[mythtv-users] A beginner's questions (Linux and MythTV)

[Joseph Fry]

> It took me about a month to arrive at a satisfactory answer to the
> question "What exactly is linux?". At this time I don't understand what a
> mailing list is; how it functions; what is the etiquette. Please forgive
> and correct a beginner's mistakes.
>
> A little background. I am a retired electrical power engineer (65 years
> old) with a lifelong interest in science and technology, science fiction
> and computers. I have done some programming - 1900 Fortran, 8060, 6502,
> Z80, Basic, Pascal, Object Pal and Visual Basic in roughly that order. I
> have been experimenting with linux since 2006 (Dapper Drake) and I think my
> main problem is that I don't really understand the modern world of
> technology - the social aspects rather than the technology itself. I still
> count myself a linux newbie and now a myth newbie as well.
>
> I am also a newcomer to the field of digital television. Digital
> terrestrial television only became available at my location on 10th
> October. I am a keen television viewer and my primary objective is to
> record those programmes I want to watch as reliably, conveniently and
> cheaply as possible. I don't really care whether I use Windows or linux but
> my preference would be linux. So far, I have established that my Acer
> Aspire One D257 netbook is capable of recording at least 2 digital channels
> and playing back the recordings (Windows 7 starter, Media Portal and
> HDHomerun). On just one occasion, so far, I managed something similar using
> Mythbuntu on the same machine. They say "The devil's in the details" and he
> is certainly working hard for me.
>
> I installed Mythbuntu (12.04 I think) twice, and each time, the first
> thing I saw was the message that the frontend can't connect to the backend.
> Based on my programming experience THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN but it does. A
> few days later it worked. I don't exactly know why but I suspect it might
> be related to the network environment - 2 different home networks,
> sometimes wired, sometimes wireless, sometimes both. Surely the IP address
> is irrelevant when it's connected via localhost? I don't like Mythbuntu
> because it's not general purpose - it took me several hours to figure out a
> procedure to get the wireless working. My wireless performance is good
> enough to record 1 channel but not 2, although there appears to be some
> sort of network glitch roughly every 80 seconds. I know this because I have
> discovered that recording from the HDHomerun tuner is very easy, it's using
> MythTV (or Media Portal) which is difficult. I am tempted to write my own
> capture application (it might be quick
> er and less hassle) but there are some programming details I would need to
> study first, such as how to send a Ctrl-C to the terminal. I also have
> MythTV and Lubuntu 12.10 on another netbook - Asus EeePC X101CH. I know the
> hardware can do the recording but, so far, I haven't achieved anything with
> MythTV (or Media Portal).
>
> I have found that both Media Portal and MythTV will sometimes accept a
> scheduled recording instruction and then apparently ignore it. In the case
> of MythTV I think that the storage directory details are the main problem.
> How can MythTV record to a location among the system files? I thought user
> files couldn't be written there? How can I set the location to my main data
> partition (NTFS for sharing with Windows)? How do I ensure that the data
> partition is mounted at startup? What permissions do I need to set? In the
> not too long term I expect to be using at least 3 HDHomerun tuners. I have
> realised that this may have implications regarding how many computers I
> need or can use - master / slave backends etc.
>
> I don't mind if you simply point me to web pages with the relevant
> information. If I don't understand what they say, I can come back and ask
> for more details. By the way, the netbook is not my only hard drive
> storage. I have been recording analogue television since 2003 and currently
> I have about 22TB connected to my network - 2 NAS boxes, 4 netbooks, 1
> laptop, 2 desktops and 1 nettop.
>
> Oh! and a Merry Christmas to all.
>

First of all... Welcome!

Before I answer any questions, I am going to give you a bit of information
to make sure that MythTV is really what your looking for.

MythTV is not really an 'application' that you would use to record and
watch a show every now and then... it should really be run on a fixed
machine, with a wired network connection, static IP, and
24hour availability.  While a laptop can certainly work as a server
(actually quite well in some situations), it really should treated as any
other server... left alone to do it's job.

Mythbuntu is about the easiest way to get started the first time, but as
you noticed its a purpose built distro.  You could install the full Ubuntu
system, and just add the mythbuntu packages to it (mythbuntu-desktop i
believe); this is suitable for a general purpose system, perhaps as you
learn, but not ideal for a dedicated server as there is a lot of
unnecessary overhead with a full gnome desktop, office suite, etc.

Mythtv expects that all tuners be dedicated to the backend they are
assigned to... meaning it won't share the tuner with any other systems.
 However mythtv doesn't limit the number of computers (frontends) that can
use the tuners... essentially it can record 1 show per available tuner (in
some cases more but lets keep it simple for now), but you could have many
frontends watching what the backend records.

If all you want to do is record a bit of tv now and again, then you can
certainly write your own script to record from your tuners... if your
looking for a system that is far better than any multi-room DVR solution
that your cable or satellite provider can offer, then it
is definitely worth the effort to learn mythtv.  It has been the primary
source of entertainment in our home for about 10 years now, and I still
haven't seen another solution that can hold a candle to it.
 I definitely put in some hours getting it set up the first time (was much
harder then), but after the first few months I only occasionally need to
think about it.  I just read participate in this list to feel like I'm
giving back something.

Ok... on to your questions/comments

1. The first thing you need to do after installing Mythbuntu is run the
mythtv-setup application to configure the backend... if you haven't done
that you will get the backend cannot connect to frontend message.  You may
also get it if you didn't configure your mythtv database properly during
installation.

2. Mythtv doesn't record to the same location as "system files".  There
really isn't such a location in the typical Linux installation... the
various folders under / (root) are generally defined by the purpose of data
they hold; its a little more structured than a windows system which will
shove executables, libraries, documentation, and configuration files in the
same folder.  By default, mythtv should be recording to /var which, if you
understand the filesystem, makes perfect sense see
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/root-fs.html.  However you can easily
change the location; I store mine in /home because that is where I mounted
my recording drives.

3. Mounting drives at startup is as simple as defining the mount in your
/etc/fstab, you should be able to find tons of documentation about mounting
file systems, and the fstab file with a quick google search.

4. You need to ensure that the account running the BACKEND has read/write
access to the location your videos will be stored... mythbuntu should
handle this by default... however if your mounting an external drive, then
you may need to set the permissions yourself.  I definitely recommend that
you read up on POSIX file permissions; they are extremely simple but seem
complex to most Windows users.

I hope all of this is of some help... I know that mythtv all seems
overwhelming, especially if your having to learn Linux in the process, but
trust me it's worth it.  Just don't expect to have everything exactly the
way you want it on day one... hell probably not even in week one.  Start
simple, you can expand as you learn more.  Start with a wired network
connection, recording to a local drive, and a single combined
frontend/backend system; once you have that working, then you can start
adding frontends, secondary backends, network storage, etc.
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