[mythtv-users] HDHR prob with new wallwarts

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sat, 7 Dec 2019 17:22:00 -0500, you wrote:

>On Sat, Dec 7, 2019 at 3:59 PM Allen Edwards <allen.p.edwards at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 7, 2019 at 11:57 AM Daryl McDonald <darylangela at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> One after thought Allen, I can't use an analog tuner it myust be digital,
>>> thanks
>>> mythtv.org <https://forum.mythtv.org>
>>
>>
>> https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TechniSat_Air2PC-ATSC-PCI rev 1.
>>
>> I guess the reason for my post was to talk you out of using cards like I
>> did. I would bet that newer cards are much better as this card is old but
>> the HDHR units work flawlessly once you set them up. Of course, I also use
>> the optical feature for my remote. That may have been a factor in my
>> switch. I have two HDHR original dual boxes. No complaints.
>>
>> Allen
>
>
>https://www.amazon.ca/Ziyituod-Network-Ethernet-Gigabit-1000Mbps/dp/B07T55GSF9/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=NIC&qid=1575756626&sr=8-4&th=1
>
>Would one of these network cards allow me to connect both HDHRs directly to
>the PC and avouid network traffic issues?

Yes, that should do the job.  In the past, I have had problems with
the RealTek 8111 drivers, but the current driver in Ubuntu 18.04 seems
fine.

You will likely need to set up the two new Ethernet ports with static
IP addresses as they will not be on the network that your router is on
and will therefore not have DHCP addressing available as that is done
by the router normally.  You can do that with the NetworkManager GUI
these days, rather than having to use the /etc/network/interfaces
file.  NetworkManager in 18.04 is actually quite useable now.  Make
sure that you use different subnets from the one(s) in use on your
network already.  So if you are already using 192.168.1.0/24 for
example, you might use 192.168.100.0/24 and 192.168.101.0/24 for the
two subnets on the new Ethernet ports, and assign the ports the static
IPs of (for example) 192.168.100.254 and 192.168.101.254 respectively.

I use a numbering convention in my network where I put network/server
devices on the high numbers of the subnet and clients on the low
numbers, hence my suggestion to use x.x.x.254 for the new Ethernet
ports.  Your convention (if you have one) may differ.

If you are planning on adding, moving or removing cards in that PC at
a later date, be aware that you can find that the names of the
Ethernet ports will change if you do that.  I prefer to avoid that by
using udev to lock down the Ethernet ports, and at the same time
change them back to the old eth0, eth1, ... names.  To do that, you
install the Ethernet card and boot up, then run "ifconfig" to find the
MAC addresses of all your Ethernet ports.  This is what I get for one
of my Ethernet ports:

eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 10.0.2.12  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 10.0.2.255
        inet6 2406:e001:1:2802::1  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x0<global>
        inet6 fe80::ad6d:51:db52:2fe1  prefixlen 64  scopeid
0x20<link>
        inet6 2406:e001:1:2802::12  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x0<global>
        ether 00:1f:c6:24:64:ce  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 20960054  bytes 10560820118 (10.5 GB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 3  frame 3
        TX packets 18901618  bytes 28550219983 (28.5 GB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 17

The MAC address is the "00:1f:c6:24:64:ce" after the word "ether" on
the 6th line in that example.  You put the MAC address in a line in a
config file in /etc/udev/rules.d that looks like this from my "lith"
box:

root at lith:/var/log# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/20-network.rules
# Asus P5K-E motherboard
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="00:1f:c6:24:64:ce",
NAME="eth0"

# Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop Ethernet adapter (PCI)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", ATTR{address}=="00:07:e9:11:c5:95",
NAME="eth1"

The MAC address goes in the ATTR{address}=="<MAC address>" clause and
you can put whatever you prefer for the NAME.  Then reboot.

The 20-network.rules file can be any name you like as long as it has a
.rules extension.  The convention is to use numbers on the front to
control the order the udev rules are executed.  The file should be
chown root:root and chmod u=rw,g=r,o=r.

However, there is a serious problem that I did realise about using a
separate network for HDHRs.  It appears that HDHRs have no way to be
set up with a static IP address - they always need DHCP.  I can see
the reason for that, but in this situation it is a pain as you would
then need to set up DHCP servers for each of the two new Ethernet
ports.  In Ubuntu 18.04 with the way Ubuntu are using parts of various
different network software such as systemd-resolved and dnsmasq, I am
not sure how to go about setting up a DHCP server on those two ports.
It might be as simple as installing the ISC DHCP server package and
configuring it, or that might conflict with the dnsmasq's ability to
be a DHCP server.  I will have to try it out and report back.