User:Kinesin

Kinesin

Personal MythTV Project page

This is Kinesin's Personal MythTV project page, a place for practicing my wiki editing and logging my install on Debian (Sid), MythTV and xmbcmythtv on my homebrew Epia based PVR.

Hardware

Backend

• Epia 933Mhz Via C3 (CLE266) - broken onboard NIC!!
• Hauppauge PVR-250
• 200Gb Seagate IDE
• Sis162 bases usb 802.11b (11Mbs)

Frontend

• Xbox running XBox Media center + xbmcMythTV

Software

The story so far: my first MythTV system is working on a upgraded Debian Sarge->sid box. However there are certian problems with the install that I want to change.

Currently the kernel is 2.6.8, I'll be upgrading to 2.6.11 as this will allow me reconfigure a few things.

• Provide hardware decoding on the CLE266 chipset via Xvmc
• Fix/improve DMA timeout issues that seem to plague Epia systems.
• Enable XFS/JFS for better large file handling.
• Enable APCI - Powersaving in S3 state, plus full boot from RTC
• Enable epia lmsensors - I think this maybe a kernel patch

The install

I installed Debian 3.1r (sarge) on the Epia using a temporary 3Com Nic and the netinstall CD. All data partitions are JFS split:

• 2GB swapp
• / 6GB
• /usr 12GB
• /var 12GB
• /home 146GB

Only a base install was carried out and at this time, don't select install X-windows etc. Modifiy /etc/apt/sources.list to point at sid (debian unstable) and run

# apt-get update && apt-get -u dist_upgrade

After upgrading to sid ;-) you may notice a few locales errors

# apt-get install locales; dpkg-reconfig locales  (select en_GB if using english-britsh)

Upgrade the kernel to the latest - notice a package switch from kernel-image to linux-image

# apt-get install linux-image-2.6.15-1-486

ndiswrapper

To get my wifi usb stick working I need to install ndiswrapper, this had to be done from source (8-Mar-2006)

# apt-get install module-assistant; 

It will download the linux-headers package that matches the kernel and serveral other tools. Run it, the get the gui

module-assistant prepare; module-assistant

select ndiswrapper, build, then install - it might fail on install, however this is because ndiswrapper needs configuring first. During this process apt will download ndiswrapper-utils.

Place the .inf drivers files on the linux server, grab them from the inside the windows drivers. I copied the *.dll, *.sys *.cat and *.inf files accross. The sis162 usb stick driver is called sis162u.inf, Therefore time to install the ndiswrapper driver.

# ndiswrapper -i sis162u.inf

plug usb hardware in

# ndiswraper -l 
Installed ndis drivers:
sis162u         driver present, hardware present

Superb! next

# modprobe ndiswrapper

Grab the wireless network tools

# apt-get install wireless-tools

Check to see if ieterface is available:

# iwconfig
wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:
         Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 00:0C:41:87:B5:2A
         Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
         RTS thr:2312 B   Fragment thr:2312 B
         Encryption key:B0C8-2A32-04   Security mode:restricted
         Power Management:off
         Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-29 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm
         Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
         Tx excessive retries:596  Invalid misc:30   Missed beacon:0

Configure /etc/network/interfaces - wep enabled below.

-- /etc/network/interfaces--
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
       # wireless config
       wireless-essid MyLocalEssid
       wireless-key1 secretkey
       wireless-defaultkey 1

Try bringing up the interface the interface

ifup wlan0;ifdown wlan0

Check it works - check elsewhere for futher info. If you want hotpluggable networking via the USB stick install ifplugd.

apt-get install ifplugd

In order to worked the hotplug scripts need to be configured to auto the ndiswrapper module - or just load it at boot by editing /etc/modules, and /etc/network/interfaces needs a small change.

# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
ide-cd
ide-disk
ide-generic
psmouse
sbp2
ndiswrapper    #added this
sr_mod

-- /etc/network/interfaces--
allow-hotplug wlan0    # This allows ifplugd to work!
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
       # wireless config
       wireless-essid MyLocalEssid
       wireless-key1 secretkey
       wireless-defaultkey 1

Now if everything is working it should be possible to plug/unplug your wifi usb stick and have the network pop online/offline!

ACPI

'ACPI' support allows the hardware to shutdown to various levels of power saving. It's very useful on a PVR box as if it fully configured and fully supported by your hardware magic things can be configured.

ACPI level S3 - Suspend to RAM. Previously seen only on laptop, on a PVR the CPU,HDD, keyboard/mice all powered off. Booting can be timer based, great for those midnight recordings! While Wake-on-Lan (WOL) etc can be used from a remote frontend.

Basic testing of ACPI can be done using the 2.6.15 kernel

# echo -n mem > /sys/power/state

Drops the machine in Suspend to RAM state, however the 'ndiswrapper' causes the kernel to panic. Manually removing the module

# rmmod ndiswrapper

Allows a successful suspend. Scripting the a suspend.sh script to load/unload the module on sleep/wake looks like the solution

On wakeup the text console fails to start.. however I've read that once X is installed it should be fine - time for more testing.

IVTV

'ivtv' is the driver for the PVR250 cards and needs to be downloaded from http://ivtvdriver.org/ There is a nice debian walk through online there for installing and configuring the card/firmware. The only change required was to move the contents of /lib/firmware to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware