[mythtv-users] Help me choose a Redhat based OS for MythBackend

[Jarod Wilson]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 3:21 AM, Douglas Wagner <douglasw0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 10:35 PM, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Nick Morrott <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > On 24 April 2010 01:58, Mike Andy <beatbreaker82 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> As per subject title, Help me choose a Redhat based OS for MythBackend.
>> >
>> > If it were me, and I was using well supported hardware, I'd seriously
>> > think about waiting for the RHEL6 clones to be released, install one
>> > of them, and then stop worrying. atrpms.net has supported MythTV on
>> > CentOS for years, and would make for an easy installation route. Plus
>> > you get to learn on a RHEL-based system which or may not be useful to
>> > you career-wise.
>>
>> I think its pretty likely I'm going to switch from Fedora to Red Hat
>> Enterprise Linux (there, now I can say RHEL from here on forward...)
>> on my own MythTV system. But for my taste, RHEL5 is already way too
>> out of date -- more of a userspace issue than a kernelspace issue, as
>> the kernel, while it has an "old" base is actually quite capable even
>> on very new hardware[*], though there are quite a few drivers not in
>> the RHEL5 kernel that one needs for many MythTV systems (primarily
>> capture card drivers and lirc). My most productive RHEL5 boxes at work
>> have a ton of userspace bits much newer than what ships in RHEL5. So
>> that brings us to RHEL6, for which the public beta was just released.
>> The userspace is fairly current (though 4 years down the road, it'll
>> be just as stale as RHEL5 is now), lots of capture card drivers are
>> built as part of the shipping kernel, xfs and ext4 are available out
>> of the box, etc.
>>
>> [*] c'mon, someone ask me how I know this... :)
>
> *LOL* I'll bite (didn't I read somewhere you were working for RedHat these
> days Jarod?) How do you know this? :)

Heh, yeah, I've been working for Red Hat for over 4 years now, but
just this past December, I took over as the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
kernel maintainer, so I'm *quite* intimately familiar with the RHEL5
kernel. :)

> I suppose you get this a lot but thanks a TON for your Myth on RH/Fedora
> docs, those got me started with MythTV back before I realized I really
> DIDN'T want to go through the agony of upgrading the box every 4 months. :)

Hey, you only *have* to upgrade (if you want updates) every 13
months... But yeah, I understand the pain. The older I get (or more
accurately, the older my kids get), the less time I have to deal with
things like the Fedora update merry-go-round, especially on what is
essentially an appliance that everyone in the house expects to be
fully functional all the time. I know Fedora well enough that I can
usually move from one release to the next with minimal problems (by
now, I know where almost all the dragons be, how to slay them, or who
in the office to bitch at about them), but its still a bit of work
that I don't really care to put the time in on anymore. That said, my
myth boxes *do* still run Fedora, and it works just fine the vast
majority of the time.

...
> (And to give a short answer to your question, I HIGHLY recommend going with
> a Cent/RHEL installation instead of a Fedora Installation.  There's NOTHING
> wrong with Fedora, but the upgrade cycle mixed with Fedora's less than
> stellar upgrade ability and typical package control problems leads many
> times to a broken Myth Installation you either have to fix or reinstall.  At
> least with RHEL/Cent you're looking at a fairly stable operating system that
> you don't have to upgrade install every 4 months.)

I think if you like to tinker, and want to have to occasionally get
your hands dirty, Fedora still isn't a bad choice, but definitely if
you want your myth box(es) to Just Work for an extended period of time
with minimal maintenance, ongoing security updates, etc., then RHEL
and/or clones are definitely a much better way to go.

I think once we hit summer (i.e., when I have next to zero shows being
recorded by mythtv), I'll slide my current Fedora 12 backend box over
to RHEL6. Less certain about my frontend boxes, given that it took me
all of just a few hours to spin up a new asrock ion box w/Fedora 12
and fully configure it to take over as my secondary frontend box.
(Those are splendid little boxes, btw).

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com