Compressed mythbuntu 8.10-installation

Mythbuntu 8.10 Installation
Manual

Authors
Mythbuntu Team

Translators
None

1

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Contents

1 Introduction 7
1.1 What is Mythbuntu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 Hardware 8
2.1 CPU Type and Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2 Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3 Hard Disk(s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4 Video Capture Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4.1 Frame Grabbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4.2 Hardware MPEG-2 encoders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4.3 DVB capture cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4.4 HDTV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4.5 Firewire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4.6 DBoxII or other devices running Neutrino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4.7 USB Capture Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.4.8 Hardware known NOT to work and other issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5 Sound Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.6 Video Display Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.6.1 ATI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.6.2 NVIDIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.6.3 Hauppauge PVR-350 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.6.4 Other Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.6.5 External Adapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3 Installation Types 15
3.1 Live CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Alternate CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3 Metapackage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4 Booting the Mythbuntu Live CD 17

5 Live CD Environment 19
5.1 Running a Frontend from CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

6 Networking Conﬁguration 26
6.1 Wireless Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.1.1 Advanced Wireless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.2 Wired support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.2.1 Advanced Wired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

7 Installing Mythbuntu from Live CD 30
7.1 Starting Oﬀ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7.2 Standard Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
7.3 Advanced Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
7.4 Primary Backend with Frontend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
7.5 Secondary Backend with Frontend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4

CONTENTS 5

7.6 Primary Backend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
7.7 Secondary Backend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.8 Frontend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

8 Booting the Mythbuntu Alternate CD 77

9 MythTV Backend Setup 78
9.1 Initial Configuration Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
9.2 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
9.3 Capture Cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
9.4 Video Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
9.5 Input Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
9.6 Channel Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

10 Mythbuntu Control Center (MCC) 98
10.1 Starting MCC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
10.1.1 Inside MythTV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
10.1.2 From Xfce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
10.1.3 From Gnome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10.2 Using MCC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10.2.1 System Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
10.2.2 MythTV Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
10.2.3 Applications and Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
10.2.4 Proprietary Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10.2.5 Remote Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10.2.6 System Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10.2.7 Artwork and Login Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10.2.8 Proprietary Codecs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10.2.9 Advanced Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

11 Configuring Mythtv Plugins 107
11.1 Myth Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
11.2 Myth Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
11.3 Myth Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
11.4 Myth Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
11.5 Myth Dvd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
11.6 Myth Flix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
11.7 Myth Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
11.8 Myth Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
11.9 Myth Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
11.10Myth News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
11.11Myth Phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
11.12Myth Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
11.13Myth Weather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

12 Remote Control (LIRC) 114
12.1 Drivers needing extra effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
12.2 IR Transmitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
12.2.1 Serial IR Transmitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
12.2.2 Command IR Receiver / Quadruple Transmitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
12.2.3 Microsoft Media Center Remote Version 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
12.2.4 Hauppauge PVR-150 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
12.3 General Setup and Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
12.4 Setting up Multiple Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

CONTENTS 6

13 Diskless Clients 121
13.1 Installing the packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
13.2 Server Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
13.3 Booting your diskless client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
13.3.1 Block devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
13.3.2 PXE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
13.3.3 Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
13.3.4 Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
13.3.5 FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
13.3.6 Interesting Files/further conﬁguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

14 Advanced Setup Options 127
14.1 Windows Frontend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
14.2 Xbox Frontend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

15 Frequently Asked Questions 128

16 Trouble Shooting 129

17 Reference 130
17.1 MythTV Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
17.1.1 Backend Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
17.1.2 Frontend Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
17.2 TV-OUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
17.2.1 Connections Explained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
17.2.2 TV Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
17.3 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 What is Mythbuntu
Mythbuntu is a combination of MythTV and Ubuntu. MythTV is a GPL licensed suite of programs
that allow you to build the mythical home media convergence box on your own using Open Source
software and operating systems. MythTV is known to work on Linux and Mac OS X (PowerPC and
Intel). It does not run on Windows.

MythTV’s robust PVR functions allow you to do the following:

• You may pause, fast-forward and rewind live Television.
• You may install multiple video capture cards to record more than one program at a time or use
for picture-in-picture functions.
• You may watch and record SDTV and HDTV via firewire if you have a firewire-enabled cable or
satellite tuner.
• You can have multiple servers (called “backends” in MythTV parlance), each with multiple
capture cards in them. All servers are centrally managed and all programs are scheduled by the
Master backend.
• You can have multiple clients (called “frontend” in MythTV parlance), each with a common view
of all available programs. Each client can watch all programs recorded by any of the servers,
assuming that they have the hardware capabilities to view the content; a low-powered frontend,
for example, will not be able to watch HDTV. Clients can be diskless and controlled entirely by
a remote control.
• You may use combinations of standard analog capture cards, MPEG-2, MJPEG, DVB, HDTV,
USB and firewire capture devices. With a firewire capable backend, MythTV can control a
variety of set top boxes often found in digital cable and satellite TV systems.
• Program Guide Data in North America is downloaded from Schedules Direct, a third party
provider that licenses the data provided by Tribue Media Services. Schedules Direct charges a
nominal rate for the data, broken up into several month increments. Schedules Direct accounts
can be made at their website, http://www.schedulesdirect.org. Program Guide Data in other
countries is obtained using XMLTV. MythTV uses this information to create a schedule that
maximizes the number of programs that can be recorded if you don’t have enough tuners.
• MythTV implements a UPNP server, so a UPNP client may automatically see content from your
MythTV system. N.B.: this feature has not been verified to work on every available UPNP
client.
• Plugins from the MythTV community provide functionality for: DVDs, Personal Video Collec-
tion, Music, Weather, News, Gaming, Netflix and much, much more. See section 17.1.

7

Chapter 2

Hardware

Hardware selection is a complex topic, one this HOWTO will only discuss briefly and in general terms.
The following subsections offer some general guidance but stop short of offering specific recommenda-
tions.

For a good MythTV experience, you must understand that MythTV exercises your hardware more
than a typical desktop. Encoder cards generate DMA across the PCI bus. The CPU is busy encoding
/ decoding video. Hard drives are constantly reading and writing data. Building a MythTV system on
older / “spare” hardware may be an exercise in frustration and can waste many hours of valuable time.

For more detail about actual configurations that others have used, Mark Cooper has setup a hardware
database at http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/. The website will let you browse what other users have
reported as their hardware configuration, and how happy they are with the results.

If you have specific questions about the suitability of specific hardware choices, you can consult the
archives of the mythtv-users mailing list at http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/ or
post a question to the list.

2.1 CPU Type and Speed
Selection of CPU type and speed is one of the trickiest elements of hardware selection, mainly because
there are so many tradeoffs which can be made. For example, if you have plenty of CPU, you can use
higher bitrates or capture sizes, etc.

MythTV has two modes of operation. First, it can function as a software video encoder, which means
that it uses a fairly generic “dumb” video capture card to get frames of video, encodes them using
the CPU on your motherboard and writes them to disk. High-end video capture cards and devices
like the TiVo and ReplayTV have dedicated encoder chips which use specialized hardware to convert
the video stream to the MPEG-2 format without using the motherboard CPU. The main CPU has
the responsibility of running the Operating System and reading and writing the encoded frames to
the disk. These tasks have fairly low CPU requirements compared to encoding video, which is why a
device like a Series 1 TiVo can run with only 16MB of RAM and a 54MHz CPU.

There are many variables that go into the question: “How fast a CPU do I need to run MythTV?”
Obviously, the faster your CPU, the better your experience will be with MythTV. If you are using the
software MPEG-4 encoder and performing the “Watch TV” function, where the CPU is both encoding
and decoding video simultaneously to allow Pause, Fast Forward and Rewind functions for live TV
requires more CPU then just encoding or decoding. MythTV also supports multiple encoder cards in
a single PC, thereby increasing the CPU requirements if you plan on simultaneously encoding multiple
programs. As a general guideline, plan on 1GHz per encoder if you are doing software-based encoding,
less if you are using a hardware-based encoder.

8

CHAPTER 2. HARDWARE 9

Here are a few data points:

• A PIII/733MHz system can encode one video stream using the MPEG-4 codec using 480x480
capture resolution. This does not allow for live TV watching, but does allow for encoding video
and then watching it later.
• A developer states that his AMD1800+ system can almost encode two MPEG-4 video streams
and watch one program simultaneously.
• A dual Celeron/450MHz is able to view a 480x480 MPEG-4/3300kbps file created on a different
system with 30% CPU usage.
• A P4 2.4GHz machine can encode two 3300Kbps 480x480 MPEG-4 files and simultaneously serve
content to a remote frontend.
• A PIII/733MHz system can capture two DVB streams and serve them both up for live TV - but
is slow at commercial flaggig.

If you have a Via mini-itx board with MPEG2 decoder or a Hauppauge PVR-350, MythTV can use
the hardware-based video decoder for playback, which further reduces CPU requirements.

2.2 Memory
A MythTV host that is both a backend and a frontend and using software encoding with a single capture
card should run adequately in 256MB of RAM. Additional RAM above 256MB will not necessarily
increase performance, but may be useful if you are running multiple encoders.

2.3 Hard Disk(s)
Encoded video takes up a lot of hard disk space. The exact amount depends on the encoding scheme,
the size of the raw images and the frames per second, but typical values for MythTV range from 700
megabytes/hour for MPEG-4, 2 GB/hour for MPEG-2 and RTjpeg and 7 GB/hour for ATSC HDTV.

If your building a seperate backend machine it can be advisable to install Mythbuntu on a smaller
>10GB disk with your recordings located on a second larger disk. This is because of all the additonal
read/writes made to a disk with the recordings it can cause disks to fail earlier than when used with
desktops.

2.4 Video Capture Devices
In order to capture video, MythTV will need one or more video capture devices with Linux drivers.
There are a number of classes of hardware available for capturing video.

2.4.1 Frame Grabbers
This class of card is the simplest and is usually the cheapest. There is no on-board encoding of the
analog video; hardware known as a Digital-Analog Converter (DAC) takes the video and presents it
to the computer in an essentially raw digital form.

For a list of video capture cards known to work with Linux, please see
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv for a partial listing; even if your specific card is not
listed, it may be that the vendor is actually using a standard reference design and placing their own
name on it. See the video4linux mailing list
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/video4linux-list for more information and for
specific hardware questions.


The most common inexpensive cards available use the Bt848, Bt878 or CX2388x series of video capture
chips; examples are the “Hauppauge WinTV Go” card and the “AverTV Desktop PVR” card, both
of which use the bttv kernel module.

NOTE: The ATI TV Wonder series and the ATI All-in-Wonder series of cards are not the same.
The All-in-Wonder cards will not work with MythTV.

The ATI All-in-Wonder cards (which are not the same as the ATI TV Wonder, TV Wonder VE or
TV Wonder Pro) will not work as a MythTV capture device because the GATOS http://gatos.
sourceforge.net drivers that are available provide only a limited subset of the V4L API. The TV
Wonder series of cards are supported by the Bt8x8 Video4Linux driver.

After you have installed a suitable capture device, you can check that the kernel sees it with lspci.
Look for an entry labeled “Multimedia video controller”. To get more detailed information about the
card, use lspci -v or lspci -vv. Ensure that your system is loading the bttv modules by typing:

# lsmod —grep bttv

You want to see the bttv module listed.

2.4.2 Hardware MPEG-2 encoders
While inexpensive video-capture cards simply capture raw frames, leaving encoding to software, some
higher-end cards incorporate hardware-based encoding. Using either a G200 MJPEG encoder card,
or a MPEG-2 encoder card supported by the IvyTV project http://ivtvdriver.org such as the
Hauppauge PVR-150/250/350/500, Avermedia M179, Hauppauge “Freestyle” or Yuan M600 cards
will allow you to use dedicated hardware encoders rather than your CPU. (The PVR-350 can simulta-
neously be used as an output device.) Using the on-board MPEG-2 encoder greatly reduces the CPU
requirements for encoding.

NOTE: Motherboards with the Via chipset are notoriously bad with DMA and have caused numerous
issues with ivtv, including hard locks. See the ivtv website http://ivtvdriver.org for the latest infor-
mation on what works and what doesn’t.

Here are some data points for encoding:

• A Celeron 450 uses 2

Here are some data points for decoding:

• An Athlon 1800XP can decode a 720x480 8Mbps MPEG-2 file using 10% CPU
• An Athlon 1GHz can decode a 720x480 16Mbps MPEG-2 file using 30-50% CPU, can decode a
480x480 16Mbps MPEG-2 using 30% CPU and approximately 30% for Live TV at 416x480.
• A P3-550 can decode a 480x480 16Mbps MPEG-2 file with 55% CPU.
• A Celeron 450 (no SSE) can decode a 480x480 16Mbps MPEG-2 file with 80% CPU.

2.4.3 DVB capture cards
DVB is a video standard primarily found in Europe (where it comes in DVB-C, DVB-T and DVB-S
varieties for Cable, Terrestrial and Satellite) and is also used as the programming interface for HDTV
capture cards in Linux. To see if your DVB card is supported, see the list of cards in the “Supported
Hardware” section of the DVB Wiki at http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page for
more information.

In the United States, you may use a card such as the TwinHan to obtain unencrypted Free-To-Air
satellite channels. See http://www.lyngsat.com/ for the types of content which is available.


2.4.4 HDTV
There are a number of HDTV cards with Linux drivers which are known to operate in the United States;
a complete list of cards with DVB drivers can be found at http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.
php/ATSC_devices Some cards support capture of unencrypted digital cable TV (utilizing QAM256),
others will only work with Over The Air signals captured with an antenna (with 8VSB).

Cards that have been reported to work include:

• pcHDTV HD-2000, Air2PC PCI rev 1-3 (8VSB only)
• SiliconDust HDHomeRun (8VSB, QAM256)
• pcHDTV HD-3000/5500 (8VSB, QAM256)
• Air2PC HD-5000 (8VSB, QAM256)

• DViCO Fusion HDTV Lite/Gold 5 (8VSB, QAM256)

NOTE: There are no known consumer-level capture devices which will allow you to capture the HDTV
output (DVI, HDMI, VGA, YPbPr / Component) from a set-top box commonly found with digital
cable systems or satellite systems. None of the capture devices listed above perform any encoding;
they merely allow your computer to save a copy of a HDTV stream which has already been converted
to MPEG-2 at the broadcast facility.

NOTE: All of the cards listed above (except for the HD-2000 and HDHomeRun) should be configured
as DVB cards. The HD-2000 can be configured as a pcHDTV card if you use the V4L drivers from
http://www.pchdtv.com and use Linux kernel 2.6.9 or earlier. With kernel 2.6.10 and higher it must
be configured as a DVB card, but you lose access to the second antenna input in ATSC mode. The
HDHomeRun should be configured as two HDHomeRun cards, one for each tuner.

To playback HDTV content, plan on a powerful CPU. “How powerful?” depends on a number of
factors, such as the capture resolution, whether the video is progressive or interlaced, and whether
your display card has hardware-assist support for Linux.

The Simple Answer: Once you are in the 3.2 Ghz P4-class of CPU you should have no issues with
viewing HDTV.

The Complicated Answer:

• For 720p content (1280x720), a 2.4GHz P4 should be sufficient.
• For 1920x1080i-¿1920x1080p with the better deinterlacing methods done in real time a 2.4GHz
CPU is taxed, but should work if you use “Bob and Weave” deinterlacing, or if you have an
NVIDIA card with MPEG-2 hardware acceleration. If you enable the hardware acceleration,
you may be able to use a 1.8GHz processor.

2.4.5 Firewire
You may use the Firewire output of the Motorola DCT6200 or the SA3250. If your provider uses 5C
encryption on a particular channel, you won’t be able to get any content.

2.4.6 DBoxII or other devices running Neutrino
You may use the Ethernet port of an DBoxII or a similar device to capture MPEG2. Your set top box
has to be running the Neutrino GUI.


2.4.7 USB Capture Devices
The Plextor ConvertX PVR devices are supported through Linux drivers available from
http://www.plextor.com/english/support/LinuxSDK.htm. MythTV uses the Plextor to capture hard-
ware encoded MPEG-4, so the host CPU requirements are low.

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 (driver available at http://www.isely.net/pvrusb2/) emulates a PVR-
x50 card. IP Recorder (RTSP, RTS, UDP)

MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and H.264 internet TS stream recording is supported using the IPTV recorder in
MythTV. This recorder expects the channels to be supplied as a m3u playlist. If your DSL/Fiber
provider supplies television service, but does not provide a m3u playlist for the channels, you can
construct one for your own use. You do not need to download it from the same server as the streams
themselves, and can also read it from a ﬁle if this is more convenient.

NOTE: Some DSL providers only allow you to use one recorder at a time, so you may need to limit
yourself to one recorder in MythTV and turn oﬀ any set top box the cable provider sold or rented to
you with your service. This limitation is independent of the bandwidth you have purchased.

2.4.8 Hardware known NOT to work and other issues
• Hauppauge WinTV-D or -HD (no driver)

• Hauppauge WinTV-USB series
• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-usb (model 602), or WinTV-PVR-PCI (model 880) cards (no driver -
this is not the PVR-250/350 series of cards supported by the IvyTV driver)
• Hauppauge HVR-1600. (no driver). NOTE: There have been reports (2006-12 timeframe) that
Hauppauge is putting the HVR-1600 inside of the PVR-150 box; if you’re purchasing a retail
PVR-150, carefully examine the packaging - there should be some indication that the hardware
inside is actually a HVR-1600 and not a PVR-150. Check the Supported Hardware
( http://www.ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Supported_hardware) page of the ivtv driver for
updated support information.
• ATI All-in-Wonder series

2.5 Sound Card
The system needs a sound card or an on-board equivalent on the motherboard to play back and in
most cases, to record sound. Any sound card that can be operated by the ALSA (Advanced Linux
Sound Architecture) kernel modules will work with MythTV. However, some cards and drivers will
provide better quality or compatibility than others. In particular, many audio devices included on
motherboards can be problematic.

The usual practice for capturing the audio associated with the video is to run a cable from an audio
output on the video capture card to the Line input on a sound card. However, some video capture
cards provide on-board audio capabilities that work with the kernel btaudio module instead, thereby
eliminating the need for a cable. This is useful if you will be using multiple capture cards in a single
chassis, since each capture card will not need its own sound card. Note that a separate sound card is
still required for playback when using btaudio, and that often the audio recorded in this way will be
mono only. See the btaudio section for more information.

NOTE: Analog video capture cards are the only ones which require a sound card for capturing audio.
DVB, HDTV, and other hardware encoder cards all provide a combined audio / video stream.

NOTE: Plugging a Line-level device into the Mic input is not recommended. Line-level devices have
higher voltages and can damage the sound card. In addition, even if it doesn’t break your card, you will


be getting Mono sound. See the Linux MP3 HOWTO at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO.
html for additional information.

2.6 Video Display Card
MythTV will work with just about any video card. However, it is highly recommended that you use a
card which supports XVideo (XV) extensions. If your card does not support XV, color conversion and
scaling will be performed by your CPU rather than the video card. This is very CPU and memory
intensive and will often result in dropped frames and a corresponding degradation of quality. Check
the X documentation for details if you are uncertain about your preferred card. You may also run
xvinfo; look for your video card to be listed as one of the adapters.

If you want to use MythTV with a standard television, you will need a physical connection from your
video card to your TV set, which can either be a TV-out port on the card itself or an external adapter
that converts the VGA signal to an appropriate video signal. “Appropriate” depends on a number
of factors, such as video standard (NTSC vs. PAL), the type of input connection (Composite vs.
SVideo), etc.

Note that with some video cards and X drivers, XVideo extensions are only supported on the VGA
output, and not on the TV output. Cards with TV-out

The next section deals with a number of cards that are known to have TV-out ports. The list is
unlikely to be complete, so if you know of others, please post a message to the mythtv-users mailing
list so the information can be included in future versions of the HOWTO. The list is organized by
manufacturer.

2.6.1 ATI
ATI makes many cards with TV-out capability, but only offers Linux drivers for Radeon 8500 and
above cards. See the Drivers and Software section of http://www.ati.com for the driver and additional
information.

The enhanced ati.2 X driver created by the GATOS http://gatos.sourceforge.net project offers
some support for TV-out on other ATI cards, but only in its “experimental” version, available through
CVS. There have been reports from people who say they have made this driver work with one or
another ATI card. For example, Bruce Markey mailto:bjm@lvcm.com writes (on the mythtv-users
mailing list): “I got this to work. You can quote me on that. I’ve used TV-out on several models of
ATI cards both All-In-Wonder and regular cards with TV-out.” See the “Adventurous Setup” section of
http://gatos.sourceforge.net/watching_tv.php for details. Also see http://www.retinalburn.
net/linux/tvout.html for more information.

2.6.2 NVIDIA
Some NVIDIA cards with TV-out can be run using the standard nv driver in X, combined with the
userspace application nvtv to control the TV-out port. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/
nv-tv-out/ for details. Recent versions of the NVIDIA driver have better support for overscan and
other features useful with TV-Out, so the nvtv application may not be required.

Some NVIDIA cards can be run with a proprietary NVIDIA X driver made available by NVIDIA. See
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more information.

NOTE: It’s strongly recommended that you use the proprietary NVIDIA drivers; they have excellent
support for XvMC and ship with a good configuration utility. XvMC provides MPEG-2 hardware
acceleration, which is important if you want to display HDTV.


2.6.3 Hauppauge PVR-350
MythTV supports the TV-out and MPEG-2 decoder functions in the IvyTV driver.

The PVR-350 is unique amongst the Hauppauge PVR-x50 cards in that it also supports audio output,
but you need to connect that audio output to something. There are two courses of action you may
take:

1. Take the audio output from the PVR-350 and plug it into an input on a sound card on your
machine. You may then use MythTV’s internal audio controls.
2. Take the audio output from the PVR-350 and connect it directly to your television / audio
system. You must indicate that you are using external audio control on the PVR-350 setup
page.

2.6.4 Other Options
Some devices with on-board TV-out capability, such as mini-itx boards, Xboxes converted to Linux
and some laptops can be used as MythTV frontends to display on a television screen. Please consult
the mythtv-users mailing list for messages that report the details of these special arrangements.

2.6.5 External Adapters
External adapters convert standard VGA output to a form suitable for display on a television. The
output format varies by region, since different countries have different TV standards. People on the
mythtv-users list have mentioned these adapters:

• AITech Web Cable Plus, powered by external transformer or takes power from PS/2 keyboard
connector, support resolutions up to 1024x768, outputs composite and SVideo, provides position
adjustment.
• Averkey lite, powered by a USB port, has Composite, SVideo, YPbPr outputs; pan, brightness,
overscan/underscan controls; supports up to 1024x768 outputs; and supports PAL and NTSC.
• ADS TV Elite XGA

• AverKey iMicro (comments are generally favorable)
• AITech Web Cable (comments are generally unfavorable, different than the “Plus” version above)
• TVIEW Gold (mentioned once, favorably)

Chapter 3

Installation Types

A new Mythbuntu installation may be performed via three methods. Each of the methods has distinct
advantages, so compare your circumstances before selecting one:

1. Installation from a Mythbuntu Live CD.
2. Installation from a Mythbuntu Alternate CD.
3. Installation of the mythbuntu-desktop meta-package on top of an existing ubuntu install.

3.1 Live CD
Most people will want to install using the Live CD. Of the three options, this is the fastest selection.
It also provides the most granularity for selecting options, and configuring packages. The GUI for
installation is very easy to follow and friendly for new users.
Another advantage to performing a Mythbuntu installation from CD is the higher level of automa-
tion that the Mythbuntu ubiquity CD installer provides. To achieve the same results in method 2 or
3 as those of 1 would require additional configuration steps to be performed.
Installation method 1 provides several options immediately during the installation process that are
not available in method 3 or 2 until the Mythbuntu Control Center (MCC) can be run post-install. For
example, installation of the mythbuntu-desktop meta-package does not install any plugins. Installation
of plugins in method 3 requires installing plugins as a separate step. Additional tasks that can be
performed during install include:
• configuring remote controls supported by LIRC,
• enabling and configuring proprietary front-end video drivers, including TV-OUT function,

• configuring backend drivers, including installing the Silicon Dust HDHomerun configuration util-
ity, and enabling XMLTV guide data provider for subscribers of Schedules Direct.
Also, you may choose to install the mythweb plugin in order to access mythtv functions from a
remote web browser. To prevent unauthorized external access to your Mythbuntu installation, the CD
installation method allows you to setup an access password. No steps are taken to secure mythweb in
method 3. Mythweb must be secured post-install via the MCC in method 3.

3.2 Alternate CD
As previously mentioned, the preferred method of installation on a new system is the Live CD. That
being said, the Mythbuntu Alternate CD has three main intended uses.
The first use is for people who have troubles with the Live CD. Sometimes people with older
graphics cards or too little memory aren’t able to start up the Live CD. For these users, the Alternate
CD may be able to perform an installation, allowing a user to defer configuration of this dsyfunctional
hardware later.

15

CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION TYPES 16

The second use is for people who want to use Logical Volume Management (LVM). LVM can allow
multiple physical drives to appear to the system as a single logical partition. This has become less
of an issue with the advent of storage groups, which are available in Mythbuntu 8.04+ and MythTV
0.21+. Users that would still like to use LVM however, can install via the alternate disk.
The last use is for pre-configuring and installing a diskless server role. Diskless servers have been
introduced with Mythbuntu 8.04. Unfortunately, the only way to install and configure one at instal-
lation time is via the Altenate disk. If a user installs using any other method, the diskless server will
have to be created and configured after installation. Doing it during installation has the distinct speed
advantage of all packages (debs) being cached on the CD rather than needing to download them after
install.
By choosing this method, unfortunately the only selectable options will be the type of install,
Frontend, Backend, etc.

3.3 Metapackage
There may be a variety of reasons for installing the mythbuntu-desktop meta-package on an existing
ubuntu install.
The most common reason users follow this is because they have already configured the box that
they intend to use Mythbuntu on to their liking. Adding on the Mythbuntu tasks makes more sense
in that case. NOTE: If you are setting up a new mythtv box, please use the Live CD or Alternate CD.
For assistance with installation method 3, please refer to the instructions on http://www.mythbuntu.
org/existing-ubuntu. These instructions will enable you to add any of the Mythbuntu roles directly
to an existing Ubuntu installation.
The biggest reason to stay away from this method on a new install is because Mythbuntu uses
the XFCE4 desktop. Applications such as OpenOffice, Evolution, and a full Gnome desktop are not
installed for a Mythbuntu installation. Thus, if these applications are unnecessary for your Mythbuntu
box, this excess bloat of an existing install can be easily avoided by installation method 1.

Chapter 4

Booting the Mythbuntu Live CD

In this chapter we will walk you through the booting from the Mythbuntu CD. If you haven’t down-
loaded it yet you should visit http://www.mythbuntu.org/downloads to download and burn it to a
disc.

Once the ISO has been downloaded and burned to a disc, simply pop it into your CD-ROM drive
with your BIOS set to boot from CD. You will be presented with a boot loader menu as shown
in ﬁgure 4.1 From this screen you can start the installer two ways. If you select the Mythbuntu
Live Environment, you will be booted into LiveCD mode. From this mode, you can operate any
applications available on the Mythbuntu disk, including the installer. If you won’t be needing anything
other than the installer, select the Install Mythbuntu option by selecting it via the up-down keys
and pressing enter. This option is particularly useful on memory limited systems that may not be able
to handle the entire live environment.

Figure 4.1: ISOLinux Boot Screen

17

CHAPTER 4. BOOTING THE MYTHBUNTU LIVE CD 18

Once the disc has booted you’ll be presented with the screen shown in ﬁgure 4.2

Figure 4.2: The Mythbuntu desktop

From this environment, you will be able to either run a Live CD Frontend, Install Mythbuntu, or
use any preinstalled applications on the disk. Feel free to explore around the disk. No changes will be
made to your system unless you proceed with Install Mythbuntu.

Chapter 5

Live CD Environment

5.1 Running a Frontend from CD
After lanching the “Live CD Frontend” you’ll be shown the following screen where you can conﬁgure
the plugins you’ll like to use and enter your master backend connection information. You can either
launch the session straight away or save your settings to a usb stick / mounted network drive and then
launch mythtv. If you choose to save your settings you’ll be prompted with a choice of where you’d
like the settings saved to.

Figure 5.1:

19

CHAPTER 5. LIVE CD ENVIRONMENT 20

Master Backend Information
To connect to your Master Backend you’ll need to enter the database connection details here, these
can be found on your backend in /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt although the host in ﬁle will mostly like need
to be replaced with the ip address of the machine. Once your settings have been entered test your
connection to make sure everything is working.

Figure 5.2: Master Backend Information Tab


Videos Plugin
Within the LiveCD you can also watch videos which is mounted via either SMB or NFS. Simply select
the share type from the box and enter the details required.

Figure 5.3: Video Plugin Tab


Pictures Plugin
Within the LiveCD you can also look at pictures which is mounted via either SMB or NFS. Simply
select the share type from the box and enter the details required.

Figure 5.4: Picture Plugin Tab


Music Plugin
Within the LiveCD you can also listen to music which is mounted via either SMB or NFS. Simply
select the share type from the box and enter the details required.

Figure 5.5: Music Plugin Tab


Remote Plugin
Another great thing with the LiveCD is the ability to use preset controls, simply enable the remote
control and then choose your control type from the drop down menus.

Figure 5.6: Remote Control Plugin Tab


Additional Settings
Under additional settings you can set the LiveCD to autostart MythTV on boot (only worthwhile if
you save the settings) along with setting the home dir to an external disk. The hostname can also be
changed here if you wished.

Figure 5.7: Additional Settings Tab

Chapter 6

Networking Configuration

By default, the Mythbuntu networking configuration will use DHCP via ethernet. If you have a need
for wireless support, or a static network you will need to adjust your configuration. This can be done
both on the Live disk as well as after the system is installed.

6.1 Wireless Support
If you have a wireless card, you will need to use Network Manager to modify your networking settings.
At the top right of the Xfce environment, click the network icon. You should see a list of wireless
networks that are not blocking their ESSID. Click a network to connect to it.

Figure 6.1: Network Manager (Automatic)

26

CHAPTER 6. NETWORKING CONFIGURATION 27

6.1.1 Advanced Wireless
If you will be moving among diﬀerent networks with this machine, it is recommended that you use
Network Manager. There are a few caveats to using wireless via Network Manager:
• If you have a network with a protected key, you will need to enter a password to unlock the
keyring every time you login.
• Network Manager can’t handle networks with static IP addresses.
• Hidden networks will not show up in the list.
All of these items can be handled by setting up a wireless network manually. To do so, choose the
Network Manager icon and choose Manual conﬁguration.

Figure 6.2: Network Manager (Manual Step 1)

In the dialog that appears, choose your wireless card and hit properties.



In the dialog that appears, uncheck Enable roaming mode. Select (or enter) your network
information in the Network Name (ESSID) box, and fill out the rest of the dialog.


6.2 Wired support
By default, Network Manager will configure your network for DHCP via ethernet.

6.2.1 Advanced Wired
If you have a need for a static IP address, you will need to disable Network manager from handling
your wired network. To do so, choose the Network Manager icon and choose Manual configuration.

Figure 6.5: Network Manager Wired (Manual Step 1)


In the dialog that appears, choose your wired card and hit properties.


Fill out the dialog that appears.


Chapter 7

Installing Mythbuntu from Live CD

7.1 Starting Oﬀ
To launch the installation program double click on the Install Mythbuntu icon located on the desk-
top, this will launch the screen shown in ﬁgure 7.1. You can now select the language to be used once
installed and during installation, select your chosen language and click on the Forward button.

Figure 7.1: Step 1 of 15

30

CHAPTER 7. INSTALLING MYTHBUNTU FROM LIVE CD 31

This brings us to ﬁgure 7.2. On this screen you need to select the a city that located within your
country and timezone, this allows for automatic changes for day light savings etc. You can select your
city either by selecting it on the map or via the selection box. Once you’re happy with your choice
click on the Forward button.



You are now able to choose your keyboard layout. Select your keyboard layout from the options
and test the keys to ensure they behave as expected. Once you’re happy click on the Forward button.



You’re now able to choose how you wish to partition the disk space. It’s recommended that you
select Guided Partition and the drive you wish to partition. and click the forward button. You can
however manually partition your drive but it won’t be covered here. You would do this if you where
to install the OS onto one drive and your recordings onto another.



It’s now time to enter your login details, password and your computer’s name. So enter the required
details and continue by clicking the forward button. NOTE: Please don’t use the userid mythtv.



7.2 Standard Installation
NOTE: This installation should only be used if it is your first Mythbuntu machine on
the network, otherwise follow the Advanced Installation 7.3 guide.
A standard installation will install and configure every option with minimal user interaction, it
configures the system up to run as a frontend and a backend as well as installing all the plugins,
themes. Samba and ssh are also install and configured to allow for easier maintenance. You should
have a screen similar to figure 7.6, select the Standard Installation option and click on the Forward
button.



Mythbuntu is able to make use of any remote which is supported by the LIRC project, a list of
them is available at http://www.lirc.org/html/table.html. If you wish to configure one then click
on the Enable a Remote Control checkbox. This will provided a drop down menu to enable the
selection of a supported remote. Upon selection the required fields are automatically filled in. However
if your remote isn’t listed you can either select Other Remote option and fill the required info in
or file a bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mythbuntu/+filebug with details of the remote and
we’ll try and get it added for the future.

You can also enable an IR transmitter at this stage as well. Click on the Enable an IR Trans-
mitter checkbox. This will provide a drop down menu to enable the selection of a supported blaster.
Upon selection the required field should automatically be filled in.

When you’re satisfied with the options click on the Forward button.

Remotes which require extra work once mythbuntu is installed are:
• AppleTV remotes

• Remotes supported via dev/input



Proprietary drivers can be enabled for your video cards here if you choose to use them. This is done
by selecting Modify Video Driver & Settings and selecting the driver you wish to use. If you chose
to enable the proprietary drivers then you’re now able to conﬁgure TV-OUT. Refer to the TV-OUT
reference section 17.2 for more information as to the settings you’ll likely require.
The Silicon Dust HDHomerun Conﬁguration Utility should be enabled if you wish to use your
backend with HD Homerun.



At this stage you can review the selection you’ve made, where if you’re unhappy with any of them
you can return and change your choices. If you are happy with the settings you’ve chosen, click on the
Install button to install.


Note The installer may appear to hang around 94%-95% however alot of packages are installed
and setup in this stage which take a while


When the installation process has completed, you will be able to create your SchedulesDirect
account if you haven’t already. This will launch the included browser and send you to the http:
//www.schedulesdirect.org website. If you previously created an account this is not necessary, and
you can go directly to the backend setup. When you’re ready, select MythTV Setup and move along
to Chapter 9



7.3 Advanced Installation
An advanced installation can be used to customize what is needed for the Mythbuntu install. It must
also be used if you wish to add this Mythbuntu installation to an existing MythTV setup. You should
have a screen similar to ﬁgure 7.11, select the Advanced Installation option and click on the Forward
button.



You are now presented with a screen similar to figure 7.12. After reading the options outlined
below follow the relevant section.

Primary Backend with Frontend A Backend/Frontend combination machine. This will be the
most common setup for people wanting to use Mythbuntu for HTPC/PVR applications. This
type of installations is intended for use as a component in your home theatre and where an
existing MythTV setup isn’t in existence. See section 7.4
Secondary Backend with Frontend A Backend/Frontend combination machine. This will be the
most common setup for people wanting to use Mythbuntu for HTPC/PVR applications. This
type of installations is intended for use as a component in your home theatre and where an
existing MythTV backend server is already in existence. See section 7.5
Primary Backend A Backend only machine is typically designed to function like an appliance; re-
quiring very little maintenance. This is intended to be installed as the first backend on a network.
This should be chosen if you wish to run your frontend and backend on physically different com-
puters. See section 7.6
Secondary Backend A Backend only machine is typically designed to function like an appliance;
requiring very little maintenance. This is intended to be installed as an additional backend on a
network. See section 7.7

Frontend A frontend only machine’s main function is to receive media content from the backend(s)
and play it back. This requires a backend to already exist on the network. See section 7.8



7.4 Primary Backend with Frontend
Select the Primary Backend w/Frontend option and click on the Forward button
You are oﬀered the choice of various Myth plugin’s which can be installed, for a list of these and
what they do please look at myth plugin reference section located at 17.1. Select the plugins you
require and click the forward button.



You’re now oﬀered with the chance to choose the themes you require. Select your themes and click
the forward button.



On this screen, you may choose the additional services which you wish to have installed and
conﬁgured to run automatically. Beside each option is a description of the service, select the ones you
want and click the forward button. If you’re going to have remote backends/frontends then you need
to enable the “MythTV Service” so that they can connect.



Passwords. It’s advisable to set a password for the root account of your database. If you opted
to install Mythweb you can also deﬁne a user and password here. Enter your passwords and click the
forward button.






• AppleTV remotes




to Chapter 9



7.5 Secondary Backend with Frontend
Select the Secondary Backend w/Frontend option and click on the Forward button



the forward button.



want and click the forward button.



Mythbackend connection information, this is where you enter the details to connect to your master
backend, the MYSQL server box should take an IP address or hostname of the backend. The password
should match what you use on your master backend. Once you’re details are entered test the connection
to save problems later on. If you opted to install Mythweb you can also set a password here. Enter
your passwords and click the forward button.






• AppleTV remotes




to Chapter 9



7.6 Primary Backend
Select the Primary Backend option and click on the Forward button



want and click the forward button. If you’re going to have remote backends/frontends then you need
to enable the “MythTV Service” so that they can connect.



Passwords. It’s advisable to set a password for the root account of your database. If you opted
to install Mythweb you can also deﬁne a user and password here. Enter your passwords and click the
forward button.



The Silicon Dust HDHomerun Conﬁguration Utlity should be enabled if you wish to use your



to Chapter 9



7.7 Secondary Backend
Select the Secondary Backend option and click on the Forward button



backend, the MYSQL server box should take an IP address or hostname of the backend. The password
should match what you use on your master backend. Once you’re details are entered test the connection
to save problems later on. If you opted to install Mythweb you can also set a password here. Enter
your passwords and click the forward button.



The Silicon Dust HDHomerun Conﬁguration Utlity should be enabled if you wish to use your



to Chapter 9



7.8 Frontend
Select the Frontend option and click on the Forward button



the forward button.



backend, the MYSQL server box should take an IP address or hostname of the backend. Once your
details are entered test the connection to save problems later on.






• AppleTV remotes



Chapter 8

Booting the Mythbuntu Alternate
CD

In this chapter we will walk you through the booting from the Mythbuntu Alternate CD. If you haven’t
downloaded it yet you should visit now http://www.mythbuntu.org/downloads to download and burn
it to a disc.

Once the ISO has been downloaded and burned to a disc, simply pop it into your CD-ROM drive
with your BIOS set to boot from CD. You will be presented with a boot loader menu as shown in
ﬁgure 8.1 From this screen you can either directly start the installer, or activate the diskless server
task.

Figure 8.1: ISOLinux Boot Screen

If you would like to activate the diskless server task, press F4 and select Install a Diskless Server

77

Chapter 9

MythTV Backend Setup

9.1 Initial Configuration Page
The initial configuration page will present you with 6 options. It is strongly recommended that you
follow these in order the first time you configure a backend installation.

Figure 9.1: Initial configuration page

78

CHAPTER 9. MYTHTV BACKEND SETUP 79

9.2 General
The general section is where you will set up the major information related to the master backend,
job scheduling, and default locale information. It is setup in a sequential design with Back and Next
buttons. You can also use the underlined letters with alt to move around. i.e., alt-N is “Next”, alt-B
is “Back”, alt-C is “Cancel”, and alt-F is “Finish”.

The first screen of the General configuration deals with IP addresses of the backend system that
you’re running mythtv-setup on. If you are setting up only one backend/frontend installation, then
the default values are fine and you can move to the next page by pressing Enter. If you need to move
around the screen, use the arrow keys to move focus between settings.

The default value shown on install will be 127.0.0.1, which is the internal loopback for the local
machine. If you plan on deploying multiple backends, running mythweb from another computer, or if
your backend is on one system and you’re running the frontend on another machine then do not use
the “127.0.0.1” IP address. Set this to the ip address of the backend as recognized by other machines
on your network. If you are using a router on your network that only hands out dynamic addresses,
you might consider setting up this machine with a static IP address instead.

NOTE: If you modify the 127.0.0.1 address and use a “real” IP address, you must use real IP
addresses in both fields, otherwise your frontend machines will generate “Unexpected response to
MYTH PROTO VERSION” errors.

Changing any of the port settings is very strongly discouraged. (If you do accidentally change them,
the defaults are 6543 for the master/backend server, and 6544 for the HTTP requests)

Once you’re satisfied with the values, move the focus down to Next and hit Enter.

Figure 9.2: Host Address Backend Setup


The next screen details the Host-specific Backend setup. This is where you will set the specific
directory path for this particular backend.

As long as you setup a separate partition for /var/lib during the initial setup, the default option
here - /var/lib/mythtv will work fine. If you setup a different mount point or won’t be recording with
this machine, be sure to set this accordingly. (Also, if you used a non-default location, be sure and set
the ownership and permissions to match /var/lib/mythtv.)

If for some reason you chose a file system other then XFS or JFS for this partition, choose to delete
the files slowly. This will avoid some nasty bugs related to using ReiserFS or ext3.

Figure 9.3: Host-specific Backend Setup


The Global Backend Setup screen will change settings that aﬀect all backends.

Your TV standard should be determined based on your locale. US users should choose NTSC.
European users should chose PAL

The VBI Format is used for closed captioning.

The channel frequency table is also based on your locale.

US and Canadian users using Schedules Direct can skip the time oﬀset for xmltv listings. Interna-
tional users will need to set this appropriately so that their data matches up at the correct time.

Figure 9.4: Global Backend Setup


The EIT scanner is used to gather data on the ﬂy. If you have a DVB based source or a source
providing this data, you will conﬁgure it here

Figure 9.5: EIT scanner


The Shutdown/Wakeup options are used for suspending or shutting down the backend server when
it has been idle for the set limit. You can conﬁgure the master and/or secondary backend(s) to go into a
sleep, suspend, or shutdown mode when not in use- depending on the capabilities of your motherboard.

There are diﬀerent methods you can use to accomplish this. A tutorial on ACPI wakeup/shut-
down can be found on the ACPIWake page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/
WhatNext/ACPIWake. You should complete MythTV installation and ensure the backend is properly
functioning before trying to set up this function.

Figure 9.6: Shutdown/Wakeup


WakeOnLan is another method of conﬁguring secondary backends to wakeup. https://help.
ubuntu.com/community/WakeOnLan

Figure 9.7: Wake On Lan


The Host Specific Job Queue sets up the types of jobs that are allowed to run on this machine.
If you have multiple backends, you can configure certain backends to only handle particular types of
jobs. This is especially useful if some are much more underpowered then others.

It isn’t recommended to have more then 2 simultaneous jobs running on any backend at any given
time.

The default job queue frequency of 60 seconds is adequate and doesn’t need to be changed typically.

Unless this backend is dedicated to only Transcoding/Commercial flagging jobs, don’t change the
CPU usage. Anything set higher then “Low” may jeopardize the ability to record programs due to
being starved for IO/CPU usage.

Figure 9.8: Job Queue - Host Specific


The Global Specific Job Queue sets up things affecting any and all backends on a mythtv network.

If you don’t check “Run Jobs only on original recording host”, each of the jobs will be evenly
distributed against possible backends. This will lessen the load on each machine.

A decently powered backend with hardware encoding cards (1Ghz+) should be able to flag com-
mercials at the same time as the recording is going. This helps if you ever plan to time shift your
recording viewing by 10 or 20 minutes and want to have the commercials flagged as you watch.

Typically you won’t want to run your transcode jobs before commercial flagging. The idea should
be that you will flag commercials, verify they are right and manually queue them up to be transcoded
and removed. If you have a particular reason to transcode first, check this box.

If you set up the backend to save the original files after transcoding, these will not be automatically
deleted, but rather fill up your recordings directory with .old files. You will have to manually go in
there and delete them to free up recording space as necessary.

Figure 9.9: Job Queue - Global Specific


The Job Queue page provides an area to add your own scripts to perform on recordings.

Some ideas for additional things can range from scp’ing a recording somewhere, transcoding it to
ﬁt on an ipod and copying it to a directory, or running it through a denoising ﬁlter.

Figure 9.10: Job Queue


9.3 Capture Cards
The capture cards section will list all capture cards setup locally on this backend.

The initial capture cards page will list all cards in this backend.

Choose “New Capture Card” to begin and add your tuner(s).

If you need to reset the order of the tuners recognized, you can either delete these capture cards,
or all capture cards in the mythtv network from this screen.

Figure 9.11: Capture Cards


When choosing a capture source, it’s important to choose the correct type.

A very common error is when choosing the Hauppauge PVR Cards. There is an option for MPEG-2
Encoder Card (PVR-X50, PVR-500) as well as for standard V4L card. Be sure to choose the MPEG-2
encoder option here if you use a Hauppauge card.

Each of the different types of sources has several options available to it.

If you are confused about any of the options, see the mythtv documentation, mailing list, MythTV
wiki http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Video_capture_card, or LinuxTV wiki http://linuxtv.
org/v4lwiki/.

If you are configuring a firewire connection, settings can be found on the MythTV Firewire Page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_Firewire.

Figure 9.12: Capture Card Setup


9.4 Video Sources
Video sources section will list all video sources in use for the mythtv database. The video sources will
be conﬁgured to connect to the listing service you are using such as Data-Direct, XMLTV, EIT. Select
“New video source” as shown below.

Figure 9.13: Video Source Setup


Provide your video source with a logical name into the “Video source name” text area. Its a good
idea to provide detail now, because later you may end up adding more tuners, digital cable, satellite,
etc.
For the “XMLTV listings grabber” choose Data-Direct for North America or XMLTV for else-
where. For Schedules Direct, enter the username and password you obtained during Schedules Direct
registration. Retrieve the lineup and choose your option.
If the “Channel frequency table” needs changing for a diﬀerent frequency then set it here.

Figure 9.14: Video Source Setup


9.5 Input Connections
The input connections page allows you assign any Video Sources to Inputs on your capture sources
before. Choose the particular input you will need to assign and press enter.

Figure 9.15: Video Input Setup


Again, it’s a good idea to provide a name for your Input here. Later on, if you have a tuner not
working, it’s easier to debug if it says ”Digital Cable” in the frontend and then doesn’t work. Choose
the Video source associated with the input in the “Video source”. If you need to use an external channel
changer script (ﬁrewire, serial, IR), you will need to enter the name of the binary/script that needs to
be launched here. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_External_Channel_Changer
for more information.
If you are using a static channel listing, fetch channels from your listings source via “Fetch channels
from listings source”. If you are using something that scans on the ﬂy via EIT or OTA HD, scan for
the initial channels by selecting “Scan for channels”.



You can assign the priority you wish to have for the card. These enables you to prefer certain
tunner cards over others, for instance to prefer DVB-T over DVB-S when both can record the same
show. Input groups can also be created to provide a way to mange groups of cards, such as all DVB-T
cards and all DVB-S cards.



9.6 Channel Editor
Warning The delete channels button deletes ALL channels. If you want to delete just one, choose it
in the list and press the delete key.
The channel editor isn’t necessary for the inital setup. You can safely ignore it for now, but
remember to come here if you need to modify transports, change channel numbers, or delete channels.
The listing of all channels is on the top half of the screen. If you need to repeat a scan for any
sources already setup, you can preform this via “Channel Scanner”.
If your DVB trasports are messed up, you can adjust them in the Transport Editor via “Transport
Editor”.

Figure 9.18: Channel Editor


Storage groups can be created which allows for recordings to be spread out across different disks.
This allows you to avoid the use of LVM or raid arrays. You simply define the storage groups you
require. Then when you setup the recording rule you have an option for which storage group to write
to. It’s also possible to define storage groups for the automatic database backup and live TV.

Figure 9.19: Storage Groups


Once you’ve choosen to create or edit a storage group your presented with a screen similar to the
one below. This allows you to add, edit and delete directories within this group.



Chapter 10

Mythbuntu Control Center (MCC)

The Mythbuntu Control Centre is the main area for configuring different items within Mythbuntu. It
strives to prevent having to use the command line to reconfigure items. Instead, an easy to use pyGTK
interface is provided.

Figure 10.1: MCC Main Screen

98

CHAPTER 10. MYTHBUNTU CONTROL CENTER (MCC) 99

10.1 Starting MCC
There are three ways to launch the Mythbuntu Control Centre. Depending on what your goal of the
interaction is and your current system setup will depend on the way you decide to launch it.

10.1.1 Inside MythTV
If you have a MythTV frontend running, you can access the control centre by Choosing Utili-
ties/Setup, Setup, Mythbuntu. MCC will request that you enter your user password, and then
will launch on top of MythTV frontend. If you accidently click outside the MCC window, simply press
alt-tab to switch back to MCC.

Figure 10.2: Starting MCC From MythTV

10.1.2 From Xfce
Mythbuntu uses the Xfce desktop. All applications are directly available from an Applications menu at
the top left corner of the screen. To get to the Xfce desktop, you will need to quit MythTV Frontend.
Choose the Applications Menu, and then System. MCC will be an item listed in this menu.


Figure 10.3: Starting MCC From Xfce

10.1.3 From Gnome
If you have installed from an Ubuntu desktop, or added an Ubuntu desktop to your Mythbuntu system,
you will be able to access MCC from your gnome menu system. Simply click the System menu, and
choose Administration. MCC will be one of the menu items listed in this menu.

Figure 10.4: Starting MCC From Gnome

10.2 Using MCC
As previously discussed, MCC attempts to provide an easy to use interface for reconﬁguring all im-
portant items on a Mythbuntu system. The interface is broken up into logical groups of items. Each
item is discussed in detail below.

10.2.1 System Roles
The System Roles tab is used to determine what type of box you have conﬁgured.
• Primary Backend: All MythTV setups must have a single Primary Backend. All backends
and frontends will connect to this machine.
• Secondary Backend: Secondary backends are useful to expand the power of a MythTV network
by harnassing additional power from more machines.


Figure 10.5: MCC System Roles Tab

• Frontend: Frontends are used to view any content recorded on a MythTV network.
• Desktop: If you decide that you would like to use this machine as a normal desktop at any
time, you can add as many desktop roles as desired.


A Standard Mythbuntu installation will have a Primary Backend, and Frontend role installed.
If at any time you decide that you would like to change the behavior of the box to add or remove
functional roles, you can do so here. After installing a Secondary Backend or Frontend role, you will
want to update the information listed on the MythTV Configuration tab 10.2.2.

NOTE: You must apply changes to the System Roles tab before proceeding to modify other tabs. If
you try to switch to another tab without applying, you will be forced to revert changes or apply them
at that time.

10.2.2 MythTV Configuration

Figure 10.6: MCC MythTV Configuration Tab

The MythTV configuration tab has different purposes depending on which role(s) you have in-
stalled. If you have either a Primary or Secondary backend role installed, you will be able to launch
MythTV Setup from here to reconfigure backend specific items.

If you have any Mythbuntu roles other than a Primary Backend, you will be able to reconfig-
ure any MySQL information used for contacting the Primary Backend. This information can be
found on your Primary Backend under the file /etc/mythtv/mysql.txt. Before applying the changes,
be sure to test your MySQL connection.


10.2.3 Applications and Plugins

Figure 10.7: MCC Applications and Plugins Tab

The Applications and Plugins tab can be used to install all available MythTV plugins as well as
applications that are well paired with them. You can also enable or disable a password for Mythweb
on this page.

The following plugins are installable:
1. Mytharchive
2. Mythbrowser

3. Mythcontrols
4. Mythdvd
5. Mythﬂix
6. Mythgame

7. Mythgallery
8. Mythmusic
9. Mythnews
10. Mythphone

11. Mythstream
12. Mythvideo
13. Mythweather

14. Mythweb


The following applications are installable:
1. Mplayer
2. Xine
3. VLC

NOTE: Plugins may or may not be greyed out. If a plugin is greyed out, this is because it isn’t
applicable to the chosen role.

10.2.4 Proprietary Drivers
Proprietary drivers provide enhanced performance for video playback and allow for OpenGL effects
within the MythTV menus. To install a proprietary driver, you can open up Restricted Manager.
Depending on which proprietary driver is installed, one of the buttons for configuration of your
particular graphics card will be available. You can modify the tv out settings using the configuration
utility here.
Also in this area you can modify which resolutions are available by modifying your monitor type.

10.2.5 Remote Control

Figure 10.8: MCC Remote Control Tab

10.2.6 System Services
10.2.7 Artwork and Login Behavior
10.2.8 Proprietary Codecs
10.2.9 Advanced Management


Figure 10.9: MCC Services Tab

Figure 10.10: MCC Artwork and Login Tab


Figure 10.11: MCC Proprietary Codecs Tab

Figure 10.12: MCC Advanced Tab

Chapter 11

Conﬁguring Mythtv Plugins

11.1 Myth Web
11.2 Myth Archive
To conﬁgure the Archive plugin, using the default theme, navigate to Music Settings via Utilities /
Setup ->Setup ->Media Settings. You’ll then be presented with a screen as below:

Figure 11.1: Archive Plugin

107

CHAPTER 11. CONFIGURING MYTHTV PLUGINS 108

11.3 Myth Browser
11.4 Myth Controls
11.5 Myth Dvd
To conﬁgure the Dvd plugin, using the default theme, navigate to Music Settings via Utilities / Setup
->Setup ->Media Settings. You’ll then be presented with a screen as below:

Figure 11.2: Archive Plugin


11.6 Myth Flix
11.7 Myth Gallery
To conﬁgure the Gallery plugin, using the default theme, navigate to Music Settings via Utilities /
Setup ->Setup ->Media Settings. You’ll then be presented with a screen as below:

Figure 11.3: Gallery Plugin


11.8 Myth Game
To conﬁgure the Game plugin, using the default theme, navigate to Music Settings via Utilities / Setup

Figure 11.4: Myth Game


11.9 Myth Music
To configure the Music plugin, using the default theme, navigate to Music Settings via Utilities / Setup

Figure 11.5: Music Tools

There are various options you can change here most of which are self explanatory, however below
is some info for those which aren’t.

Tree Sorting Determines the order in which the music tree is sorted, this should be entered as a
space-separated list. Options are album, artist, genre, splitartist, splitartist1 and title OR
use the keyword directory to mirror the filesystem tree.
Filename Format This is the filename format which your music collection is stored in, and used
used to determine Album, Artist, Genre, Title and Track Number when Ignore ID3 Tags is set
to true or when no ID3 information is found. Options are ALBUM, ARTIST, GENRE,
TRACK TITLE.

Ignore ID3 Tags MythMusic will determine the Album, Artist, Genre, Title and Track Number
from the ID3 tags of the music files to play. If this option is set to true then it’ll determine the
information from the path and filename of the music file instead. For this to work the Filename
Format needs to be correctly set for your collection.


11.10 Myth News
11.11 Myth Phone
11.12 Myth Video
To conﬁgure the Video plugin, using the default theme, navigate to Music Settings via Utilities / Setup

Figure 11.6: Video Plugin


11.13 Myth Weather

Chapter 12

Remote Control (LIRC)

Most remote control configuration occurs from within the Mythbuntu Control Centre. From there, you
can choose and change your remote control as well as re-generate button mappings. See chapter 10
for more information.
Some remote controls require additional setup that has not yet been automated. See section 12.1
for more information what remotes need extra design.
Also, for more advanced setups, such as IR and RF transmitting, or multiple remotes, you will
need to refer to the section 12.2.

12.1 Drivers needing extra effort
The Ubuntu 8.04 packaging can’t currently handle the extra work required for some remotes. The
parts necessary for these are detailed here.

Serial Receiver The serial port needs to be disabled from kernel usage so that lirc serial can use it.
See section 12.2 for how to do this.
GPIO Devices Kernel 2.6.22 no longer allows the lirc gpio driver to be used. Instead all gpio de-
vices will load from the dev/input native lirc driver. See this specification for more informa-
tion about what needs to be done. https://blueprints.launchpad.net/mythbuntu/+spec/
lirc-gpio-alternative
Apple Remote You will need to find your event device in /dev and set the DEVICE item in
/etc/lirc/hardware.conf

12.2 IR Transmitting
As installed, the default Lirc init scripts are properly setup to handle a single device, but the driver
build scripts can be adapted to handle multiple devices. If you are looking to set up a transmitter
and a receiver, multiple transmitters, or multiple receivers, set up a Single Device first and verify
functionality.
IR transmitters can be used to control external devices such as cable boxes or television sets. They
are very useful in home theatre automation by reducing the number of remotes necessary to control
your devices.

The following drivers have support for IR transmission

• Serial IR Transmitter (Supported by lirc serial module). 12.2.1
• Command IR Receiver / Quadruple Transmitter (Supported by lirc cmdir module). 12.2.2
• Microsoft Media Center Remote Version 2 (Supported by lirc mceusb2 module). 12.2.3

114

CHAPTER 12. REMOTE CONTROL (LIRC) 115

• Hauppauge PVR-150 (Supported by lirc pvr150 module). 12.2.4
• USB-UIRT (Supported by native lircd binary).

12.2.1 Serial IR Transmitter
When installing lirc or reconfiguring (sudo dpkg-reconfigure lirc) , choose the option for either “Serial
Receiver” or “Serial receiver (igor cesko’s variant)”. Depending upon which port you have your serial
transmitter attached to, you may have to modify the modprobe options that are used for loading the
kernel module. Create a file entitled /etc/modprobe.d/lirc with these contents:

#COM1 e q u i v a l e n t , / dev / t t y S 0
o p t i o n s l i r c s e r i a l i r q =4 i o =0x 3 f 8
#COM2 e q u i v a l e n t , / dev / t t y S 1
#o p t i o n s l i r c s e r i a l i r q =3 i o =0x 2 f 8

Uncomment the appropriate line to represent serial port you have connected your transmitter.

If you are running the lirc serial driver either for a transmitter or receiver, you will need to disable
kernel serial support.

• First you will need the setserial utility to do this.

$ sudo apt−g e t i n s t a l l s e t s e r i a l

• Reconfigure setserial.

$ sudo dpkg−r e c o n f i g u r e s e t s e r i a l

• Choose manual.
• Modify /var/lib/setserial/autoserial.conf
Add (or modify if its there already) (switch to ttyS1 if your using that instead)

$ / dev / t t y S 0 u a r t none

• Copy that script to /etc/serial.conf
$ sudo cp / var / l i b / s e t s e r i a l / a u t o s e r i a l . c o n f / e t c / s e r i a l . c o n f

12.2.2 Command IR Receiver / Quadruple Transmitter
One site (http://support.commandir.com/guides/index.php?distro-ubuntu-gutsy) has automated
the above procedure for their CommandIR Mini transceiver which has a remote receiver and 4 IR
blasters (http://www.commandir.com/). The device’s emitters allow control of multiple devices and
do not require different codesets since each emitter can be individually selected for transmit-
ting using irsend set transmitters. It is possible to use their script to setup LIRC on Mythbuntu for
CommandIR then make minor modifications for other hardware.

12.2.3 Microsoft Media Center Remote Version 2
Gutsy packages include support for the mceusb2 IR transmitter. Simply select a Microsoft Media
Center (New Version) remote from the list of remotes during lirc installation.


12.2.4 Hauppauge PVR-150
You need to download the Hauppauge firmware and add the appropriate codeset to your lircd.conf for
the device you want to control. The firmware can be found at http://www.blushingpenguin.com/
mark/lmilk/haup-ir-blaster.bin. Download it and put it in /lib/firmware The codesets can be
found at http://www.blushingpenguin.com/mark/lmilk/lircd.conf. This file contains the code-
sets for every device in the database. You will need to extract the information for the device you want
to control, and append it to your /etc/lirc/lircd.conf – but for now, just save it someplace safe. When
you have downloaded and moved the firmware and have the codeset file, Reboot before continuing.

You will need to determine the codeset of your device. To help you determine the possible codeset,
consult the list here: http://www.blushingpenguin.com/mark/lmilk/IRcodesets.html. Note that
finding the correct codeset for your device can be tricky- but the master list can usually help you track
them down by process of elimination. Once you have determined a codeset, you need to extract those
codes from the master file you downloaded and add them to your /etc/lirc/lircd.conf as another remote.

For example, to blast a Power Button a Motorola DCT6200 series cable box, you would use the
POWER button raw code from codeset 85. If you are linking it to a key on your remote, you want to
change the button name to the name reported by irw.

$ sudo nano / e t c / l i r c / l i r c d . c o n f
First, add the blaster header:

b e g i n remote

name blaster
bits 32
flags RAW CODES
eps 0
aeps 0
plead 0
gap 333333
repeat bit 0
begin raw codes
Next, find the power button in codeset 85- since this is a cable box, it is prefixed in the master file
as 0 85:

name 0 85 KEY POWER
5570570
Then make it conform to how irw reports the keypress- in this case, irw reports it as POWER, so
that is what to name it:

name 0 85 KEY POWER
5570570
Keep adding your buttons (only the ones you want to control with the blaster). When you are
finished, add:

end r a w c o d e s
end remote
To close out that remote definition. In this example, the entire remote definition for the power
button only looks like:


b e g i n remote

name blaster
bits 32
flags RAW CODES
eps 0
aeps 0
plead 0
gap 333333
repeat bit 0
begin raw codes
name 0 85 KEY POWER
5570570
end r a w c o d e s
end remote

After saving the new lircd.conf, restart lirc:

$ sudo / e t c / i n i t . d/ l i r c r e s t a r t

and test it. In the example the command:

$ i r s e n d SEND ONCE b l a s t e r POWEROFF

turns the DCT6200 cable box on and off. Even if it does not control the device as intended, you
should see the blaster flashing.
Troubleshooting codeset selection, blaster placement, etc. is beyond the scope of this guide. A
wealth of information is readily available via Google.

12.3 General Setup and Usage
Unlisted Remotes
If your remote isn’t listed in the lirc installation, you should file a bug on Launchpad (https://bugs.
launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lirc/+filebug)

Using a premade lircd.com

$ wget ”<download l i n k >” −O l i r c d . c o n f

For other remotes, a good place to start looking is the Lirc Website Remotes list (http://
lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/). The online remote configuration tool LIRC Config (http://
lircconfig.commandir.com/) also maintains a customizable database of lircd.conf’s.

To replace /etc/lirc/lircd.conf with the lircd.conf that you have found:

$ sudo cp <name o f downloaded . c onf > / e t c / l i r c


Recording a Remote
Insert the module that you intend to record from. For example

$ sudo modprobe l i r c m c e u s b 2

Record the remote using irrecord
Using a premade lircd.com

$ sudo i r r e c o r d −d / dev / l i r c 0 l i r c d . c o n f

Once you have completed your configuration, move this lircd.conf to /etc/lirc/lircd.conf

$ sudo mv l i r c d . c o n f / e t c / l i r c

Add the modules for the remote to /etc/lirc/hardware.conf under MODULES==

Additional lircrc information
Multiple applications can be listed in the .lircrc file, but you will need a seperate begin and end block
for each button in each application.

MythTV lircrc
If you are using this for mythtv, you will either need to create a standalone lircrc for mythtv in
/.mythtv/lircrc or create a symbolic link to this file and place all the lircrc related content in /.lircrc.

• Creating a symbolic link. [All mythtv buttons will need to be placed in /.lircrc with the rest of
the applications you use lirc for]

$ l n −s ˜ / . l i r c r c ˜ / . mythtv / l i r c r c

• Creating a standalone file. [All mythtv buttons will be placed in /.mythtv/lircrc]

– Here is an example using a mceusb/mceusb2 remote:
– Here is an example using a hauppauge remote: http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/lircrc-haupgrey-g3.
txt
• IRexec
irexec is able to interpret keypresses and launch applications when the keys are pressed. The
syntax is:

begin
prog = i r e x e c
button = REMOTE BUTTON
c o n f i g = APPLICATION
end

APPLICATION is simply the path and name of a file marked executable.


Configuring a lircrc by hand
If you are intending on using lirc for only IR transmitting, you don’t need to create a /.lircrc file. If
you are going to use it for IR receiving, you will need to create a /.lircrc file describing what each of
the buttons does for each application you will use lirc in.

The basic syntax is as follows:

begin
prog = PROGRAM
button = REMOTE BUTTON
c o n f i g = ACTION
end

Where:

PROGRAM is the program you are recording buttons for. Some examples for PROGRAM are
mythtv, mplayer, xine, vlc and irexec.

REMOTE BUTTON is the name of the button in accordance with what is listed in your /etc/lir-
c/lircd.conf

ACTION is the action that will be performed when this button is pressed. You can find a list of
actions in the attached .lircrc example file.

For a mceusb2 remote, you might need to change the button names from ”chan-”, ”chan+”, ”vol-
”, ”vol+” to ”chandown”, ”chanup”, ”voldown”, ”volup”.

Restarting Lirc
Should you ever need to restart lirc due to adding a remote, or after a suspend or anything like
that:
$ sudo / e t c / i n i t . d/ l i r c [ s t a r t | s t o p | r e s t a r t ]

12.4 Setting up Multiple Devices
After you have proven LIRC works with a single device, you can modify your scripts to include
support for multiple devices. The first thing you will have to make sure you have kernel modules for
the additional devices. If during the single device setup, you built modules for all the devices you
thought you would need, you can skip the next step.

Modify Init Scripts
•Modify /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

• Make sure that all of your modules are now added to the list of MODULES=””. Take note of
the order you provide these modules. This will be the order that lirc recognizes the devices, and
important if you are going to need to differentiate between different lirc devices.
• Modify LIRCD ARGS=”” to match


LIRCD ARGS=”−d / dev / l i r c 0 −−output=/dev / l i r c d −− l i s t e n ”
LIRCD2 ARGS=”−d / dev / l i r c 1 −−output=/dev / l i r c d 1
−−c o n n e c t=l o c a l h o s t : 8 7 6 5 −− p i d f i l e =/var / run / l i r c d 2 . p i d ”

•Modify /etc/init.d/lirc

• Change this block:

LIRCD ARGS=‘ b u i l d a r g s $LIRCD ARGS ‘
s t a r t −stop−daemon −−s t a r t −−q u i e t −−e x e c / u s r / s b i n / l i r c d
−− $LIRCD ARGS < / dev / n u l l

• To be:

LIRCD ARGS=‘ b u i l d a r g s $LIRCD ARGS ‘
LIRCD2 ARGS=‘ b u i l d a r g s $LIRCD2 ARGS ‘
s t a r t −stop−daemon −−s t a r t −−q u i e t −−e x e c / u s r / s b i n / l i r c d
−− $LIRCD ARGS < / dev / n u l l
/ u s r / s b i n / l i r c d $LIRCD2 ARGS < / dev / n u l l

•If you have more then 2 LIRC devices, you will need to add additional blocks to /etc/lirc/hard-
ware.conf and /etc/init.d/lirc to connect to the main lirc process.

Testing Lirc
Start lirc via
$ sudo / e t c / i n i t . d/ l i r c s t a r t

You should have two lircd processes running. You will need to provide a parameter to any lirc
process trying to interact with lircd now to indicate which lircd you want to interact with.

Chapter 13

Diskless Clients

13.1 Installing the packages
If you want to use diskless clients, you need to install the appropriate packages ﬁrst. In 13.1, you
should select the ”Diskless Server” checkbox. If you also want your MythTV computer to act as a
DHCP server, also select Add DHCP server. The upsides and downsides of this option are discussed
a bit later in this document. Hit Apply to install the packages.

Figure 13.1: MCC System Roles

121

CHAPTER 13. DISKLESS CLIENTS 122

13.2 Server Preparation
Once the packages are installed, switch to the ”Diskless Server” tab as shown in 13.2. For now, we
will concentrate on the upper part of that screen where you can see the Server Preparation section.

Figure 13.2: MCC Diskless tab


First, you need to select a CPU architecture for your clients. Unless you have installed an amd64
or ppc version of Mythbuntu, the only choice available will be i386 which will work for most clients.
Now select Build Image and click Apply. Building the image for your diskless clients will take a
while, depending on the speed of your internect connection and of your computer.
Please note that a copy of your /etc/apt/sources.list will be used to build the image. If you have any
third-party package repositories, it is a good idea to select Allow unsigned packages before building
the image.

13.3 Booting your diskless client
There are several options available for booting your diskless clients.
Let’s start with a little bit of theory:

In order to boot successfully, your client must load the Linux kernel and the corresponding ”initramfs”
(basically a very minimal linux system which is used to mount the root file system). Inside the
initramfs, a connection is made to the nbdrootd (”NBD” meaning ”network block device”) to mount
the diskless image you created earlier. Additional, the overlay file system is mounted over NFS from
your server. Because the diskless image is mounted read-only, the image and the overlay NFS share
are merged using a stacking file system called ’aufs’ (’another unionfs’). The client then boots. Any
changes you make to the file system end up on the overlay file system.
You can either load the kernel (and its initramfs) from a normal block device like a hard disk or a
CD-R or you can use PXE. With PXE, you don’t need to have any disks in your client but it can be
a bit harder to set up.

13.3.1 Block devices
Boot your client from a USB thumb drive
Any recent computer today has USB ports, and most can boot from them. The Mythbuntu Control
Centre can prepare your thumb drive for you. Please make sure there is no valuable data on that drive
as data loss might occur!
All you need is a thumb drive where the first partition is formatted as fat32/vfat. As you can see
in figure 13.2, the settings for preparing flash drives are located in the Client Bootable Flash
Drive section. Before anything can be done in this section, please select your image in the Client
Maintenance section above.
Now you need to choose your flash drive. In the empty area next to that drop-down menu, the name
of your flash drive will be displayed. Make sure you select the correct one to avoid data loss. Next,
select the network interface which is connected to the network where your clients reside. This will
often be ”eth0”. If your server is not running all the time, you can also enable Wake on Lan there.
The initramfs will attempt to wake up the server before mounting the root file system.
Now select Write Drive and click Apply.

Boot your client from hard disk
Write me!

Boot your client from CD-R
Write me!

13.3.2 PXE
If you want to use PXE instead, you will need two things: a DHCP server and a PXE stack on your
client.


The DHCP server
Again, we have a few options.

DHCP server on your diskless server

Simply select Add DHCP server in the System Roles tab in the Control Centre (figure 13.1)
and click Apply. It’ll try to customize the DHCP configuration to suit your network, but you might
want to make corrections in /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf. If you adjust that file, issue ’sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-
server restart’ in a terminal to reload the DHCP server.
This option works best if there’s not other DHCP server on your network. However, many people will
already have small SOHO routers/NAT boxes which act as DHCP servers, so please be careful here.
It is still possible to use a second DHCP server in addition to your existing one; read on:

Unauthoritative DHCP server on your diskless server
This document explains it quite well: http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/twodhcpservers Note: you’ll
need to use etherboot, see below.

Using alternate DHCP ports for the DHCP server on your diskless server
You can run your whole mythbuntu-diskless DHCP setup on different ports so it never conflicts with
your current DHCP setup. It’ll only work if you use etherboot as your PXE stack (see below)
Prepare the initramfs Open a Terminal and chroot to the your diskless base system: sudo chroot /op-
t/ltsp/i386 Now that you’re inside the chroot, open /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/ltsp in your favourite
editor:
nano / e t c / i n i t r a m f s −t o o l s / c o n f . d/ l t s p

Modify the DHCPPORT variable. A value of 1068 works well there. Save your changes and run
update−i n i t r a m f s −k a l l −c

to update the initramfs. Now type
exit

to exit the chroot and run
sudo l t s p −update−k e r n e l s

Prepare the DHCP server
Open /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server in your favourite text editor:
sudo nano / e t c / i n i t . d/ dhcp3−s e r v e r

Around line 90, you’ll find a line saying:
−−e x e c / u s r / s b i n / dhcpd3 −− −q −p f $DHCPDPID −c f $CONFIG FILE $INTERFACES

Modify it to say:
−−e x e c / u s r / s b i n / dhcpd3 −− −p 1067 −q −p f $DHCPDPID −c f $CONFIG FILE $INTERFACES”

Prepare the PXE stack When you create the etherboot image for your hardware at http://rom-o-
matic.net/, click Configure during step 3. Select
ALTERNATE DHCP PORTS 1 0 6 7 1 0 6 8

there and proceed as usual.
Done.


DHCP server on a SOHO router/different computer
It’s possible that your SOHO router will grant you enough control over its DHCP server. Refer to its
documentation to find out how to set up PXE booting. If you’re running an alternate firmware like
OpenWRT, you should have no problem adding a config entry.
On your diskless server, you can find example configuration files for the ISC dhcpd and for dnsmasq
in /usr/share/doc/ltsp-server/examples/. You probably have to expand these configuration files by
adding a ’next-server’ statement to point to your mythbuntu server where the tftp server with the
kernel resides.

PXE
’PXE’ stands for ’Preboot eXecution Environment’. In our case, PXE talks to the DHCP server to
get an IP address and to download a boot loader (pxelinux), which will in turn download the kernel
and the initramfs.

PXE stack supplied with your computer/network card
A lot of computers today come with a PXE stack as a part of their BIOS ROM for their onboard
network interface card (NIC). It’s also possible to buy NICs which have a PXE stack.

PXE stack from the etherboot project
If you don’t have a PXE stack already or if you think yours might be buggy, you can download a
PXE stack for many NICs at http://rom-o-matic.net/. Make sure to select the correct ROM output
format. This will allow you to load a PXE stack from a floppy disk, hard drive or from CD-ROM.

13.3.3 Maintenance
Of course, most things you can do with your normal Mythbuntu installation can also be done with a
diskless client.

Installing packages Packages should always be installed inside the client image. Only hardware-
specific packages like proprietary drivers should be installed on the clients themselves (see below for
further explanation).

To install new software inside the client image, bring up Mythbuntu control centre on your server
and switch to the diskless tab (13.2). Select your image below the Client Maintenance heading and
click the Control Centre button to start a new instance of the Mythbuntu control centre. You can
now perform packages updates and configuration tasks as usual.
Note: take care not to mistake the newly started Control Centre instance diskless image for the Control
Centre of your server as they look very similar.

Why shouldn’t I install packages on the client itself ? One of the few limitations of the diskless
clients is the way packages are handled. All packages you’ve installed are listed in a database which
resides inside the diskless image. When a client changes a file in the diskless image, the image 13.2itself
is not changed. Instead, the modified file is copied to the overlay directory.
When you install a package on your client, a copy of the package database is created which means that
the database on the client won’t know about any updates or new packages inside the image. This can
lead to awkward situations where the client uses a version of a proprietary driver which doesn’t match
a newer kernel

Configuration Any configuration on the client can be performed as usual in the Control Centre
or using your favourite editor. For example, one thing that most people might want to enable on a
diskless client is automatic login.

13.3.4 Troubleshooting
If something goes wrong, don’t panic. There are several log files waiting for you:
On the server, textbf/var/log/daemon.log will contain some information concerning NFS and tftp, so


it’s a good idea to look there if your client doesn’t boot. Another option to find out more is removing the
two words ”quiet” and ”splash” from the boot line in /var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.cfg/default.
You can then see all kinds of information when you boot your clients.
If your client manages to boot but shows other problems, it’s a good idea to look in /var/cache/mythbuntu-
diskless/overlay/$KEY/var/log/ (where $KEY is the MAC address of your client without colons)
to find log files for your client.

13.3.5 FAQ
I’ve switched my network card and I want my settings back!
You can either move the overlay directory in /var/cache/mythbuntu-diskless/overlay/ to the new
MAC address or you can pass the ”overlaykey=” boot option. The argument passed to ”overlaykeys=”
is the name of the directory inside /var/cache/mythbuntu-diskless/overlay/.

13.3.6 Interesting Files/further configuration
Here is a (possibly incomplete) list of configuration files used by mythbuntu-diskless.

On the server:

/etc/inetd.conf: used to launch nbdrootd which serves the diskless images. Often, the tftpd is started
from here. * /etc/exports: Used to export /var/cache/mythbuntu-diskless/overlay * /var/lib/tftp-
boot/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.cfg/default: Bootloader configuration. Note that this will be overwritten
every time ’ltsp-update-kernels’ is ran. You can create client-specific pxelinux configuration files if you
don’t want to lose your custom configuration. Refer to the pxelinux documentation to find out how.
Alternatively, you can specify additional boot arguments inside the image.

Inside the chroot:
After you’ve switched to the chroot environment using
c h r o o t / opt / l t s p / i 3 8 6

or simply by clicking ”Open Terminal” in the Control Centre (see 13.2), you can edit the following
files:
* /etc/ltsp/update-kernels.conf: If you create this file, you can add a BOOTPROMPT OPTS
variable to specify your boot options. To apply your changes, run
/ e t c / k e r n e l / p o s t i n s t . d/ l t s p −update−k e r n e l s

On the server (outside the chroot), you need to run
sudo l t s p −update−k e r n e l s

to copy the new bootloader configuration (and possibly a new version of the kernel) to the TFTP
directory.
* /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/ltsp: This is the configuration file for the initramfs script used to
bring up your client. It’s not recommended to change anything here, but someone might benefit from
changing $HOSTNAMEOVERRIDE or $OVERLAYKEY.

Chapter 14

Advanced Setup Options

14.1 Windows Frontend
For a MS Windows Frontend we recommend MythTV Player. It is available at http://www.sudu.
dk/mythtvplayer/ Be sure to remember to turn on the MySQL Service on your backend.

14.2 Xbox Frontend
A python based frontend for MythTV which runs on xboxmediacenter can be found at http://
sourceforge.net/projects/xbmcmythtv/

127

Chapter 15

Frequently Asked Questions

• Q. I’ve successfully installed Mythbuntu and have it up and running, but I’d like
to install the Ubuntu desktop on it now to add other features. I switched to the
Ubuntu flag in the Mythbuntu settings and it downloaded and installed the pack-
ages, but when exiting MythTV, I still get the old xfce interface. What else do I
need to do? (gtr33m)

A. You need to change your session type. Log out and at the login screen hit the session button.
Choose GNOME. It will ask you to change settings, and then hit yes.

• Q. I am looking to do a nightly backup of my Mythbuntu backend to my server. I
am looking to compile a list configuration files, etc. that would be useful in restor-
ing the machine, should something happen to it. The database backups are a given.
(dmfrey)

A. The database is setup currently to backup already via a cron job, but I believe its a weekly
backup rather than a nightly. You probably just need to move that cron job over from cron.weekly
to cron.daily. So now if you are looking for a backup that you can literally press a key and restore
the entire drive, I almost think you are better off using a full out rsync of the entire system
partition. Most installations are only 1-1.5gb so this is doable especially if you use compression.
Comparatively, you probably can get away with backing up , as well as any config files that you
have to tweak post installation. All the information about your tuners, storage areas, etc are all
stored in the mysql database. You might want to record the options you chose during installation
to make sure you remember to set them up next time, but otherwise I think this is the way to
go. The backups are saved to /var/backups with rotation done on them so a few weeks worth is
there.

128

Chapter 16

Trouble Shooting

If you have problems with your installation of Mythbuntu then you can get help within IRC (chat) in
#ubuntu-mythtv or #mythtv-users on freenode.net. You can also get help on the Mythbuntu forums
at http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=301

129

Chapter 17

Reference

17.1 MythTV Plugins
17.1.1 Backend Plugins
Myth Web MythWeb provides a web interface which can be used to view listings, schedule recordings,
delete recordings, and search for programs. It can also browse mythmusic’s music database, and
may eventually support playing music streams as well. packname:mythweb

17.1.2 Frontend Plugins
Myth Archive MythArchive is a plugin for MythTV that lets you create DVDs from your recorded
shows, MythVideo files and any video files available on your system. It can also archive recordings
in a proprietary format that archives not only the file but also all the associated metadata like
title, description and cut list information which will mean you can create backups of myth
recordings which can later be restored or it will also allow you to move recordings between myth
systems without losing any of the metadata. It is a complete rewrite of the old MythBurn bash
scripts, now using python, and the mythfrontend UI plugin. packagename:mytharchive
Myth Browser Mythbrowser is an integrated web browser plugin for your MythTV system. packa-
gename:mythbrowser

Myth Controls External controls for MythTV. This will allow you to modify button mappings and
key bindings. packagename:mythcontrols
Myth Dvd MythDVD provides an interface for launching your preferred DVD player from MythTV,
and also supports transcoding DVDs into audio/video streams which can be played by MythVideo,
using the transcode package. packagename:mythdvd

Myth Flix Allows you to monitor your Netflix dvd rental queue. http://www.netflix.com/ pack-
agename:mythflix
Myth Gallery MythGallery allows you to visually browse a directory tree containing image files.
It can display any image file format supported by Qt, and supports image rotation and simple
slideshows. packagename:mythgallery

Myth Game MythGame can be used as a frontend to start any emulator that your host OS runs.
packagename:mythgame
Myth Music MythMusic provides a digital audio jukebox integrated with MythTV. It supports Ogg
Vorbis, FLAC and MP3 streams, displays visualizations, and can also encode new Ogg Vorbis or
FLAC streams from audio CDs using a CD-ROM drive. packagename:mythmusic
Myth News An RSS feed news reader module for MythTV. packagename:mythnews

130

CHAPTER 17. REFERENCE 131

Myth Phone Mythphone is a phone and videophone capability on MYTH using the standard SIP
protocol. It is compatible with Microsoft XP Messenger (see caveat below) and with SIP Service
Providers such as Free World Dialup http://fwd.pulver.com. packagename:mythphone
Myth Video MythVideo allows you to browse and play video streams, using an external player, from
within the MythTV interface. packagename:mythvideo

Myth Weather MythWeather displays current and forecast weather information within MythTV.
packagename:mythvideo


17.2 TV-OUT
The images and information on this page have mainly come from wikipedia.

17.2.1 Connections Explained
Composite Video Composite video, also called CVBS (Composite Video Blanking and Sync), is the
format of an analog television (picture only) signal before it is combined with a sound signal and
modulated onto an RF carrier. See figure 17.1(a)
S-Video Separate video, abbreviated S-Video and also known as Y/C (or erroneously, S-VHS and
”super video”) is an analog video signal that carries the video data as two separate signals
(brightness and color), unlike composite video which carries the entire set of signals in one signal
line. S-Video, as most commonly implemented, carries high-bandwidth 480i or 576i resolution
video, i.e. standard definition video. It does not carry audio on the same cable. See figure
17.1(b)
Component Video Component video is a video signal that has been split into two or more com-
ponents. In popular use, it refers to a type of analog video information that is transmitted or
stored as three separate signals. Component video can be contrasted with composite video (such
as NTSC or PAL) in which all the video information is combined into a single line level signal.
See figure 17.1(c)

(a) Composite (b) S-Video (c) Component

Figure 17.1: Pictures of connections

17.2.2 TV Formats


17.3 References
• The information for section 2 is mainly based upon the mythtv docs found at http://www.
mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html
• The information for ?? was posted by apauna on the Mythbuntu forms and can be found at
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=584473
• The pictures and information in 17.2 is from wikipedia.

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