Topics

1

Users / Internal HDD #1790

« on: August 01, 2007, 04:43:36 am »

I want to use the 2nd internal drive on the Core as a picture server for my laptop.  The problem is that I'm having difficulty getting Samba to work consistently. I can manually add a samba share from within ubutunu.  That works fine for a few days\hours until LMCE modifies the smb.conf file on me.  Obviously, I need to add the share from within LMCE so that my share doesn't get deleted.

I was able to add a share using template #1790.  That seemed to work except that it doesn't make the shared folder public.  If I select "System Settings"->Sharing from within Ubuntu I can see the new device in the list and samba is enabled.  If I select it an click "Change" the "Share with Samba" box is checked, but the public and writeable boxes aren't.  Without these boxes checked I can't view the share from my laptop.  Is there an option that I can check in the web admin that will make the share public\writeable?

2

Users / Switching from 1 network card to 2

« on: July 04, 2007, 04:13:38 am »

I'm currently using an onboard network adapter, but I'd like to add an additional gigabit NIC.  I want to have the onboard card configured for the external network (192.168.2.xx).  It will connect directly to my cable modem and optain an IP from my ISP.  The gigabit card will connect to a gigabit switch on the internal network and will have an IP of 192.168.80.xx.

I've installed the gigabit NIC and Linux detects it as eth1.  My question is, how do I get LinuxMCE to detect the new card?  Is there a network setup wizard or something that I can run?  Or do I need to manually configure /etc/network/interfaces?

3

Users / DHCP and wireless laptop

« on: June 24, 2007, 07:17:16 pm »

I just discovered today that I'm not able to acquire an IP address from the core DHCP server using the wireless card in my laptop.  I'm able to acquire an IP just fine if I use the physical ethernet connnect.  Here's my setup:

Cable Modem ->Wireless Router (DHCP disabled) ->DCERouter (DHCP server)       
                                                                   ->VOIP Modem (wired connection)
                                                                   ->Laptop (wired)                       
                                                                   ->Laptop (wireless)     

The DCERouter(core) has a single NIC card.  The Laptop and VOIP modem can acquire IPs in the 192.168.80.xxx range just fine.  When I disconnect the ethernet cable on the laptop, it can see the wireless router just fine, but it can't acquire and IP from the core.  Should this setup work or am I missing something?

4

Users / Cover Art for TV shows?

« on: June 19, 2007, 04:51:42 am »

Is it possible to define cover art for TV shows?  It would be really great to get automatic cover art for shows that I record like Lost, Scrubs, etc.  MythTV tags each recording with a .id3 file, so it should be possible to use that info to pull down the appropriate cover art.

Does LMCE get DVD cover art from IMDB or Amazon or where? 

5

Users / nVidia playback problem

« on: June 01, 2007, 05:07:23 pm »

Since installing 1.1 and Kubuntu 7.04, I've noticed that I'm having difficulty getting smooth video playback. It doesn't matter what type of content I try to play.  SD and HD material display the same symptom.  There's a lot of tearing in the image and playback is jumpy.  The problem exists using both xv and xvmc/xxmc, but the problem is worse when using xvmc.  I did some investigation and isolated the problem to the Composite extension in the xorg.conf file. 

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

If I set Composite to "Disable" the playback is smooth.  It appears to be an nVidia driver issue with either KDE or Ubuntu 7.04, but I'm not sure which.  People are having tons of issues with the current nVidia drivers and Ubuntu over at the nvNews forums.  The most recent nVidia drivers have exhibit this problem on my box.  I've tried 9755, the latest legacy driver, and the 100.xx nVidia beta driver.   The catch is that disabling Composite prevents me from using UI2 with alpha-blending.  I can still run UI2 with Masking however, so all is not lost.

I wanted to point this out in case others are seeing playback issues with nVidia cards.  Here are my system specs.

Athlon64 3500+
6600GT (AGP)
2GB dual channel RAM
nVidia 9755 driver (same issue with beta 100.xx beta driver)
Avermedia A180 ATSC\QAM card
Olevia 532H HDTV connected via DVI

6

Users / Yet another MythTV question.

« on: May 22, 2007, 08:10:35 pm »

First off, the MythTV integration in 1.1 seems to be working much better than the 1.0 release.  Thanks a ton.  Was the root cause of the problem identified or is the current implementation still a work around?  I noticed that mythfrontend is called mythfrontend.real which looks very similar to the workaround identified by user Corwin in this thread "Any solutions for disappearing mythtv frontend?"

Now to my question, after selecting Media->TV it launches the myth frontend and takes you to live TV.  If you traverse back to the LMCE home screen you see a list of options including (liveTV, recordings, guide, etc.).  When you press "guide" it takes you to the mythTV guide.  In the infamous LMCE debut video that wasn't the guide that was displayed.  That guide allowed you flip through "2 weeks worth of shows" in a few minutes or something like that.  This clearly isn't the guide that was displayed in the video.  Whatever happened to that guide?  I as hoping to see it in the 1.1 release.  It looked nifty and I hope it gets revived.  The current mythtv guide is fine, but it takes away from the media centric experience that LMCE is shooting for.

7

Users / Version 1.1 and MythTV questions

« on: May 22, 2007, 07:41:12 pm »

I'm currently running into an issue where the frontend can't connect to the backend.  The problem is related to the IP addresses that get defined in the mythtv-setup->General section.  By default, LinuxMCE sets the first IP address to the IP of the internal network.  The second IP field is being set to "localhost".  This mismatch is an issue.

According to the how-to document at mythtv.org you either need to have both IP fields set to localhost or both fields set to valid IPs.

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-9.html 
"NOTE: If you modify the 127.0.0.1 address and use a "real" IP address, you must use real IP addresses in both fields, otherwise your frontend machines will generate "Unexpected response to MYTH_PROTO_VERSION" errors."

To fix the problem I have to manually run the mythtv-setup EACH I start LMCE and change the first IP to localhost.

This was initially working, but it broke somewhere along the line.  My guess is that it stopped working when I changed the network settings for my box from within the pluto admin pages.  I currently have my box setup with a static IP and I let my router act as the DHCP server for the rest of the boxes on my network.  There must be a bug where the changes that I made aren't being reflected correctly in the mythtv setup.  Is there a place in the Admin pages where I can change the IP value that gets used in the MythTV setup?

8

Installation issues / Can't upgrade from Edgy 6.10 to Fiesty 7.04

« on: May 16, 2007, 08:50:41 pm »

I'm trying to prep my system for the 1.1 beta release.  Here's what I tried:

#sudo gksu "update-manager -c"

That launches the update manager.  I then click on "Upgrade" where it talks about 7.04 being available.

The upgrade starts but it aborts because it can't fetch the following packages:

http://deb.plutohome.com/debian/dists/20dev_ubuntu/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz
http://deb.plutohome.com/debian/dists/replacements_ubuntu/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz

Is anyone else getting this?  I don't really want to do a fresh install of 7.04, nor do I want to try to uninstall LMCE 1.0 before I upgrade to 7.04.

9

Users / Wrong aspect ratio with Xine video playback

« on: April 16, 2007, 02:42:49 am »

When I watch TV that I've recorded from the "Media->Video" menu, the aspect ratio is all messed up.  4:3 content gets compressed horizontally (extra wide black bars).  If I watch the same show outside of LMCE through mythfrontend it looks fine.  I'm aware of the issue where Xine can't properly detect the aspect ratio of the TV.  I thought the recommended fix was to add a "DisplaySize 240 135" to the xorg.conf.pluto file, but that doesn't seem to work.

Has anyone else run into this?  Ripped and standard DVD's seem to play back correctly.  I haven't tried any HD content as of yet.  I'm running at 720p.

10

Installation issues / MythTV woes

« on: April 02, 2007, 12:15:40 am »

I tried to installing LMCE on a machine that already had a functioning MythTV installation.  Apparently that was a mistake.  I'm currently running into database problems.

My original Myth Install created a mythtv user and a database called MythConverg.  From the mythtv setup, you were required to supply a password for the mythtv user in order to access the database.  That was fine and it worked.

When LMCE tries to access the database it connects as user 'root'@'localhost' with NO password.  When I run the mythtv setup from inside the orbiter it can't connect to the database, so it brings you to the screen where you need to supply the IP of the backend and the database\name password.  You MUST supply a password here.  To get by this issue, I can manually change the database to use a password for 'root@localhost'.  That allows me to run the setup and configure my cards.  The problem is that if you try to change anything from the Pluto admin (i.e. the PVR-150 settings) it fails because it tries to connect as 'root'@'localhost' with NO password.

So here are my questions:
1. Why does LMCE always try to connect to the mysql as root?  This isn't how a typical myth install is done.
2. Is it possible to change LMCE so that it uses a password when connecting to mysql?

11

Installation issues / Method to detect Media

« on: March 30, 2007, 07:23:11 pm »

Here's my current setup.

I have a dual boot Windows/Ubuntu box.  Two of the internal drives are essentially shared between Linux and Windows.  I also have a 2nd windows box that hosts music and pictures.  Currently LMCE can't find the content from any of these drives.

--device name from inside Linux
/media/hd5a ->NTFS partition containing DVD ISO images
/media/hd4a ->FAT32 partition containing various MPEG4/MPEG2 video files. 

--Windows shares located on an IP ouside of the internal network
\\PICTURES
\\MUSIC

Questions:
1.  Why doesn't LMCE automatically find the content on /media/hd5a and /media/hd4a drives?  How do I update LMCE so that this data will appear under the 'Videos' option in the 'Media' menu?

2. I understand that LMCE won't detect my windows shares automatically since they aren't on the same "internal" network (i.e. LMCE internal network 192.168.80.xxx, but Windows Box is 192.168.2.xxx).  How do I get my pictures\music to be visible to LMCE.  Do I need to manually add a device(s) using the Window Share / device template 1768?

12

Users / DVD Playback help!

« on: March 28, 2007, 10:53:14 pm »

I'm unable to playback DVD's from LMCE.  When I select "play disk" I get the message "One moment - checking the drive ..", but nothing happens.  I've tried standard and unencrypted DVD's with the same result.  I don't see any activity on my DVD drive lights.  How do I tell LMCE to use my /dev/dvd device to playback DVDs?  I can't seem to find any Pluto\LMCE documentation that describes this.  Is there a custom xine config file that I need to tweak or something?