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PostPosted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:25 am 
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Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2004 1:30 pm
Posts: 139
Location: New Hope, MN
First of all, this will do you no good if you do not have a working backend box. You don't have to have a working front end on that box, but for setting things up it will probably help. Once it is up and running, your backend box can sit in a closet, in the basement, be rack mounted some place, whatever. I actually have mine in my bedroom now, and primarily use it to listen to music.

As always, run the mythbackup program on a working master box before proceding. If you have to back out of things, this will be a major help.

Preparation. You need to enable networking for MySQL. All this entails is commenting out a line that reads 'skip-networking' in the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file, and restarting MySQL (/etc/init.d/mysql restart). You will also need to make sure you have the ip address for your master set properly in the 'General' section of mythtv-setup. If you are setting this up after you have had a working system, remember to restart mythbackend (/etc/init.d/mythbackend restart). Also pick a new name to use for your new front end.

Now that you have a working backend, I presume you have assembled a pc you plan on using as a front end. (I have not tried this on an X-box, don't plan on ever owning one.)

Lots of tweeks may be useful to you, and I have a few left to do, but here goes. Do a Auto-Install of KnoppMyth. After the install, you will be prompted to reboot. Once the reboot is completed you will see a prompt for the root password so that KnoppMyth can start setting up your system. You may recall entering that password during the insstall, but so far the installer does not set that password for you. Time to switch to text mode. I assume you know the [Alt]-[Ctrl]-[F1] trick, so do that. Log in as root, and set the password. Now switch to the directory /usr/share/mythtv and use vi (or whatever editor you prefer that is installed) to edit the file mysql.txt and change the word 'localhost' to the name of the backend system you plan on using.

Save the file, exit, switch back to X, ([LeftAlt]-[F7] in case you forgot) and give the configuration program the password you just set, go through the various options. Do not clear all capture card settings, and you should end up in the gui to set up your front end. Under General the IP address for your backend system should already be set for you, set the correct IP address for this box.

Gotcha's that caught me. I run my own dns server, and forgot to set the reverse lookup for the IP address that I was using on my new front end to the name I was using on my front end. Neither ssh, nor telnet to port 3306 on my master box were working. Turns out they were doing a reverse lookup to confirm that the name the box was advertising was the known name for the IP address, and because it was failing I was not able to establish a connection. A quick tail of /var/log/auth.log told me what the problem was, and I had that problem fixed shortly therafter. It was initially baffling however.

TV tips. I don't really like to hang a monitor off my system to configure it, or work in text mode. Since I am outputing into a TV, the resolution is pretty much unreadable at the default levels. When my system was initially booting up after installing the system, I pressed [LeftShift] to interup lilo, and passedit the command 'Linux vga=normal'. This gave me the 80x25 screen I could use to work with in text mode. Once I was at a command prompt I set this as my default by editing /etc/lilo.conf and adding 'vga=normal' to the section for 'Linux'.

Likewise I find trying to read an xterm at 1024x768 to be rather difficult on a TV. For readability I set my Modes line in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to read 'Modes = "640x480"' and found that I can now reasonably easily read text in an xterm. This is not necesarily a requirement, but it works well for me.

Still not working for me. I have a share set up to use /MyMusic off of a server as /myth/music on my front end. I have a similar share set up to work on my master. Unfortunately because they are using a common mysql database to keep track of what music is available, I am getting errors when trying to play music on my frontend.

I also have not set up my frontend to play videos off of my backend system. It's not critical for me yet.

Oh, 'Why did I write, and post this?' you may be asking. This is the second time I attempted to put together a frontend. The previous time I did not think to update the mysql.txt file, and ended up with all kinds of problems. I was able to get the front end running, and had it pointing at the other box as a backend. That gave me an ok way to watch tv or previously recorded material, however the scheduling setup was all wrong. There are still a few stumbling blocks as noted above, but this appears to be the correct way to get the database setup and going. Hopefully it will help someone else along the way.

One of these days I will think about setting up a slave backend. I have a box that could do that, but I am thinking I have enough systems running at the moment.

-Rusty

Yes I do need to update my sig now...

_________________
Master:
- AMD 1800XP on a MSI KT4V motherboard, via KT400 bios
- 120 G Segate Baracuda /, /cache, /myth, swap
- 200 G Segate Baracuda /myth/tv
- 3 Haupauge! WinTV PVR250s
- 19" Daewoo Monitor (1280x1024 ni)


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 9:50 am 
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Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:08 am
Posts: 91
Location: Switzerland
Actually, thanks for posting this... I did run into trouble setting up a remote frontend, and you seem to address some of the issues.


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