[mythtv-users] Successful Pundit FE/BE Install 0.17

[Timothy G. Schaefer]

After messing with it off and on for a few days (damn work gets in the way 
of all of my fun!) I finally got my system working enough to put it down by 
the TV and start the wife training lessons (although we had to argue about 
the benefits of watching time shifted TV "But I want to see the new Gilmore 
Girls as soon as possible", hrmph!).

To dilute all of the "XXX not working. HELP!" messages I thought I would 
give a success story ;o) but mostly I wanted to give some props to those 
that helped and to document any special hoops I had to go through, so the 
next person installing MythTV 0.17 following Jarod's guide on the following 
system will have something to refer to (probability approaching zero...):

Pundit - Fairly quiet with Q-fan on I can still here it when it's quiet in 
the living room, may get some new quiet fans, the bright blue LEDs may have 
to go, especially the HD activity one, overall I like it, may buy another 
for a dedicated FE.
2.0 GHz celeron, looked like the lowest power consumption
512MB Ram
Hauppauge PVR-250
Western Digital 250GB
DVD-ROM drive
Overall cost $530.12 - ability to watch what I want when I want - Priceless

I seriously owe a beer(s) to Isaac, Jarod, and Axel. The posters to the 
2000 or so mailing list emails that I searched for that also helped just 
get a big thanks. Came close to having to post asking for help, but 
eventually googled and gossamer-thread searched my way to completion.

Below are my personal install notes, jazzed up for clarity and 
searchablilty. I followed Jarod's guide and typically commented when I had 
to do  things differently for various reasons. My largest problem turned 
out to be a driver load issue after two FC3 installs, I realized that ivtv 
must not have been getting loaded before mythbackend causing all sorts of 
havoc. Utter frustration kept me from copying down much of the logs of 
mythfrontend during this troubleshooting, typically just took them straight 
to the search engines.

Some nagging issues remain. Notably "Mutex destroy failure: Device or 
resource busy" occasionally keeps popping up on the command line, no idea 
what that is. Got dumped to the desktop once or twice coming out of 
watching a recording, Jarod's power button tweak makes that almost a 
non-issue.  While watching recordings a green bar pops up on the screen for 
like one frame and sometimes the whole screen kind of flashes, I think I 
saw others talk of this in my many searches. Also the TV image could be 
shifted to the left a little, since I have a black bar on that side, I 
think I saw a setting buried in Myth for X axis offset, either that or do 
with video driver somehow. Some improvements I would like to do are, get it 
working with the cable box to get the upper channels, stream recordings to 
XP machines through MythWeb or some other suitably easy (for wife) method, 
jazz up the boot process with some MythTV themed boot splash, KDE splash, 
and wallpaper. Setting up a LCD/VFD would be cool and having an LED on the 
front to show that it is recording would be neat (I guess the flashing HD 
activity light is fairly indicative, but I would like to get rid of that in 
favor of a dimmer red LED that stays on solid when recording).

Thanks all!!!!! If anyone wants to email me offlist or try a Skype call to 
talk MythTV install, use, whatever, let me know, more than willing and 
happy to talk about my new toy and to help others!

-Tim

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-BIOS changes: bumped up VGA shared memory size to 64MB according to Matt 
Marsh's Pundit install guide. turned on Q-fan, the thing was a roaring 
beast before that.

-started install per Jarod Wilson guide

-saved apt cache of archives copied to same location to save download (from 
aborted first install, went horribly awry trying to troubleshoot, which 
ended up being a driver install order discovered later for the second 
successful installation.)

-got to point of running first apt-get dist-upgrade got following error as 
RPMs were being installed, not sure if okay or not

   78:sgml-common            warning: /etc/sgml/catalog saved as 
/etc/sgml/catalog.rpmorig
########################################### [ 36%]
   79:openjade               ########################################### [ 37%]
   80:docbook-style-dsssl    ########################################### [ 37%]
   81:libxml2-python         ########################################### [ 38%]
   82:libxml2                ########################################### [ 38%]
   83:xml-common             warning: /etc/xml/catalog saved as 
/etc/xml/catalog.rpmsave
########################################### [ 39%]
warning: /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xmlcatalog saved as 
/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xmlcatalog.rpmsave
   84:docbook-dtds           ########################################### [ 39%]
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
Failed to remove entry from /etc/sgml/catalog
/var/tmp/rpm-tmp.71607: line 59: [: : integer expression expected

-went with listed kernel 2.6.10-1.770 (2.6.11 available) since that was 
what Jarod's guide had (thought that maybe my problems on first install 
where kernel/module related)

-HOWTO installs x.org sis driver for 6.8.1, I have 6.8.2 of X.org (checked 
with X -version), I installed 6.8.2 driver

-backed up Xorg.conf as ORIG

-Made Jarod's changes to xorg.conf (not linked text file) except commented 
out SVIDEO line and uncommented TV since I will be using composite, I need 
a better TV...

-audio seems to be working. skipped audio changes (ran kmix to enable 
master and PCM channels and adjusted volumes)

-Got to ivtv install and backed up modprobe.conf as ORIG before changes

-Did not do UPDATE section of remote section

-occasionally "Mutex destroy failure: Device or resource busy" and "** 
ERROR **: file gam_tree.c: line 146 (gam_tree_remove): assertion failed: 
(g_node_n_children(node->node) == 0)
aborting..." keep showing up in root shell. I hit enter to get prompt back 
and continue.

-After install everything works, can watch TV, watch recordings. Awesome! 
Then I reboot. Load up mythfrontend, remote isn't working, watch Live TV 
and it stays blank. Jump to shell "ll /dev/video?" turns up nothing. Driver 
didn't load???, so I started them up, noticed remote didn't start up, 
started it, loaded mythfrontend. Now remote works, but Live TV shows 1 
second of TV, freezes for about 30s then dumps me back to mythTV home 
screen (unfortunately I didn't save much of the messages dumped by 
mythfrontend, I was getting frustrated at this point).

-in attempt to get working changed mythfrontend to run as root. May want to 
revert since this was not the problem. How????

-working! After setting mythbackend and lircd to not load during startup, 
rebooting, and manually loading things in the proper order things worked. 
need to make sure ivtv and lirc drivers get loaded early enough

-Live TV and recordings have green/white/black lines popping up all over 
screen on the output to the TV. Found out due to 1024x768 on monitor. 
Dropped monitor to 800x600, all is good.

-Since prior problem was not a kernel issue installed latest kernel 
"2.6.11-1.14_FC3" updated lirc and ivtv modules to match

-applying Jarod patch to get ivtv and lirc drivers loaded earlier (found in 
UPDATE: section of remote, should have followed this the first time). 
Backed up /etc/udev/rules.d/lirc.rules and /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit as ORIG as 
part of this

-Live TV and playback are pausing, with mythfrontend logging "Prebuffering 
Pause". Search reveals possibly sound card issue, turn off aRTS. Pause is 
gone! (I think this was all I did to get the pausing stopped, I was nearing 
completion and getting excited so notes fell to the wayside.)

-to keep screen blanking from kicking in following Jarod recommendation 
backed rc.local as ORIG first

-Following DVD guide setup, /dev/DVD was already setup linked to /dev/hdb, 
no changes needed.

-mv /home/mythtv/.kde/Autostart/Autorun.desktop to backup as ORIG instead 
of delete per Jarod DVD guide

-added addition to rc.local for mtd (no backup prior, see rc.local.ORIG)

-TV still blanking while system sits idle, removed line from rc.local that 
refers to
dpms per Jarod's guide