I'm hoping someone can point me in the direction of debugging this problem. I have a new install of debian and Myth 0.19 (using Marillat debs). The problem is that there is no picture when trying to watch live tv -- when I select "watch tV" I get a blank screen for maybe 10 seconds and then myth returns to the menu.

There are no error messages when I run myth-setup, and I can watch live tv using xawtv, so I know the pcHDTV card works. Channel-scanning works and I get a program guide in myth. I have a geForce 6200 video card, if that matters.

I don't know where to begin to look to debug this.

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Bob

Why dont you download and install knoppmyth? There will be much more help then and it should just work.

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ASUS A7N266 Micro-ATX Motherboard
Athlon 2200 processor
512K Kingston PC2100 Memory
MicroAtx Case
2 PVR250's w/remote
eVGA e-GeForce mx4000 (64 Ram with Tv/Out (Svideo))
Lite-on DVD cd-rw combo
120 GB Western Digital

I thought I might get that response

The main purpose for this machine is as a RAID 1 backup server. That is set up and running. The Myth part is an experiment.

I'm really just hoping for some insights into how to debug such a problem. Everything seems to work except the video, where do you begin to look?

Thanks.

Bob

well your clues are going to come from the backend log. In knoppmyth it's at /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.?.log I'm not sure where it goes in debian. It's been a long time since I used the official debs of mythtv.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Thanks, good suggestion. Below is the complete backend log entry. Looks like there's a database problem. I had started mythbackend as root.

In mythsetup I have "mythtv" as both the user and password with mysql as the database. If I go to the command prompt and enter "mysql -u mythtv -p" and then enter "mythtv" as the password, I get a mysql prompt. So I *thought* I had properly set up password access. Looks like I didn't. Is there another database in there somewhere? I'm surprised that I can get listings if I can't access mysql...


2006-03-26 19:11:00.414 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2006-03-26 19:11:00.590 New DB connection, total: 1
2006-03-26 19:11:00.665 Unable to connect to database!
2006-03-26 19:11:00.707 Driver error was [1/1045]:
QMYSQL3: Unable to connect
Database error was:
Access denied for user 'mythtv'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

QSqlQuery::exec: database not open
QSqlQuery::exec: database not open
2006-03-26 19:11:00.989 DB Error (KickDatabase):
Query was:
SELECT NULL;
No error type from QSqlError? Strange...
2006-03-26 19:11:01.050 Failed to init MythContext, exiting.

Hi,

While developing the AMICUS MythTV installation script (MythTV on Debian), we just got done struggling with this same problem. It is immensely frustrating and caused much grief with the test team.

What steps did you take before installing the MythTV debs? Did you try to set up the mythconverg database in MySQL first following the instructions in one of the many HOWTOs?

The fix is to just set the mysqladmin password and let the debian MythTV packages do the mythconverg database setup.

You can check out the steps needed in the AMICUS script, menu option 4 (MySQL configuration). Please use the latest revision, the 0.03 script is way out of date now.

Also, make sure you have the right password in /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt for access and that it matches the one in the mythtv setup and configure.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Andrew,

First, I was unaware of the AMICUS project. Thanks for your efforts on this! I did do some web searches before installing but I wasn't aware of how much fiddling would be necessary. I found messages that said things like "I just installed the debs; it was easy". So that's what I tried. Ha!

The first time I ran apt-get on the Marillat (19.0.04) debs, I wound up with a lot of errors about broken dependencies. There was an error message about a file that did not exist and hence could not be touched. I got errors whether I tried to install or remove myth. So I created a dummy for the missing file and reran apt-get. (The file might have been /usr/share/mythtv/mysql.txt.dist.) I got it down to a problem with myth-database and at that point ran dpkg-reconfigure -force as the output suggested and everything seemed fine. But I was still getting the error messages that I posted.

Unfortunately, I still have no video even though I have now put the correct password in /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt and I get no error messages in the mythbackend log.

I will look at your script and get back to you (I'm pretty poor at scripting however). If it would help you I am willing to try it. The only issue is that at this point I don't have a clean install so I'm wondering what preparations you would suggest (apt remove, deleting config files, reconfiguring mysql etc.) to make it a worthwhile trial for you.

Bob

Bob,

I am glad to help if we are talking about MythTV and/or Debian but if you would like to talk about AMICUS we should probably move the discussion or we will incur the wrath of the mods.

Please join us on amicus-users mailing list for more discussion on AMICUS. I will be glad to help you there if you would like to try AMICUS.

https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/l ... icus-users



Changing the subject back to just MythTV on Debian related database issues...

You may want to check the permissions of your video store lockfile to make sure you can access it as the user running MythTV.

I am not sure anymore where KnoppMyth stores the videos or the lockfile but with the Debian MythTV defaults, it is /mnt/store. To fix this temporarily you can allow access with (note: this fix is insecure and should not be considered for the long term)

chmod 766 /mnt/store (or where this is on your system)
chmod 766 /mnt/store/lockfile.nfs (or what ever the name is)

The correct fix is to add the user mythtv to the proper groups (audio, video, mysql, etc) but the above will allow access temporarily.

Thanks! Best of luck!

Andrew Lynch

PS, is a clean install of Debian an option? If so, I recommend it. If not, you may want to carefully do "apt-get remove --purge" of all the MythTV and related packages to clear away the debris. The install/removal cycle can really get messy especially if the --force* options are used. Forcing apt-get/dpkg should be reserved for emergencies only IMO. Good luck!

Just FYI for those who may have been following this thread, permissions did not seem to be the issue so I still have the problem. If I find something useful I will report back, but otherwise I will take this offline to the AMICUS group and see if the AMICUS script can help.

Thanks!