I have been playing around with MythTV for a couple of months now. I even spent a few hundred dollars on equipment just to have something new to play with. I still have yet to get it to work, but I haven't done any serious searching to find answers. I have already reinstalled it 1 or 2 dozen times and right now I have a problem I can't seem to figure out.

I have a 40GB hard drive as hda and have hooked the DVD drive on the same cable to be hdb. I have a 160GB hard drive on its own cable as hdc. I did this for maximum performance on the storage drive, having it on a cable by itsself. However, I can't seem to find a way to make Knoppmyth set up the 40GB as my system and the 160GB as my storage. Furthermore, I have been out of Linux for about 11 years now and can't even find a place in cfdisk to name the partitions they way the auto-format does.

Actually, if someone could give me some good install tips for my equipment, I would be eternally grateful. As I said, I have not so much as gotten the channel scanner to find a single channel yet and have no clue why. I just keep reinstalling and trying different things. Here's my equipment list:

Gigabyte board (forget the model, but I assume it's not important)

Athlon 2000 processor

256 MB RAM

hda - Western Digital 7200 RPM 40GB drive (intended to be the system)

hdb - Aopen DVDRW drive (new, 16X DVD +/- R, 8X DVD +R DL, 4X DVD -R DL)

hdc - Western Digital 7200 RPM 160GB drive (intended for only Myth storage)

MSI NX6200AX vidio card

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150 MCE-Kit model 1062 - the setup asks if I have a serial IR Blaster...I do not have one that uses a serial port, but the USB reciever for this has two outputs in the front labeled 1 and 2 where the IR transmitter plugs in and it came with a single transmitter. I'm assuming I say 'no' at that question.


Now, I have traversed these pages and gotten different things working at different times, I did have the remote working for a couple installs (haven't bothered to go that far again or even test it with the new Knoppmyth version because I still can't get the drives set up right or any channels to come in), but now I can't find any of my notes on all that (my baby ate my homework, believe it or not). If people wouldn't mind giving me links here and there to topics for each of these things, preferrably that work with the latest version, so that I have one place that links to all of this information. I know all of this information is out there if I just look for it, but here it is, 12:30 in the morning and I am finally finding time to work on it again. With work and family and my selfish desire for occasional sleep, I just haven't found the time to locate and collect everything I need to know.

I DO NOT expect someone to do all of this research for me. What I am asking for is someone who has already been through it and already knows where to find this information. If you know about the PVR, post a link for that. If another person has a tip on getting the drives formatted and set up right, post a link for that. If yet another person remembers exactly how I have to do the settings for the initial set up, walk me through the important parts there. Any little tip that would save me some time would be appreciated. Right now I probably have 10 or 20 hours in it, not counting the install of Fedora Core 5 (before I realized it was too new to work easily), the download of Gentoo (never even got that one installed) and the install of Debian (I just know too little about Linux these days to make any of these work). The problem is that I just don't have the time to just sit down one day, to the research while I'm working on it and figure it out.

Thanks in advance.

I have set up my drives to use my 40G as my boot/system/music drive and my second drive (250G) for tv recordings (and video) .

After installing I did the following

use cfdisk to make a partition


then format


edit /etc/fstab


then run mount


have a look to see drive space


If you are wanting to use the second drive for video storage as well you can make a folder such /myth/tv/video and use a symbolic link from /myth/video

As for you Hauppauge , sorry can't help there

Hey, I didn't expect a single person to give me answers to all of it. Great info there. I really appreciate it. I wasn't even thinking about music, but the way you have it set up is perfect. I can be playing music, also from the system drive, while recording something on the dedicated video drive and still get maximum performance for recording video. You're awesome, man. Thanks a lot.

Good news, everyone! Not that anyone cares, but I think my motherboard or processor is bad, which would account for the problems I am having. I have started getting lockups on install, then I found out the friend who gave me the processor got it from a computer which was struck by lightning. I just thought I would post this tidbit in case other people are looking for answers to problems similar to mine.

If you can install a different operating system or even run a live CD (Knoppix or whatever) then your processor is not bad.

pain - the processor worked most of the time, but locked up occasionally. It got worse the more I used it, going from locking up every third install, to every install, to twice an install. I am a computer tech and have seen it before. The surge through the system weakened, but didn't kill the processor. It causes random bugs which can be a pain to track down. I have a different motherboard and processor and the lockups have stopped. Thanks for the help, though.

chrisj - I found a way to do this that I like better that I thought I would share with you. It's a little complicated, but it's a better match to what I want to do.

First, I made a directory /mnt/tmp. I then mounted hdc1 to that directory. I copied all the files and directories from /myth to /mnt/tmp and confirmed that they went. Then I edited /etc/fstab and changed the /myth mount point from /hda3 to /hdc1 and rebooted. Checking with df -h (thanks for that one, by the way. Very handy) and ta-dah! 150GB of useable drive (160GB formatted) in the /myth directory with the directory structure 'apparently', 'so far' completely intact. I now intend to see if I can move /home to /dev/hda3, which is 35Gb and will give me plenty of room to copy files I intend to experiment with.

Also, adding the line "options ivtv tuner=50" and changing the line above that from 2 to 50 (I don't think this was necessary because it had a '#' in front of it, which I think makes it a comment) now allows me to actually receive a signal for the first time! I have TV!

It's still a work in progress, but I am farther than I have gotten before and intend to play with it this weekend. I have not gotten the remote to work with the instructions you gave, even though I am pretty sure they are the same instructions I got somewhere else that worked, but I had it working before, I can get it working again.

Once I get this up and running perfectly I intend to do a writeup for my particular hardware going step by step and answering every question. I actually intend to wipe out all the work I've done so far and reinstall, writing down every single step as I do it so that it will be easy to follow. As it is, if I hadn't played around with Linux 10 years ago, I still wouldn't have a clue where to begin troubleshooting.

The next piece of info I need: I have the USB remote receiver that came with the 150 MCE. It does not have a serial IRBlaster. Instead, it has 2 ports on the front of the device labeled 1 and 2. They are 1/8 inch jacks and the IRBlaster plugs into 1 of them (I think the other is for a second, optional IR blaster). Anyone know how to set that up? Do I answer 'yes' or 'no' when it asks if I have a serial IRBlaster? I want to go through every single step of setup so if you get this card, here is step by step everything you need to do right down to the last button press, to the point where you could do it without a screen if you just pressed the keys you are told to when you are told to. Thanks.

Hi asmodee, I'm sure I've seen references to having the hd and optical disks on seperate channels for speed. Something about the bios setting the hd to transfer data at the lower speed of the optical drive. I've often seperated them when trying to get the most out of older equipment for instance. Just my two cents.

_________________
free range geek in boulder, co and mythtv enthusiast
R6.03

Hi,

Your processor issues sound a lot like not having the proper (if any) silicon grease applied for heat transfer. Only takes a dab however without it,

Mike

Be careful here, this can cause severe backup bloat. See the warnings for the new backup here - http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10117


See this page on the wiki for a slightly cleaner solution - http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=CompileIvtv

BTW - This is veering off target for an "installation" post since they are supposed to be about issues with the installer (CD and 2nd stage scripts) proper.

mjl - As I mentioned, I am a computer tech. I did not mention I also have a degree as an electronics technician. This is what I do 40 hours a week. I know it is difficult to tell what someone knows based on a few posts, but trust me, I would not make that mistake As I have said, I have seen it before. A surge can severely weaken components and make them run very flaky.

tjc - yes, it is getting quite off topic. I generally consider all the little configurations to get everything going to be "install" because if you knew exactly what you were doing from one step to the next, this is what you would do to install it. The processor discussion, however, is quite right. I'm pretty much good to go now. I just need to get the remote working and figure out how I'm going to hook all my equipment together, so we can kill this post. I do plan to do a step-by-step at some point for every step I have to take to make the thing work perfectly, but that will be a whole new post, so thanks for your help, everyone! It's been fun (actually, quite frustrating, but once it's working you seem to only remember it being fun for some reason!)