Installing MythTV on Fedora

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Revision as of 14:10, 17 March 2006 by 137.242.142.202 (Configure package repositories)

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Introduction

This "How To" guide is for installing MythTV on the latest release of Fedora Core which is currently Fedora Core 4, but will soon become Fedora Core 5.

This guide is shamelessly based on Jarod Wilson's how to guide which you can find here

With the way that opensource development is constantly changing a guide that could keep up with the changes was needed. Being that this guide is in the wiki format and capable of receiving full community attention, the guide will change along with the release of Fedora as well as all other software packages that go together with making MythTV the greatest TV time shifting product in the world.

You are welcome as a MythTV user and general wiki participant to add/modify this document that will help the community the best way possible.

Hardware

Fedora Setup

The 2.6 kernel series includes several journaling file systems, some of which are more suited for use with large files 'like Myth recordings' than Red Hat's default file system, ext3.

In order to use a different file system at install time when loading the Fedora Core install CD/DVD you type in:
boot:linux <otherfs>
Where <otherfs> is for example reiserfs, jfs, xfs.

Among the MythTV community it is highly recommend to use a custom partitioning scheme rather than auto-partitioning, with a dedicated /video (or similar) partition for storage of all your recordings.

Previously, XFS was Jarod Wilson's recommendation for the file system to use for such a purpose, but some additional stability issues with using XFS on Fedora Core's stock kernels have been brought light. In the case where you're stacking software RAID, LVM and XFS all together, stack overflows tend to crop up. JFS is becoming the more recommended file system, so boot the installer with "linux jfs", then choose JFS for your /video partition.

ReiserFS is also an option, though it is believed JFS performs a bit better (XFS is even better still, at least, when its stable...). An example partitioning setup can be found below.


Partition Mount Point Size Format
/dev/hda1 /boot 50-100MB ext3
/dev/hda2 swap same as RAM (ex: 512MB) swap
/dev/hda3 / 8-12GB ext3
/dev/hda5 /video Everything else jfs

At the Installation Type screen, you want to choose a Custom installation (rather than Personal Desktop, Workstation or Server), because none of the defaults give us everything we need and/or add junk we don't need.

On the Disk Partitioning Setup screen, choose to Manually partition with Disk Druid. A suitable custom partitioning setup is as follows (assuming a single IDE hard drive):

Be sure to choose JFS (or XFS or ReiserFS) as the partition format type for the /video partition, as the selection will default to ext3. Note that there's really no point in using anything but ext3 on / and /boot. Red Hat tests ext3 heavily, its the only one that is pretty well guaranteed to be problem-free for / and /boot. Those expecting to add additional hard drives to their system for more video storage might want to set the partition type for hda5 to LVM, then create a logical volume over the top of it, formatted JFS. That'll allow you to increase the size of your /video partition transparently across multiple drives. Details on how to do that can be found in the official MythTV docs, at http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-23.html#ss23.3.

On the Network Configuration screen, it is highly recommend setting a static IP address (could either be truly static, or a staticly mapped DHCP address). It really isn't a huge deal if you only have one Myth box (though you probably don't want MythWeb to be a moving target), but it could cause major headaches once you have more than one machine, since non-primary systems wouldn't know where the master backend was anymore if the address changed.

On the Firewall Configuration page, life will be much easier if you simply disable both the firewall and SELinux. Again, the firewall being enabled probably won't cause a problem if you only have one Myth box (you should allow at least ssh and http traffic), but if not properly tweaked, would prevent any secondary systems from being able to contact the master backend. As for SELinux, there are a number of things that just plain won't work right if you have it enabled. ResierFS doesn't work well with SELinux (known bug in Red Hat's bugzilla) and MythWeb (or more specifically, the web server, apache) can't communicate with MySQL without some work. I don't know enough about SELinux yet to know what changes are needed, or care enough to want it on a Myth box, so I just assume make life easier and disable it.


  • On the package selection screen, select (at least) these package groups
    • X Window System
    • KDE Desktop Environment
    • MySQL Database (be sure mysql-server is selected under the "Details" section)
    • Web Server (if you want to use MythWeb)


  • Some other packages that might be of interest, but are not required:
    • Graphical Internet
      • Gaim
      • Firefox (very handy for following this very guide -- think copy and paste)
    • Sound and Video
    • Windows File Server
    • Network Servers
      • vnc-server
    • Development Tools (if you want/need to compile anything)


As suggested on the MythTV site, we're going to use KDE as our X environment for running MythTV. If you happen to be running another window manager, you can fire up a terminal session, and issue the command:

$ switchdesk KDE

First Boot

At the first boot setup screen, create a user called mythtv, with a password of your choosing. All further documentation assumes you are logged in as the user mythtv.

Lines with $ as the prompt are executed as user mythtv, lines with # as the prompt are executed as root.

In that same first boot setup area, there is an option to enable ntp. This is highly recommended. This allows for correct recording times of television shows. Check the box to enable ntp, and either enter an ntp server you know of near you, or leave it with the pre-populated values, which are from the ntp.org pool (pool.ntp.org aliases to a bunch of time servers around the globe).

Update Fedora

To get your system fully updated, simply run the command:

# yum upgrade
(answer 'y' when prompted) 

WARNING: Do NOT attempt any other rpm activity while the upgrade is in progress.

Among the packages upgraded just a minute ago with yum should be your kernel, to the very latest errata release, be that the single-processor one or the smp one. Additionally, your boot loader should have been automatically updated to use the new kernel, so all you need to do is reboot to start using the new kernel, which you'll want to do in just a minute. As of this writing, 2.6.15-1.1831_FC4 is the latest released errata kernel. You should be using at least this kernel (or kernel-smp), if not a newer one.

Generally speaking, you should always install the latest errata kernel, shortly after the release of which Axel should have all the needed kernel modules available. Kernel modules are NOT maintained for older kernels, because of two things. First, a new kernel from Red Hat usually fixes some flaw in earlier kernels (security hole or bug fix), so its good practice not to use the flawed kernel and second, building kernel modules for every kernel would take forever and a day and cause assorted other headaches for Axel. To make providing kernel modules feasible, only the very latest one or two kernels are supported.

To make life simpler after we've rebooted and are prepared to start installing drivers for some of our hardware not supported natively by the kernel, we're going to set up a custom environment variable, KVER, that will help avoid problems from typos, user error, confusion, etc. Simply drop a file in /etc/profile.d, like so:

# echo "export KVER=\`uname -r\`" >> /etc/profile.d/kver.sh
(those are back-ticks, not single-quotes)

Now you're ready to reboot into that new kernel and start installing kernel modules for your tuner card(s), remote, etc.

# reboot 

Configure package repositories

We won't touch any packages from and 3rd-party repositories until a bit later, but you'll need to tell yum about the ATrpms and FreshRPMs package repositories, and since we were on the subject of yum already, go ahead and set it up now. This is a simple matter of adding a configuration file for each repository in /etc/yum.repos.d/. Pre-configured files can be created by cutting and pasting the following into a root shell.


echo [atrpms] >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo name=ATrpms for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/fc$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable >> /etc/yum/.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo enabled=1 >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo gpgcheck=1 >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo '' >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo [atrpms-testing] >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo name=ATrpms test packages for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/fc$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/testing >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo enabled=0 >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo gpgcheck=1 >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms >> /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
echo [freshrpms] >> /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.repo
echo name=FreshRPMs for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch >> /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.rep
echo baseurl=http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/$releasever/$basearch/freshrpms >> /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.repo
echo enabled=1 >> /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.repo
echo gpgcheck=1 >> /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.repo
echo gpgkey=http://freshrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY-freshrpms >> /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.repo


Generally, any problems encountered with ATrpms and ATrpms packages should be addressed on the atrpms-users mailing list before being taken to the MythTV list. You can subscribe to the ATrpms lists here.

FreshRPMs is structured a bit different than ATrpms -- it generally only provides add-on packages, while ATrpms provides both add-on packages packages that replace/upgrade/enhance packages originally provided by Red Hat. FreshRPMs only has one channel of packages. You can subscribe to the FreshRPMs mailing list here.

As with any other mailing list, please search their respective archives first.

Install Video Card Drivers

Sound Setup

For starters, let me say that aRts (the KDE sound server) does NOT work well with MythTV in many cases, though work has been done recently to remedy that (I have no problems with it enabled on my systems anymore). It is still highly recommended that you disable aRts from starting up if you encounter audio problems. To do so, while logged in as your mythtv user, choose "Control Center" off the Fedora (Red Hat) menu. Navigate through "Sound & Multimedia" to "Sound System" and deselect "Start aRts soundserver on KDE startup" ("Enable the sound system" on KDE 3.3 or later) and then click "Apply". On subsequent logins, aRts will not launch.

Note: outside of setting your audio mixer levels, this step is not essential. Just set your volumes with the mixer program of your choice and move on to the next step if you like. ALSA is the default sound system in the 2.6 kernel, so you've already got it, and your sound card should have been auto-configured during firstboot. If you have some flashy new card, there's a chance you might need a newer ALSA version, which ATrpms does provide. Those wanting to install the latest ALSA packages from ATrpms should do so with these commands:

# yum install alsa-kmdl-$KVER
# yum install alsa-driver 

If you have multiple sound cards you want to use, you may have to edit your /etc/modprobe.conf file for your specific card. Details for supported cards can be found here:

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/ I'm including a copy of my /etc/modprobe.conf ALSA configuration excerpt, which is for a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card. This should be valid for SB Live! and Audigy2 cards as well. If your card isn't one of those, check out the ALSA site's sound card matrix to find information for your card. The differences are very minor for most cards, and usually only the driver name has to be changed. For example, to configure ALSA for use with the onboard audio of an nForce2 board, it should be a simple matter of replacing all instances of "emu10k1" in the following modprobe.conf and .asoundrc with "intel8x0".

# Example modprobe.conf entries for my Audigy
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-emu10k1 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-emu10k1 

For those folks out there unfortunate enough to need dual sound cards, I'm including a theoretical modprobe.conf ALSA snippet for a SoundBlaster Audigy and nForce2 onboard (i810) audio.


#Example modprobe.conf entries for Audigy and nForce2 onboard (i810) audio
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
options snd-card-0 index=0
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-emu10k1 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-emu10k1
alias snd-card-1 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-1 index=1
install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0 

Next, create a .asoundrc file for your mythtv user (full path of /home/mythtv/.asoundrc). Technically, this isn't necessary, but it can help out quite a bit in some cases (especially if you're outputting via an S/PDIF connection), and can't hurt. Anyhow, just make a new text file called .asoundrc like so, adjusting for your specific card, substituting for "emu10k1" where necessary:

$ cat > ~/.asoundrc
pcm.emu10k1 {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.emu10k1 {
type hw
card 0
}
(Now hit Control-D to end cat input) 

This is a *very* basic .asoundrc file, which worked for me just fine for some time, but I'm currently forging forward with native ALSA digital output in Myth, which requires a bit more complex setup. Mike Dean did an excellent writeup on the matter of digital sound, with details on a fully fleshed out .asoundrc, which you can find at:

http://www.mythtv.info/moin.cgi/DigitalSoundHowTo I put together my own tweaked-out .asoundrc for my Audigy based on the long version for the nForce2 sound card found at the above link. It basically amounted to four changes. You can grab my full .asoundrc here:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/asoundrc.txt Note that it is set up with output via S/PDIF and hardware decoding (by my external amp) as the default output method, so adjust accordingly. I'm actually not certain everything in here is correct, but audio on my box does everything it should, so I've left well enough alone.

Anyhow, now fire up the audio controller of your choice (aumix, alsamixer, kmix or gnome-alsamixer) and adjust the volumes, inputs and outputs to your liking. While enabling S/PDIF out for my Audigy was a matter of a checking a box in gnome-alsamixer, some folks have reported having to set a particular slider (IEC958 something-or-other?) to zero to enable the S/PDIF output on their sound cards. Go figure.

A simple way to test whether or not you've got sound is to use ALSA's aplay utility, like so:

$ /usr/bin/aplay /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup.wav 

For whatever reason, one of my boxes doesn't like to restore all my audio levels, despite my having stored them with an 'alsactl store'... To get around this, along with my nvidia-settings not loading, I used a short shell script you can check out in the Configure automatic startup section below.

Install MythTV

Now, here's why we REALLY like yum... MythTV has numerous required dependencies to function correctly, which are automatically taken care of with one simple command:

# yum install mythtv-suite 

The last time I looked, that one-liner installed 94 different packages, totalling about 85MB. Just a wee bit easier than hunting down all the rpms by hand, let alone compiling everything from source... :)

Install Capture Card Drivers

Install LIRC

Setup MySQL

We'll need to enable MySQL to load at startup, set some passwords, and create the MythTV database, which we'll populate shortly. The population of this database is handled by mythtvsetup in the next step, and all MythTV add-on module database additions must be done AFTER running mythtvsetup at least one time.

# /sbin/chkconfig mysqld on
# /sbin/service mysqld start 

Set the mysql root password, replacing ROOT_PWD with your chosen administrator password:

# mysql -u root mysql
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('ROOT_PWD') WHERE user='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Now we create the mythtv database (called mythconverg) to get us started:

$ mysql -u root -p < /usr/share/doc/mythtv-0.19/database/mc.sql
(enter the password you just set above when prompted)

Again, all subsequent database population for MythTV's add-on modules must now be done AFTER running mythtvsetup at least one time. And if you get an error that looks like this...

ERROR 1064 at line 4: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'TEMPORARY TABLES ON mythconverg.* TO mythtv@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "mythtv"' at line 1

...you are probably running MySLQ 3.x and probably aren't running Fedora Core 4 (or later), but you can safely ignore it. Everything got created just fine, that syntax is for people using MySQL 4.x, which FC4 and later use. No real discernable difference bewteen 3.x and 4.x though, until you tweak your MySQL config a bit. It's worth customizing some parameters in /etc/my.cnf for optimal performance with Myth. I know next to nothing about the topic, but from experimentation and listening to people who do know what they're doing (I think), I found these adjustments to my.cnf under the [mysqld] section improve performance with both MythTV (esp. in the GUI) and MythWeb:

key_buffer = 16M
table_cache = 128
sort_buffer_size = 2M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M
query_cache_size = 16M 

Setup MythTV

There are a number of things you might want to figure out in advance to successfully complete your setup. First, recall what your video device was set up as (likely /dev/video0 if you have a single v4l card, DVB #0 if you have one DVB card). Note that the actual device number is NOT what determines what order MythTV will use your cards in. What matters is the order that you enter them in mythtvsetup, so your best card doesn't have to be /dev/video0. Set up /dev/video8 first, and it'll be the first card used for recordings.

You will also need your zip code (please tell me you know this...), and it would help to know the right listing from http://www.zap2it.com/ (for US users, other countries use different listings sources) that matches your service provider, so xmltv gets the right program listings (I screwed up the first time, because I was guessing, and most of the programming info was askew). US folks will also have to fill out some paperwork to use zap2it's new xml data feed listings (the only way to go now). See this page in the MythTV docs for details:

http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.4 Before you dive into the setup, you may want to make one little change so that you can actually see all the text you're supposed to see. There's a bug in Fedora Core 4's urw-fonts package that causes fonts to display MUCH larger than they should. Details on how to fix this can be found here:

http://www.users.on.net/~jani/dvico-mythtv-10.html#ss10.1 Now on to launching the MythTV setup utility. For this part, you need to have an X session started up, as the setup utility is an X application. Fire it up like so:

$ mythtvsetup 

I'm told that non-US folks may have issues correctly getting through the tv_grab_xx/xmltv part of the setup if "focus follows mouse" is already set (in KDE's Control Center), so keep that in mind. Just set "focus follows mouse" when everything else is already configured.

Recent changes in the mythtvsetup and database population methodology broke the default path settings for the MythTV rpms, which should be /var/lib/mythtv/ for storage of recorded shows, and /var/cache/mythtv/ for live TV buffer. These directories are automatically created at install time, but you'll have to manually enter them in section 1 of mythtvsetup.

Those using a dedicated /video partition, per my example, should obviously set /video/recordings/ for storage of recorded shows and /video/buffer/ for their live TV buffer. However, you can do pretty much whatever you like here, such as recording to an NFS or samba mount, a software RAID array, or even to an LVM group so you can expand your /video partition sometime down the road (I use LVM myself, someday I'll write about it more...). Just make sure your mythtv user has permission to read and write to whatever location you choose.

It is highly recommended that you go through the setup steps in order. Follow the on-screen instruction, with aid from the MythTV website's documentation on this page:

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-9.html NOTE: your system may appear to hang at step 3; give it time, it isn't locked up, that part just takes a while!

Once you've gone through the setup, you have to populate the MythTV database with some program info. I spent a good long time tweaking my channel lineup on zap2it's site to remove all the junk channels I didn't really care to have show up. Once you have your listings to your liking, you're ready to fill your database with programming info. A change in MythTV 0.17 requires that you start up the backend first. We'll daemonize it a bit later, but for now, just start it up like so:

$ mythbackend & 

Assuming all goes well and the process doesn't exit on you (if it does, check out the troubleshooting section below), lets get some guide data:

$ mythfilldatabase 

If you're using a guide data source other than zap2it (i.e., anyone outside the US and Canada), I'm told that you may well need to add a "--manual" flag to the end of that command to get it to work. Look at the output of "mythfilldatabase --help" for more clues if you have problems.

Also, BE PATIENT! This step can take a fairly long time, depending on your internet connection speed and how many channels your service provides... It is also recommended to run mythfilldatabase every night from cron, to keep your show information up to date. To help mitigate possible flooding of our listings provider's servers, we'll set mythfilldatabase to run at some random time after 2:30am, as suggested by David Rees on the mythtv-users mailing list. We'll simply add an entry to the mythtv user's crontab, like so:

$ crontab -e
----Insert the following text into your mythtv user crontab----
### Run mythfilldatabase every night at some random time after 10:01am
01 10 * * * sleep $(expr $RANDOM \% 14400) && mythfilldatabase > /var/log/mythtv/mythfilldatabase.log 2>&1
----Cut above here (don't include this line)---- 

Myth also has built-in support for scheduling when mythfilldatabase should be run. You can find it somewhere in the frontend's setup. The randomization wasn't as good as the above the last time I looked (its been a while), but probably sufficient. I still use the cron job myself, actually running sometime mid-day, to help easy zap2it's traffic load (most people hit them in the dead of night).

Now start up the MythTV front-end (I recommend doing this in a separate shell window, so you can distinctly see the different output for the backend and frontend processes)...

$ mythfrontend 

There are various options within mythfrontend that you can tweak... In the past, I've recommended enabling "De-interlace Playback", even if you're using an interlaced display (like a TV). However, I've found with the latest nvidia driver and its flicker filter, this is no longer necessary for TV output (note that the flicker filter can only be used on SVideo or composite TV-Out, it isn't an option for DVI or VGA). You're on your own for the rest of the settings. Just be sure to go through every section, and get to the point where you click a "Finish" button, otherwise some values seem to not get initialized (most notably, you may get crashes that say something about not being able to open the dsp). Another setting I'd recommend enabling, especially if you're using an nVidia video card (not sure about others) is OpenGL VSync, which recently became a toggleable option. It isn't stable for everybody, but works very well for me on several systems (and I find it to be a must for optimal HDTV playback). If everything appears to be working, once you've gone through all the configuration steps, you can set your system up to automatically load everything at startup. And congrats, you've done the bulk of the work. You can stop here if you want, but if you're like me, you'll want everything to load automatically when the system boots.

Configure Startup

The necessary init script for the MythTV backend to automatically start at system boot is already in place for you, just simply turn it on:

# /sbin/chkconfig mythbackend on

If the backend isn't already running, save yourself a reboot and issue this command:

# /sbin/service mythbackend start 

Now, because I have a few things that don't seem to want to play nice anymore (i.e., nvidia-settings don't load like they should, alsa volume levels aren't restored), I decided to create a quick little shell script in ~/.kde/Autostart/myth-load.sh to handle loading up all the extra goodies I need/want to auto-start, as well as force stubborn things to work. This script loads my nvidia settings, restores alsa volumes, launches irexec for my little power button script (on the Tips 'n' Tricks page), then launches mythfrontend, all in one fell swoop. Just copy and past all this into ~/.kde/Autostart/myth-load.sh (adjust accordingly for different desktop environments):

#!/bin/bash

# Only do this stuff if we're on the main display
# (i.e., don't do this in a vnc session)
if [ `echo $DISPLAY | grep -c ":0"` -ge 1 ]
then
    # Load nVidia driver custom settings
    nvidia-settings --load-config-only &
    # Restore audio settings
    /usr/sbin/alsactl restore
    # Launch irexec for myth power button stop/start
    irexec &
    # Launch myth frontend
    mythfrontend &
    # Disable dynamic power management (screen blanking)
    /usr/X11R6/bin/xset -dpms
    # Disable screen saver
    /usr/X11R6/bin/xset s off
fi
exit 

Don't forget to make it executable:

$ chmod +x ~/.kde/Autostart/myth-load.sh 

While logged in to an X session, you'll also have to run gdmsetup, to set autologin for your mythtv user. You'll have to get a root terminal open (if you aren't logged into your X session as root already, which is a no-no), then:

# gdmsetup 

In GDM Setup, on the first tab ('General'), you should see a section "Automatic login". Check the box for "Login a user automatically on first bootup" and select your mythtv user from the popup menu. Alternatively, if you are not very comfortable with Linux just yet, and you suspect there may be occasions where you've mucked something up to the point that an auto-login will lock up the computer, you might not want to use Automatic Login. Instead, you might opt to use the "Timed Login" option, to log the mythtv user in a few seconds after the login screen first appears. This way, you can circumvent the mythtv user logging in, and log in as root to hopefully correct whatever you've broken.

NOTE: if you installed the packages from kde-redhat, they probably supplanted gdm as your display manager and put kdm in its place. I like the look of Red Hat's gdm much better than kdm, so I changed it back by editing /etc/sysconfig/desktop and setting "DISPLAYMANAGER=GNOME". Not that you should be seeing the login screen often, my box is always sitting there logged in with the Myth UI up. Maybe I'll add some kdm info in a bit...

Anyhow, I recommend setting the Kicker (the panel at the bottom of the screen) to auto-hide, so it doesn't end up on-screen during video playback, disabling the screen saver, and disabling any monitor-related dynamic power management, or you may not be able to wake your system up if you don't have a mouse and keyboard connected. You can use the KDE Control Center to disable your screen saver, and edit your xorg.conf file to disable dpms (or at least the screen blanking parts). Note that the above myth-load.sh script actually issues a pair of commands at login time that should also disable dpms and the screen saver, but you can turn it off everywhere you can to be sure...

And finally, to turn on auto-hiding of the Kicker, right-click on the Kicker, choose 'Configure Panel...', then select the 'Hiding' tab, and select the radio button for 'Hide automatically'.

Configure MythTV add-ons

Upgrading Your System

Upgrading your MythTV installation to a new release is fairly straight-forward. As of MythTV 0.13, all database changes are handled automagically, so you merely have to upgrade your mythtv rpms when they become available. Occasionally, driver updates are also required (such was the case with the ivtv driver when upgrading to MythTV 0.13, and PVR-350 output in 0.14+ required ivtv 0.1.9+). The basic upgrade process should be as simple as:

# yum install mythtv-suite 

Note that this will NOT suffice to upgrade all sub-packages in the event of an updated build from ATrpms of the same major version. In other words, say 0.18.1-115 packages are released with some bugfix not in 0.18.1-114 (-114 and -115 are ATrpms build numbers), but mythtv-suite is already satisfied w/0.18.1-114 (mythtv-suite only needs 0.18.1 packages of any build number), so you'll have to specify all components manually (rpm -qa | grep myth for a list of 'em). If a driver update is required, you may need to:

# yum install <somedriver>-kmdl-$KVER <somedriver>
(<somedriver> could be ivtv, lirc, nvidia-graphics, etc.)

A general note about upgrading and installing rpm packages: you should NEVER use --nodeps to install or remove a package. If you can't get around using --nodeps, there is likely a packaging problem, which you should report upstream, to have it fixed. A tanked rpm database can do Very Bad Things™ to your system, and recovery is sometimes impossible. Try 'yum check' to verity its integrity, should you happen to have committed the --nodeps sin in the past.

Upgrading your kernel is a little bit more involved than upgrading only MythTV, because all custom kernel modules, both rpm-installed and source-installed, will have to be updated also. Kernel modules carry two different versions, one for the kernel they are for (the 'kernel version') and one for the actual module itself (the 'module version'). Everything but kernels and their matching kernel modules get upgraded automatically by 'yum upgrade'. However, note that cases where the kernel version on a kernel module remains the same, but the module version is incremented, an 'yum upgrade' will upgrade that kernel module. Essentially, you really only need to take extra measures when upgrading your kernel, as everything else gets handled automatically.

When you do come to a point where you need to upgrade your kernel, one of the nice features of installing from packages, rather than source, shows itself. For all the ATrpms kernel modules, you can simply type in the command...

# rpm -qa {alsa,ivtv,nvidia-graphics,lirc}*

...to get a full list of all the kernel modules you have installed on your system. With that list in hand, you can now install your new kernel, along with all the corresponding updated kernel modules. For example:

# yum install kernel#2.6.15-1.1831_FC4
# yum install {alsa,ivtv,lirc,nvidia-graphics7676}-kmdl-2.6.15-1.1831_FC4

You can also uninstall an older kernel and its kernel modules with a single command:

# yum remove kernel-<oldversion>

Trouble Shooting

First and foremost, READ THE OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION!!! Specifically, the page on Troubleshooting, at http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-22.html. Second, search the MythTV users *and* developers mailing list to see if this isn't already a known problem that might be fixed in CVS or have a work-around. Again, you can search the archives online at Gossamer Threads. Third, check out the wiki over at http://www.mythtv.info/, which also contains quite a bit of valuable information. Fourth, take a look at ATrpms Bugzilla and the Fedora Myth(TV)ology Wiki and Bug-tracker.

When trouble-shooting, I suggest exiting the frontend, stopping the backend and opening a pair of terminal windows. From one, start up the backend (as root, just type "mythbackend"). In the other, launch the frontend with verbose output (just type "mythfrontend -v all"). There should be a fair amount of output spit to the terminal windows that should give you (and the developers) a better idea of what is going wrong with your system. Please include that output when asking for help. Additionally, if you're getting a segmentation fault, your best bet for getting help determining the cause of the problem is to download the myth source code and compile it yourself in debug mode, then run it with gdb, the GNU debugger (how to do that is detailed at the above link). Only with a backtrace can the developers really help you if your setup is causing Myth to segfault.