Hello all!

I am working on my first MythTV box and thought KnoppMyth R5F27 would be my best bet as I am very green when it comes to Linux.

I have been trying for two days now to figure out why I am unable to see anything when I select 'watch tv'. I get the 'black screen' but none of the 'How to' suggestions under that heading seem to solve my issue. It seems the channel info is not loading from Schedules Direct. I run mythfilldatabase and it says 'no channels are configured to use grabber'. Other info there leads me to believe that my PC is communicating ok with Schedules Direct (I can access Mythweb so I know my internet connection is working) and I have double checked my account with Schedules Direct and all seems fine on their end. My DCT 6200 changes channels when I try to 'watch tv' so I figure the firewire settings must be correct and that my pc and dct are communicating. I have tried to check the log files but for some reason I am 'access denied' even as su. I have spent so much time on this and none of my searches have produced anything helpful.

'Retrieve Lineups' in the Video Source Setup produces a progress bar that briefly shows up to 50% before disappearing but yet I never seem to see any channels actually show up. Then, in the Input Select section, the 'Fetch channels from listings source' doesn't seem to do anything.

I appologise in advance if I am missing something obvious as I always seem to have trouble with search parameters. yes, even when I plug in the exact line like: no channels are configured to use grabber.

Please let me know if I need to provide any further info.

Any help offered will be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

Edited: reread original post

I am guessing you are in the USA as you are trying to use Schedules Direct.

Linux is case sensitive. Everything (except for internet names) must be
entered exactly as shown.

FYI: There are three users set up on your KnoppMyth box:
- root
- mythtv
- your-other-user
and you must be logged in as (or su'ed to) root or you will get access
denied. This is different than Ubuntu which may be confusing you.

We really need more info if the following doesn't fix it. Detail
about your hardware, your local network setup, your isp, etc.

Stop when you hit a step that you cannot do or doesn't work.

There seem to be two issues here:
- no program guide info coming from schedulesdirect.org
- no video coming from sat/cable box into system

First, on some other PC, verify that you can get to your account at
schedulesdirect.org and that it has at least one 'lineup' added. If
you have not added a lineup then that is your problem.

Next we need to get your ip address.

I assume that you have a working keyboard attached to your KnoppMyth
box. Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to pop from the graphical MythTV frontend to a
command line prompt (looks kind of like a DOS prompt). Log in as root
and type:Wikipedia is one of the few web sites that respond to ping packets.
You should also be able to ping your ISP e.g. earthlink.net but only the
ISP that you use.

Now let's determine what your IP address is. Type:Ignoring the 'lo' paragraph, you should see an 'eth0' paragraph.
Look for 'inet addr:' the group of 4 small numbers seperated by 3 periods
is your IP address. Mine is 192.168.0.252 and because I sit behind a
router the number I have is of the form 192.168.x.y which is not visible
on the internet and you could even use the exact same address without
any problems.

Now we pop back to the graphical mythtv frontend by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F7.
Press Esc and answer yes to exit the frontend. Right click the desktop
and select 'xshells -> xterm'. Become root by entering the command:and providing your root password. Now kill the backend by typing:Now run mythtv-setup by typing:Go into '1. General' and verify that the first and fourth lines contain the
IP address that we found previously.

Get out of General and go into '2. Capture Cards'. Under the heading
of 'Capture cards' the first three lines begin New, Delete, Delete. The
lines after that are the capture cards that you have entered. Verify
that you have entered the correct capture card for your hardware.

Get out of Capture Cards and go into '3. Video Sources'. Under the
heading of 'Video Sources' the first two lines begin New, Delete. The
lines after that are the video sources that you have entered. Verify
that you have entered a video source for each of your capture cards.
Select 'North America (SchedulesDirect.org) (Internal)' as your 'listings
grabber'. Enter your SCHEDULES DIRECT user id and password and
press 'Retrieve Lineups'. Now and only now you should be able to
select a 'Data Direct Lineup' on that same page. If you don't get anything
in the 'Data Direct Lineup' you have a problem.

Get out of Video Sources and into '4. Input Connections'. Each 'Video
Source' should be connected to the correct input connection, for instance
if you have a satellite receiver that outputs svideo then it should be
attached to the svideo input connection here. Go into that page and
make sure that the 'video source' is correct. If this input connection is
a simple video capture from a satellite or cable box press 'Fetch channels
from listings source'. This may take a while. When it is done you must
be able to select a channel in 'Starting Channel' or it won't work.

Make sure that your sat/cable receiver is powered on and (to help
diagnose) actually displaying a channel. Make sure that your video
cables are connected correctly between your sat/cable box and your
capture card.

Get all the way back out of mythtv-setup and type this to restart the backend:and this to restart the graphical subsystem including restarting the frontend:

What step failed, what can you do and not do?

Cliff

_________________
R5F27 using R5F1 Nvidia drivers
HD-5500 analog from NTSC Sat Rx, with OTA DVB too
GeForce MX-440 SVideo tvout to a TV
Older dual core 3.4ghz Intel CPU
Asus P5PE-VM Motherboard
2 GB RAM
1 TB LVM2
VirtualBox
Samba

WOW!

Now there is a comprehensive reply if I ever saw one! Thanks Cliff. I will work through your instructions later today. I realized I had not included my location info in my profile, thanks to you, and that is now there. I am not a total noob in computers as I have built 4 or 5 pc's but all with MS OSs. I have had exposure to Unix and Linux for the last 6 or 7 years but only recently set up a Linux machine for my own learning. I do appreciate that all commands are case sensitive and other symbol and space usage are critical in Linux.

Thanks so much for your suggestions and I will report back as soon as I am able to work through them.

Cheers,
Rob

OK,

I checked my account with Schedules Direct for the fourth time and it still shows one lineup for my local cable provider.

I do have a working keyboard on my KnoppMyth box and the ping to wikipedia worked just fine(although it did seem to just keep repeating over and over, I didn't know if this was normal and got it to stop with a Ctrl + C but I don't really know what that did as afterward I couldn't open anything or start anything. I wound up reinstalling from the CD and so far I am back to 'normal') . I tried to ping my ISP but that didn't seem to work or I had the wrong address info.

ifconfig shows 192.168.0.163 so I did change this in the Setup 1. 'General' section in the first and fourth positions.

In step 2. Capture Cards, I setup my firewire connection settings as before, port 0, node 1, Broadcast (or Point to Point, tried both), 100mbps. (this seemed to allow the cable box to be changed to channel 3 when I select 'Watch TV' from the main menu)

In step 3. Video Sources, where I select my firewire source, is where things start to go wrong. When I get to the 'Retrieve Linups', all it does is briefly show a progress window at 50% and then it disappears. No Channels show up for selection in the Data Direct Lineup box. No matter how many times I try selecting 'Retrieve Linups', the same thing happens and no options for channel lineups.

I did try going further but it seems like this is the current choke point.


I did manage to grab some things from the boot sequence that showed up in red text:

-*KnoppMyth found no Multimedia Video cards! -This is correct as I am only using firewire connection to a Motorola DCT 6200.

-Mounting local filesystems...mount: sysfs already mounted or /sys busy failed.

-*Not starting Internet Superserver


Could that last one be the problem?


Thanks,
Rob

I just tried entering my username for Schedules Direct without the capital on the first letter and viola, it worked. I find it odd that I have to login to SD with a capitol, as I had set it up with, but need all lower case for Knoppmyth. I'm just glad it seems to work for that part now.

I will report more as I continue to work though it.

Thanks,
Rob

When this has happened to me in the past it usually means I haven't entered my username or password correctly. Remember your username is an email address.

You should definitely be seeing the lineup you set up in Schedules Direct at this point.

Thanks ceenvee703,

My username isn't an email address so this is where I went wrong. Now I am dealing with the 'black screen' but at least I have the guide loaded. Also, my DVD player isn't working either but that is not important right now. I'm working through the firewire connection options and then on to whatever is next on the list for 'black screen'.

Cheers,
Rob

Glad you got your schedule working.

I am not familiar with your capture hardware. Hopefully someone who uses
the DCT 6200 can chime in. Perhaps you could search for DCT 6200 black
screen or something similar on the forums here or knoppmythwiki.org or
Google.

Cliff

Thanks again, Cliff. I have so far managed to only get a picture to come up once. I set up a logic chart for trying the port/node/connection options and quickly found one that worked (0,1,Broadcast) but when I tried to change channels, the picture disappeared. I am now looking for a fix for this and so far can not reproduce the picture even on just one channel.

I am stuck at home with a disability and this is a project to try and keep my brain from completely rotting away. So far it is very stimulating.

I will try the searches you suggest and thank you so much for your assistance so far. I guess I am now looking for a 'firewire' expert.

Cheers,
Rob