[mythtv] Hardware advice (Via Eden Board) / Video Card.

[Colin Panisset]

On Monday 25 November 2002 16:23, Christoph Neumann spake thus:
>
> I have setup my computer so that mythtv runs in it's own X session.
> Basically, I do "xinit /usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2 -- :1 -screen TV" and then
> run "mythfrontend" when the xsession comes up.  "TV" is a custom-defined
> "screen" in my XF86Config:
>
> Section "Screen"
>         Identifier "TV"
>         Device "NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS (generic)"
>         Monitor "ViewSonic PS"
>         DefaultDepth 24
>         Subsection "Display"
>                 Depth 24
>                 Modes "800x600"
>         EndSubSection
> EndSection
>
> I can then switch between my normal X session and my MythTV xsession with
> the "Ctrl+Alt+F7" and "Ctrl+Alt+F8" sequences.  I'm working on mapping
> hotkeys to run scripts to enable/disable TV out since the NVidia card I
> have has problems when I switch X sessions with the TVout enabled.
>
> - Christoph

Since this could well be useful for various other people, I'm doing a 
similar thing after reading and implementing the XF86Config part of 
Christoph's setup. I'm using a small startup script, called mythstartup, 
which looks like this:

---- Begin script ----
#!/bin/sh
/usr/X11R6/bin/twm &
/usr/local/bin/mythfrontend	# this never returns
---- End script ----

In combination with a $HOME/.twmrc which has the following salient features:

---- Begin .twmrc fragment ----
NoTitle
UsePPosition "on"
RandomPlacement
NoGrabServer
ClientBorderWidth
FramePadding 0
---- End .twmrc fragment ----

Then I start it with:

xinit /home/mythtv/mythstartup -- :1 -screen TV

This gives me a dedicated MythTV session that's always running. The box is 
only a 1GHz P3, and my wife uses it, so I have to be careful about the 
encoding resolution and codec/options that I use, but it works fine for the 
moment.

I did try starting mythfrontend on its own, without a window manager, but I 
found that there were problems with keyboard focus getting lost, either 
after changing the theme or watching live TV -- couldn't change channels, 
pause, or even stop viewing. Thankfully Ctrl-Alt-Backspace works well :)

BTW, the machine it's running on has *no* hard drive. It has a root 
filesystem on NFS, and automounts the /media/video filesystem as necessary. 
Works just dandy over a switched 100Mbit network. This goes a long way to 
making the machine silent. Case and CPU fans are all there is, and though 
I'd love to get rid of them both, it's one of the little Shuttle PCs and so 
there isn't space for large heatsinks or big, slow fans. Oh, 768MB RAM 
doesn't hurt either ;)

  -- C.