Hello All!
First, my setup:
AMD 3400+ (2.4ghz) single core socket 754
DFI NF3 250GB
SATA WD Raptor (Primary)
SATA Seagate HD (Secondary)
Radeon 9600 connected to plasma tv via DVI
Onboard sound, onboard Ethernet
Media Center Remote version 2


I am at wits end . I’ve tried so many programs, so many techniques, and I’ve lurked on forums for so many days this past week and a half. If you don’t want to read a long rant, please skip down to my (hopefully minor) question. Sorry for all the links, I just want you to know where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

All I want to do is have a system that plays my video files (xvid, avi, mkv, etc) and my anime with subtitles and multiple language streams (mostly .mkv) with me being lazy and controlling everything through the remote. Just a frontend. I don’t want to record TV; I don’t want any PVR applications, all I want is a HTPC that plays my library of mkv, avi, divx, and xvid files.

I ran windows media center for the longest time, and it worked fine when I was watching regular xvids or divx files, but if I wanted to watch anime (mostly KAA rips), I would have to bring out a mouse and manually control the computer via the core media player. Windows MCE didn’t like the MKV file format; I had to mess with the registery for it to even know they existed, and when I then tried to play the file, I wasn’t satisfied with the results… I couldn’t control with stream or which subtitles loaded. Then I tried GBpvr. That was a little bit of a pain to configure, I mean, coming from windows MCE (it just works!), but I was able to configure HIP with my MCE remote, and then run the program. The anime files played natively, but I couldn’t get the subtitles to work. There was only one other person that posted about anime, but his post didn’t help me that much. So then windows was down and out.

Now begins my ubuntu adventure. I’ve followed these guides:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_Edgy
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php
but I always got stuck at the lirc configuration. I couldn’t get it to install and work with my remote. I even tried compiling and building from source following this guide to the letter, but I got errors and it didn’t work. When I got to the make and make install part (step 5) it would give me so many errors, that I just got frustrated and gave up. Then I stumbled upon knoppmyth R5E50.

Knoppmyth had its own errors. First there was the confusing pamphlet (do I make 3 partitions or 4??) I tried to install so many different ways. First off, I did the manual install with both drives plugged in. It was fun getting the write permission error (hit spacebar to select the drive!! … NOT intuitive). After I figured that out, it worked, but on reboot Grub was looking for its lost Ubuntu child. That led to lots of forum searching for clearing the MBR… not fun. Then I tried to install again after the MBR was cleared but then I got the dreaded no boot after the first install. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this forum posting in time: with the wonderful advice to edit your lilo because it doesn’t like it when theres another drive there. Anyway, without knowing that I read somewhere else that R5E50 supports auto install with SATA, so I gave that a whirl. Not so fast… I got lilo errors, something about a missing or invalid storage location? Don’t remember, that search for that specific error message is buried within my many searches in my history. So anyway I finally got it working, by only plugging in the main SATA drive, and then running the auto install. So the installation proceeds, I put in my password, then a root password, and it installs. Mythtv boots. I think it then asked me for a password, but I just hit enter twice – I didn’t set up a password for the mythtv user… I think. It finally loads, and then my MCE remote doesn’t work… I’m thinking not again, but I find this forum posting about copying the lirc file from the cd rom drive to the install. Finally, it works…. sorta

Anyway, here is my problem. I want to mount my second hard drive and link to it through the “my videos” configuration page in mythtv. It is an ntfs formatted drive, but I cant even access it because I cant get root permission in at the terminal!??! I hit control+alt+F1 or F2 to get terminal, but I’m logged in as the mythtv session (user@mythtv) or something like that, and I can’t get root access. Putting in the password I used before at the beginning of the installation doesn’t work. Also, how can I make it so that it mounts every time when the computer boots? Anyway, if someone can tell me how to get root access, and log out of the mythtv session, that would be great. The other thing I need to do is configure samba so that I can access that hard drive to update it from another computer in the house. I would search for that and probably figure it out myself, but the problem of gaining root needs to be fixed first.

I’ll probably edit this to clean it up, it’s a rough draft of my post, but I’ve been at it for about 6 hours yesterday (just for knoppmyth! Don’t even ask me how long it took for ubuntu), trying to get this stuff working. Please, if you can spare time to help, I am not good with linux, as you can probably see. If you have solutions please spell them out for my noobness? Thanks!

- Awperator

From Ctrl+Alt+F6:



Then give the root password. You're in.
type:

and it should say that you're root.

Just out of curiosity, if you're just looking for a video player have you considered Xbox Media Center? MythTV seems like overkill for what you are trying to do.

I have an xbox, but I haven't looked into modding it before, so I didn't really consider that as an option. To update, I just went back to windows, and I'm using GBPVR for the video files, and the core media player mapped extensively to my MCE remote via hip for my anime. It works

- Awperator

_________________
AMD 3400+ (2.4ghz) single core socket 754
DFI NF3 250GB
SATA WD Raptor (Primary), SATA Seagate HD (Secondary)
Radeon 9600 connected to plasma tv via DVI
Onboard sound, onboard Ethernet
Media Center Remote version 2