MythTV General Discussion and Support

[RILEYP]

Originally Posted by kreegor

My GPU (gt430) died! There are artifacts on the bios screen... its very yucky!

My bios screen goes stupid and is unreadible like a really old black and white tv with horizontal shift issues with a certain stick of of ram I always seem to forget to put in the bin.

[kreegor]

Originally Posted by RILEYP

My bios screen goes stupid and is unreadible like a really old black and white tv with horizontal shift issues with a certain stick of of ram I always seem to forget to put in the bin.

A fair point. I will check the ram this weekend. I have some spares laying around for testing.

EDIT: Turns out it was my GPU!

[Valik]

My Asrock ION will be arriving this week. I'm assuming the setup is fairly simple for the FE.

Now questions about the setup of the BE/FE. Are there any benefits to installing Ubuntu Server?
It will be on 24/7 and not familiar with other software available, so what other apps should I consider running on this machine?

Firewall
SABnzbd
Sickbeard
Couchpotato
jdownloader

Hardware... I plan on running software raid5 on about 6 3Tb hdds. What is the best way to do this in software?

2 sony playTVs ready to go.
How much ram?
CPU requirements?
Compatible video card that will do everything quick (transcoding assuming it isn't the cpu that does this) but isn't overkill as not keen on chewing the extra juice for no reason.

PC will not be in lounge room so noise isn't a huge issue but would prefer something that doesn't scream.

I ask these questions because most of the info on mythtv is on old hardware.

Basically I'd like to know what build you would put together if you could do it all again.

[HyRax1]

Originally Posted by Valik

My Asrock ION will be arriving this week. I'm assuming the setup is fairly simple for the FE.

sudo apt-get install mythtv-frontend mythvideo mysql-client

Originally Posted by Valik

Now questions about the setup of the BE/FE. Are there any benefits to installing Ubuntu Server?

Less resources consumed by not having to run a GUI on the server. Boots VERY fast.

Originally Posted by Valik

It will be on 24/7 and not familiar with other software available, so what other apps should I consider running on this machine?

Well, you need the MythTV backend for starters plus some other stuff to make administration a bit easier:

sudo apt-get install mythtv-backend mythtv-database mythvideo mythtv-status mythweb openssh-server htop mysql-client mysql-server

Remember to make your admin and mythtv user part of the "video" group or you may find your tuners are inaccessible.

Originally Posted by Valik

Firewall

Not necessary if you already have your router doing firewall duties, unless other members of the family are of the evil hacking type.

Originally Posted by Valik

SABnzbd
Sickbeard
Couchpotato
jdownloader

Other software is only needed if you plan to have the software doing additional duties other than MythTV.

Originally Posted by Valik

Hardware... I plan on running software raid5 on about 6 3Tb hdds. What is the best way to do this in software?

I'd recommend going RAID6 so you can lose up to two drives because 3TB will take a looooong time to restripe while the filesystem is mounted in the event of a drive failure, and you'll be vulnerable during that time with RAID5.

For doing software RAID, you will be using mdadm. The Ubuntu Server installer can set this up for you.

Originally Posted by Valik

2 sony playTVs ready to go.
How much ram?

MythTV only? 2GB is plenty. More duties? RAM is cheap - max out your system. Ubuntu will make good use of it for caching data anyway.

Originally Posted by Valik

CPU requirements?

Any CPU is fine, however faster CPU's mean less time spent flagging commercials or transcoding video. Go for the highest/fastest/longest/creamiest CPU you can afford.

Originally Posted by Valik

Compatible video card that will do everything quick (transcoding assuming it isn't the cpu that does this) but isn't overkill as not keen on chewing the extra juice for no reason.

Motherboard on-board video is all you need. GPU is only used by the frontend for video decoding.

Originally Posted by Valik

PC will not be in lounge room so noise isn't a huge issue but would prefer something that doesn't scream.

Lots of slow-moving fans are fairly quiet, but your drives will be noiser anyway.

Originally Posted by Valik

I ask these questions because most of the info on mythtv is on old hardware.

Well, the OCAU MythTV Hardware Wiki is reasonably up to date.

Originally Posted by Valik

Basically I'd like to know what build you would put together if you could do it all again.

I'd use an i5 as a minimum on the backend since they're so cheap these days and crunch data soooo much faster than previous CPU's for so little coin. The frontend is fine as an Atom-based machine (as per the ASRock ION series), but if you want to do anything more than video decoding such as play games, then I'd plump for an i3 or i5 for that.

[ltd73]

Originally Posted by Valik

Hardware... I plan on running software raid5 on about 6 3Tb hdds. What is the best way to do this in software?

my recommendation is not to RAID it (hw or sw) at all. treat them as individual disks and make use of mythtv's storage groups.

if you lose a HDD you just lose the contents on that drive and the drives can individually power up/down as need be (saves power - each disk is ~10-15W of power).

RAIDing them will cost you (power) and limit your ability to add bigger/smaller/different disks in future for no tangible benefit.

[Valik]

Didn't know about the storage groups but I think I'll stick with the raid setup.

[kreegor]

I'm using Mythbuntu 12.04 and I keep getting a popup message saying that updates are available. I have set it to auto update security updates etc. How can I get that popup window to go away?

[mike-s]

I have two pc's doing separate MythTv and NAS functionality.
I have my MythTv box in an Antec NSK2400 case and if I had to do a do-over, I would use the same case again as the only drives I have in there are 3 hard drives (50gb / & 950gb /storage on one, 1Tb /storage2 on the second & a backup volume for all databases & configs (400gb), I don't back up the media files, though it may be something I should consider doing by replacing the hard drive with a larger one at some point.) and a dvd burner. The 12cm fans finally started crapping out (after three years) recently and I replaced them with Jaycar low rpm & long life (100,000hr mtbf) ones. It is a quiet case and I can't fault it at all.

My NAS is an Antec Titan case, and it may be more suitable for your needs as it has easy drive access, lots of fan mount points and has heaps of internal space for nearly any motherboard. It is a case that has the ability to get the airflow for big grunty processors, but I'm only using a Sempron le-1250 in there as I've really got it for it being quiet & most importantly to me it has front access to the hard drives. It's a bit big & unweildy, but It works for me.

[HyRax1]

Originally Posted by kreegor

I'm using Mythbuntu 12.04 and I keep getting a popup message saying that updates are available. I have set it to auto update security updates etc. How can I get that popup window to go away?

Click on the Settings button in the bottom-left of the Update Manager and change the pop-up settings there.

[kreegor]

Originally Posted by HyRax1

Click on the Settings button in the bottom-left of the Update Manager and change the pop-up settings there.

The only settings I can see that would relate to this are on the updates tab.

When there are other updates:

1. Display Immediately
2. Display weekly
3. Display every two weeks

[HyRax1]

Change "Automatically check for updates" to "Never" and you'll never have any pop-up's appear (this check for updates is separate to any other check for updates you do).

You can also change the "Notify me of a new Ubuntu version" to "Never" as well, as that's the only real serious pop-up that I ever see in Unity.

If you're not using Unity and are using Classic Gnome instead, then jump into a terminal and type this in:

$ gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false

...which will stop the classic Gnome version of the Update Manager doing it's pop-up thing and reduce it to a red icon in the Gnome panel.

[Valik]

Starting to pick out a few shopping items for the BE/FE...

GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB WIFI
RipjawsX F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL(8Gx2)
Intel Core i7 3770K/3.50GHz/8MB CACHE/LGA1155 Ivy Bridge

Unsure if the onboard video will cut it or if it will work on linux. I'm quiet skeptical but prepared to buy or reuse old card if needed.
MB has wireless & bluetooth. Was only an extra $10 compared to the same model without it so I figured what the hell.
The 9 sata ports helped sell the board but is there anything else I should consider?
I was told to load up the ram but is anything over 16Gb going to be used?

[HyRax1]

Originally Posted by Valik

Unsure if the onboard video will cut it or if it will work on linux.

Don't underestimate Intel HD - it's a much better GPU than it ever used to be.

Originally Posted by Valik

I was told to load up the ram but is anything over 16Gb going to be used?

4GB is more than adequate for a MythTV BE, but Linux will happily make use of extra RAM to cache things to save hitting the disk all the time.

[kreegor]

Originally Posted by HyRax1

Change "Automatically check for updates" to "Never" and you'll never have any pop-up's appear (this check for updates is separate to any other check for updates you do).

You can also change the "Notify me of a new Ubuntu version" to "Never" as well, as that's the only real serious pop-up that I ever see in Unity.

If you're not using Unity and are using Classic Gnome instead, then jump into a terminal and type this in:

$ gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false

...which will stop the classic Gnome version of the Update Manager doing it's pop-up thing and reduce it to a red icon in the Gnome panel.

Thanks for that. I have disabled all those settings so hopefully it doesn't pop up any more.

Now, this is more of a generic question. Is there a way to get recordings to show up in a gallery style menu like in videos rather than the standard list?

[hollstar]

I have two questions: When I set up my MicroServer backend, I set up one frontend so they were obviously both the same version.

apt-cache policy mythtv
mythtv:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 0.23.0+fixes24158-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
     0.23.0+fixes24158-0ubuntu2 0

Now that I want to add another frontend to the mix, what is the best way to install the same version so I don't get a protocol error?

Having said that however, how can I easily upgrade the backend from 0.23 to 0.25 along with those frontends? I'm sorry but it just isn't clear to me after reading various Wikis and pages...