[mythtv-users] Virtualisation in the home network - ready for mainstream?

[Simon Hobson]

Kevin Kuphal wrote:

>Virtualization is ready but MythTV might not be.  I've had great
>success with virtual machines for Monowall, MySQL, OpenFiler, and many
>other services that Myth relies on, but if you're using PCI/PCIe based
>tuners, forget it.  There isn't, IMO, a reliable way to get those
>tuners to perform in a virtual environment.  Now if you're using a
>HDHomeRun, that's a whole different story and you may have great
>success because it is network based.

FWIW I have a complete backend with single PCI tuner running in a VM under Xen.

System is :
AMD64-2000, Xen 3.2.1-2~bpo4+1, Debian Etch with 2.6.18-6-xen-amd64 
kernel, 4G ram

Myth system is Debian Lenny with 2.6.26-1-xen-amd64 kernel and myth 
installed from debian-multimedia.fx-services.com repository. Tuner is 
PVR-1100, passed through to guest with pciback. 768M ram.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte board with 939 socket and nVidia chipsets.


OK, it's not exactly the most heavily laden Myth system, but it's 
been quite reliable. It can certainly combine a recording, 
commgflagging, and single frontend playback without problem.

I guess it's very much YMMV !

-- 
Simon Hobson

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