[mythtv-users] CentOS 5.1 support

[Ian Forde]

On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 09:09 -0800, Jeff Coffler wrote:
> Okay, mild correction:
> 
> If you want to get everything from a "single vendor" (i.e. you have a  
> preference to not use ATRPMS if you don't have to), then you must use  
> the CentOS Plus Kernel if you want firewire support.

Fair enough.

> In your case, it looks like you installed the kernel support module  
> for Firewire from ATRPMS, which allowed you to not use the PLUS  
> kernel.  But at that point, you're not binary compatible with RHEL5  
> anyway ... so unless you have a preference (as I do) of "single  
> sourcing" all your changes, it doesn't really matter what you do.

Uhh... what? "not binary compatible" ???? You've loaded a kernel module.
That's all you've done.  Haven't changed glibc, haven't rebuilt the
kernel.  Haven't modified any stock libraries.  I'm not understanding
what you mean here.

Let me present you with a test case.  Let's say you're using RHEL5.
When you load a 3rd-party kernel module (such as ivtv) into your kernel,
Red Hat won't support the ivtv module.  They do, however, support the
kernel that they shipped.  If they're working with you to debug a
kernel-specific issue, you may want to *unload* said ivtv module.  If,
however, you rebuild your kernel, or use *anyone else's* kernel, then
you're on your own.  If you rebuild one of their RPMs or use an RPM that
they didn't ship, they won't support *THAT* RPM, period.

(FWIW, I used to work for the consulting arm of Red Hat.  Trust me on
this one...)

> I noted, by the way, that you use IVTV as well.  That guarantees that  
> you'll be mucking with your kernel - the Plus kernel doesn't handle  
> that either.

See above.

> Note that I used to use IVTV, but dumped that in favor of the  
> HDHomeRun (no drivers) and Firewire.  The combination of these two  
> items let me catch ALL my content digitally (at least with Comcast),  
> which results in higher quality recordings AND lower disk storage  
> utilization.  IVTV MPEG2 encoding would encode (for me) to larger disk  
> utilization (about 1GB / 30min of recording).  Meanwhile, firewire  
> capture (for non-HD) is more around .6GB / 30 min of recording with  
> clear higher quality recordings as well.  Pretty much a "no-brainer",  
> if you have firewire as an option.

Not so much if Comcast is scrambling your premium channels.  Then you're
looking at an IVTV-supported card using composite (or coax) cables
coming from a cable box.

	-I