[mythtv-users] Any Gentoo MythWeb users who could help out?

Drew Tomlinson drew at mykitchentable.net
Thu Jun 28 15:17:44 UTC 2007


On 06/27/07 12:12 Mark Knecht said the following:

>On 6/27/07, Anthony Floyd <anthonyfloyd at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 6/27/07, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>      
>>>
>>Hi!
>>
>>    
>>
>>>1) In the mythtv.org wiki it says I need to ensure that mod_env and
>>>mod_rewrite modules are enabled. How do I do this?
>>>      
>>>
>>As you've discovered, in the default ebuild, these are enabled.
>>
>>    
>>
>>>2) If I try to access the backend at http://192.168.1.55/mythweb/ from
>>>      
>>>
>>>3) If I go a bit further and try to access mythweb.php I get the
>>>following error messages:
>>>      
>>>
>>Both of these are due to the missing bits in .htaccess.  What's odd is
>>that the ebuild should have dropped one in the appropriate directory.
>>You don't say what version you're using, but I'll send you my 0.19
>>.htaccess off-list.
>>
>>HTH,
>>A>
>>    
>>
>
>Hi,
>   Thanks Anthony, Robert, Keith, Jarom and Preston. I'm now
>officially in overwhelm mode. I will be spending time reading all the
>responses in depth. Hopefully it will become clearer.
>
>   I am not an IT guy and have no real training. I just mess around
>until I learn it, usually the hard way, and finally get it working.
>Hopefully I will get there. Sometimes I'm slow.
>
>   For clarity my system is all 0.20 based. All 6 Linux boxes are Gentoo:
>
>dragonfly: @192.168.1.55 is the backend
>
>dragonfly, rocker, lightning, myth12, myth14 and sector9 are all frontends
>
>gamer (lightning's dual boot name) is my Win XP box. Currently it
>knows nothing much about my network but I want MythWeb to work here
>most of all.
>
>   All of my Linux machines have the mysql file set as such to work on
>the network:
>
>DBHostName=dragonfly
>DBUserName=mythtv
>DBPassword=mythtv
>DBName=mythconverg
>DBType=QMYSQL3
>  
>

This doesn't matter to MythWeb.  However there is some "config.php" file 
(can't remember exactly) in the MythWeb package that needs to be edited 
so PHP knows how to connect to the database.  MythWeb is nothing more 
than another front end.

>   I notice one possible problem when starting Apache:
>
>dragonfly mythweb # /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
> * Stopping apache2 ...
>apache2: Could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name,
>using 192.168.1.55 for ServerName
>                                                          [ ok ]
> * Starting apache2 ...
>apache2: Could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name,
>using 192.168.1.55 for ServerName
>                                                          [ ok ]
>dragonfly mythweb #
>
>   Should I fix that (how?) or should I possible use this section from
>.htaccess?
>
>    # By default, MythWeb uses the hostname program to look up the
>hostname of the
>    # machine it runs on.  If this reports incorrect data, or you run
>MythWeb on a
>    # machine without the hostname program, set this to your current hostname.
>    #
>    #   setenv hostname         "my_mythbox"
>
>   Anyway, I'm feeling a bit lost at this point so I'd best just do
>some reading and see if it clear up at all.
>
>   Thanks for all the info.
>  
>

Maybe I can help by giving you an overview of Apache and MythWeb.  
Apache is nothing more than software that defines an area of disk space 
as a web site.  It's Apache's job to answer http requests, and serve the 
associated files (albeit sometimes it passes those files to other 
software for rendering before sending) to the requester.  Configuring 
Apache is done in the the httpd.conf file  (mostly).  .htaccess files 
are just like the httpd.conf file but typically contain configuration 
"exceptions" for the directory in which it resides.  Personally, I try 
not to use .htaccess files and include that configuration in the 
httpd.conf when possible.

So the main area of disk space by default in the httpd.conf installed 
with Portage is defined in the httpd.conf file with this line:

DocumentRoot /var/www/localhost/htdocs

MythWeb is typically a subdirectory of the above.  The the URL to access 
MythWeb is http://dragonfly or 192.168.1.55/mythweb.  ./mythweb should 
contain all of the PHP files and subdirectory structure that make the 
MythWeb web site.

I also see that in the default Apache configuration from Portage, the 
httpd.conf files "include" configuration directives contained in 
commonapache2.conf and ./modules.d.  The commonapache2.conf file sets up 
general Apache behavior and is well commented.  You should edit this 
file to suit your environment.

PHP (you have installed PHP, right?) is a scripting language in which 
MythWeb is written.  When a client requests a *.php page from Apache, it 
runs the page though the PHP processor to be rendered into html.  Then 
Apache sends the html page to the requester. Thus Apache has to know 
that files ending in *.php should be sent to the PHP processor.  On my 
system (which uses the default structure from portage), there is a line 
in the httpd.conf file that includes all the files in 
/etc/apache2/modules.d.  One of those files is named:

70_mod_php5.conf

The contents of this file load the PHP module into Apache and defines 
what files should be passed to PHP for processing before Apache serves 
the page.  Thus with you just getting a directory listing when 
attempting to view http://webserver/mythweb, that suggests to me that 
Apache doesn't know that if no file name is passed in the URL, it should 
look for index.php, send that file through PHP, and then serve the results.

So if you're still having problems, I suggest getting rid of (or 
renaming) all .htaccess files and try and get things working without any 
sort of access control.  Then if you decide you want access control (I 
don't use it as my setup is not accessible via the Internet), then add 
the .htaccess files.

Good luck,

Drew

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