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Screencasts of Installing MythTV Via MythDora 4.0
peterdaly writes "MythDora 4 is a MythTV 'in-a-box' style distribution based on Fedora Core 6. With the help of a RedHat employee and author Jarod Wilson, MythDora 4 has made great strides in hardware compatibility and ease of installation. It is designed to format your hard drive and install everything needed for a fully functional MythTV System. MythPVR.com has created a three-part screencast of the installation process covering MythDora installation, configuration, and MythTV setup. If you have had problem installing MythTV in the past due to hardware compatibility issues, it might be time to give it another chance."
Having recently fled from the barren dependency hell of Fedora, (to Feisty), I am perplexed as to why anyone wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro of any kind would choose Fedora as their base distro. Hardware detection was... OK, but there were innumerable problems with package management, configurations and yes, software availability. I mean, will the box play mp3 files? DVDs? Fedora is not a distro known for these capabilities.
May the Maths Be with you!
I wanna see someone port MythTV's codecs to the PS3's Cell DSPs so I can use it as my PVR direct to my HDMI TV and 7.1 surround.
--
make install -not war
For those who already have Fedora installed, there's an excellent guide available at http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php which is simple to follow and worked for me on the first try (I went with a Hauppage 150 card). Personally, I preferred installing it the software myself, so I have a better idea of where to look when something breaks. I have yum cron'ed to run nightly, and so far I haven't had the install broken by any new packages since the install (4 or so months ago).
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
I am by no means an expert of any kind. In fact, I'm about as amateur as it gets. Before about a week ago, I had very little experience with linux (edgy, FC3 for about 5 mins). This is my quick take on the three:
KnoppMyth was way too over my head. I'm certain that it was my inability to grasp knoppix that was the problem. User problem to be sure, but if that counts as an issue... Knoppix did do great with lirc and my remote right out of the box, a sore spot for me with the other distros I used.
Whereas KnoppMyth felt like swimming in a ocean of misunderstanding, MythDora felt like death by a thousand cuts. It was pretty, but I kept feeling like I ran into hurdles over... and over.. and over. I used Jared's guide, but like all things, the book can only take you so far..
I ended up throwing Feisty on my HTPC and loading up a full backend/frontend/desktop. Biggest problems were my Avermedia A180 (DVB issues) and lirc. The level of user generated documentation with Ubuntu made the difference for me.
Feel free to disagree with me. I can't defend any of this with anything more than my personal experience.
Well, to work with a remote you need some sort of an IR receiver. And if the machine needs to control a set-top box of some sort (direct tv for example) you may need an IR emitter as well. Coincidentally, I happen to sell such things: http://iguanaworks.net/products.psp
Yes it's a shameless plug, but when you throw up a softball like this I just have take a swing at it.
The Hauppague PVR-150,250, and 350 are the best game in town for tuners. Fry's sells the PVR150 for $120 if you have to get it right away, or I've seen them online for as cheap as $60 for plain box with no remote. You can do remote through your LAN I just built a MythDora 3.2 box (doh! Could have done MythDora 4.0!) and it works quite nicely on a P3/850 with an NVidia 6200 based video card with S-Video out. Just this last weekend, I rebuilt the thing with a 320GB drive instead of the tiny drive I had lying around so it wouldn't run out of space so quickly. It also sounds a lot less like a jet engine when running. More info here: www.mythtvtalk.com Check out the forums.
My goal with KnoppMyth is to make it easy. Obviously, it wasn't for you. In what ways can we improve KnoppMyth to make it easier?
Regards,
Cecil
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
You have obviously not spent anytime in #mythtv-user. I've seen lots of folks come in there and ask for help with install MythTV on Ubuntu.
Regards,
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
Sorry if my personal and professional life gets in the way of making a release for you. The day you have to pay for KnoppMyth is the day you can stop bitching about releases taking too long.
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
Getting a remote to work isn't worth the trouble. I have a PVR-250 in my Myth machine and I ditched the remote for a wireless keyboard a while back. Much easier.
I tried MythDora, but frankly I got tired of the "Swiper, no swiping!" popups every time I tried to record a show. I've heard there's a MythBusters plugin to get around them, but I don't think the walrus mustache is an acceptable tradeoff.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
It would be nice if extras like exporting to DVD-R, webbrowsers, etc were easier to find. And, when found, install. Finding things on the forums is a pain.
Also, last time I tried, changing your zip code/postal code was broken if you put in a Canadian postal code (They go like this X0X 0X0). That was about a year ago though.
And dealing with things like two IR outputs + one IR input using different methods with LIRC would be nice. As it stands I had to compile LIRC by hand with differing module names to deal with this. I'm sure there's plenty of people with multiple Cable/Satellite boxes that have this issue.
Overall, I love Knoppmyth! I'll have to figure out if I want to risk an upgrade to the latest version or not yet.
PPS - A table showing MythTV versions included with each release of Knoppmyth would be nice, so you can easily match up custom installed frontends.
Thanks again!
In terms of finding programs, etc. Those are all accessible via the MythTV menu. But I can see where better documentation came come in handy. A while ago, I started on a much updated pamphlet, but it is disheartening to work on something and people doesn't read it. A lot of the question I get in IRC (freenode.net #knoppmyth), are covered in the pamphlet. If only people would RTFM.... But I digress. More work is due on the pamphlet, I've just been busy with my professional life.
In terms of MythTV related issues... Those are MythTV issues and not KnoppMyth specific. Ironically, one of the areas we try and make it easier for users is in MythWeather. Your zipcode is automatically retrieved from the db and entered for you.
I don't ever recall reading or hearing about issues w/ multiple LIRC. When issues like this occur, if you want to see it fixed in a future release, you should bring it to my attention of the forum or via PM or email. The development team isn't very large. We don't have all the hardware that is out there. Even our testers may not have the hardware you have. So, if you want to see something fixed, the best way to bring it to our attention and provide details. Same thing goes if you fix an issue. Provide details and ask to test.
Thanks for the feedback.
Regards,
Cecil
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
KnoppMyth is meant to be used as a set-top box, not a general purpose computer. KnoppMyth already includes MythBrowser.
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
People care about avoiding lawsuits and yet it looks like one of the major suppliers of MP3 players recently lost a large patent infringement lawsuit earlier this year to the tune of billions of dollars (no doubt an appeal is pending). If the patent holder isn't paid off, the patent holder has the power to create a huge hassle for lots of ordinary people who will turn to their proprietor and ask why they didn't charge enough money to pay for the requisite licensing fee (or why a loyal customer would be left to the ravages of the lawyers). Just ask Apple about Paul Heckel's ability to get an undisclosed sum from them over patents that were allegedly infringed in Hypercard (or so says Heckel and his patent lawyer). People do not benefit from living a life where they are spared the harsh reality -- the US patent system as it pertains to software -- that exists for so many others. Lashing out at people for making you aware of that reality won't help people avoid these dangers.
As for software not being political, that has never been the case. Any activity involving multiple people is political; computer software is no exception. Only the naive believe they can divorce themselves from politics. While it can be unpleasant learning that computer-related work is filled with political ugliness you were unaware of; learning that the lives of others is more harsh than you knew. But it's worth knowing so that you can better understand how things really work, behave ethically in accordance with your newfound knowledge, and sleep easier.
Digital Citizen
I've run MythTV since 0.14 on Knoppmyth and Fedora -- starting with FC3.
When I started, Knoppmyth was way over my head -- particularly the finishing touches to get everything running properly. It was my first real hands-dirty experience with Linux and I appreciated for all I learned. I did did manage to get an ancient K6-3D system running Knoppmyth -- not well enough to put in my livingroom, but well enough to prove the concept and that it was worth the time and effort to build a new system on more capable hardware.
My second system was a P3 700 built on FC3 following Jarod Wilson's definitive guide, mainly because I felt that following the guide to transform a generic install into a MythTV appliance would teach me a lot about what the Myth components were, how they all fit together, how to make them all fit together in Linux, and what to do when something went wrong. I was right.
I built a third machine (my current master beckend/frontend) on FC4 also following Jarod's guide but this time on a P4 2.5 machine.
By this time I was ready to start adding FE capabilities, but I already knew the process of installation, knew about the components and dependencies, and no longer felt the need for yumming or smarting in kernel modules and so on. I used Knoppmyth to turn my old P3 700 former-backend into a frontend.
This setup worked well through several upgrades -- FC on the backend, Knoppmyth on the frontend with the only caveat being that both machines have to be running the same version of Myth. Upgrade one, you have to upgrade the other.
Even though this was about two years ago, the Knoppmyth install was easy and painless, and I was prepared to deal with irregularities like tweaking xorg.conf. I also really appreciated that the Knoppmyth CD would let you run a frontend off the CD -- allowing you to instantly test hardware without touching the drive.
Last weekend, I finally retired the P3. It's currently on holiday, but will soon return to service as a file server. Instead I built a new frontend on an Athlon 64 4000.
I decided to give Mythdora a whirl since I know it's been under heavy development including the involvement of Jarod. I was really impressed with how smoothly and quickly the installation went, including post-install scripts to handle things like IR hardware and binary nvidia drivers (I know, I know, but the binary driver really works better for Myth than the Free one). I went from having a pile of boxes at 4 pm to a working Mythtv system at 9:30. It might have been quicker but I had to run to the shop when I ran out of beer.
I didn't try a Knoppmyth install on this hardware, but have no doubt that it would have gone just as smoothly. Cecil deserves a lot of respect and credit for the fantastic job he has done with Knoppmyth over the years.
Of course I did have quite a bit of Myth-specific experience behind me and knew from the start to buy hardware that was rock-solid compatible -- like an nforce board, nvidia gfx card, turtle beach sound card, on-board 10/100 LAN, etc.
The point is that by last weekend I was a lot more familiar with Fedora than with Debian, so I was really happy to be able to so painlessly migrate my FE to Fedora. I have no doubt that those more familiar with Debian will be just as happy with what Cecil has done in Knoppix.
And more than anything, lot of credit is owed to the folks behind MythTV -- from Isaac Richards, the original creator, and all the key developers, to folks like Jarod, Cecil, and Dennis for enormous contributions in making Myth more accessible, to all the numerous active and helpful folks on the mailing list. They've made MythTV into a product that truly is a world-beater -- by far the most powerful, most flexible, most extensible, and downright most pleasurable media engine on the planet.
Here's looking to 0.21.
I installed knoppmyth on my first myth box about 2 years ago. At the time it was the distro. of choice for easy, automated installations. It worked well on my "lowrider" (underpowered, ancient) system. The problem that ultimately killed that box was that the automated installation program set up a small (~4gb IIRC) partition for applications by default, and gave the rest to the AV partition. I wanted to install _every_ app. that had to do with multimedia, so this became too restrictive ultimately.
.02 based on my experience.
For my next box (considering the first a proof of concept), I went all out an spec'd an efficient, yet capable machine (I also plan to run Astrisk (voip server) on it, a web server, etc, etc). Unfortunately for me, I bought a bad ram stick that wasn't on the vendors list. Before I figured this out, I installed many distros to try to get the hardware running.
These include:
- Simply Mepis
- Knoppmyth
- DreamLinux
- Mythdora
- Ubuntu 6
After I figured out my ram problem, I now had to choose from among these distros based on my experience installing most of them several times.
- I did not like the knoppmyth custom installer (cumbersome, ambiguous at times), so I ruled that out.
- Mythdora just wasn't for me. I've always used debian-based distros, so that bias was enough to cause me to look elsewhere.
- I remember thinking that Simply Mepis was a great out-of-the-box distro with a slick user I/F, but the community forums were mostly Portuguese (I think, Brazil, IIRC??).
- I don't remember too much about Dream linux.
- In the end, I went with Ubuntu.
Using Ubuntu meant that I had to install a few more packages than with some of the other distros (e.g. mySQL, mythserver, mythfrontend), but there was plenty of community documentation to walk me through all of that. The same is true of all of the applications that I plan to load on it someday (once it was good enough for my wife to use, I kind of moved on to other projects for a while...(ahem, ADD/ADHD, cough).....) The Ubuntu UI is also pretty wife/gf friendly, which can be a key issue in household mythtv acceptance.
My
I was flipping bits on an abacus, newb.
Cecil, you are living in a dream world. Most people don't RTFM. Even when asked. Even if it brought world peace, turned lead into gold and allowed cars to run on water.
Easy to use means not having to open the manual, that the screen tells you everything you need to know, such that a 5 year old can learn to use it. It is this very familiarity that keeps Windows on top, because it is what people know. Linux has to fight this mentality. It is a shame that so many Linux enthusiasts don't understand this.
Treat the average user like cattle, or sheep, if you prefer. Don't give them a choice. Choice is confusing. I like to call these users 12 O'Clocks because they are same people who's VCR's are forever punished to flashing 12:00
Bearded Dragon
With the parent as such a fine example, I look forward to an unbiased, unemotional discussion on the pros and cons of different Linux distributions. I'm sure it will be based entirely on objective facts, supported by careful citations, and not contain any anecdotal evidence or personal opinions.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
While I don't personally use your distribution I want to thank you for making it available.
Your hard work IS appreciated.
I think if you were to install KnoppMyth, you'd see that is "like cattle". I personally think MythTV is easy to use. Granted, if can be difficult to install, hence my work on KnoppMyth.
When KnoppMyth was first introduced, the manual was sparse. The pamphlet now stands at about 40 pages. Now, the reason that came about is because people asked specifics and I wanted to provided a great understanding of the different parts of KnoppMyth.
Frankly, I think the attitude of not reading or not wanting to read is wrong. That is part of reason we have a monopoly in Redmond. Open your eyes and your mind....
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
It's disguised anti-Red Hatism from those who resent a company making money out of Linux. Mostly ungrateful fucks who don't realise just how much Red Hat's money puts back into the system. There are also a lot of lazy buggers out there who can't be bothered to figure out how to make it work and talk shit about yum and rpm. Add in those who don't seem to realise that Fedora eschews non-Free/possibly patented stuff by default and haven't figured out what a third-party repository is: "I can't play MP3s!" "MP3 is covered by software patents and so its inclusion in the distro is legally dubious. You just need the extra packages from (some repo)." "What's (some repo)? Where do I get that?" "Google is your friend." "Whaaat? That's crap!" "Well fuck off back to Windows, then." It's l33t to bash Red Hat and Fedora (which does look better) and sing the praises of Ubuntu's supposed ease. Lock 'em up in a small room with a clean box and a copy of FreeBSD; then see how l33t they feel after an hour or so.