<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
It took me about a month to arrive at a satisfactory answer to the question "What exactly is linux?". At this time I don't understand what a mailing list is; how it functions; what is the etiquette. Please forgive and correct a beginner's mistakes.<br>
<br>
A little background. I am a retired electrical power engineer (65 years old) with a lifelong interest in science and technology, science fiction and computers. I have done some programming - 1900 Fortran, 8060, 6502, Z80, Basic, Pascal, Object Pal and Visual Basic in roughly that order. I have been experimenting with linux since 2006 (Dapper Drake) and I think my main problem is that I don't really understand the modern world of technology - the social aspects rather than the technology itself. I still count myself a linux newbie and now a myth newbie as well.<br>
<br>
I am also a newcomer to the field of digital television. Digital terrestrial television only became available at my location on 10th October. I am a keen television viewer and my primary objective is to record those programmes I want to watch as reliably, conveniently and cheaply as possible. I don't really care whether I use Windows or linux but my preference would be linux. So far, I have established that my Acer Aspire One D257 netbook is capable of recording at least 2 digital channels and playing back the recordings (Windows 7 starter, Media Portal and HDHomerun). On just one occasion, so far, I managed something similar using Mythbuntu on the same machine. They say "The devil's in the details" and he is certainly working hard for me.<br>
<br>
I installed Mythbuntu (12.04 I think) twice, and each time, the first thing I saw was the message that the frontend can't connect to the backend. Based on my programming experience THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN but it does. A few days later it worked. I don't exactly know why but I suspect it might be related to the network environment - 2 different home networks, sometimes wired, sometimes wireless, sometimes both. Surely the IP address is irrelevant when it's connected via localhost? I don't like Mythbuntu because it's not general purpose - it took me several hours to figure out a procedure to get the wireless working. My wireless performance is good enough to record 1 channel but not 2, although there appears to be some sort of network glitch roughly every 80 seconds. I know this because I have discovered that recording from the HDHomerun tuner is very easy, it's using MythTV (or Media Portal) which is difficult. I am tempted to write my own capture application (it might be quick<br>
er and less hassle) but there are some programming details I would need to study first, such as how to send a Ctrl-C to the terminal. I also have MythTV and Lubuntu 12.10 on another netbook - Asus EeePC X101CH. I know the hardware can do the recording but, so far, I haven't achieved anything with MythTV (or Media Portal).<br>
<br>
I have found that both Media Portal and MythTV will sometimes accept a scheduled recording instruction and then apparently ignore it. In the case of MythTV I think that the storage directory details are the main problem. How can MythTV record to a location among the system files? I thought user files couldn't be written there? How can I set the location to my main data partition (NTFS for sharing with Windows)? How do I ensure that the data partition is mounted at startup? What permissions do I need to set? In the not too long term I expect to be using at least 3 HDHomerun tuners. I have realised that this may have implications regarding how many computers I need or can use - master / slave backends etc.<br>
<br>
I don't mind if you simply point me to web pages with the relevant information. If I don't understand what they say, I can come back and ask for more details. By the way, the netbook is not my only hard drive storage. I have been recording analogue television since 2003 and currently I have about 22TB connected to my network - 2 NAS boxes, 4 netbooks, 1 laptop, 2 desktops and 1 nettop.<br>
<br>
Oh! and a Merry Christmas to all.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style>First of all... Welcome!</div><div style><br></div><div style>Before I answer any questions, I am going to give you a bit of information to make sure that MythTV is really what your looking for.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>MythTV is not really an 'application' that you would use to record and watch a show every now and then... it should really be run on a fixed machine, with a wired network connection, static IP, and 24hour availability. While a laptop can certainly work as a server (actually quite well in some situations), it really should treated as any other server... left alone to do it's job.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Mythbuntu is about the easiest way to get started the first time, but as you noticed its a purpose built distro. You could install the full Ubuntu system, and just add the mythbuntu packages to it (mythbuntu-desktop i believe); this is suitable for a general purpose system, perhaps as you learn, but not ideal for a dedicated server as there is a lot of unnecessary overhead with a full gnome desktop, office suite, etc.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Mythtv expects that all tuners be dedicated to the backend they are assigned to... meaning it won't share the tuner with any other systems. However mythtv doesn't limit the number of computers (frontends) that can use the tuners... essentially it can record 1 show per available tuner (in some cases more but lets keep it simple for now), but you could have many frontends watching what the backend records.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>If all you want to do is record a bit of tv now and again, then you can certainly write your own script to record from your tuners... if your looking for a system that is far better than any multi-room DVR solution that your cable or satellite provider can offer, then it is definitely worth the effort to learn mythtv. It has been the primary source of entertainment in our home for about 10 years now, and I still haven't seen another solution that can hold a candle to it. I definitely put in some hours getting it set up the first time (was much harder then), but after the first few months I only occasionally need to think about it. I just read participate in this list to feel like I'm giving back something.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Ok... on to your questions/comments</div><div style><br></div><div style>1. The first thing you need to do after installing Mythbuntu is run the mythtv-setup application to configure the backend... if you haven't done that you will get the backend cannot connect to frontend message. You may also get it if you didn't configure your mythtv database properly during installation.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>2. Mythtv doesn't record to the same location as "system files". There really isn't such a location in the typical Linux installation... the various folders under / (root) are generally defined by the purpose of data they hold; its a little more structured than a windows system which will shove executables, libraries, documentation, and configuration files in the same folder. By default, mythtv should be recording to /var which, if you understand the filesystem, makes perfect sense see <a href="http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/root-fs.html">http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/root-fs.html</a>. However you can easily change the location; I store mine in /home because that is where I mounted my recording drives.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>3. Mounting drives at startup is as simple as defining the mount in your /etc/fstab, you should be able to find tons of documentation about mounting file systems, and the fstab file with a quick google search.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>4. You need to ensure that the account running the BACKEND has read/write access to the location your videos will be stored... mythbuntu should handle this by default... however if your mounting an external drive, then you may need to set the permissions yourself. I definitely recommend that you read up on POSIX file permissions; they are extremely simple but seem complex to most Windows users.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>I hope all of this is of some help... I know that mythtv all seems overwhelming, especially if your having to learn Linux in the process, but trust me it's worth it. Just don't expect to have everything exactly the way you want it on day one... hell probably not even in week one. Start simple, you can expand as you learn more. Start with a wired network connection, recording to a local drive, and a single combined frontend/backend system; once you have that working, then you can start adding frontends, secondary backends, network storage, etc.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style><br></div></div></div></div>