Revision as of 12:16, 8 November 2009

Current Setup

I currently have one backend with 2 Zotac Ion frontends.

Frontend 1

Frontend 2

Backend

Why I chose this system

Frontends

• The whole setup was good value for money (considering it is a 5tb fileserver/backend with two frontends + TVs), around £1000 (which is US$1600 (xe.com) at the time of writing).
• The Zotac Ions are fantastic boards. They handle everything nicely, including 1080p content (with VDPAU enabled)
• The Zotac boards are supposed to take around 21w of power under full load.
• The M350 cases are tiny! They can be hidden in corners and crevices very nicely. They also have 2 hidden front usb ports, ideal for bluetooth, usb storage, or other dongles which don't need to see the light of day.
• I have both Zotac machines completely hidden from view, one behind a door frame and one strapped to the back of the benq monitor.
• I chose the Benq for the 1080p, and that it is much cheaper than a 1080p HDTV. The Hanspree is a throwback from the old setup.

Backend

• Its 5tb in raid5...
• The case was by far the most expensive component, but it almost perfectly suits the 5 1.5tb HDDs that it houses.
• The server is really surprisingly quiet, and runs very cool.
• According to my calculations as well as other peoples reviews, this will use about 60w under full load, when underclocked. Not bad for a 5tb server backend.
• Its 5tb in raid5...

Problems

• Forget about putting anything inside the M350 cases except for a mobo, an hdd or two and some ram. These tiny cases have no room inside them, but then again, theres nothing else you need in them!
• The wireless is utter crap. Read the fix down the page. Even when it is fixed, watching live tv with it is a bit poor - I have a Wireless N switch with Gig eth and when I browse the internet on my laptop, it'll slow the tv down.
• Took me ages to figure out how to get the drivers for the nvidia graphics, not helped by the utterly shoddy wireless.

Real world figures

In terms of crunching power, wattage and temperatures, this system really can't be complained about;

• Zotac Ions play 1080p fine with VDPAU. No issues. No questions asked. It Just Works (TM).
• I said on the notes to my old setup that 500gb is more media than one can watch. That was a bit of a Bill Gates moment. I stand corrected, 6tb might be enough though (I hope!)
• 2GB is so damn cheap and it runs these systems fine, any more would be overkill. I would say 2GB is overkill but at about £20 for a matched pair noone is complaining.
• The 1.6ghz dual core processor in the Zotac Ions can be a bit slow at times. It is really painful to watch the "prescaling images" bar when you change theme/first open mythtv.

Wireless Fix

If you are experiencing spotty wireless, whereby the wireless seems to stop working, although still says it is connected, then after 10 minutes of a lack of connection it suddenly springs to life. Well, you have crappy-wireless-driver syndrome. Just follow this command on Ubuntu:

[code] sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty-generic [/code]

Restart and you're golden

Old Setup

This is my old setup, left here for education/nostalgia.

Pundit-pvr

The Asus Pundit P1 in White

Why I chose this system

• The whole system was very cheap, around £200 ($400).
• It has quite a small footprint, although much bigger than a set-top-box, it is no way as big as a desktop case.
• It looks quite stylish, which is always good for the WAF
• It'll run HD content.
• I chose the cheapest Core2Duo I could find. Any Core2Duo PC should be able to run atleast 720p content. Although dedicated HD graphics is recommended.

Problems

• The Pundit P3 is a low profile system, as such, you'll need low profile cards. The Nova T 500 is not a low profile card, so you'll have to remove the PCI plate, and have the card lose in the slot (this is not desirable, as the card can easily become de-seated!) support@hauppauge.com will send you out at blanking plate, don't expect any correspondance, I tried several times asking about it, then finally just emailed my address over in the hopes of getting it, and 2 days later a blanking plate was in the post!
• The system isn't as quiet as I'd like - the stock cooler is quite whiny, and the stock case fan (attached with only 1 screw!) is very loud. Getting a good Scythe fan or two would definitely be recommended. With stock cooling the air runs cold - so you could probably get away with a small heatsink over the CPU and a good, quiet case fan.
• Still having slight problems with Mythbuntu. Overall I would say the system is worth it, but has its annoyances.

Real world figures

In terms of crunching power, wattage and temperatures, this system really can't be complained about;

• I've been able to record 2 channels and watch HD-720p content with NO lag. Even with integrated graphics.
• 500GB is a hefty size for storing data. It'll easily store more content than you're likely to watch. Having said this, I'm beggining to run out of space, and 1TB is about £70, so cheap enough for consideration!
• 1024mb seems to be enough. I would consider upgrading this if you have a bit more spare cash.
• Because its a relatively "slow" core 2 duo, its cold to the touch - with the stock cooler, but more than capable of running 720p

Notes on getting Mythbuntu working properly

Hard Drive optimisation

A good partition setup is as follows:

1. 20gb / ext3
2. 1GB SWAP (make this the same as the installed memory for easy sleep/hibernation)
3. Rest as /var/lib/ xfs

I would recommend setting the noatime and nodiratime options to your drives, for less intensive harddisk access. To do this, go to your /etc/fstab which may look like this, for example:

# /dev/sda1
UUID=6e039164-c59f-49f1-9b96-e658a24aac2d /               ext3    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /dev/sda3
UUID=d8af15ba-f63e-465d-848e-9c8d3d020e4a /var/lib        xfs     relatime        0       2
# /dev/sda2
UUID=07a339be-0944-4a04-a71a-9b1e173cbb6e none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

Change this file to look more like this:

# /dev/sda1
UUID=6e039164-c59f-49f1-9b96-e658a24aac2d /               ext3    noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /dev/sda3
UUID=d8af15ba-f63e-465d-848e-9c8d3d020e4a /var/lib        xfs     noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8        0       2
# /dev/sda2
UUID=07a339be-0944-4a04-a71a-9b1e173cbb6e none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

Fixing LIRC for Hauppauge remotes

Mythbuntu uses the incorrect lircrc for the Hauppauge remote, you should copy and paste the one from the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 PCI page. Save this as ~/.lircrc and make links from this to ~/.mythtv/lircrc and ~/.lircrc/mythtv

Another annoying problem stems from the "events" on the system. These don't stay put, so on one boot you'll have your receiver on event6, the next, it'll be event3. Obviously Lirc can't magically detect this for you, but luckily, other system processes can.

First you want to find the event the receiver is currently running on:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices | grep -iA4 receiver

Now, run the following command:

udevinfo -a -p $(udevinfo -q path -n /dev/input/[OUTPUT_FROM_ABOVE_COMMAND]) | grep -i vendor

Hopefully you'll get one line saying "SYSFS{vendor}="0x99999" or something to that effect, if you get more than one, then usually its the first you need. Now, using your favourite editor, open /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules:

sudo mousepad /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

Add the following line:

KERNEL=="event*",SYSFS{vendor}=="0x99999",SYMLINK="lirc0"

Obviously this is bit you replace 0x99999 with the code you received from one of the above commands. Once this is done, restart the udev server:

/etc/init.d/udev restart

And voilas. To test, you can check the listing of lirc0;

ls -la /dev/lirc*

It should output "lirc0 --> event6" or whatever your receivers eventid is.

For reference: /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

# /etc/lirc/hardware.conf
#
REMOTE="Hauppauge TV Card"
REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"
REMOTE_DRIVER="devinput"
REMOTE_MODULES="lirc_dev lirc_i2c"
REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="/etc/lirc/lircd.conf"
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""

START_LIRCD="true"
LOAD_MODULES="true"

Recommended extra packages

If using wireless, install WICD!, this will enable mythbuntu to silently connect to your wireless network, without nagging you for keyrings, or d/cing after a sleep. To do this; add

#WICD, Wireless network manager
deb http://apt.wicd.net hardy extras

to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. From this point, just run "sudo apt-get install wicd" and you should be good to go; you might need to add /opt/wicd/tray.py to your startup programs, to get a tray icon.

Also perhaps add wine, depending on how you use the machine, I personally run some windows games I own, so wine is helpful:

# Wine
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt gutsy main
deb-src http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt gutsy main

Then apt-get install wine!

Mysql Crashing

It would be a good idea to get mythbuntu to repair the tables on reboot. Having to manually repair the tables when the box crashes is annoying, so why not automate. Add this to your system startup, whichever way you prefer:

mysqlcheck -umythtv -pPASSWORD --auto-repair mythconverg