[mythtv-users] Starting Myth TV without desktop environment (ie KDE) using WindowMaker instead.

[Blues Guy]

> I still plan on actually trying them 
> out myself in the very near future (along with
> XFCE4), time permitting.
> 


Jarod's spot on for most things, but for a dedicated
Myth box running Fedora Core 1, I think it's better
(ugh, I hate that word, it's so imprecise!) to do a
minimal install, and use the native yum, (instead of
having to add apt-get), then use yum to install
XFree86, xfwm4, and mythtv-suite and of course alsa,
lirc, etc...(thanks Axel!)

The point being, you start out smaller, just use xfwm4
window manager, and even with the entire myth-suite,
it's still just under 1GB and could fit on a compact
flash card if you wanted to make a REALLY quiet
machine.  Then you could NFS or SMB mount your file
store to your big noisy machine in the basement.  If
you're selective about what myth components you
install, you could get even smaller and maybe keep
your mysql DB local too.

I solved the start up problem in a very similar way to
one that was mentioned in this list a while back.

1) inittab is set to runlevel 5, and at runlevel 5
calls a script that logs the mythtv user in.

x:5:respawn:/sbin/agetty -n -l\
/var/lib/mythtv/autologinmythtv 38400 tty7

When I need to do maintenance, I just ssh in and
telinit 3.

2) The mythtv user's .bashrc script runs X, the window
manager, and mythfrontend.

export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
X :0 -dpi 100 &
xfwm4 --daemon
mythfrontend

This way you eliminate all the focus problems and KDE
crap, and everything runs out of init, so if anything
dies (myth segfault, X crash, etc.) it restarts
automatically.  And I don't need a keyboard and mouse
near the TV which helps with the WAF.  If you've doing
more than Myth on your box, you may want a full
desktop, but for a dedicated box like mine, it's the
only way to go.  It's simpler and more elegant.

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