kids or excitable pets, I suggest drilling some holes in the bottom of the case in order to use the mounting holes on the bottom of the hard drive to keep it from moving around. If you do that, you should also be able to get away with rubber washers instead of the heat insulating rubber mat.
All-in-all an excellent article. Thanks!
December 8th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the tip. You actually get a template with the Zalman cooler to help with drilling the holes, so you have the option of fixing it to the bottom or side of the case. A good option for many people, but as my box is hidden away and never gets moved I couldn’t be bothered!
It can also be fixed into a 5 1/4″ drive bay, but as my case has fancy plastic fittings in there, that wasn’t an option for me.
Garry.
December 15th, 2006 at 1:42 am
Hi Garry
Trying your guide and have Peter’s Problem. Tried your fix and I don’t have anything under /home/mythtv/ but Desktop and MythTV-Setup. I have the mysql.txt file in the /etc/ tree but no .mythtv. I will try copying it but I have a feeling something else is missing. I put in the msql settings without effect. Thanks for the effort.
Mike
December 31st, 2006 at 11:21 am
I found that first creating the mythtv user by hand worked much better for me (rather than letting the Ubuntu installer do it, as the installer gave me an mythtv user without all required files and all files owned by mysql!)
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Hey Garry,
Thanks a lot for this guide! I followed it step by step from a fresh install and it worked a charm! I’d recommend this to anyone!
Thanks again,
Oli
January 2nd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Thanks, mate; I hope you enjoy your new MythTV box!
January 6th, 2007 at 12:27 am
could this be installed on an intel macmini?
thanks
K
January 6th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
If it’s running Linux, then sure. I can’t think of any reason why not.
January 16th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
GREAT Guide!!! Garry.
Working on Xubuntu Edgy.
No problem with guide. Step by step and all runnin’.
As i’m starting with linux i don’t know how to do 3 things:
- I’d like to launch mythfrontend from my personal user account. Not the one created for mythtv user on the installation. But i don’t have permissions in many files.
How can i o that? Anything like adding my user and mythtv user to the same group or any similar solution??
I know this isin’t very related to your guide…but i’m trying to do it and i don’t know how…
- the other thigs is: When i launch mythfrontend, the mouse doesn’t work. If i change the task leaving mythtv runnin’, i just can use the keyboard…
any idea abut the problem?
- the last thing is (not very related to mythtv): I would like to use the remote control as a mouse (move cursor and simulate click) when i’m not in the mythtv task (but it’s running), i.e. on the Desktop. Any way to do it? Any Tow To to follow??
I Hope you can help me a bit with that.
Sorry for my english…i hope you understand me…
THANKS
January 16th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Hi jorgynh0,
I’ve never run mythfrontend as anybody other than the mythtv user. If you really want to log in as somebody else, I suggest bringing up a terminal and switching user to mythtv before running mythfrontend. The following commands should work:
xhost +
su – mythtv
export DISPLAY=:0.0
mythfrontend
If mythfrontend is interfering with your mouse, I’m guessing it’s because it thinks it’s a remote control. This can happen when the remote comes up as a different device after a reboot. This can be fixed by making the device static. See the following link for instructions:
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_tips.php
Regarding using your remote control as a mouse, you need something like the Gyration Air ouse:
http://www.gyration.com/en-US/ProductDetail.html?modelnum=GC1005M&accshow=3
…but I haven’t a clue how well supported it is under Linux.
Why not just use a normal cordless mouse, I’m sure it will be more accurate. I use a Logitech:
http://parker1.co.uk/blog/?p=9
…and it works fine rested next to me on the sofa.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Ok Garry.
Thanks a lot for your fast reply.
I’ll try all now.
The thing about not using a normal cordless mouse is becouse I’m trying to build a multimedia center on my PC. So i’ll be able to work with it and, at the same time, be running a second desktop (where i may want to launch mythtv or any other application) on the TV at other room.
So i’ll have 2 desktops, and i would like to use the one in the TV only with the remote control.
That’s why i want to use mythtv in my personal session…
Thanks again for your help.
Gonna work a bit with it…
January 16th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
All working rigth, Garry. THANKS AGAIN.
Solved mouse problem mahing the control remote device static.
And with the commands you wrote, i can run mythtv with my user.
Just 2 more things (for now…
):
- What does the command “xhost +”.
When I execute it it says : “access control disabled, clients can connect from any host”
Is it dangerous for my system??
- Any way to make a script with that commands so that I can run it with a click when i want to launch mythtv??
January 16th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
“xhost +” allows other people to popup windows on your X server screen and possibly see what you’re doing. It’s handy if you’re on a large LAN, but if you’re at home then it’s pretty unnecessary as I’m fairly sure you won’t have the X ports open on your firewall! There are more fancy ways of allowing access if you’re concerned.
I’ll post a script tomorrow.
January 17th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hi again, Garry.
I hope all this to be usefull for other people, cause i’m monopolizing your blog…
I’ll be waiting for the script. If is possible to use any altenative to “xhost +”, it will be great…
OR if i understood well your post, it’s unnecesary to use it if i don’t “have the X ports open on my firewall!”.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
OK, forget the xhost stuff, here’s how to assign a keybinding (in this case F12) to run mythfontend as mythtv when logged in as another user.
- When logged in as your desired user, bring up a terminal and run:
gconf-editor
- Go to: apps->metacity->keybinding_commands
- Click on the Value field of “command_1″
- Enter the following:
gksu -u mythtv /usr/bin/mythfrontend [ENTER]
Go to: apps->metacity->global_keybindings
- Click on the Value field of “run_command_1″
Type F12 [ENTER]
Now, pressing F12 will prompt you for your password and then run mythfrontend
January 17th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Ok, Garry thanks, but…
I can’t try it now but:
Is gconf-editor a GNOME application?
I’m using Xubuntu (XFCE Desktop). I supose gconf-editor won’t work for me…
should i search for something similar for XFCE??
Thanks again.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I tried the command you posted in a terminal:
“gksu -u mythtv /usr/bin/mythfrontend”
and it worked.
The problem is that i can’t use the gconf-editor as it’s of Gnome and i use XFCE. I’ll look for any way to assign it to a key.
Thanks Garry.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:06 am
No problem. I’m sure there’ll be some way to do it on Xubuntu!
January 18th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Talking about mythTv now:
I’m having problems playing AVI files.
As VOB files use the internal player of mythTv (or something like that, if i’m not wrong), when i play a DVD movie i can pause it, forward it…
But when i play an AVI movie, that’s not possible. I have tried mplayer and the Xine command of Garry’s guide.
Any possibility to be able to pause, rewind…AVI movies??
January 18th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Let get this straight, you can play AVI files OK in xine, but cannot control xine using the remote control? It sounds like a lirc config issue.
The lircrc config I supplied should work with xine as well as mythtv. Make sure you’re using xine and not gxine. Xine works a lot better. “apt-get install xine” and give it a try.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I think it’s as you say.
I run myhtv, select a folder which contains an AVI file.
Select it and, i suppose it use the command i configured in mythtv to run AVI files:
xine -r 4:3 -f -I –no-splash %s as you wrote in your mythtv guide.
Or the one which is configured by default that uses mplayer.
When i try with the xine one, AVI files are not played, so i had to back to the mplayer line to be able to play the AVI file.
So, it’s very possible i don’t have xine installed. I think the one which comes with Xubuntu 6.10 is gxine and that must be why i can’t play AVI files with xine command…
Then i’ll try to install xine and it should work as you say “The lircrc config I supplied should work with xine”.
I’ll tell you.
THANKS again
January 19th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Finally, I installed xine and all OK.
Just one more thing (I hope the last one…):
When i use the command you told me to run mythfrontend with mi user session: “gksu -u mythtv /usr/bin/mythfrontend” it works if i run “xhost+” first.
If not, it returns: “cannot connect to X server :0.0″
¿Any other idea to run it without “xhost+”?
Thanks for all your help, Garry.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:25 am
To only allow connections from “non-network local connections”, which is pretty darned secure, use:
xhost +local:
Or, in a form which can be assigned to a key or icon:
xhost +local: && gksu -u mythtv /usr/bin/mythfrontend
January 19th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Ok. Thanks again. I’ll try it tonight…
January 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 am
Well. Finally all is working fine.
Thanks for all your help Garry.
January 26th, 2007 at 3:01 am
Hi Garry
first of all thanks very much indeed for such a well thought out and easy to follow guide. I got my mythtv pc up and running and most of it has worked straight away with very few hiccups. So thanks again
Now to the hiccups
1. I am trying to set up streaming from a laptop to the mythtv pc to watch recorded programs and have followed your streaming guide, but for some reason I cant get the mythlink.sh file to run. I presumed that this has to be run on my mythtv pc, but do I have to move it to a specific folder such as /var/lib/mythtv before running. Or do I need to change the permissions of the file such as chmod 755 mythlink.sh, or what is the command to run that file. I have tried all sorts of things and nothing worked.
2. I noticed in your hardware listings that you use 2 Hauppauge Nova-T cards and I also decided on them after looking around the net. But in your guide I couldn’t see any info on how to set up both the cards in mythtv. Do I just need to add the second card as DVB also and just change the card Number from 0 to 1 so that both cards can record at the same time or watch 1 card while the other records another channel. Cheers.
And Thanks again for the amazing guide
Tim
January 26th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Hi Tim,
Glad you found the site useful and I hope you’re enjoying your new MythTV box.
Regarding your streaming problem, I’m really sorry, but the standard mythlink.sh script on the site has been broken since MythTV started using a .mpg extension instead of .nuv. I’ve fixed the script and it’s on the site here (note the lack of a .sh extension on my version):
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv/mythlink
You do need to give it 755 permissions and put it somewhere in your $PATH. You also need to edit the directories at the top of the script to point to where you keep your Myth recordings ($MYTHDIR) and also where you want your readable links to go ($TVDIR). Make sure the user running the script can write to $TVDIR.
I’ll get back to you on your second question shortly…
January 26th, 2007 at 4:27 am
Hi again
Now thats what I call quick feedback, especially at 4 a.m.
Ok, I have tried the mythlink script and that works but I think then that the next command on your streaming guide to run vlc will also be different now. Obviously I changed the filename and path here to match the symlink file made by running mythlink on my mythtv pc, but vlc fails with the following error
mythtv@PVRPC:~$ vlc 001_The_Bourne_Identity.mpg –sout ‘#std{access=http,mux=ts,url=:8081}’
VLC media player 0.8.6 Janus
[00000292] main private: creating httpd
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 0.1.9 from http://dvd.sf.net
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.9 for DVD access
libdvdread: Can’t stat 001_The_Bourne_Identity.mpg
No such file or directory
libdvdnav: vm: faild to open/read the DVD
[00000287] main input error: no suitable access module for `001_The_Bourne_Identity.mpg’
[00000278] main playlist: nothing to play
Any ideas?
Thanks again for the help
January 26th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Hi Tim,
Yes, it’s late (or is that early)! I’ve been doing an upgrade of a Sybase database in The Gambia of all places. The wonders of the Internet…
Anyway, I’ve just tried the VLC command on my copy of The Bourne Identity and it works fine:
# vlc 008_The_Bourne_Identity.mpg --sout '#std{access=http,mux=ts,url=:8081}' VLC media player 0.8.6 Janus [00000292] main private: creating httpdAnd played it with:
Does your 001_The_Bourne_Identity.mpg symbolic link definitely point to the right place? Maybe try playing one of the /var/lib/mythtv/*.mpg files directly.
I’m off to bed now, so if it doesn’t work then we’ll have to continue in the morning!
Garry.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:30 am
Hi Garry,
yes its working great. I had to put the full path to the symlink file like so but it worked and thats the main thing
vlc /mnt/store/tv/001_The_Bourne_Identity.mpg –sout ‘#std{access=http,mux=ts,url=:8081}’
Thanks very much. Will look into some more tomorrow, or should I say in a few hours, haha. Sleep well, and at least you sound like you have a legitimate reason for staying up late
Cheers, Tim
January 27th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Hi Garry, back again.
In response to my earlier question re setting up my second Nova-T card in mythtv I have now added the card as DVB Card Number 1 (where the first card is set as number 0) in the mythtv-setup. In the status they both show ok, but when recording 2 programs at the same time a message comes up that the tuner is locked. I only have 1 cable attached from the tv aerial to the first nova-t input and I found that if I move that to the second cards input while recording 2 programs then the second card works. So I assume that I need to get some sort of adapter that can take the cable input from the tv aerial and attach it to both the tuner inputs on the back of each Nova-T card.
Is this correct or is there a way that mythtv can get the input from 1 of the cards and split it internally in the software and feed it to the other card.
Hope that doesnt sound too dumb a question. Thanks
Tim
January 27th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Hi Tim.
You *definitely* need a co-ax aerial input into each card.
However, newer Nova-T cards have both an input and an output connector. I have my main aerial cable plugged into the first card and then a short coax cable looped from the output on the first card into the input on the second. This works fine for me and signal strength is fine.
Garry.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Hi Garry, thanks for the info. I checked on the hauppauge website but cant find any nova-t cards with input and output, and I am sure these cards are new versions. Bought them from novatech last week, but then again…anyways, I bought a signal booster with 2 outs, but now I need to get 2 cables with male connections on each end. Always something else
Another quick question though if I may. Re the lirc settings for the remote. every now and then the inputs change, so I have followed your tips guide to make the lirc device input to static via the irremote symlink in /dev/input, but each time I use the command /etc/init.d/udev restart to create the symlink it seems to switch to the other card on startup.
I noticed that when using the command for the first card on
input3
udevinfo -a -p $(udevinfo -q path -n /dev/input/event3)
or for the second card which is on input4
udevinfo -a -p $(udevinfo -q path -n /dev/input/event4)
both cards have SYSFS{vendor}==”0x14f1″
Is it therefore possible to use another command in the file
/etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
KERNEL==”event*”,SYSFS{vendor}==”0x14f1″,SYMLINK=”input/irremote”
such as the SYSFS{modalias}==”pci:v000014F1d00008800sv00000070sd00009002bc04sc00i00″
or something else that uniquely identifies the nova-t card I want to use for the remote rather than the other card.
Thanks
Tim
January 29th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Hi Tim,
It looks like Hauppauge have changed the spec of the Nova-T once again! My Conexant-based card has an aerial input and output, but it looks like the newer cards don’t. Sorry about that.
Regarding the udev config, you’re right – you can use any of the attributes to identify the card instead of “vendor”. As I have different cards I cannot say exactly, so just compare the udevinfo output from both cards and pick an attribute which is unique to each and change the /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules file appropriately.
January 31st, 2007 at 4:45 am
Hi Garry,
thanks for the info. I have updated my 10-local.rules file and am using the following setting for it which seems to be more stable now
KERNEL==”event*”,ID==”0000:02:0c.?”,SYSFS{vendor}==”0x14f1″,SYMLINK=”input/irremote”
I still get the odd boot up where it puts another input in place but I’ll live with it for now
Got the dual cards working now, and decided to resize the main install partition down to 10 GB to make room for a jfs partition to record to, as my machine was struggling a bit on ext3, and it has made a big difference already. I had a slight problem with mythweb not seeing files in the newly mounted partition, but it turned out to be the symlink file /usr/share/mythtv/mythweb/data/recordings which was still linked to /var/lib/mythtv, so I just removed that and then created a new recordings symlink to the new mounted partition, so if anyone wants more details on that just let me know.
While I am here, could you advise me on the best way to secure mythweb from the net, as I will sometimes want that accessible from the net when I am away. I have looked at the .htaccess files and tried that but without success. Also tried securing using Apache, but no go either. I cant quite figure it out, so any guide or advice would be appreciated. Only good info I could find on it so far was http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Securing_MythWeb, so perhaps something based on those settings but tailored to the rest of your guide. If I do manage to sort it out though I will let you know. Anyways, thanks again and cheerio for now
Tim
January 31st, 2007 at 9:15 am
Hi Tim,
First of all, I’ve been wondering why this blog software keeps holding your comments for moderation. It turns out that it was objecting to the “sex” in essex! Anyway, I’ve fixed that issue, so hopefully you should be moderation free from now on.
Interesting to hear about JFS. I’ve personally never had any problems with ext3. How has JFS made a difference for you?
Regarding MythWeb security, I use a very simple apache config which seems to work very well. Do the following as root or using sudo:
Edit the file: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Add the following section (just search for Directory and add it somewhere near there). “ripley” is the name of my box, by the way.
Create a password file:
January 31st, 2007 at 10:06 am
Garry,
Very good guide indeed. Quicky question on the epia sp frontend setup. What does the following section do:
Enable real-time scheduling of the frontend process:
sudo chmod a+s /usr/local/bin/mythfrontend /usr/local/bin/mythtv
This seems not to work on my epia forntend. It says no such file, I checked there is nothing there. What should be there?
Thanks
Jon
January 31st, 2007 at 10:15 am
Thanks Jon,
The command is supposed to alter the mythfrontend programs so that they can run with superuser privileges. This gives them permission to do real-time process scheduling and is supposed to make them run faster. Lets face it, Epia boxes need all the help they can get! Anyway, I assume your binaries are in /usr/bin and not /usr/local/bin. Give this a try:
sudo chmod a+s /usr/bin/mythfrontend /usr/bin/mythtv
As this is the default for Ubuntu. I’ll update the guide.
Cheers,
Garry.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:39 am
Garry,
Thanks, that makes sense. I will try it tonight.
Another quirk i found when setting up Ubuntu 6.10 on a an epia sp which might be useful to others:
Ubuntu would not even boot to start with. It needed acpi=force passed to the kernel first. I tried ubuntu 6.10 on an older epia board at work and it worked fine. Also ubuntu 6.06 on an epia sp worked fine so just 6.10 on epia sp needs this ?
Anyway thanks for your speedy reply.
Jon
January 31st, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Hi Garry, thanks again for the super useful and super quick reply. Working login authorization now for mythweb
Re JFS I have noticed a speed up in deleting files from mythtv and file deletion and management seems to be one of JFS’s main advantages. I was going to try XFS, but some guys on #mythtv-users recommended JFS, and after reading up on it, it seems the way to go. There was a good write up on it on the Linux Magazine website http://www.linux-mag.com and all other related sites I searched on the net gave it a thumbs up. So thought it was worth a try, and I will let you know how I get on with it in due course.
Also good to know that my blogs are now moderation free. Made me laugh though and I’m just wondering how many other messages or emails etc I have sent that have had the same treatment just because of that, LOL.
Anyways, onto the last hurdle with this mythtv setup, connecting s-video out to my TV scart in. I am thinking of buying a new LCD TV soon so if this doesn’t go according to plan then it may just speed up my spending
Anyway, thanks again will let you know how I got on.
Cheers,
Tim
February 9th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Hi Garry,
Re my earlier thread, unfortunately I didn’t have much joy hooking up my mythbox to my tv via s-video to scart, but no matter, I’ve been thinking about getting a new LCD tv anyways.
But until I do I would like to ask some advice on my recent efforts to run a second myth frontend running wirelessly from my laptop. The problem I have is that my wireless router is upstairs in my study linked to some other pc’s, so I have set up my main myth front and backend pc downstairs connected to the router via a wireless pci card, the idea being that my girlfriend can watch her ‘soaps’ on one frontend and I use the laptop to watch other programs if they are on at the same time. The main front and backend pc works wonderfully, thanks to your great guide and kind help.
But as for the laptop, while it sometimes works really well for a while, every now and then the frontend disconnects from the main myth pc backend and cannot reconnect due to mysql or the master backend itself, not sure what exactly. I keep trying to persevere fixing it, but am beginning to think that the wireless link from backend to the router and then back to the laptop is just too tempermental and prone to interference from other sources and is not worth while, but yet I can stream recorded programs via vlc to the laptop without a problem. Do you think that I should just accept the fact that this is pushing my hardware too much and use streaming only, or is there any way for the laptop frontend to force the backend or mysql into reconnecting. I thought Wake on Lan from frontend to backend might work, but not figured out how to set that yet if indeed its worth trying, or maybe reducing the buffer size settiings in /etc/mysql.my.cfg.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, but if I am clutching at straws then please tell me and I will have to try and rethink how to set up the master backend, perhaps get the tv aerial recabled into my study upstairs and have the master backend up there so only 1 wireless connection is needed between router and laptop, or a cable from the router fitted so it can be near downstairs aerial connection.
I hope this doesn’t sound like such a dumb question, and sorry for hogging your blog space
Anyways, thanks again.
Cheers Tim
February 9th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Garry,
I have run through the whole of this guide and now have a backend mythtv machine together with an epia-sp frontend box. The system runs over Homeplug ethernet over mains and streaming is very smooth. Your guide is very clear with just the right amount of info to make the stuff work without a complete technical overload. Excellent !
I am impressed with the epai-SP, its amazing what such a low powered board can achieve. You said you used these boards in a project you worked on. Did you have any experience of getting them to other things, such as play DVD’s or outputting video via the s-video out socket?
Also the tinny sound issue on the epia-sp for which you included a fix, is there a way of increasing the level further? – the sound does improve with the fix but is still quieter than sound levels from other programs. It is not a big problem, sometimes I forget that the volume on my speakers is turned right up and the sound of African drums when Ubunutu boots shakes the house (and probably next doors’ to).
But a great guide, you should get an award.
Jon
February 11th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Hi Tim,
Sorry for the late reply – I’ve been on holiday and away from my PC (shock, horror). Don’t worry about “hogging my blog”, that’s what it’s here for.
I have a similar setup to yours – my main backend connected over wireless-g to my router. I have a PC on a fixed network off the router which works perfectly as a frontend. However, if I use my laptop as a frontend, also over wireless, I also get the occasional glitch. Sometimes playback cuts out and drops back to the menus. I guess it’s because the wireless network just can’t keep up with the stream.
So, it’s a different problem to yours, but shows that 2 wireless networks can be a problem. I guess that VLC is designed to do this sort of thing, so should perform better. Maybe using 1 wireless network, or trying Homeplug ethernet like Jon above would help you. You could easily try this out by using a cable between your router and laptop as a test to see if it fixes the problem.
February 11th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Hi Jon,
Yes, the Epia-SP is a great little box. The only problem I have with mine is that I find it a little noisy. Ironic, because the passively cooled board needs a case fan!
I have used the board to output via s-video. I’ll dig out the config and post it.
As for playing DVDs, the slot loading Panasonic drive I have in mine might be expensive, but it’s a great solution – it’s very quiet which is essential when watching movies. The normal drive I have in my other box sounds like a hovercraft taking off! I didn’t have to do anything special to get DVDs to play – just the usual stuff to add support for restricted formats:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
Sorry, but I don’t have a solution for increasing the level of the sound driver. This may be obvious, but do you know that Myth has a separate volume level in the settings – make sure it’s turned up.
Garry.
February 12th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Garry,
Ah yes, the seperate volume control within Myth. That will be what I need. Oops, could not see for looking. Many Thanks.
Jon
February 13th, 2007 at 3:02 am
Hi Garry,
Hope you had a good holiday.
Thanks for the feedback. It seems that my netgear WG311v3 wireless pci card in my mythpc doesn’t reconnect when it gets disconnected. I am using ndiswrapper with netgear winxp drivers as there aren’t any linux drivers, and then using networkmanager to manage the connection to the router. That works well on my other pcs and autoreconnects on any disconnection, so I guess there must be something causing it not to reconnect. Anyway I will try to see if i can set the connection up manually, maybe just with wpa_supplicant or /etc/network/interfaces to see if it will reconnect. If not I’ll just run a cable from the router downstairs to the myth pc. I guess its one of those things I just need to give a bit of thought to. But yes vlc works great for streaming recordings, so I am using that mostly.
Ive moved my mythpc to the living room to see if it connects better from there, but now having connected the sblive 5.1 card to my surround system, I now need to try and figure out how to get the mythtv volume control to affect all the speaker outputs not just the front left and right. Always something to do
Oh well, thanks again and no doubt will speak to you soon. Cheers for now,
Tim
February 21st, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Hi, Garry
you have a very usefull site! I have set up an mythtv backend with Ubuntu 6.10 and it works well. I am now working on an Epia frontend with an sp8000 board. One problem was here that the installation of Xorg did install the vesa driver and not the via. I had to correct this manually. The only problem i now have is the remote control of my machine. I have a MAPOWER KC 3000 case with an remote connector and I want to get it work with the remote from my Yamaha receiver. I copied the files from yout homepage, but I think they have to be copie to /etc/lirc and not to /etc. I wanted to configure the remote with irrecord but that fails. irrecord says: can’t configure hardware. I tried the command cat /proc/bus/input/device . There ist not irda device, only keyboard, mouse and a speaker?? device. Im searching in the net for a while, but I can’t get anything usefill for me. Excuse my simple English it’s not my nature language.
Many Thanks
Wilfried
February 21st, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Hi Wilfried,
If your remote does not appear in cat /proc/bus/input/devices then it might not be supported by the kernel. If you can give me some more information regarding your remote control then I might be able to help, but it could be tricky as I don’t have that remote myself. By the way, your English is excellent.
March 1st, 2007 at 1:42 am
Hi Garry, me again hope things are good with you. Anyways, all is well this end and my mythtv is working quite nicely at the moment. However there are a couple of issues that I cant seem to solve and after some intensive searching on the net to no avail, I was wondering if you may have any ideas or advice.
First is to do with watching The Simpsons. It seems very strange but I have never been able to watch the simpsons via live tv or a recorded program of it from mythtv. It records fine however as I am able to watch it afterwards from another player such as vlc xine mplayer, never from mythtv. And it is only the Simpsons. All other programs record fine and play back fine most of the time. Someone on #mythtv-users said that it might be to do with 4:3 ratio, but not sure. Any ideas on possibly where to look for any clues to that?
Secondly, I have an SB Live 5.1 card and although I can control the front left and right speakers with mythtv volume control, the centre, subwoofer and surround speakers don’t respond to the vol control. I expect I need to set some alias to the also configs, but not quite sure what or where. Again any help would be appreciated.
Finally I just wanted to point out that it might be worth mentioning for anyone that wants to use mythweb from outside their LAN that, as I discovered the hard way last week, mysql doesn’t password its root account by default in Ubuntu, so that needs to be done if you are opening your router port 80 for mythweb. I got hacked into and someone messed my database up but luckily I had just done a backup so it was easy to fix again, so first thing I did after recovering was to secure the mysql root account with a password. Also if anyone does use a mysql root password and if they are using any of your scripts such as mythlink script and updateid script they will need to adjust the scripts with a -p after mysql -u root so that it prompts for a password when running them. I hope that is of use to you and others reading this.
Other than that all is well so far, so thanks again, and look forward to hearing from you in due course. By the way, I ordered that Hacking MythTV book by Jarod Wilson, so hopefully that will have some interesting info in.
Cheers
Tim
March 1st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Hi Tim,
Sorry, I don’t know what the problem is with the Simpsons – I have no problems playing it back even in 4:3 format. Very strange. Maybe try recording some other 4:3 shows to see if that really is the problem.
I also have no clue about 5.1 surround sound as I don’t have that setup.
Regarding the MySQL root password – you say you got hacked via mythweb on port 80. I’m a bit baffled as to how they got MySQL root access via that route. For a start, I thought you configured apache security to prevent unauthorised access to mythweb. Still, it probably is good practice to have a password for the MySQL root account, so thanks for the tips.
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Hi again Garry,
Thanks for the reply. No worries, I’ll try and figure out whats the prob with the Simpsons issue. Yes it’s very strange and like I said all other programs I have watched play fine. Oh well, I’ll take your advice and try some other 4:3 recordings again. I’ll sort it eventually. And the sound issue is not too much of a problem as I can still control the vol from the speakers directly, its just not wireless, but again no worries.
Re MySQL so maybe it wasn’t via that route that I got hacked. Could just have been a coincidence as I had left my router open on port 80 to my mythtv pc for a few hours to test out mythweb from the net when it happened. Perhaps I hadn’t fully secured it or the hacker got lucky and found my mythweb password. Anyway, I have secured it more now and am using an SSL cert too, and having tried it again since I can see loads of port scans in the router log but none have got through, so far.
Important thing is most is working well and definitely usable, so thanks again and all the best for now.
Tim
March 5th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Hi Garry,
A great guide but I appear to have hit a problem setting up the scheduling.
I am using kubuntu rather than ubuntu. (I don’t know if that is significant?)
I have a working mythtv system with 2 Hauppauge cards in it. I can watch TV just fine.
I have downloaded the Icons and the script, I have installed the icons and extracted the updateid archive. When I try
$ ./updateid
I get:
$ ./updateid
/bin/sh: ./updateid: Permission denied
I have tried a number of things including extracting the archive to /usr/share/mythtv and in the home directory of the mythtv user. The sorts of results that I get are:
$ sudo ./updateid
sudo: ./updateid: command not found
$ sudo /usr/share/mythtv/updateid/updateid
ERROR: Cannot open “ids.cfg”, No such file or directory
I am relatively new to linux but I am guessing that this is a file permission problem. Am I close?
The only other thing that I can think of is that it is a mysql password problem but I followed your instructions exactly. Would this cause root password to be set?
Thanks in advance.
Malcolm
March 6th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Hi Malcolm,
I am quite new to mythtv myself so if my suggestions don’t work for you then I am sure Garry will sort them out when he sees this message, but I figured if I could help then it is wortht eh effort. First I am not sure if using kubuntu would affect this updateid script as the code in it seems uprelated to any of the kde or gnome files particularly. I may be wrong though.
But I did notice that you were trying to use /bin/sh, and I am quite sure that one of Garry’s recommendations was to sudo gedit /etc/passwd and change that to bin/bash. See Installing Myth TV section on MythTV Ubuntu Installation Guide first page http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php
If that doesnt work then have you set a password on mysql. To check if there is a password set for mysql root try
msql -u root and if that allows you in then there is no password set. Type quit to exit mysql.
I am not sure if this will sort out your issues but I hope it helps some
Good luck
Tim
March 6th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Hi Malcolm,
The file needs execute permissions (although it does have them in the tarball so I’m not sure where they’ve gone!).
chmod 766 updateid
…should do the trick. It should be run as the mythtv user. Otherwise, posting the output of the “ls -l” command might give me more of a clue.
Cheers,
Garry.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Hi Garry,
Before doing chmod:
$ ls -l
total 160
.
.
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 2006-11-09 15:51 updateid
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 1216 2006-10-17 11:07 upnpavcd.xml
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3577 2006-10-17 11:07 util_menu.xml
$ cd /usr/share/mythtv/updateid
$ ls -l
total 12
-rw-r–r– 1 mythtv mythtv 7667 2006-10-27 16:15 ids.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mythtv mythtv 3113 2006-11-09 15:51 updateid
$
After running chmod 766 updateid:
$ sudo chmod 766 updateid
Password:
$ ls -l
total 160
.
.
drwxrw-rw- 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 2006-11-09 15:51 updateid
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 1216 2006-10-17 11:07 upnpavcd.xml
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3577 2006-10-17 11:07 util_menu.xml
$ cd /usr/share/mythtv/updateid
$ ls -l
total 12
-rw-r–r– 1 mythtv mythtv 7667 2006-10-27 16:15 ids.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mythtv mythtv 3113 2006-11-09 15:51 updateid
$
As far as I can tell the only change was from drwxr-xr-x to drwxrw-rw- on updateid.
At this point ./updateid seems to have worked.
$ ls -l
total 24
-rw-r–r– 1 mythtv mythtv 7667 2006-10-27 16:15 ids.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mythtv mythtv 3113 2006-11-09 15:51 updateid
-rw-r–r– 1 mythtv mythtv 5992 2007-03-06 22:06 updateid.sql
-rw-r–r– 1 mythtv mythtv 1306 2007-03-06 22:06 updateid.xmltv
I now have updateid.xmltv with suitable looking contents.
However, as far as I can tell, I don’t have a /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk_rt.xmltv to overwrite:
$ cp /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk_rt.xmltv /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk_rt.xmltv.save
cp: cannot stat `/home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk_rt.xmltv’: No such file or directory
I have searched the hard drive and can’t find a file anywhere called uk_rt.xmltv.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Malcolm
March 6th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Hi Malcolm,
Make sure your Video Source name is uk_rt in mythtv-setup as per the guide and that the Video Source is set to uk_rt in the Input Connections screen. I’m pretty sure that doing this as the mythtv user should create a /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk_rt.xmltv file.
It looks like your /home/mythtv/.mythtv directory does not exist at all. Are you sure you’ve run mythtv-setup when logged in as the mythtv user?
March 6th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Also, I meant to say “chmod 755 updateid” to set read/write/execute permissions for the owner (mythtv ) and just read/execute permissions for everyone else. It’s weird that accidentally setting write permission for other users on the directory fixed things…
March 6th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Hi Garry,
I have checked the uk_rt settings in the Video Source & Input Connections screens. Everything looks ok although I am pretty tired. I will double check tomorrow evening.
I do have a /home/mythtv/,mythtv directory:
$ cd /home/mythtv/.mythtv
$ ls -l
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 2007-03-05 21:54 channels
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 2007-03-06 21:18 osdcache
drwxr-xr-x 3 mythtv mythtv 4096 2007-03-05 22:05 themecache
$
Not much in it though!
There is another wierd thing, which may or may not be related….
When I use the up arrow in a konsole to scroll back through my commands I get
$ ^[[A instead of the commands.
When I originally install Kubuntu, konsole works fine at some point down the mythtv install this problem arises. I haven’t had time to investigate further.
This is a completely new install of Kubuntu from a DVD where the MD5sums are OK. The only things that I have done are fit 2 Hauppauge Nova-T cards and install mythtv following, as closely as I can, your instructions.
Definitely wierd.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Hi Malcolm,
The reason the MythTV install causes problems with your shell history is probably because the mythtv user has the /bin/sh shell by default. Changing this to /bin/bash in the /etc/passwd file should fix it:
mythtv:x:117:117::/home/mythtv:/bin/bash
For the other issue, I suggest copying the xmltv config to the right place and continuing with the guide:
cp updateid.xmltv /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk_rt.xmltv
Hope this helps,
Garry.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Hi Garry,
I’ve cured the shell problem thanks to your advice.
I copied updateid.xmltv to home/mythtv/.mythtv, renaming it to uk_rt.xmltv:
mythtv@mythtv-server:$ cd /home/mythtv/.mythtv
mythtv@mythtv-server:~/.mythtv$ ls -l
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 2007-03-05 21:54 channels
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 2007-03-06 21:18 osdcache
drwxr-xr-x 3 mythtv mythtv 4096 2007-03-05 22:05 themecache
-rw-r–r– 1 mythtv mythtv 1306 2007-03-07 19:18 uk_rt.xmltv
I then backed up my channels and updated it with updateid.sql. However, I needed to use root to do this:
mythtv@mythtv-server:~$ mysqldump –opt mythconverg channel > channel.sql
mysqldump: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user ‘mythtv’@'localhost’ (using password: NO) when trying to connect
mythtv@mythtv-server:~$ sudo mysqldump –opt mythconverg channel > channel.sql
Password:
mythtv@mythtv-server:~$
Then I hit my next problem:
mythtv@mythtv-server:~$ sudo mythfilldatabase –quiet
config file /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk-rt.xmltv does not exist, run me with –configure
Error in 1:1: unexpected end of file
mythtv@mythtv-server:~$
The same happens with
mythtv@mythtv-server:~$ sudo /etc/cron.daily/mythtv-backend
Password:
config file /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk-rt.xmltv does not exist, run me with –configure
Error in 1:1: unexpected end of file
mythtv@mythtv-server:~$
But /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk-rt.xmltv does exist as demonstrated earlier!
I have opened it up with nano and this is part of the contents:
channel itv3.itv.co.uk
channel itv2.itv.co.uk
channel C1961.radiotimes.com
channel citv.itv.co.uk
channel channel4.com
channel C1959.radiotimes.com
channel e4.channel4.com
channel london.bbc1.bbc.co.uk
channel london.bbc2.bbc.co.uk
channel choice.bbc.co.uk
channel news-24.bbc.co.uk
There are 52 similar lines.
Can you suggest anything this time? Also I have been having keyboard problems more or less since I switched to bash. Initally the space bar wasn’t working – so I switched keyboards. Now up arrow and right arrow don’t work. Down arrow and left arrow are fine. I am off to test the keyboards on another computer now.
Thanks in advance.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Hi Garry,
Keyboard problems appear to be hardware. Two Dell keybaords now consigned to the bin. This one seems to be working OK touch wood. Hopefully I will get to the remote control soon!
March 8th, 2007 at 1:19 am
It looks like you have uk-rt configured in mythtv-setup and the file is named uk_rt.
Rename /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk_rt.xmltv to /home/mythtv/.mythtv/uk-rt.xmltv and it should start working.
It seems like that one character has been the source of most of you problems!
March 8th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Hi Garry,
That looks like a result. Thanks. I now have channel listings on both capture cards. What problems. All because of a hard to spot typo in the mythtv setup screens!
I am off to read the Myth TV user manual now – to work out how to use my new toy. Then I will try to get the remote control working. Hopefully you won’t hear from me for a while!
Regards,
Malcolm
March 8th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Glad it all worked out in the end
March 13th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Hi Garry,
Great write up on this. However I’ve hit with one problem (or maybe more…)
Using the latest Ubunt CD, installed it without any problems but when I tried to install the mysql-server – I get this error:
————————————————
apt-get install mysql-server
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Note, selecting mysql-server-4.1 instead of mysql-server
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
mysql-server-4.1: Depends: mysql-common (>= 4.1.15-1ubuntu5) but it is not installable
Depends: mysql-client-4.1 (>= 4.1.15-1ubuntu5) but it is not going to be installed or
mysql-client (>= 4.1.15-1ubuntu5)
Depends: libdbi-perl but it is not installable
Depends: libmysqlclient14 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: mailx
E: Broken packages
————————————-
And yes, I am using the sources.list which I got from your site. Perhaps something changed since you written the HOWTO? Or am I missing something else?
Thanks,
Tony
March 14th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Hi Tony,
APT should not select mysql-server-4.1 – the default MySQL package on Edgy is mysql-server-5.0. I’m not sure why it’s done this. Are you sure you installed from the Edgy 6.10 CD? Please post the output of the following commands:
uname -a
cat /etc/lsb-release
Thanks.
March 29th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Guide works on feisty herd 5 but for conextant nova-t you have to add module cx88_dbv to /etc/modules
March 29th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Thanks Peter,
I’ve yet to try it on Feisty myself, so thanks for the tip.
March 31st, 2007 at 9:06 am
Hi Gary,
Thanks for the great howtos. I have an EPIA system and deinterlacing was causing no end of grief!!
I need a little help with the xmltv. I live in Yorkshire but after running ./updateid i get the channel details for the midlands. ids.cfg doesn’t seem to have the right channel idents in it.
I have manually changed the uk_rt.xmltv changing the line
midlands.bbc1.bbc.co.uk to north.bbc1.bbc.co.uk and the same for beeb 2. although this hasn’t worked. And now when i look on tv guide i have several bbc1s and 2s.
Firstly, is there a more upto date ids.cfg or could you point me in the direction of a howto?
Secondly, would it be better to drop the database and get mythfilldatabase to repopulate the fields, should this get rid of the duplicate bbc’s?
and (….sorry) when setting up a frontends do i need to enable shares on my backend (all my mp3s, movies and pictures) to allow for mythvideo, mythmusic and mythgallary to see them.
Thanks,
Jim
April 1st, 2007 at 6:25 pm
First the good bit, WELL DONE GARY !! I have fought with Mythtv on and off for two years, as a Linux noob, I have tried numerous distros’s . The biggest problem was always information spread throughout the net, your guide is excellent! One place to rule them all, one working myth that binds them (Think that might be plagiarism)
As Jim mentioens above, I have a similar problem, you mention getting the listing tv_grab_uk_rt –list-channels > /tmp/all_channels.txt
Ok I did that? now what am I supposed to correct?
Regards Paul.
April 2nd, 2007 at 7:50 am
Hi Jim, Paul,
Sorry for the late reply, I was on holiday last week.
Once you have generated /tmp/all_channels.txt, it contains up-to-date xmltv IDs for each channel. These are the strings which look a bit like domain names (e.g. cbeebies.bbc.co.uk). You then have to update ids.cfg with the correct IDs.
It seems to have got a bit out-of-date lately, so I’ll fix it and post it shortly.
Garry.
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:43 am
Hi Jim, Paul,
mysqldump -u root mythconverg channel > channel.sql
There were a few problems with ids.cfg – for example the south-west region was missing, but if the entry for the midlands is wrong then I’ll need some more info to fix it. Could you please send me a dump of your channels table? You can get the dump using:
mysqldump -u root mythconverg channel > channel.sql
My email address is on the following page:
http://parker1.co.uk/contact.php
Regarding Jim’s other question: yes, you do have to share your media files on your backend if you want to access them from your frontends. The directories holding the files should be shared using NFS and remote mounted on the frontends and then the paths set correctly in your frontend MythTV config.
Garry.
April 4th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Hi guys, i have managed to fix the problem i was having with the xmltv feed. With a little help from what Garry said appove and looking at channels_ids file that i got from the sourceforge area for xmltv i made the following changes in my ids.cfg file
BBC ONE,midlands.bbc1.bbc.co.uk,4165,9018,/usr/share/mythtv/icons/tv/bbc1.png
to
BBC ONE,north.bbc1.bbc.co.uk,4165,9018,/usr/share/mythtv/icons/tv/bbc1.png
BBC TWO,midlands.bbc2.bbc.co.uk,4165,9018,/usr/share/mythtv/icons/tv/bbc2.png
to
BBC TWO,north.bbc2.bbc.co.uk,4165,9018,/usr/share/mythtv/icons/tv/bbc2.png
and
ITV1,anglia.co.uk,8258,9018,/usr/share/mythtv/icons/tv/itv1.png
to
ITV1,yorkshire.granadatv.co.uk,8258,9018,/usr/share/mythtv/icons/tv/itv1.png
re ran ./updateid
copied xml file and inserted sql
re ran mythfilldatabase and hey presto I now have my local tv channel data.
This fix (bodge!) is only for the Yorkshire region but hopefully this should provide some guidence to anyone else having issues.
Cheers,
Jim
April 4th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Hi Jim,
I’m still not quite sure if changing the main ids.cfg on the site to reflect your changes will break it for other people. So, I’ll leave it as it is for now and people can always follow your instructions if they have the same problem.
Thanks again,
Garry.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Just a quick comment for folks having problems with this install.
I just updated my epia sp13000 frontend/backend with a hauppauge with a nova-t from edgy to feisty (xubuntu).
Gary, the edgy guide is great and saved me many a sleepless night – I owe you one!
On reinstalling feisty it appears that the nova-t is not correctly detected in the kernel. This subsequently causes mythtv-backend to fail.
The problem has been recognised and should be fixed in the next update of v4l-dvb.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/91186
In the short term modprobing the card and restarting mythbackend fixed it.
sudo modprobe cx88_dvb
sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend restart
mythfrontend
A little inelegant to be poking around at the command line every time I restart the box, but I guess it’ll do. I hope this helps some other unfortunate victim.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Hi Mark,
I have to hold my hands up and admit that I didn’t even notice this until you pointed it out!
I’ve got 2 tuner cards and it seems that the newer cx88 card is suffering from the problem. The other card uses an older chipset, so is working fine. I wonder how long it would have taken me to realise that I could only record one thing at once!
I’ll have a go at adding the modprobe line to the mythtv startup script so that it works on startup.
Garry.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:08 am
If you get modprobe working in the startup script, can you post some instructions here!
So far I’ve just tried adding cx88_dvb to /etc/modules but that didn’t seem to work.
Best
Mark
April 26th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Hi Mark, adding the following to /etc/modules worked for me:
cx88_dvb
Not that it’s *not* cx88-dvb as mentioned in here:
http://www.linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.php/Cx88_devices_%28cx2388x%29
April 30th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
sudo /etc/init.d/lirc start
After following all instructions this command says lirc not configured
Have done all you said and duplicated placing of files as per lirc configure.html
Help
May 1st, 2007 at 7:27 am
Hi Peter,
Does the earlier bit of the HOWTO work? I mean the part where work out which eventX device lirc is on and test it using:
sudo /usr/sbin/lircd -H dev/input -d /dev/input/event2 -n
…and:
irw
You should see output in the terminal when you press some buttons.
If so, please make sure you have the following files copied correctly:
/etc/lirc/lircd.conf
/etc/lirc/hardware.conf
Garry.
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Well finally everything except the vfd is working. Like mythweb but how does one switch between mythtv and mythweb. I only seem to be able to get to any other part of my system by exiting mythtv – is there any way to run in a window.
The future is daunting
May 4th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Hi Peter – you can use ALT+TAB to switch between mythfrontend and other applications. There’s an option in the MythTV settings to run the frontend in a window but I find the ALT+TAB switching to be fine if I just want to do a bit of web surfing etc.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Garry,
Well done on a excellent site. the dvb-utils stuff has saved me the effort of installing mythtv as I have an issue with 2 cards. When you added your second card, did you get a strange issue where only the card with the lowest interrupt would tune?
I have two Conexant chipset cards and only the one will tune. Any ideas?
May 6th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Only one of my cards has the Conexant chipset, but I know plenty of people who have it working with your setup.
As it definitely works with one card, why not go ahead and install MythTV. It’s just a few packages and if both cards work under Myth then it may just be a problem with your dvb-utils commands.
May 6th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Nope, only one card will work at any given time. I think its to give up and get a board with more than 4 pci slots if I can that is.
May 7th, 2007 at 4:50 am
Hello Garry,
I installed Ubuntu 7.04 x86 and installed Myth Tv using the package installer in Ubuntu. When I run the Myth TV frontend I can see the different menu options but when I try the setup I get the message:
” Could not connect to the master backend server – is it running? Is the IP address set for it in the setup program correct?”
I tried sudo/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start but it could not find the file.
I am an ultra noob when it comes to Ubuntu and Linux in general so please forgive my lack of understanding. Oh, I’m using a Hauppauge PVR-350 tuner card.
Thanks in advance.
May 7th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Hi AndyH, sorry for the late reply – busy bank holiday weekend and all that.
Have you checked whether both cards are being recognised by the kernel? Try:
grep DVB /var/log/dmesg
…there should be an entry for both frontend 0 and frontend 1. If both cards are being registered and you have a tuning problem then maybe it’s your aerial feed to one of the cards or something. Try swapping the cards and the aerial feed around and see if you can narrow down the problem.
May 7th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Hi Siby,
Have you gone through the HOWTO step by step?
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php
You don’t mention running the mythtv-setup program – this must be done first as the mythtv user to configure MythTV before mythbackend will start.
May 11th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Have reverted back to edgy as some of my peripherals would not work together in feisty. When I have reinstalled mythweb the listing is missing BBC 1 2 and 3 and starts at ITV 1
Any idea
May 11th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Hi Garry,
I’ve used your “How-to” with success under Edgy with an old Hauppauge Nova-T USB (by adding the extra TDA firmware as you describe) but the result was not quite stable (would crash every few days for no reason that I could establish).
Now trying again under Feisty with a newer Hauppauge Nova-T USB2, but I don’t seem to be able to get the hardware to work. I’ve followed the steps as close to the letter as I can, but if I boot the PC with the Hauppauge box “cold” I get the following in /var/log/messages:
May 11 22:58:23 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.305088] dvb-usb: found a ‘Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2′ in cold state, will try to load a firmware
May 11 22:58:23 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.330524] dvb_usb_nova_t_usb2: probe of 1-3:1.0 failed with error -2
May 11 22:58:23 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.330540] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_nova_t_usb2
If I boot it with the Hauppauge box in a “warm” state (having previously booted into WINXP with the Hauppauge drivers installed) I get:
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.719560] dvb-usb: found a ‘Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2′ in warm state.
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.719799] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.723577] DVB: registering new adapter (Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2).
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.724546] dvb-usb: MAC address: 00:0d:fe:83:83:83
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.725799] **WARNING** I2C adapter driver [DiBX000 tuner I2C bus] forgot to specify physical device; fix it!
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.748999] DVB: registering frontend 0 (DiBcom 3000MC/P)…
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.780541] input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /class/input/input4
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.780610] dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 100 msecs.
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.780616] dvb-usb: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2 successfully initialized and connected.
May 11 22:29:16 ShuttleP5 kernel: [ 13.780634] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_nova_t_usb2
With the latter I can see the device in mythtv-setup, but a channel scan yields nothing (a similar scan in WINXP picks up 52 channels.
Does the above suggest that I need different firmware for the Nova-T USB2?
TIA -Martin
May 14th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Hi Peter. Sorry for the late reply – busy weekend and all that.
A bit stuck with your problem. Is it just MythWeb where the channels are wrong is? I guess not. So, the channel scan has worked fine in the past on Edgy and Feisty but this time you have no BBC channels? All I can suggest is that you try the scan again and see if the BBC channels appear.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Hi Martin,
You need the correct firmware. The following page explains which firmware is needed for which cards and how to get them:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV_Nova-T_USB2
Sorry I can’t give more precise instructions, but it’s difficult to be exact as I don’t have that card myself.
May 14th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Garry – you’re quite right. But it’s very confusing – there seem to be 2 types of Nova-T USB2 and yet though mine seem to be the older type. they “want” the later firmware type
dvb-usb-nova-t-usb2-02.fw
But, even now they (I’ve bought 2 of them) both fire up from a cold state and post healthy-looking messages in DMESG, both produce the “No lock” status when scanning for channels in mythtv-setup.
Perhaps my only option is to abandon Linux for now and try GB-PVR under Windoze
Def not my preferred route as a main initial aim was to get away from M$…
May 14th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Hi Garry,
Just wanted to say thanks for the guide. I haven’t used Linux/Ubuntu before and although I have used command lines (from DOS!) not knowing all the commands or quite how the filesystem works things can get very confusing very quickly!
However your guide is clear and I now have my setup running exactly as I would expect it to!
Thanks again
AndyW
May 14th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Hi Andy – glad it all worked for you and I hope you enjoy using Myth!
Hi Martin,
Regarding your tuning problems, have you tried tuning using tzap (the “Watch Some TV” part of the guide)? At least this would show you whether your card is capable of tuning under Linux. There are ways to tune without using Myth. Sorry, I know It’s a pain!
Unfortunately your problems seem to be down the the Nova-T version you are using. If only Hauppauge would leave them alone!
May 16th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Hi Garry,
Have found that I do have a slight problem. When I go into Media Library -> Watch Recordings, I can see the programs that I have watched Live listed, but cannot see any of the programs that I have deliberately scheduled to be recorded, meaning that I cannot watch them.
The same happens in the Manage Recordings -> Delete Recordings in that I cannot see anything that I have scheduled, only the live shows again.
I can see them in the Previously Recorded screen, but obviously cannot play them from there.
Hopefully this is something trivial that I have missed and cannot see the solution for looking (would rather look daft for asking than have a recorder that you can’t watch recordings on!) so any help would be much appreciated!
May 16th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Hi AndyW,
Hmmm very strange. Never seen anything like this myself. Are the recordings actually on the disk? The default directory for saved recordings is /var/lib/mythtv. The .mpg files should be in there. Maybe it’s read permissions on this directory for the mythtv user or something – just guessing.
Garry.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Hi Martin,
I’m getting the same issues as you with my WinTV nova-t USB2 card under Feisty, the firmware is in the correct directory and my “dmesg” shows the same as yours.
And yes, it won’t pick up any channels. I found your entry after googling:
” **WARNING** I2C adapter driver [DiBX000 tuner I2C bus] forgot to specify physical device; fix it!”
so I believe the actual device driver configuration in the kernel may be at fault.
I believe it should look something like this:
“usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
dvb-usb: found a ‘Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2′ in cold state, will
try to load a firmware
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file ‘dvb-usb-nova-t-usb2-01.fw’
to the ‘Cypress FX2′
dvb-usb: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2 successfully initialized and
connected.
usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 3
dvb-usb: generic DVB-USB module successfully deinitialized and
disconnected.
usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
dvb-usb: found a ‘Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2′ in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the
software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2).
dvb-usb: MAC address: 00:0d:fe:02:58:64
dib3000: Found a DiBcom 3000P.
DVB: registering frontend 0 (DiBcom 3000P/M-C DVB-T)…
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 100 msecs.
dvb-usb: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T usb2 successfully initialized and
”
Notice the message:
“dib3000: Found a DiBcom 3000P”
that does not show up in either of our “dmesg” outputs.
The above was taken from http://www.greyishmatter.co.uk/blog/, where Fedora 4 was used to setup the Hauppauge device.
Question is, how do we fix this, and is this related?
Send me a mail on Markieman234@hotmail.com and we’ll try and sort this together, it seems that noone on either the Ubuntu support forums nor the IRC channels have any ideas at the moment.
Any thoughts here guys?
May 28th, 2007 at 11:28 am
excellent guide:- Nicely presented, clear and accurate. My install went smoothly (though even better if I had read what was written!). The install is as valid for DVB-S (ie satellite), the only changes being
1) for ‘tzap’ read ‘szap’
2) you need to read the satellite data from /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-s/[satellite]
3) check channels.conf for appropriate channel names and pid (eg “BBC 1 London” on 5000 and 5001)
4) to test I used dvbstream -o -ps 5000 5001 | gxine stdin://mpeg2
5) I think (?!) I needed to install extra codecs on the base install … I used automatix
May 28th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Hi John,
Thanks a lot for that, it’s information which loads of people will find useful. I’ll add it as a footnote to the guide.
I’m not a big fan of Automatix myself. I’ve known of people who are still mistakenly using 2 year old versions of Firefox because Automatix installed it. You’d be better off following the “restricted formats” docs to get the extra codecs. These aren’t required for MythTV, but are necessary if you want to play DVDs or MP3s:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
May 29th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Garry
Pretty sure you are right about Automatix vs restricted formats, old habits die hard, especially when you are old!.
I have stumbled upon another difference between DVB-T and DVB-S setups:- To get the schedule information from the Radio Times in, I’m pretty sure that I’ll need to edit “ids.cfg” to reflect the different service IDs and Network ID on Astra 2 . This will be tedious but simple. BUT IS IT RIGHT???
BBC One LondonSID=6301 NID=5001
May 29th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Garry
Pretty sure you are right about Automatix vs restricted formats, old habits die hard, especially when you are old!.
I have stumbled upon another difference between DVB-T and DVB-S setups:- To get the schedule information from the Radio Times, I’m pretty sure that I’ll need to edit “ids.cfg” to reflect the different service IDs and Network IDs on Astra 2 . This will be tedious but simple. BUT AM I RIGHT???
Drawing data from lyngsat.com would make for example
BBC One London SID=6301 NID=5001
Any other pitfalls you can spot? If not I’ll go ahead and send you a modified ids.cfg
May 29th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Sorry, I think the NID is 2
May 30th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Hi John,
I’ve never really looked into the Satellite stuff, but what you say sounds plausible. Good luck!
June 1st, 2007 at 12:53 am
Hi Garry
I’m new to linux, trying to migrate from windows. Had 5 attempts of this guide, only once had it working only to lose the system on the scheduling setup. My problem starts as soon as I load the mysql server, after log in and setup, I get the wrong password issue, can’t start or stop mysql. It seems that the mythtv user has no rights to load or change anything? I end up reinstalling Fiesty from CD. Are there changes in the new updates that would cause this? Or am i just not doing this right?
Have been using a Windows based DVD using a G400 daul output to big TV with 7.1 sound, player for years now, wondered why you have not gone to water cooling, I stick the rad to the power supply fan with strong magnets, so only one fan per system, never turned them off since. Never seen the CPU temp about 46. Still working on a way to silence the power supply fan.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:20 am
Hi Garry
Got over the password issue by making a user called mythtv with the GUI before loading the server and themes and logging in as mythtv.
can’t get the scheduling working yet..
I’m looking to find a way to share the recordings folder? I want to play back the recordings through the network to my windows dvdx player on to the big TV?
June 1st, 2007 at 8:31 am
Hi Alec,
The section in the guide where we “grant access rights to the mythtv user” should give him permission to load and change anything using the sudo command. Prefixing sudo to any command he runs temporarily gives him administrator (or root) privileges.
You should never have to reinstall from CD. If you really want to then you can uninstall any package and start again. Ubuntu is not like Windows, uninstalling a package (using: sudo apt-get remove –purge package-name) removes it entirely and it will not leave any files hanging around.
I don’t use water cooling because you still need to cool the water so it’s not necessarily quieter than fan based solutions. Can be expensive, too. My system only has a single fan – in the Seasonic power supply and it’s the quietest fan I’ve ever (not) heard!
You can share the recordings to your windows PC using Samba – this uses the Windows SMB protocol so your Windows box will think it’s just another MS system. There are loads of guides on the net – here’s one:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#Samba_Server
June 1st, 2007 at 11:27 am
Hi Garry
Thanks for that, still thinking Windows and of course not knowing any Linux commands yet.
I use the power supply fan to cool the water from the CPU and drives, just clip the little rad over the fan out side the case, Will look up this Seasonic power supply,
Once again many thanks for your help.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:03 pm
It’s the Seasonic S12 – highly recommended:
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_silent.php
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Belated reply to Mark’s note regarding WinTV nova-t USB2 problems a week ago:
Hi Mark – sorry for the delay, I’ve been on holiday.
Just tried another install under Feisty and, like you, I don’t get the “dib3000: Found a DiBcom 3000P” entry in dmesg, and a Scan still picks up no channels.
Before going away I tried to install Myth under four or five other Debian-based distros, and the only one that would work with the nova-t USB2 was KnoppMyth R5F1. But I couldn’t live with that as you end up with a machine that’s running Knoppix!
However, I might try another KnoppMyth install tonight just to see whether the extra entry in dmesg is there.
Martin
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Mark – I finally seem to have a workable solution for the WinTV nova-t USB2 problems:
It seems you were right, and that the DVB device drivers that are packaged with Ubuntu aren’t correct for a WinTV nova-t USB2. I followed the instructions on compiling and installing the latest LinuxTV drivers here:
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_install_DVB_device_drivers
and it now scans ok and MythTV works fine. This may be applying a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but I don’t know enough about Linux to find a quicker way.
Martin
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:00 am
I’m from Spain.
It’s possible to install Ubuntu + MythTV on a PS3, with frontend (backend in an other PC)?
Thanks
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Hi Garry – just wanted to mention that I’ve had almost exactly the same symptoms as AndyW reported on 16th May – I could record programmes but then not find them to watch. It appears this is because in Setup, TV Settings, Playback, the “Default Group Filter to Apply” was set (not by me, but as the installation default) to something other than “All Programmes”. Correcting this solved the problem.
June 4th, 2007 at 7:28 am
That’s a new one on me. Thanks for posting it – I’m in the process of updating the guide, so I’ll add it.
Cheers.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Garry – one further question:
I’ve just done yet another MythTV install on a new AMD64-based Shuttle using your guide and it works very well. However, I’ve got 2 tuners – one an internal Nova-t PCI card like yours and the other the Nova-t USB2 external box from earlier trials.
What I’d like to do is to reserve one tuner (the external one) for LiveTV, while the other is used by preference for recording, so that a recording does not interrupt LiveTV.
Do you know of a way to do this? There doesn’t seem to be an obvious option in the Setup menus, but I guess you must have solved the problem on your own installation?
Thanks!
June 10th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Hi Martin,
The way I solved this problem in my installation is to have a digital tuner built into my TV. This effectively gives me 3 tuners. I therefore never watch live TV through Myth, leaving both tuners in my PC free for recording. The other advantage of this is that build-in tuners tend to be more responsive when flicking through channels. The drawbacks, of course, are that you can’t pause the TV or use myth’s guide data.
What do you actually want to do – never use the external tuner for recording? That sounds a bit restrictive.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Ah, ok, so you never see the problem.
What happens is that if I’m watching LiveTV on the first tuner and the scheduler discovers it needs to record a different channel, it pops up a message asking whether I want to watch while it records, return to the main menu or cancel the recording – even though it (apparently) knows that the second tuner is sitting doing nothing!
Of course I can choose the second option, and then choose “watch TV” and it will let me watch via the second tuner, but surely there has to be a better way…
June 10th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Yeah, that sounds like a pain! Sorry, as I’ve never come across the
problem I can’t really help. Maybe try the mythtv forums. There are
tuner priority settings in mythtv-setup but I’m not sure if these will
do what you want.
September 3rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
Hi Garry
Thank you for all the hard work and TIME, that you have put into the community and helping us out.
I am new to Linux, and in the process of following your excellent guide, I have hit apon a small problem ,I install the card and proceed to tuning into our local transmitter , all works fine it locks on onto a signal and appears to be working..but when i run the command for : dvbstream -o -ps 600 601 -qam 16 -cr 3_4 | mplayer – or
dvbstream -o -ps 600 601 -qam 16 -cr 3_4 | gxine stdin://mpeg2
both players complain that there is no demuxer? I want to test the card fully, before i install myth again as on the first build i was having serious picture quality issues. Is this all codec related , as it seems gxine cannot play a mpeg2 stream ?
Thank you once again for your help
Alan
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Ohh dear wrong area…. , I posted it under edgy… I am using fiesy..refer to above post
Alan
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Hi Alan,
Glad you’ve found the site useful!
Both mplayer and gxine should definitely support MPEG2 out of the box.
Maybe it’s a problem with the tuning of the card. Has the command:
tzap -r “BBC ONE”
…locked onto the signal? You should see FE_HAS_LOCK at the end of each line.
Leave this running and run the dvbstream stuff in another window. Also, check your /root/.tzap/channels.conf to make sure that scan found the channels.
September 4th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Hi Garry
Thanks for the fast reply, much appriciated ! ( PS I really like your personal photos you have a good eye for photograpghy.)
As per your guide I run a tzap -r “BBC FOUR” and it locks onto the signal ; and i can see “FE_HAS_LOCK ” so it appears to be fine .
I proceed to leave the terminal screen open allowing the channel to be streamed. its only once when I run the commands to stream the mpeg2 to gxine or mplayer does it complain that there is no demuxer.
I have googled this problem and found : http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?topic=2203.0
Was hopeing you had some info ?? (I am using a bare install of Fiesty and have updated , do I need to add any restrictive content ? Havent even installed Myth yet only the Nova t500 thats all.
Regards
Alan
September 4th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Ah – I think I might know what the problem is…
The dvbstream command:
dvbstream -o -ps 600 601 -qam 16 -cr 3_4 | gxine stdin://mpeg2
…is specific to BBC ONE. The 600 and 601 are the PIDs for BBC ONE. If you want to play ITV1, you’d have to use Tzap to tune to ITV1:
tzap -r ITV1
dvbstream -o -ps 515 653 -qam 16 -cr 3_4 | gxine stdin://mpeg2
The PID values are available from channels.conf (the send to last two fields).
Not sure what the values are for BBC FOUR, but have a go with BBC ONE and ITV1 and see what you get.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Garry
Thank you once again, I will try that and report back . Sorry for being such a noob, but I really dont want to ditch linux, It is a very steep learning curve, but well worth all the effort from what i have seen so far.
Thanks once again.
Alan
September 5th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Hi Garry
I seem to have found what the problem is ! I spoke to somebody else whom has a Mythbox all setup and was advised to install automatix.
Since installing everything is working really great; hope this helps others out!
Alan
September 5th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Hi Alan,
I’d strongly advise not to install Automatix! If your problem was a codec issue then you’re MUCH better off following the simple instructions on official Ubuntu website:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
Automatix is a quick fix which hacks your system to pieces. Using the above procedure will install the codecs and packages from proper archives so that any changes will survive future updates/patches for the life of your system.
September 5th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Hi Garry,
Ohhh Great!!! (looking sheepish )
I have just been reading all the negative press around the package. Will it be safe to uninstall ? Will it have screwed up the update manager ? and or system folders.
Strange thing is I did try the restrictive content from the Ubuntu site and it dident help, maybee I missed something out!
As they say you learn all the time ! back to rebuilding!
Thanks once again
Alan
September 13th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Just a follow up, I now have the Myth Box running great exept of IMDB data base problems , but that is already documented on the Mythtv.org site, so hopefully there will be a fix soon. It has been a hair pulling , gut wrenching exersise to get Myth running as well as learning Linux at the same time having used a PC all my life it takes some thinking to understand the OS. The last puzzel to get my remote working was the fact I deemed the lirc config files (like dos) to be text based and save in the default file type and assuming it was like a PC`s .bat file ? …. BUT I was wrong you have to change it to the Linux file sytem type …DOH!@!
Once again thanks for all the help
Alan
September 13th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Hi Alan,
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I hope get lots of use out of your new MythTV box!
The difference between ASCII text files in DOS and UNIX is a very simple one, but can catch many people out. In DOS, each line is ended by both a carriage return and a linefeed character. In UNIX, it’s just at linefeed. It’s explained very well in this Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline
It can mean that a text file written in DOS will not be read correctly in Linux. FTP actually converts the files when transferred in ASCII mode. Other conversion methods are detailed on the above page.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Hello,
I recently reinstalled Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 just to give MythTV another try. I’ve gotten everything to work on the computer but I’m not getting any output through the capture card through the receiver onto my big screen.
I have the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 capture card.
I was also wondering how to get the channel information to come up. Right now it just shows ‘unknown’ in the red/blue box at the bottom of the screen.
Thank you.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Hi Siby,
Sorry, but the TV-out on the PVR-350 is a complete unknown for me as I use the Hauppauge Nova-T cards which have no outputs of that kind – I drive my TV through the PC’s graphics card. Also, I only have experience of Freeview (DVB terrestrial), so am not the best person to talk to regarding populating your cable TV listings.
Maybe try the MythTV forums or find a guide tailored specifically to the PVR-350.
September 27th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Thank you very much for your reply. I will try the MythTV forums.
October 7th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Something to note with BBC FOUR: it shares pids (?) with CBeebies, so the result differs depending what time of day you run “scan” :
e.g.
CBeebies:721833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:201:401:16960
> BBC FOUR:721833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:16832
I daresay there’s a way to merge my two channels.conf files to get them both working. Will play with this later (possibly not in this particular case), though, I’m not that interested in CBeebies
October 7th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
CBeebies:721833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:16960
BBC FOUR:721833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:201:401:16832
— CBeebies:721833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:201:401:16960
BBC FOUR:721833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:16832
Looks like part of my post was interpreted as tags and stripped, so I’ve posted this bit again with out the < and > / lt and gt.
October 8th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Hi tzap,
I wouldn’t worry about this too much. The channels.conf is just used for testing, so MythTV should still work fine.
It’s funny – with 2 kids most of the stuff mine records is on CBeebies nowadays!
December 9th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Hello, I’m Googlebot
March 4th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Hi guys,
first of all thanks to Garry, this guide is amazing, mythTV is awesome. THANKS!
i have a problem, when i open the program guide the preview video is on the left and it is all fuzzy while there is a window on the right that says “loading preview video” so obviously it should be on the right.
Can anyone help?
March 12th, 2008 at 9:19 am
solved with ATI driver upgrade
March 12th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Although it seems like no one is checking this site anymore, i will ask anyway.
Q. Does anyone know the process for upgrading to the latest release of mythtv?
(i am on ubuntu 7.10)
March 12th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Hi Joe,
Sorry, I do check the site. Been very busy recently.
To get the latest version of Myth, you have a few options:
- wait until next month for the next Ubuntu release, Hardy, which has Myth 0.21 in its official repos.
- fine a third-party repository which has 0.21 packages for Gutsy.
- Compile from source – not as hard as it sounds.
Garry.
March 21st, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Hey,
Thanks for the reply Garry, I will wait for Hardy I think.
I am planning on setting up XMLTV, great guide! but… I am confused why the icons are needed? are they required or are they optional?
Joe.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:45 pm
You can also add the backports repository. Worked without a single problem for me, but then Hardy is out on Thursday I think…
Is any one using a Nova-T 500 with 0.21 and are they getting multiple recordings happening on the same multiplex. I’ve read this should work, but my installation doesn’t seem to support it.
Possibly a driver issue with my Nova card?
Ricky
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:00 am
Hi Ricky,
Backports worked fine for me, too. I’m not sure if multiple recordings on the same multiplex is working or not.I find 2 tuners more than enough most of the time. I’ll give it a try and see.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
My bad.
I’d set device two (DVB1) as my preferred recording device ages ago.
You need to delete both devices and recreate them for multiple recordings.
I’d done this but only set the first device to allow 2 recordings and not changed the second device. It seems Myth wasn’t smart enough to switch devices when scheduling my recordings.
Ricky
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I instal Mythubuntu and look a great Application for Multimedia and DVB needs..
2 problem at the point , I have been working on:
1st is, after install mythubuntu , NO Audio At all , I have been re-instal the sound driver , and nothing at all same problem.
I type: aplay –list-devices
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: ALC883 Analog [ALC883 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: ALC883 Digital [ALC883 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
devices are there..
type; lspci
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP67 IDE Controller (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP67 AHCI Controller (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:0f.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:11.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP67 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 7050 PV / nForce 630a (rev a2)
type; alsamixer
*** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
how can I fix this problem,..
thanks
August 4th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Hi Spacedvb,
Do you have audio when on the desktop or is it just in recordings? If it’s not at all, then I’m not sure about your specific sound driver issues. Maybe try ubuntuforums.org.
Garry.
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March 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
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