[mythtv-users] Recommended Linux Distro post CentOS

Jeremy D. Eiden theonlyrealperson at gmail.com
Wed Dec 16 03:11:42 UTC 2020


On 12/15/20 8:05 PM, James Linder wrote:
>
>> On 16 Dec 2020, at 7:07 am, Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Ben <bkamen at benjammin.net> wrote:
>>>> I'm wondering who is using what for their home servers for MythTV (and Plex) on the same box.
>>> Can't speak for the non-Myth stuff, but my backend and frontends all run Devuan now - what Debian would be if they'd not succumbed to the dark side of systemd.
>> I have tried Devuan and it would indeed, be suitable for myth front and backends.
>>
>> However...
>>
>> Despite telling you during installation that "everything is your choice" the default install desktop is effectively forced to be xfce, whereas I prefer LXDE.
>>
>> The "debootstrap" code was seriously borked when I tried it, and you could not install the same version in, for example, a VM as the version you were running, only the 'next' version. WTF? That killed using it for a KVM server stone dead.
>>
>> As I also run LTSP here, and debootstrap is used for the clients, that was a no-no too. I understand that the 'new' version of LTSP will work properly, haven't tried that on Devuan lately.
> I am not trolling, or standing in a copper vase full of water on a mountain top during a thunderstorm saying all gods are bastards (Terry Pratchette) but why the angst about systemd?
> I find it to be different
> Not particually hard to learn
> Quite nice in principal, being all-in-one-place and consistant
> (My RockPi 4 does xxx on boot, ah systemd stuff)
> James
> PS well 2 places, /etc/systemd /usr/lib/systemd
> PPS and yup in context of mythtv

Here is my issue with it - when it fails, it fails in really stupid ways 
that can be hard to figure out and fix.

For example, say you have a second non-system disk that you store 
recordings or random things on (to keep the MythTV link).  Nothing on 
the OS or even the users truly depend on, and it's mounted under /mnt or 
/media.

Disk fail?  You remove it to copy the data onto another computer?  
Systemd will prevent the whole system from booting. It'll just hang 
forever.  You need to boot a usb stick or figure out how to you 
systemrescue to comment out the offending disk in fstab and reboot the 
system.  Assuming you figure out that the disk failed.

Systemrescue (or whatever it's called) isn't as intuitive as one might 
think - and if you don't have a computer to search the right commands 
on, you are toast.



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