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PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 5:34 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 2:16 pm
Posts: 51
Moving this to installation forum per an instruction I received. Not sure I really grasp the logic behind how the forums are organized, but here's details of an install I did that mostly worked with minor repairs needed.



I just did an install of R5C7 on a Dell with a SATA drive. The instructions given here:

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/doc.html#manualinstall

say to create 4 partitions, but the partition numbers are inconsistent with the partition numbers listed in /KNOPPIX/knoppmyth-sata. I tried to edit that file during the install process, but I guess it's on the CD because it was read only even when I tried ":w!" as root in vi.

I didn't see anywhere in the install GUI to edit the partition mapping, so I ended up editing /etc/fstab after the installation.

By default, I ended up the install with a very small /myth and a large unused /dev/sda4. Fixing it was fairly easy for an exerienced Linux user, but it would be a good idea to fix either the file or the manual install instructions so that they both have the same partition layout.


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PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 5:39 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 2:16 pm
Posts: 51
Transplanting this post per instruction I received in another post. Some functionality isn't really working right, but the hardware listed below does reach a basically functional state with only minor fixes.

Ok, so does anyone know where a file goes if you "ln -sf" over it? I apparently obliterated XF86Config-4.350 by putting the arguments in the wrong order.

In any case, to get it back I decided to do a complete reinstall and take careful notes. Everything went pretty smoothly.

I left my partition setup the way it's specified in the manual install procedure

/dev/sda1 /root
/dev/sda2 swap
/dev/sda3 /cache
/dev/sda4 /myth

I didn't reformat any partitions this time, because I had already formated them the last time according to the exact command in the manual install document. After selecting manual install, I had to edit a file.

I ctrl-alt-F2'd to a text console and did "cp /KNOPPIX/knoppmyth-sata /ramdisk/knoppmyth-sata" then I vi'd it and uncommented the line that mapped sda3 to /cache and sda4 to /myth. I commented out the line that mapped sda3 to /myth. Then I ctrl-alt-F1'd back to the install screen and loaded /ramdisk/knoppmyth-sata rather than /KNOPPIX/knoppmyth-sata. This is a change from the manual install document.

Everything went smoothly from here, although I was dumped rather unceremoniously to a root command prompt. The documents aren't particularly clear about whether this is what's supposed to happen, but I assumed it was ok and typed "reboot" at the prompt.

Time is a recurring nuisance. Every time I install Knoppmyth, it assumes my clock is UTC. However, my clock is EST and correct. When I select EST from the list Knoppmyth changes the time to be wrong by offsetting the time as if it had been UTC even though it had been EST all along. So next, I correct the time back to what it was.

Unfortunately, after the manual reboot, Knoppmyth again forgets the time. It prompts me again to select timezone and again assumes my accurate EST time is UTC. So I change to EST which causes Knoppmyth to set the time incorrectly again.

On the last install I selected bootsplash=yes because I didn't know what it meant. On that install, my PVR-350 TV out only worked for playback, not for mythfrontend GUI. This time I select4ed bootsplash=no and after another reboot (which I wasn't prompted to do and I didn't see mentioned in the install procedure, I just figured out that it needed to be done.) I saw the mythfrontend GUI come up on the TV screen.

Unfortunately, the clock is wrong again, so TV listings are incorrect. The clock was off by 4 or 5 hours (I forget, I was tired last night when I did this) so I think that the install screwed up the time zone yet again even though I set it correctly twice in the install procedure. The date command reports EDT (I'm pretty sure that's wrong, isn't it EST in the summer and EDT in the winter?) so I just manually set the time to the correct time on my wall clock without regard for the timezone.

At this point, I've got a working system with the following problems minor problems that may or may not be install related:

- Apparently wrong timezone
- SSH problem, really long delay between userid and password prompt
- NX problem, this seemed to work "out of the box" on the last install but doesn't work this time
- virtual console problem, the VGA output shows a bunch of messages related to ivtv and I'm unable to ctrl-alt-Fkey to another virtual console
- X11 problem, this is more of a wishlist problem. What I wanted was mythfrontend on the PVR-350 TV out and an independent fully functional X11 desktop on VGA. I've seen some suggestions on how to fix this by editing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 but I haven't tried the suggested fixes yet.
- mythfrontend GUI problem, the mythfrontend GUI (particularly the setup screens) doesn't fit on the TV screen. Editing the appearance settings in the GUI helps a bit, but doesn't fix the issue and the px numbers clearly aren't pixels since I've currently got it set as width 10px and height 2px. This gives me a GUI that's mostly usable, although not completely visibile on the screen. I presume I probably need to mess with mode lines in XF86Config-4 in order to get this working, but I suck at modelines.

So, not bad. Not as smooth as when I setup my Series 1 Tivo oh so many years ago, but pretty smooth. The only place where it falls functionally short of Tivo is that the GUI doesn't fit on the TV screen. The rest of the shortcoming are things that Tivo (Series 1 anyway) can't do.

Hardware
-----------
Dell SC420 Small Business Server - $242.74
SATA drive (was a free upgrade to 160GB from 40GB when I bought it)
2GB RAM (added later - Crucial) - $259.49
PVR-350 - forget what this cost, probably $100-200

Not a bad price. I put in 2GB on the assumption that I'd be able to get an X11 desktop at the same time as running mythfrontend on TV Out. If this were a dedicated mythtv box I could have saved that money.


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 Post subject: Time zone isues
PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:23 pm 
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Joined: Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:50 pm
Posts: 6
Just a few things I've learned the hard way...

KnoppMyth keeps the BIOS clock set to UTC time, and should adjust the display to the correct time zone. I'm not sure if this is true of all versions of Linux, but its defiantly true with this version.

Yes, the installer seems to forget the time zone at every step of the way. Just keep telling it the correct time zone, and it should be fine.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:25 pm 
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Joined: Sun Jul 09, 2006 7:54 pm
Posts: 29
It's not just SATA -- the cache partition was removed but some of the instructions still have it listed, so if you follow the instructions you get your cache partition mounted in /myth and your myth partition wasted. Now you just need / (but make it bigger than 2.5 gigs or it'll fill up if you try to customized things), /myth, and swap. The wiki has it right, I think. (I just ran into this myself...)


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