I'm trying to run a KnoppixMyth LiveCD as a frontend to my KnoppixMyth based server installation. Hoewever, it doesn't even start the MythTV frontend, just shows a dumb X-windows screen. I 'm allowing 256 MB of ram for the VMWare session, which should be more than enough. I have a sound card, which is recognized.
Has anyone any ideas on how to make things work? It seems like such a good idea to run KnoppixMyth in VMWare, since I have that installed on all the (many) computers around the house. That way I would be able to humor my wife and son (who haven't bothered to learn Linux yet), while still having access to all my media content.
PS! Yes, I have tried to start the MythTV from the pop-up menu. DS!

Why not insall cygwin X server and then ssh in and run "mythfrontend" and it will appear on your windows desktop ?

Rob

P.S. If you need a hand setting this up, I'm more than willing...

Help would be appreciated.
I tried that, and the backend server answered:
"X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting"
I'm not an X expert (I'm using Linux as a server mostly). How do I go about it?

1) In /etc/ssh/sshd_config you have to make sure X forwarding is enabled
2) download cygwin off their web page. The only thing you need to "install" is base X services
3) download putty. Define a connection profile and enable ssh forwarding (it's a checkbox somewhere).

Now, do this:
=========
1) run putty. Use the profile in which you enabled x forwarding and log into the mythtv box as whatever user you created.
2) Run cygwin from the start menu. Type "startx"
3) inside the putty window, type "mythfrontend"
4) wait a few seconds and the mythfrontend screen should pop up on your windows machine (although it will be in a window).

Hope this helps!

Rob

Hi Rob

I followed your instructions, and cannot get the cygwin bash shell to start an x server.

I typed : startx, and got the following :

xinit: no such file or directory (errno 2): no server "X" in PATH

it went onto list a longer message, I can replicate again if you need more info

I am really keen to get this going.....

Regards

Matt Shaw
matt@shagshaw.com

I have VMWare also, but I seriously doubt it will work for a frontend. I've only used windows 98 and 2000 as the OS though. Trying to play an mp3 through it is choppy and the network connection isn't as fast as it should be. I haven't tried it but I am pretty sure it won't work. I know it won't handle even older games with not so complex graphics calls.
It's much easier to just boot to the CD (if your PC is windows) or install a remote frontend (if your PC is linux). Just my 2 cents.

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ASUS A7N266 Micro-ATX Motherboard
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Lite-on DVD cd-rw combo
120 GB Western Digital

I agree with elgordo123 on the speed of VMWare. I have used it for testing XP installation disks and found it to be terribly slow, so using it as a frontend would be a slim to impossible probablity.

I do like the idea of X forwarding as I have a dual monitor set up at home for my main computer and no areial in sight. It would be great if I could watch my TV there.

Any chance of a wiki on this topic?

[edit] grammer

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Girkers

If you get problems with X, you should try running as mythtv (or any other user), and not root.
I have tried everything "xhosts", etc... Just DON'T run an X app as root...

@Robstarusa:

This sounds pretty darn cool. I too followed your instructions, here's the output from my ssh session:

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

startx is supposed to be run on your Windows machine - it starts an X server on that machine, which your Myth box can display to. The Cygwin X installation comes with an alternative script that I always use to start the X server - not sure whether it's superior, but it works for me. Start a Cygwin shell and run "startxwin.bat" - it will pop up an xterm, which you can discard, and you'll see an 'X' icon in the system tray.

[Note, the server/client terminology of X confuses people - the server is the display, the client is the application which uses the display. It makes sense if you think about it, but it's the inverse of what most people initially assume]

Then, if you ssh to your Myth box with X forwarding (Putty is great, as mentioned above, selecting the option in the GUI Connection->SSH->Tunnels->Enable X11 forwarding)

Then running 'mythfrontend' in your ssh session should appear on your windows desktop.

I'm not finding that batch file. Which components of cygwin did you install?

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

Sorry - I installed a lot of cygwin stuff so didn't realise these were extras. I think they are from the cygwin package "X-startup-scripts", which is in the X11 group on the cygwin installer.

They install into /usr/X11R6/bin, which I think will be on your path automatically in a Cygwin bash shell.

By the way, if you use that script, you can edit that script, and REM out the line with 'run xterm' in it, to get rid of the annoying and pointless xterm.

Another note - I use a PVR-350 with TV-out, and I can't view things using this technique (the TV out is selected as a global Myth option).

Also, I expect it's also really hard on the network (if not impossibly hard) - X is not known for its bandwidth efficiency and I think it may have to transmit uncompressed video, not sure.

Wow, it worked.

Here's what I did (after installing cygwin default options with all the xorg-11-* stuff)

1. sshed into mythbox
2. loaded the batch file you spoke of on my win32 box
3. ran "mythfrontend" in the ssh window

Very cool. Is there a way to force a resolution of the resulting xsession?

:EDIT: I just figured it out:



Again, very cool. Too bad it's so slow. I have a 100 base network and even at a lower resolution like 800x600 the menus are rather slow to display.

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

excellent... As for resolution, I think you may be out of luck, but someone with better knowledge of MythTV might be able to help. I assume what you really want is to up the size of mythfrontend to take your whole screen. Best I could suggest is to downgrade your windows desktop to the myth screen size - not particularly desirable.

Normally, with X apps, you can run it with something like "mythfrontend -geom 1280x1024", but that doesn't seem to work with mythfrontend. I think the display size is per-machine, so if you changed anything it would mess up your defaults on your TV.

For watching recordings, you can explore to \\<machinename>\myth\pretty and view them directly with Windows Media Player or whatever (though I think there's a codec to install). That won't help with live TV.

Looks like I was editing my original post while you were typing your reply. But I did figure out how to do it. My interest ins't really in watching the video on my win32 box. It's really nice to have a way to edit the settings wo/ doing it on the TV.

Thanks again for the help. This is great

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.