[mythtv-users] Ubuntu 0.22 installation experience

Richard Morton richard.e.morton at gmail.com
Fri Dec 25 17:23:53 UTC 2009


In the last week decided to reinstall my server with a fresh Ubuntu 9.10
installation with Myth0.22

My system components:
Asus P5Q MB
Q6600 Core2Quad
4GB RAM
Asus NVidia 8500GT 1GB graphics card
OS on PATA Maxtor drive
Media stored on 1.5GB SATA drive
Nova-T500 DVB-T twin tuner
and a few peripherals

I burn't a release ISO CD of Ubuntu 910. upon boot/install the option to
select the IDE drive was not there, even without the SATA drive connected;
this was also true of a Xubuntu 910 cd. I then tried a Ubuntu 904 CD. This
allowed the installation to continue; I then completed a successful
distribution upgrade before proceeding; this has two drawbacks that I know
of:
1) GRUB legacy not GRUB 2 (all* the other systems in the house are running
fresh 910 installations so this is the only system with a different GRUB
configuration method - no biggie) *yes all; no Windows in the family now!
2) ext3; the boot partition uses the older filesystem rather than the now
default ext4
I am sure there are ways to correct both of these; but I'm not currently
worried about them - unless someone gives me a good reason to complete what
are likely risky procedures.

installing 0.22 was a breeze; restoring the DB worked well and the DB
upgrade went smoothly. Backend/Setup completing most of the upgrade and the
plugins tables upgraded with the frontend.

setup NFS shares (instead of the previous SAMBA/CIFS as there are no windows
systems in the house now).

Impressions of 0.22; much nicer feel of polish to MythUI; my favorite theme
is mythcenter (wide) with the retro osd theme. I love the graphite look but
I don't like horizontal menus - in my view usability is first priority over
style; but hey it's a lovely piece of art. Retro OSD theme works fine on
both HD and SD TVs but some of the others don't; with text only
squint-readable on my non-HD TVs.

Using the Mythbuntu auto-builds repository for Myth btw.

 - various issues with network APIs (telnet etc); as I discovered when
looking to install MythDroid trunk and seeing a few patches need to be
applied; I have never built the whole of myth from source and I had to get
the system up and running in a relatively short time; so I didn't have the
chance to attempt this as well. I am really looking forward to those patches
getting committed.
 - nvidia 185 drivers outputted on SVideo output in b&w; upgrading to 190
from nvidia website fixed this.
 - nvidia driver configuration doesn't have permission to write to
xorg.conf; minor issue to copy and paste it manually
 - seeing a little tearing on playback of videos; about to try the fix from
this thread -
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/414353#414353
 - deleting a lot of files from watch recordings screen in a sequence causes
frontend to crash (d then UP then ENTER - repeatedly to delete a few
programmes in a series - I haven't counted but when you get to around 10
programmes deleted the frontend crashes.)
 - MythGallery slideshow displays a grey screen and no image playback;
selecting random and using the cursor keys works fine.
 - mythweb didnt work but googling the error message gave me the answer - I
think it was dpkg -i mythtv-common  & dpkg -i mythweb and checking the IP
address - I didn't need to change it, but it still started working after I
completed this and disabled password protect MythWeb - I need to re-enable
this manually I guess so I can expose it to the net.
 - flash programme playback in mythweb is broken and enabling the flash
object in mythweb (I use firefox flashblock) returns me immediately to the
main menu.



on remote frontend using ubuntu with XCFE4 as desktop - not Xubuntu; I got
issues with login with Xubuntu currently. the extra load myth022/NFS (versus
0.21/CIFS) is placing on the system means that there is slight stuttering; I
noticed a thread indicating that using the inbuilt myth streaming from the
backend is more efficient; so I enabled that; and all now plays flawlessly
using slim profile with xvmc (configured screen resolution 1440x900)

(updating the SP13000 with the latest updates from Ubuntu has however broken
the gigabit ethernet PCI card in the system - but the onboard 100MB
connection is working well).



Some general comments about Myth 0.22; lovely, some great work completed by
the developers; the transitions between many of the areas with fade work
well. to improve usability I would like to see smoothscroll implemented for
moving textlists / highlight bars around. I am sure this has been thought of
already; and is in progress or a theme developers  choice. I guess this
would need to be choosable on a per-frontend setting; but it would make it
easier to follow for those in the room not pressing the buttons and not
knowing the direction of travel (in watch recordings lists for example).


So a big thanks to all the developers it is a nice upgrade

Rich
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