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Xen and KnoppMyth
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Author:  gushy [ Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:19 am ]
Post subject:  Xen and KnoppMyth
Guys,

I've got a server on which I run several Xen VMs (para-virtualised, I can't afford swanky new intel chips with XT) and I would like to run KnoppMyth / Mythtv on there as a backend, no TV tuners - all recording will be done by my two KnoppMyth frontend systems.

At the moment the server is running CentOS5 with CentOS5 or Fedora7 VMs; anyone got any tips on how I can get KnoppMyth installed in a para-virtualise d VM?

TIA,
Author:  tjc [ Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:17 pm ]
Post subject: 
Terminology point... If it's got a tuner that you're running it is a BE machine, either master (MBE) or servant (SBE). The FE is the GUI and just handles user interaction and plays back content. While you can have a BE without a tuner, you can't use a tuner without a BE running _on that machine_.

I'm not sure what you're really trying to do here (use the VM as the central storage maybe?), but you probably want to go read up on the FE/MBE/SBE architecture before designing your system topology... There may very well be easier ways to accomplish whatever it is.
Author:  gushy [ Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:36 pm ]
Post subject: 
Ah, yes of course. I guess I want 3 BE's, with the server (no tuner) as the MBE, one other system (with an analogue tuner) as an FE/SBE and another system (with 2 digital tuners) as an FE/SBE.

I have three goals really :
1. Have movies / music / photos etc. shared between both FE/SBE systems
2. Have all recordings shared between both FE/SBE systems
3. Reduce my electricity bill by having the MBE (no tuner) controlling recording times etc. so the I can have both FE/SBE's shutdown when not in use.

1 and 2 can be achieved by the use of a shared filesystem and mysql, however I'm not sure I can achieve 3 without having mythtv running on my server.

I've not really read a huge amount about the underlying tech of mythtv (I never needed two, KnoppMyth just works ;)) So I'm assuming what I want to do is achievable from my knowledge of running a single FE/MBE.

I'm not even sure I need to have KnoppMyth on a VM I guess I can run mythtv on Fedora in a VM, I just thought it might be best to keep the versions of mythtv consistent by running the same release of KnoppMyth everywhere.
Author:  mad_paddler [ Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:54 am ]
Post subject: 
I've moved a physical debian server into a paravirtualised xen guest pretty easily. I essentially just tar'd the filesystem up and restored it into a partition on our xen server. I'm sure I found a guide on the 'net on how to do it.
Author:  gushy [ Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:29 am ]
Post subject: 
Really? That's interesting I thought you had to have a modified kernel to run in a pvm. I'll have to give that a go; I don't use real filesystems, all my VMs use file based disk rather than real partitions, but I guess there must be a way to mount the files as real partitions.

Time to hit google!
Author:  Girkers [ Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:35 pm ]
Post subject: 
Couldn't you just create the VM from using an ISO as the base image. What I mean is create the VM and then install into that VM from the ISO.

We have a VMware ESX server and that is the approach that I would take in this environment, I don't know if that is appropriate for your situation though.
Author:  gushy [ Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:10 am ]
Post subject: 
Unfortunately without hardware extensions that are on the new CPUs you have to run para-virtualised VMs and those require modified kernels.

One of the reasons I currently use CentOS and Fedora in my VMs is that they ship with modified kernels.

The way Xen works is a little different to Vmware style solutions, gives you better performance / less overhead but is tied to the hardware more.
Author:  mad_paddler [ Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:59 am ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
I thought you had to have a modified kernel to run in a pvm


You do, you use the xen kernel already on your xen server. You might have to mess around with the initrd...
Author:  gushy [ Tue Jul 10, 2007 4:03 am ]
Post subject: 
ah I hadn't thought of that, thanks!
Author:  gushy [ Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:13 pm ]
Post subject: 
jailtime.org has a debian 3.1 image, I'm wondering if I can just use that change the sources, and the apt-get update to a working knoppmyth system.
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