Difference between revisions of "Setup General"

Revision as of 14:09, 14 July 2013

This page is up-to-date to MythTV version 0.21, the current release is 34.0

Introduction

This manual takes you through a detailed walk through into the various backend configuration options. Before doing this, a few ground concepts and terms should be explained so that the backend setup tasks sound logical to you:

With the backend of MythTV we mean the portion of the system that enables you to use capture devices as well as Scheduling Recordings on those cards, Commercial Detection, and transcoding. In short the backend process interacts with the Database and the hardware primarily.

As with the Mythfrontend, there can be multiple backends. One backend process is designated as the master backend. This is usually the first backend installed on a system. This backend is responsible for coordinating the activities of the other backends known as slaves. This is especially true for scheduling as the master backend will determine the best distribution of programs across all available tuners. Each backend can have any number of tuners. Commercial Detection can be distributed across different backends, thereby spreading the load of that process.

There is no requirement for direct user interaction with the backend. The backend can use local Hardware/File Storage or have it mounted from another system. If remotely mounted, network performance should be considered as there will be considerable traffic on the network as recordings are stored and retrieved by the backend process.

The backend and frontend communicate using their own Communications Protocol (Myth Protocol). The developer of Win Myth, a windows frontend to MythTV for playing recordings on Windows, has documented his workings on the protocol here. Work on defining the Myth Protocol is also being performed on this Wiki.}}

Running mythtv-setup

Configure the Myth backend like so

> /usr/bin/mythtv-setup

You will now see the GUI for MythTV to setup the backend server and in particular the channel tuning for our broadcast streams. You will need to set up:

1. General — General Backend settings (most user can use the defaults) See the next section for detailed explanation.
2. Capture Cards — Add and configure your capture devices here
3. Video Sources — create guide data. This may require you to subscribe to an online service that provides programming information specific to your location and TV service.
4. Input connections — tell your Capture Card(s) to which Video Source they should connect. (If you are setting up an IR blaster, you will need to add a script here that controls it.)
5. Channel Editor — scan and configure your channels here
6. Storage Groups — Configure which folders your recordings will be saved to.

Following we will discuss the general backend settings the other configuration items will be discussed in the next chapter.

General

The General settings is where you will set up the core settings of your backend. In case you are running a basic backend/frontend combined setup, you will most probably want to leave the default settings for most of this section, but in case your setup involves several separate backends and frontends, this is where you will determine the role of the backend you're currently configuring. There are two types of backends:

• Master backend: you need at least one master backend on any MythTV setup
• Slave backend: TODO, explain the role of slave backends...

Host Address Backend Setup

Locale Settings

Miscellaneous Settings

Shutdown/Wakeup Options

sudo /usr/bin/mythsettime $time

 sudo echo $1 > /home/mythtv/myth.time
 sudo echo $1 > /proc/acpi/alarm

 sudo /usr/sbin/mythshutdown

 sudo /sbin/halt -p

 logfile=/var/log/mythtv/mythpreshutdown.log
 exstate=0
 ps_who=`who | grep -v mythtv | grep -c ':'`
 if [ $ps_who != 0 ]; then
   echo "User logged in" >> $logfile  
   exstate=1
 fi
 #run the next check on master backend only. Slave backend hostname is hardcoded...
 ping -c 3 slavebackend > /dev/null
 errorlvl=$?
 if [ $errorlvl == 0 ]; then
   echo "slave backend is up" >> $logfile
   ssh slavebackend /usr/local/bin/mythtv-preshutdown.sh
   if [ $? === 1 ]; then
     echo "slave backend not ready for shutdown yet" >> $logfile
     exstate=1
   fi
 fi
 /usr/bin/mythshutdown --check
 if [ $? == 1 ]; then
   echo "mythshutdown builtin checks prevent shutdown" >> $logfile
   exstate=1
 fi
 exit $exstate

WakeOnLan settings

MasterBackend

Reconnect wait time (secs):

Count of reconnect tries:

Wake Command

Wake command for slaves:

Job Queue (Host-Specific)

Maximum simultaneous jobs on this backend:

Run Jobs only on original recording host

Job Queue Check frequency (in seconds)

Job Queue Start Time:

Job Queue End Time:

CPU Usage

Allow Commercial Detection jobs

Allow Transcoding jobs

Allow User Job #1 jobs

Allow User Job #2 jobs

Allow User Job #3 jobs

Allow User Job #4 jobs

Job Queue (Global)

Job Queue (Job Commands)

User Job #1 Description:

User Job #1 Command:

User Job #2 Description:

User Job #2 Command:

User Job #3 Description:

User Job #3 Command:

User Job #4 Description:

User Job #4 Command:

Starting mythbackend

Once configuration is done you can test to see if the mythbackend process is running correctly by starting it in a Terminal window:

$ /usr/bin/mythbackend

Watch out for any error messages.

You may also find it useful to read about Mythwelcome and ACPI Wakeup