[mythtv-users] Mythtv 31 on a Zotac Ion

[Greg Oliver]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 2:38 AM David Watkins <watkinshome at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 at 18:27, John Pilkington <johnpilk222 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 13/08/2020 16:40, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> > On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:57:35 +0100, you wrote:
>> >
>> >> The SSD on my ancient standalone Myth box failed last night.
>> >>
>> >> It was a combined frontend / backend running Myth 25 on Fedora 16.
>> Once I
>> >> got multirec and DVB-T HD working I didn't see the need to upgrade!
>> >>
>> >> Recordings were on a separate drive and I have database backups but
>> I've
>> >> decided to do a clean install.
>> >>
>> >> I just wanted to ask if anyone has an opinion on whether v31 will
>> still run
>> >> on that hardware.  Initial impressions aren't good.
>> >>
>> >> Last night I installed lubuntu on an old 2.5inch spinning laptop drive
>> I
>> >> had lying around and installed myth from the repo.
>> >>
>> >> The GUI was freezing when recording HD.
>> >>
>> >> Now I didn't investigate at all and I was recording to the same old
>> laptop
>> >> drive as I put the OS on so there's much I can improve.
>> >>
>> >> I've ordered a new SSD and i'll be recording to external drives again.
>> >>
>> >> i'd just like to know if I'm wasting my time on that hardware - and
>> would
>> >> compiling from source give me a system better tailored to my hardware?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Thanks in advance
>> >>
>> >> David
>> >
>> > How much RAM does it have?  Linux distros have been growing over the
>> > last few years and the standard ones are typically not comfortable in
>> > 2 Gibytes any more.  But MythTV is still fine in 4 Gibytes, unless you
>> > have a monster database.  Having the GUI freezing may simply be
>> > because old 2.5" laptop drives are very slow, even compared to modern
>> > spinning drives, let alone SSDs.  And laptop drives are optimised to
>> > stop rotating at the slightest chance, so if it had to start again,
>> > the delay for that would be significant.  My mother was running
>> > Xubuntu 18.04 and MythTV v30 on a 2009 Gigabyte motherboard with 4
>> > Gibytes of RAM and it was fine unless she also ran Firefox and
>> > Thunderbird, which made it swap a little bit.  I only had to upgrade
>> > her PC a couple of weeks ago because it started to do CPU thermal
>> > shutdowns when she played a recording for more than an hour.
>> >
>> > Your Ion was fine before, and so as long as it has at least 4 Gibytes
>> > of RAM it should still be good.  If it only has 2 Gibytes, then you
>> > may need to use one of the special distros that are less resource
>> > hungry.
>>
>> This stirred dim memories of a long thread here a couple of years ago -
>> nominally about an 'indoor antenna'    It might be worth searching for
>> 'zotac ion linux nic support'  IIRC centos had dropped support for the
>> nvidia nic.  It may be better now.
>>
>> John P
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>
>
> Thanks for the replies.
>
> The box only has 2GB RAM sadly, and the BIOS steals 512K of that( onboard
> Graphics?), but one advantage of old hardware is I might be able to find
> some DDR2 memory lying about the house somewhere.
>

I have a bunch of ram stick from laptops I threw away or Acer Revos and
other SBCs, etc that I have collected over the years.  If you want to send
me a postage label, I will mail them all to you if you want them.  They all
work and have been in a drawer for several years now.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-ODo1TRJMibjgUielDXQl-FTbr1PeWpc?usp=sharing

If you want them - just ping me and I'll pack and ship them today if you
can use any of it.

-Greg



> I didn't have any problems with the NIC or any other hardware when I did
> my test install yesterday, but I had to use quite an old version of the
> nVidia driver (340 I think).
>
> Anyway the SSD arrived last night so I'm giving it a go, and if that board
> can't hack it then I'm on the lookout for new hardware.  I liked that ion
> board because it was small and quiet.  GUI wasn't snappy but it was OK, and
> the Video playback was pretty good.
>
> Regards
>
> D
>
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