[mythtv] New version of mythtv Installation Script

[Dwight Hubbard]

On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 17:49, Cedar McKay wrote:
> Dwight, I'm really impressed with your installer. Or at least I think I 
> will be once I get it working.

Hopefully, the next version will work better.

> Possible Bug?:
> I tried it out on my RH 9 system. When I got to the "Select the source 
> for your tv listings" screen I chose U.S.A from the pull-down, then 
> entered my zip (98103). However, the "TV provider" pull-down list was 
> never populated. I waited a couple of minutes, but nothing showed up. I 
> assume you hit zap2it for this info? If so, I think this is a bug, 
> because when I tried mythfilldatabase a couple of minutes later on my 
> RH8 system and got listings, so I imagine zap2it is up. I tried again, 
> but nothing. I hit next anyway and the script proceeded to download and 
> install a bunch of stuff. But with about 1/4 of the progress bar 
> remaining the installer disappeared. I assume the root cause is the 
> failed tv-listings selection. I have attached the mythtv_installer.log 
> from /tmp below.

The cause of the installer stopping was actually with an error in the
code to install mythweb.  I think I have it fixed in the new version.

> General comments:
> 1) When I do wget -q -O - http://mythtv.dwightandamy.com/go.sh|sh after 
> it says it has downloaded installer.py there is quite a pause (30 
> seconds?) before the graphical interface comes up. Perhaps you should 
> print out something like "please wait while the installer starts up" so 
> people don't think there has been a crash.

Ooops, I actually used to have a message that said that, but when I
modified the go.sh script to create the log in /tmp, I redirected the
message to the log file ;-)  I'll have that fixed in a second.

> 2)If failing to successfully select the "TV provider" info was the root 
> cause of my subsequent failure, maybe the "next" button should be 
> disabled on that screen until that step is successful. Along with that 
> maybe an error message can be printed out if provider info can't be 
> retrieved.

The tv provider pulldown list is populated using tv_grab_na from the
xmltv distribution.  I've considered rerunning it if it doesn't get
anything but worry I could create a deadlock if there really aren't any
providers.  Of course disabling the next button would have the same
problem.

> 3)You have debug on by default. Perhaps that should only be the case 
> when the user selects "CVS" rather than a stable release, since debug 
> hurts performance.
> 
> 4) I briefly thought "debug" meant debug messages for the installer 
> rather than for myth. Perhaps that text should be clarified.

I've changed the text, I hope it's clearer.

> 5) I noticed that the installer was trying to install alsa. With my 
> motherboard the drivers included with RH9 (but not RH8) worked fine, so 
> I don't find it desirable to screw with them in my case.

Not as easy to change as I'd like, several of the rpms the installer
installs have alsa as a prereq.

> Not that I know anything about anything, but I think your installer is 
> a really great idea. If support for debian based systems and gentoo can 
> be added to the script this would make a really elegant solution to the 
> difficulty some people have installing mythtv. I think gentoo, debian 
> and rpm based systems make up the bulk of the mythtv users, so that 
> would be great.

Debian should be close to working since I use apt-get to install most of
the RPMs.  I'd love some feedback if someone who runs debian can tell me
what I might need to change to get it to work.

I would think gentoo support would be fairly easy to add.  As far as I
remember I would just need to emerge the appropriate packages and let it
run the normal stuff to set it up.