[mythtv-users] Mythbuntu 8.10

James Crow james at ultratans.com
Fri Oct 31 19:39:26 UTC 2008


On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 10:02 -0400, James Crow wrote:
> I was feeling adventurous this morning and decided to upgrade my
> Mythbuntu 8.04.1 system to 8.10. On 8.04 I had to add a patch to lirc
> for my remote (MCE made by Pinnacle). I also had to compile a newer
> version of the dvb drivers to support a Pinnacle 800i ATSC/QAM card. I
> had a USB Pinnacle HDTV Pro stick that needed updated drivers to work
> with 8.04 as well.
> 
> Because I did not want to use the DKMS patched lirc and 4vl-dvb drivers
> from my 8.04 system I removed them prior to starting the upgrade.
> # dkms uninstall -m lirc -v 0.8.3~pre1
> # dkms uninstall -m v4l-dvb -v 0.20080631
> 
> My main desktop was already running 8.10 and had most of the needed
> packages. I copied the debs over to the Myth box and started the
> upgrade. It needed to grab an additional 170 packages (out of 900 some)
> and took about 12 minutes.
> 
> The update asked about overwriting a couple of files. One of them was
> my /etc/mysql/my.cnf. I have the database bound to my ip rather than
> localhost to support my remote frontends. The upgrade wanted to
> overwrite my php.ini and I let it. I had increased the amount of memory
> used by php for something, but forgot why.
> 
> Another ten minutes or so and the system was ready for a restart. After
> restart I noticed an error in dmesg about the firmware for my Pinnacle
> 800i card. I copied it into place and restarted. The kernel loaded the
> firmware this time without a hitch.
> 
> I have started recordings on all available recorders and will check them
> out when I get home for lunch. Thumbnails look good in Mythweb so I
> think they will be ok.
> 
> So far so good.
> 
> Cheers,
> James
> 

I did encounter a couple of snags, but nothing major.

I have a total of three tuner devices.
1) Hauppauge PVR-500
2) Pinnacle 800i PCI card
3) Pinnacle PCHDtv stick USB

Once all were connected the usb stick drivers loaded first and grabbed
the first sound card and v4l /dev/video0 device. The PVR-500 loaded next
and the 800i last. This messed up things with my Myth setup and would
have caused problems with my sound output to the tv.

I Googled for just a bit and found the proper way to force the different
devices to the correct /dev entries.

For the sound I added a line to the /etc/modprobe-d/alsa-base file:
options em28xx_alsa index=-2
A line for my Pinnacle PCI card was already present
options cx88_alsa index=-2

This would force both of my tuner alsa devices to grab indexes after my
onboard audio card.

Because each tuner has a v4l device I have a total of 4 ntsc capture
devices. Two are hardware encoders and two software. I want the hardware
encoders to be /dev/video0 and /dev/video1.

For this I added a couple of lines to /etc/modprobe.d/options to force
both software encoders to device 2 and 3.
options cx8800 video_nr=2
options em28xx video_nr=3

I also wanted to set the ATSC (dvb) portions of the cards to set
numbers. For this I added two more lines:
options cx88_dvb adapter_nr=0
options em28xx_dvb adapter_nr=1

I now have my sound cards set how I want them as well as ensuring my v4l
(/dev/videoX) and dvb devices do not change from boot to boot.

I have yet to test the recording quality, but it should be ok.

Cheers,
James





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