Topics

31

Users / Does creating a RAID set in LMCE on existing drive with media, wipe it out?

« on: November 25, 2008, 08:47:27 pm »

 
I have just picked up a couple of 500G internal SATA drives. I currently have 1 internal 500G drive, with media on it, using the pluto structure.

My question is this, if I add 2 more 500G drives to it and create a raid 5 disk using LMCE's RAID facility, will it wipe out the data on the original disk?

I have never created a RAID set on a disk that contained data, so I figured I would ask to see if anyone here has done this or knows what the outcome would be.

The current disk has just over 400G of media on it.

Thanks.

Regards,

Seth

32

Users / Migrated all Data to the core - Experiences

« on: November 25, 2008, 04:30:20 pm »

 
High all,

Last evening I took every bit of disk storage I had, and placed it on the Core server in the basement.
It was a mix/matched bunch of internal and external disks, and now they are all centrally located.

My reasoning for doing this was 2 fold. I was having issues with my Living Room MD, which uses the NVIDIA forcedeth driver for network, and I was getting a rash of CIFS and NFS timeout errors in dmesg and the logs. This was causing my core to eventually lock up, as the errors were consistantly getting more and more. This would then take down all my MD's as the core was hosed up, and angry.

The second reason I did this, is so that no matter what I do in the house now, I know my media will be available to all other MD's.

I have just ordered a new Motherboard and CPU for the living room:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131324
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103211
Which are on a combo deal right now for $114.99 Free shipping.
This board uses a broadcom based on board 10/100/1000 NIC, and is reported to be supported well. My core has 2 Broadcom Gigabit NIC's currently. It also has HDMI, DVI, and Optical SPIDF out. More will follow after I try to install it, I will post it to the wiki. It does have ATI graphics, but we shall see if that causes an issue or not.

Back to the topic, If you are experiencing an excessive amount of CIFS, and Network related issues, and you have the opportunity, try to centrally locate your storage, or use NAS type, this resolved all my issues, even though I am replacing the system board and CPU. It made quite a difference in the amount of times it popped up the annoying (Added blah-blah drive blah-blah) and now when using the FaM menu in the web admin, Media Files Sync just flies. It is much faster than it was, when the storage, internal and external was connected to the MD with the bad NIC.

Anyways, just my 2 cents. I hope if anyone is experiencing this issue, give it a try, centralize everything. After all that was the original intent of the core anyways. 

Regards,

Seth

33

Installation issues / New system board onboard NIC, pinstrap or MII??

« on: November 24, 2008, 07:22:31 pm »

 
I have a new board for an MD in my installation, that has settings in the BIOS for the onboard network adapter. It is a Realtek 8201BL PHY interface.

When going through the options on the board, I see that the interface has 3 options to set:

MAC LAN
   This option allows you to change the state of the onboard MAC LAN.
   The Choices: Auto (default), Disabled.
Onboard LAN Boot ROM
   This item allows you to enable or disable Onboard LAN Boot ROM.
   The Choices: Disabled (default), Enabled.
MAC Media Interface
   The Choices: Pin Strap (default).MII.

I can assume from the above, that MAC LAN should be set to - Auto
Onboard LAN Bootrom (PXE?) should be - Enabled
MAC Media Interface - should it be Pin Strap or MII?

Perhaps someone could enlighten me on the last part. I am not sure what to do, it has Pin Strap on by default, But a google of MII stands for Media Independent Interface. I would think to use this in a PXE boot WOL environment, I would want MII,  but as it is not the default choice, perhaps I am wrong.

Any insight would be helpful. Worst case, I could just try both.

Thanks.

Regards,

Seth

34

Users / The function of "Disabled" in device description?

« on: November 19, 2008, 07:00:41 pm »

 
I am having some issues that are causing my core to lock up. I am thinking it is a device attached to the core. Going down through the list, as I click on a device, I see in the right pane, that there is an option for disabling it. "Disabled"

My question is this, rather than delete devices completely from the tree, if I just check "Disabled" will it seperate it from the core, in otherwords, remove it from being used, so that I can , by process of elimination, possibly determine what is causing the hang.

Thanks,

Regards,

Seth

35

Installation issues / Multiple Entries in The Video Menu. Solved!!!

« on: November 17, 2008, 01:50:19 pm »

 
Ok. So I have my core up and running stable for quite some time now. This morning I go into the video menu, to see if the show I recorded last evening is there. And it is 
However, As I scroll down through the cube, I notice that all of my existing media is ther as well, but there are 6 instances of each ONE recording.

I know for a fact I did not rip The 300 6 times, so what is going on here?

It makes my wife nuts, to select "Children" from the genre tags, and then have to scroll through 6 cubes worth of 4 shows.

Not sure what I need to do to get this resolved. But I need to. I am actually contemplating a complete re-install....

But I am sure its something simple......Right?

Look forward to the forthcoming responses.

Regards,

Seth

36

Users / Media Director Suggestions

« on: November 11, 2008, 01:32:08 pm »

 
Hi All,

I have a new MD in the living room. It runs an AMD 64 3200+ cpu (single core), and has 1G of ram. It also contains 2 tuner cards (pvr 150's) and a 500 Gig hard drive. Now when I net boot it up, it chooses arch of amd64. Of course. But I was wondering for stability issues, should I:
a.) allow LMCE to build and boot it as a 64bit MD
or
b.) create the MD by hand in the admin page, and use the i386 arch?

This system also has an external 500G USB drive with Movies/Tunes and a USB-UIRT which will be controlling the Dish receivers, and the TV it is attached to.

I know if I go i386, I will need the x86 fix for the USB-UIRT. However if I go amd64, the USB-UIRT will just work. (For Transmitting/blasting).

So I guess I am looking for success/failure input from the group. It is currently running Mythbuntu 8.04 and serving up its recordings/videos through UPnP to the existing core system. But I don't want Mythbuntu, I want LMCE

Please post suggestions/experiences here for me.

Thanks, and Regards,

Seth

37

Installation issues / DHCP and MAC addresses: How to Purge?

« on: November 05, 2008, 01:32:13 pm »

 
Hi there,

I have a question. I had a media director that had some hardware issues. I would like to keep it for testing, however, the IP address that it was assigned by the core, keeps referring to its MAC address. I would like to clear the questionable MAC address from getting the 192.168.80.5 IP address assigned to it.

What file or .conf piece do I need to modify to clear the offending MAC address, and give this IP to my new MD, rather than having it assigned to the old, testing MD's MAC address?

End result is that I want the new MD (which is working great as .6) to become .5

Thanks In Advance,

Regards,

Seth

38

Users / MythTV - Odd database issues, and mysql failures!!!Help!!

« on: September 16, 2008, 01:37:15 pm »

 
So, last evening I get home from work and get ready to fire up some of the recording I myth'd over the weekend. I fire up the LMCE video menu, and instead of seeing my tv shows there with cover art, I get the evil 2135_2008091401000.mpg files. So, I jump into MythTV and fire up the recordings menu, and of course, all my shows are there. So I go back out, and fire up mythweb to see if there is anything missing there. It says the tuner card on my Media Director in the Basement, is "(Currently not connected)". So I figure it is hung, I go downstairs, and its running fine, so I fire up MythTV there, and I get the mythtv-setup screen asking me about language preferences. I choose English, insure the server information is correct, and still no MythTV.

So I go back upstairs and fire up my laptop, and get two ssh sessions going, one to the core and the other to the MD in the basement. I become root on the core, and run the various job scripts I have, and they seem to complete successfully. So, I jump into the ssh session to the MD, and type 'mysql -u mythtv -p mythconverg, enter the password, and get a "Unable to connect to mysql socket at /var/run/mysql/mysql.sock2, or something like that. So the next thing I try, is typing in 'mysql -u mythtv -p mythconverg -h dcerouter' That worked and I connected to the database on the core.

So then I start digging into the various jobs I have scripted, like my mythpretty script which makes Human Readable entries from the evil mythtv numbering schema as detailed in my wiki entry here http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/MythPretty and I notice that the shows are no longer being updated. For instance I know I have 2 episodes of The Shield recorded, but only one shows up.

So I run the script on the MD, and it also does no updates, and from either LMCE, MythTV, or the XboxMC I have running, I can not watch any of the shows recorded by the MD. MythTV recordings menu for instance says "File not found" I can only speculate that this is because the MD can not connect to the mysql database, via MythTV.

Most of the googling I did says about settings for the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file needing to be changed. Specifically the "bind address" portion of it. However, I have never changed this file. The only recent changes I did was re-installing the mythtv database, to resolve a tuner card not showing up issue, and restoring my mythconverg tables relating to previously recorded, and still used MythTV recordings, which I wiki'd here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Mythtv:RestoreRecordingsAfterUpgrade

I am at a loss. I am preparing to nuke and pave the core and start again, but I was wondering if any of you guru-types, may have a place for me to look, as to repairing my database issues.

Regards,

Seth

39

Users / Getting "Human Readable" MythTV Shares for non-LMCE Clients

« on: September 03, 2008, 03:49:21 pm »

 
Hi all, just wanted to post that I have created a wiki article to make viewing MythTV shares on non--LMCE systems, easier on the eyes.
After completing the steps in the wiki, you will see this:

Code: [Select]

1136_20080902220000.mpgTurn into this:

Code: [Select]

The Shield - 2008-09-02, 10-00 PM - Coefficient of Drag.mpg
Just go here for the details:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/MythPretty

Best Regards,

Seth

40

Users / Myth to Pluto DB Job Not working!!!Help!!-SOLVED!!!

« on: July 31, 2008, 01:34:25 pm »

 
Hi all, I have a recent developement which is quite maddening. I re-installed my core with 710 RC2 x86 Last Saturday afternoon. Now I immediatley started scheduleing shows, as I deleted all the ones I had recorded. Figured I would go with a fresh start. Now all the shows that recorded on both saturday and sunday, went right into the lmce video menu as they should. I had even taken the extra step of adding show art to the recording bit from mythweb from the image url's provided at thetvdb.com. So now I have all the shows from those 2 days with their respective artwork. So I schedule some recordings for th upcoming week. And added their respective artwork from thetvdb.com urls, come Monday evening, when trying to view some episodes that were recorded, they do not appear in the LMCE vdeo menu, however the dvd's that were ripped that very day did.

Now when going into MythTV and using its recordings menu, all my shows are of course there, and commflagged as they should be. So I figure that I just need to manually run the job on these few shows, something glitched out. So I go through them all and run the job. Wait about 30 minutes, then do a reload of the router -  just in case - and still no tv shows appearing in the LMCE video menu.

I have tracked down the file that run called by the USER job in mythtv, they produce no error output. I was wondering which log I should watch or log(s), while running the job, to see what is happening.

Please anyone with any ideas, chime in.

Thanks in advance and Regards,


Seth

41

Users / How Many AMD64 Cores Out There?

« on: July 09, 2008, 06:56:57 pm »

 
I was just wondering how many people are using AMD64 cores, with 710 RC2, and if you were experiencing any issues. I am debating installing a AMD64 core, .vs an i386 one on my AMD64 server.

In the past there were issues, concerning the betas. But now I am planning a redesign, and was wondering how stable the AMD64 image was currently.

Thanks and Regards,

Seth

42

Users / Getting your MythTV programs repopulated in MythTV? Can it be done?

« on: June 16, 2008, 01:32:01 pm »

 
Hi all. Over the weekend, I installed a fresh copy of 710 RC2. I added my media drive back into the mix, and all my shows show up in the LMCE Video menu, as if it never happened. However, when launching the MythTV viewer, I do not see my recordings. I can remember in my Knoppmyth days, that there was a script included, that would rebuild/repopulate your mythtv menu after a fresh install. I think it was called mythrebuilddb.pl I was wondering if this script could be run in LMCE. It uses the same database as pure MythTV, mythconverg, but I was wondering if any of the LMCE/MythTV gurus, would have any insight as to whether or not this would still work. I am not sure how interwoven if at all the mythconverg db is with the pluto_main db.

Any ideas would be great. I have yet to find the script on the internet, but I have a Knoppmyth disc at home, and I could install that on a test box, and get the file. If I am not mistaken, the mythbuntu cd I have would probably have the file as well.

On another note, if there are any mysql guru's out there, perhaps you may know of a different way to re-import the data into the mythconverg db?

Thanks in advance,

Regards,

Seth

43

Installation issues / 710 RC - Changelog questions

« on: April 23, 2008, 05:15:18 pm »

 

I see that the RC will be made available for download in a few days. I have some questions regarding the changelog

1. MythTV updated to the latest fixes (is this .20 or do we now have .21?)

2. VDR Integrated into LMCE (Does this mean it is automatically installed, or will there still be choices?)

3. Fixed internal drive detection for MDs (does this eliminate the constant messages regarding it finding an in use drive?)

4. Upload pic for rooms is converted to png to be displayed both on page and on orbiter. (so now any image is automatically resized?)

Also I did not see mention of 2 other enhancements important to me
  a. ddamron's PLM code with PNP detection included in this release
  b. jondecker's CM11A code included in this release

These may seem like stupid questions, but rather than bark them out in the IRC room, I figured this would be a good place to ask.

Regards,

Seth

44

Users / 704 Issues - MD Specific

« on: April 11, 2008, 05:47:39 pm »

Hi all,

I have recently rolled back my production system at home to 704 as this is the stable version. And it is, it just runs, no lock-ups, timeouts, etc. The issue I am having is MD specific. When I create a diskless MD, it goes through the motions and creates the image, no problem. It then boots up the MD with this image, no problem. However, on this particular MD, I have a pvr150mce card, which it sees during boot up although it fails to load the firmware, so the driver appears as failed. This is the  confirmed in the setup wizard, as the card does not show up as detected or usable. OK. This I can fix. I ssh to the core from a remote terminal on my laptop, and copy the /lib/firmware folder over into /usr/pluto/diskless/<md number>. Then  I reboot the MD, and bingo the cards are detected. After coming up it hangs on starting the mce_usb2 device, for the attached mce remote. Ok, I see that the lirc drivers are downloaded successfully by the message system, and I can manually do
 modprobe lirc_dev
 modprobe lirc_mceusb2

And then the remote works. So I add these two kernel modules to /etc/modules. Now on a reboot I have both the pvr150 card and the mce_usb2 remote working automagically. And then the real problem.

Now when I add my Dish STB to it, it lets me set it up, and there are no issues there. I let it do the mythtv thing and download the program guide. After that is finished, I select TV from the menu, and all I get is a black screen. So I hop on an ssh session again and run dmesg, it says something along the lines of "Application is too fast for device". So I then exit out of TV mode and drop into Video mode, try to play something on the core storage, again I am vexed with the black screen. Ok, so I try Audio, and it works. Next I try "Live TV Dish 522RF" and I can watch the Dish STB no problems. So something is hosed with mythtv, and there must be an issue with network playback.

Here is what I plan to do over the weekend. On the MD, I will preform a disk'd install, using the 704cd and the 2 lmce cd's. After that long process, I will try again to get things working. In the meantime, and before I put in the install time, is there anything else I can check or look into? I have deleted and recreated the diskless bit in the web admin 3 times now.

Any guidance would be helpful.

Thanks. 

Seth

45

Users / USB-UIRT beta4 i386 - Pretends to Work!!! (Mostly Resolved)

« on: March 14, 2008, 12:47:08 pm »

 
OK. So I downloaded the cd install of beta4. I waited the eternity for it to finish up. After I get up and running, I add in my Dish Network receiver, learn all the appropriate codes, and let Sarah set up my MythTV. OK. So far no issues. Replace the MythtTV_PLayer as described in the wiki, for the fix. Now, I go to watch TV. I try to change the channel, I hit 122 (SciFi) the USB-UIRT blinks 3 times as if it is doing it's bit. The TV pauses briefly, and then..... Nothing happens!

Now I figure I learned the codes incorrectly, so I redo the learning procedure, and try again, and no dice.

I noticed this issue with beta3 DVD install, after installing the beta3 AMD64 DVD, My USB-UIRT works flawlessly. Is this an i386 bug?

Where should I look (logs) to see what is happening? I kind of thought that it was going to do this, but spent the time downloading the i386 version anyways.

I am confuzzled. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.