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PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 10:41 am 
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Posts: 23
Preamble: I just joined the forum today. I'm not a linux beginner (about 4 years experience, now running Ubuntu Lucid on my laptop and windoze-free) and I built the desktop PC I'm typing this on six years ago. However, this is my first HTPC build and my first KnoppMyth install.

This was an attempt at a fresh KnoppMyth 5.5 install on a virgin hard disk. Hardware details:
MB: GIGABYTE|GA-880GMA-UD2H R
CPU: AMD|PH II X4 925 AM3 RT
RAM: 2Gx2|GSKILL F3-10666CL7D-4GBRH
HD: 1T|WD 7K 64M SATAIII WD1002FAEX - OEM
CD: BLU-RAY BURNER LG | WH10LS30 OEM - OEM
TUNER: pcHDTV HD-5500 HDTV PCI CARD
CASE: HTPC ANTEC|M FUSIONREMOTE 350
DISPLAY: Sharp Aquos LC-32D62U LCD TV

During the build, I did not notice any jumpers on my SATA HD or Optical drive.

I followed the installation instructions here: http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... ythInstall
starting at "Manual Install" due to my SATA drive. My optical drive booted from the KM on the first try.

I made partitions / (10G), /swap (12G), /cache (18G), and /myth (remainder of 1T). I wrote the partitions, set up swap, and followed the fstype suggestions. I changed Load Config to /KNOPPIX/knoppmyth-sata and input all information. The installation (to /dev/sda1) appeared to complete normally. I removed the CD before reboot.

Upon reboot, the system goes through usual POST and boots from Linux.
However, I do not get the expected Xterm popup, and my screen does not look like that I see on the example YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It-Pqcucgsc&fmt=18

Possibly unrelated nasty looking (red) language in the startup dialogue:
...
"*Cannot check root filesystem because it is mounted read-only."
...
"Mounting local filesystems...failed."
...
(at this point, the screen blinks on and off several times, and then stays on with the line below)
"INIT: Id "c7" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes"
If I wait 5 minutes, it does the blinking again and corrects itself with the same message.

If I CTRL-ALT-F2, I see a white background with "KnoppMyth" at the bottom and a terminal window designed like a TV. I can login as root, but I cannot figure out how to proceed with the normal configuration that is supposed to be running at this time. I have tried to boot from the CD again, but my system continues to boot from the Linux installation on HD, even when I set all three boot devices in the BIOS to the CDROM.

Any takers? :( Thanks in advance for any shared experiences or solutions!


Last edited by ecumaniac on Tue Sep 21, 2010 4:58 am, edited 1 time in total.


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 4:20 pm 
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Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2004 12:14 pm
Posts: 425
Location: Charlotte, NC
First of all welcome to the group. The page you referenced is unfortunatly out of date. I suggest you reinstall using auto-install (SATA is fully supported). I also suggest you use 6.3 instead of 5.5 (although 5.5 was a great release - I used it for a LONG time....).

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 6:39 pm 
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Thanks - I'll look for 6.3 and start with an auto-install.

I assume you are talking about LinHES R6.03? I don't see anything KnoppMyth anywhere beyond 5.5.


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 6:58 pm 
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Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2004 12:14 pm
Posts: 425
Location: Charlotte, NC
http://mysettopbox.tv/

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:34 pm 
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Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2005 7:07 pm
Posts: 821
Location: Melbourne, Australia
ecumaniac wrote:
I assume you are talking about LinHES R6.03? I don't see anything KnoppMyth anywhere beyond 5.5.


Yes, that's the latest release of what used to be Knoppmyth. I still call it Knoppmyth from habit, too, even though Cecil re-named it when he left the Debian base for arch.
Most of the people already here would know what Knoppmyth 6 is, so we make assumptions.

KM - sorry LinHES ;-) - 6.03 has the best hardware support, so you should be using it for new hardware. KM 5.5 can always be made to work of course but it's non-trivial sometimes, and Cecil and the other developers have already done all the hard stuff and put it into 6.03

Ciao

Mike

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:19 am 
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Joined: Sun Aug 01, 2010 10:10 am
Posts: 23
An update:

I need to wipe the KM5.5 stuff so I can start over with LinHES. I'm willing to try either a CD install (downloading ISO now) or a USB install (already downloaded, but I've never formatted a USB stick to boot before, and having a hard time finding instructions.)

Still being unable to boot from CD and convinced it had something to do with LILO being in my master boot record, I logged in as root, issued 'lilo -U /dev/sda' and rebooted.

Now all I get on boot is "Loading operating system..." and it still will not boot from CD, nor will it boot from my KM installation on HD. My BIOS boot order is
1. USB-FDD
2. CDROM
3. Hard Disk

Basically, I just wish I had never bothered with KM5.5 and I want a do-over to go back to the beginning and put the LinHES 6.03 CD in and just do the installation. Since I can't do this, I'd like to at least be able to wipe everything I did (described above) and start fresh.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2010 10:28 pm 
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Location: Melbourne, Australia
Not being able to boot from CD has nothing to do with LiLo or KM 5.5. Your computer's CMOS has been set to attempt to boot from CD before HDD, so if it's not booting from the CD then the CD isn't bootable, or your drive is SATA and is considered a different boot device: On the gigabyte MBs I've played with in the past few years, SATA Optical drives have always been listed separately (at the bottom).

Look at ftp://linhes.org/R6/R6.03.00/LinHES_R6.03.00.usbstick.tar.bz2 for a usb stick version of LinHES. If it's not obvious how to use it, you will find instructions on the forum (I recall it being mentioned previously).

Mike

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Australian Dragon
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 8:14 am 
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Thanks, Mike. While my BIOS didn't have any other options for SATA HD, I did a "Restore failsafe settings" and then on reboot it told me my SATA was in IDE mode, and asked if I wanted to change it. I said no, and the CDROM promptly booted me into the LinHES 6.03 setup.

Now my main problem is that my pcHDTV HD-5500 pci card doesn't show up when I try to configure my capture card in LinHES setup. They were supposedly designed with KnoppMyth in mind. I've seen other people with this card working in their setup, so I'm guessing it's just named something else in the capture card list?

I guess I've moved on now from my original topic posting, so I should probably start a fresh one in a more appropriate forum.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 7:47 pm 
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Location: Melbourne, Australia
ecumaniac wrote:
Now my main problem is that my pcHDTV HD-5500 pci card doesn't show up when I try to configure my capture card in LinHES setup. They were supposedly designed with KnoppMyth in mind.


Did you install the card physically yourself? If you are not detecting it, chances are that you haven't seated it correctly in the pci slot. Shine a torch at the spot where the card enters the slot and see if it's sitting up at one end. Make sure you pull out the power cable before pushing it back or pulling it out: There is probably still power in the motherboard until you do this. Also, I would allow 30 seconds for capacitors to discharge.

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
*********************


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 6:29 am 
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Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2004 12:14 pm
Posts: 425
Location: Charlotte, NC
I seem to remember a similar issue I had with a 5500... Try a different pci slot (if you have one available).

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 4:31 pm 
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I reseated the card in the pci slot and it was picked up right away during setup, although the only way I could get to the original setup (detect capture cards) for LinHES was to re-install. I know there must be a way to do this from the main screen but I went through what I thought were all the menus and couldn't find it.

Now, when I do a channel scan I fail to find any! I'll peruse the boards here to see how others have dealt with this. I'm getting HD OTA broadcast and I run our antenna through an amplifier, then split one to the TV and one to the HD-5500. TV reception is great - even better now with the amplifier.


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:18 am 
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Location: Melbourne, Australia
ecumaniac wrote:
I reseated the card in the pci slot and it was picked up right away during setup, although the only way I could get to the original setup (detect capture cards) for LinHES was to re-install. I know there must be a way to do this from the main screen but I went through what I thought were all the menus and couldn't find it.

Now, when I do a channel scan I fail to find any! I'll peruse the boards here to see how others have dealt with this. I'm getting HD OTA broadcast and I run our antenna through an amplifier, then split one to the TV and one to the HD-5500. TV reception is great - even better now with the amplifier.


Great progress. You don't have to reinstall of course. Alt+s will shortcut it to a few minutes.

You may want to swap the TV and card antenna inputs, just to rule out a dud cable or amplifier output. If cables are OK, it's not out of the question that the card has been damaged when it was incorrectly seated. I would do an "lspci" to see if all tuners are recognised.

Cheers

Mike

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 18, 2010 3:43 pm 
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Thanks for the tips, Mike. As an update, lspci shows the card:

04:06.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder (rev 05)
04:06.1 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [Audio Port] (rev 05)
04:06.2 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [MPEG Port](rev 05)
04:06.4 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [IR Port](rev 05)

Not sure if there is supposed to be a 04:06.3 port in there, but I don't see it.

I checked the splitter and the TV gets good signal from both outputs. I will eventually check the cable running to the card, but I suspect it is fine.

I found a more obvious problem with my initial setup: I had the pcHDTV card as an analog capture device (we get HD OTA) so I did Alt+s to get to the configuration, but it warns me about the backend server running, and I might not be able to make changes or scan for channels. So I chose the option to disable the backend server, changed the capture card to HD instead of analog, and the only thing left to do (which clearly failed when I tried to do it in analog mode) is to scan for channels. Unfortunately, when I go to the 4. Input Connections menu and select my Television (coax) input, I cannot access the button to "Scan for channels" the way I could when I had it originally set up for analog.

I used to be an engineer, but the physicist in me says just wipe it and redo the installation, because I should be able to scan for channels if I correctly select HD from the getgo. Of course that is a simplistic approach and if you have a more elegant solution that would allow me to scan for channels with my new configuration I'd be grateful.


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 18, 2010 11:35 pm 
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Location: Melbourne, Australia
ecumaniac wrote:
the physicist in me says just wipe it and redo the installation.


No, don't do that. The warning is due to mythtv-backend locking the card when it runs, so no other applications can use it. You need to alt+2 before running setup (alt+2 is a shortcut for "/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend stop") to release the lock. Anyway, just delete the card from the capture cards list in setup and add it as a digital device/ Then associate it with an appropriate video source (delete the existing one if it's analogue only, and add a digital one). Then you can go to Input Connections and scan for channels.

Exit out of setup and re-start the backend with alt+1.

You are probably right about the analogue screwing with your channel frequencies and it's always best to just remove and re-add the info.

Mike

_________________
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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
*********************


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 3:54 pm 
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I added the pcHDTV as a digital capture card. I don't recall which one - I think it was DVB but I had to try several different ones before I could scan for channels. Upon scanning, all of our usual OTA channels were identified as "probable" or something similar. However, when I go and try to "watch live TV" there is no video or audio, just a black screen with the channel information bar at the bottom. I need to find and run some diagnostics to figure out what is going on.

I also have an unrelated question about the listings subscription. LinHES will operate without it, correct? We have a very small selection of channels and the things we are interested in recording are predictable enough for us to set everything manually.


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