[mythtv-users] Question about Wiki

[Tom Lichti]

Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> Tom Lichti wrote:
>   
>> I have a few things I'd like to add to the Wiki, but I'm not sure on the 
>> etiquette/guidelines. I see the style guide, but it doesn't really cover 
>> my concerns. The two things I want to add are:
>>
>> 1) In the hardware section, there is an entry for the Avermedia M179 
>> cards. I have 2, as well as 2 PVR 250's, and I can definitely say that 
>> the direct comparison of the quality is no contest, the 250 is much 
>> nicer. Plus, the cards were found and configured in KnoppMyth without 
>> any issues, I'd like to add something about that as well.
>>
>> 2) I just spent an hour trying to debug a problem with alsa, and 
>> realized the fix was a 2 second thing that I should have twigged to. 
>> Should it go in the knowledge base section ,or the sound cards section 
>> in Hardware?
>>
>>   
>>     
> It's hard to say exactly where little tidbits should go.  Certainly a 
> little note on the M179 page about quality compared to the PVR-250 would 
> be appropriate as well as perhaps a similar statement on the PVR-250 
> page about it's difference over an M179.  There is also a general 
> purpose Video Capture Cards page where this comment could also go.
>   
Perhaps a section on both pages called 'User observations' or something 
like that? That way we'd know it was more subjective than objective.
> As for the alsa problem, it depends on many factors.  Was it specific to 
> a particular audio card?  A particular version of alsa?  With so many 
> variables, a single page of alsa information is hard to put together. 
>   
Well, what specifically happened is that on my frontend, which was 
originally KnoppMyth but has been updated to current SVN, I upgraded to 
the latest alsa version, and it caused stuttering during playback, so I 
went back to the version I had before. I never rebooted during this 
process, so that may have been a factor. Anyway, during either the 
upgrade or downgrade, my mythtv user was removed from the 'audio' group, 
which meant the user had no permission to access the audio device. I 
didn't notice this because I never logged the user out during all of 
that, so it still had permission to access the device. Once I rebooted, 
I found out I had no sound in mythtv. I could run alsamixer as root, but 
not mythtv, but it didn't twig that it was a permissions problem until 
an hour later (after I had re-run alsa config numerous times, upgraded 
alsa, etc, etc) when I added the mythtv user back to the audio group, 
and everything was working again.

I found lots of people who had a similar problem, but none that 
mentioned permissions, so it seems like something that may be useful for 
the wiki. It's really more of a troubleshooting thing, but there isn't a 
'Troubleshooting' category. Perhaps it could be added? Also, I'm not 
sure if it was a KnoppMyth/debian specific problem, but it could be 
useful for someone out there.

Tom