Installing MythTV on Debian Etch

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Revision as of 15:20, 17 April 2007 by Michel (talk | contribs) (Install the base system)

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This is a Tutorial to install MythTV on a Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 ('etch') machine.

Install the base system

Download the netinst disk for your favourite platform from http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/ or one of the mirrors.

  1. Insert the Debian CD in the CD/DVD drive
  2. Reboot the target PC by pressing its reset button
  3. At the Debian Boot Screen, hit enter
  4. Choose language, Country or Region, Keyboard Layout
  5. Choose a servername and domain.
  6. Accept automatic partition changes
  7. Install GRUB to the MBR
  8. Reboot
  9. Debian start its post install configuration routine
  10. For Time Zone, I chose Eastern
  11. IMPORTANT: do not use the username "mythtv". The user "mythtv" is reserved for use by mythtv
  12. Enter your new root password and a new user account,
  13. Add ftp.debian.org
  14. Uncheck Desktop; Check Web Server, SQL Server, & File Server
  15. Configure the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) by accepting the default settings
  16. The Debian Netinst installer should now leave you with a login screen.

Installation and configuration

MySQL

become root

 su -

now at first we need the mysql server:

apt-get install mysql-server

now set the mysql root user password

mysqladmin -u root password yourpasswordhere

Sound

For sound, I ran

apt-get install alsa-base alsa-utils
alsaconf

IvTV driver packages

If you need ivtv for your TV Tuner, then run (NOTE: The following command is one line long. The `uname -r` part is placing your specific linux kernel version, so you may run into trouble if you have compiled your own kernel, in which case you should run 'apt-cache search ivtv' and find the correct modules for your system. You will also need to keep an eye on the 'linux-source-2.6.18' package, and be sure that you are getting the correct version.)

 apt-get install ivtv-utils ivtv-modules-`uname -r` linux-source-2.6.18 linux-headers-`uname -r` module-assistant

Note: If ivtv-utils is not found in apt, you may need to add the contrib packages to your sources.list file

 deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch contrib
 deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch contrib

If you are using a Hauppauge PVR-150 TV Tuner, then get latest pvr-150 firmware from http://dl.ivtvdriver.org/ivtv/firmware/ and put the *.fw files (except the usb-related files, indicated by their filenames) in /lib/firmware, then run

 modprobe ivtv

Please note: Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 comes with IVTV version 0.8.2. If for some odd reason you need newer IVTV drivers, then the two options are:

1) Grab the latest greatest out-of-the-box packages from 'sid'.

2) Build the IVTV drivers from source as described on the IVTV wiki page

Both are not explained in detail over here.

Linux Infra Red Control (LIRC)

If you need to install LIRC in order to use an Infrared Remote, first run:

 apt-get install dialog

Then download lirc from www.lirc.org , follow the instructions in the INSTALL file, then run these commands:

 modprobe lirc_i2c
 chmod 666 /dev/lircd

You will then need to start lircd (the first command checks to make sure the device files are there, and the second command may require you to add '-d /dev/lirc?' substituting the ? with a number, which will probably be 0)

 ls /dev/lirc*
 lircd

You will then need to get a lircrc file, and a lircd.conf file which will reside in /home/mythtv/.lircrc, /home/mythtv/.mythtv/lircrc, /etc/lircd.conf, and possibly (I forget) /etc/lircrc. This link may help you: http://lircconfig.commandir.com/

Graphical User Interface (GUI): X.org

In order to run X, I ran (The last entry, fluxbox, is the window manager. It is up to you to decide which window manager you want to run.)

 apt-get install xfonts-base xbase-clients xserver-xorg xfonts-75dpi fluxbox

After installing X, you will need to modify your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Getting MythTV

Out-of-the-box packages

Add two more sources to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main 
deb-src http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main

Before we can use apt, we must import the gpg keys for the site

gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 1F41B907
gpg --armor --export 1F41B907 | apt-key add -

now we can get the rest of the needed package to build myth via:

apt-get update
apt-get build-dep mythtv

Now you can get mythtv:

apt-get install mythtv

and if you want extras you can search for them with

apt-cache search mythtv

Building from source

If you really insist building yourself:

add your user to the staff group so you get write permission to usr/local now after logging in as a user (DON'T USE ROOT) do this:

svn co http://cvs.mythtv.org/svn/trunk/mythtv

This creates a folder called mythtv where the actual sources are in.

cd mythtv

and compile it with something like:

 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --arch=athlon-xp --enable-dvb --enable-dvb-eit
make
make install

The configure line above is only an example. In this example, the installation is configured to be under /usr/local. If you want to put it somewhere else, you can alter the --prefix argument. Run ./configure --help to see what options are available and necessary for you.

You will probably want to be root to run the "make install" part, though, because that target invokes ldconfig to set up shared library paths, and usually nobody but root can do this.

Starting MythTV

Set the mythtv user's password:

 passwd mythtv

Log in as the mythtv user, then start an X session:

 startx

Open up XTerm and run the MythTV Setup program:

 mythtv-setup

After configuring MythTV, you can start the MythTV Backend:

 sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start

You will then need to pull your channel information:

 mythfilldatabase