[mythtv] gcc3.2 + mythTV = trouble...

Matt Zimmerman mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Mon, 9 Dec 2002 10:52:02 -0500


On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 08:31:12AM -0500, Chris Liscio wrote:

> It appears there is a "bug" that is popping up when you try to run mythTV
> (cvs, from before Issac's "don't use this" fixes) compiled with debug
> symbols.  It dies on the first call to sleep(), which on the stack crawl
> appears to be happening somewhere in libc.  Obviously something
> non-myth-related.  :)

Not necessarily; it could be anything, including memory corruption.  This is
especially questionable in a threaded program.  You might want to
investigate this further before making any drastic changes to the system.

> Anyway, I tried to migrate my Mandrake 9 box over to gcc2.9, and it doesn't
> appear to be very easy to do so.  In particular, making myth after doing a
> 'urpmi gcc-2.9' failed because it can't find the qt libs or headers.  Also,
> running configure doesn't work either.  It appears gcc doesn't know where
> all my headers are all of a sudden.  This is all becoming quite messy now.

Even if you succeed in doing this, you will run into bigger problems in the
end.  The ABI for g++-3.2 is different (and incompatible) with that for g++
2.9x.  This is a good thing, as it is progress toward standardization in
this case, but it will be a big headache for this particular transition.
This means that you cannot link (for example) a library built with g++ 2.9x
with another built using g++ 3.2.  If you want to try 2.9x, you will need to
rebuild _every_ library that myth uses.

And then the bug may turn out to be something else. :-)  I don't see any
clear reason to preferentially suspect gcc from your description, though it
is a possibility.

> If anyone thinks otherwise, I would be happy to take this off the list
> since this machine has to be doing some important serving along with the
> mythTV functions and I can't really afford to leave anything up to chance.
> Obviously, any sort of information one might have about the pros/cons of
> either distro for mythTV *specifically* would be very helpful to us all.
> Please, no religious wars...That's what Slashdot is for.  ;)

I believe Debian is the only distribution for which there are plug-and-play
mythtv packages.  My bias is obvious, so that's as far as I'll go on the
distribution question.

> In the end, I would like to turn a mythTV box on and have it go right to
> mythTV (autologin  et al), with as little extra crap as possible.  This is
> the desired configuration I'd like to provide others who might want to
> delve into the world of mythTV without delving into the world of Linux.
> :)

Just a data point: a base Debian 3.0 installation is ~75M, including MythTV
and all dependent libraries and an X server makes it ~160M.  Running MySQL
on the same box probably adds another 20M or so.

-- 
 - mdz