Messages

16

Developers / Re: Backup System Improvements (0810 Critical)

« on: January 13, 2009, 03:13:46 am »

Jon,

If you are talking about media added since the last backup point, then something which would allow a "roll forward" of as much data as possible could be a background task that gets all associated information that relates to a media file, and creates a "bundle" that can be used to restore one piece of media. 

This would also be v useful for the case where someone wants to do a complete new install but not lose all their data.

I have had this in mind for a while since using Mythtv originally- that there should be a way to restore or move a single recorded program to another system- same process.

17

Users / Re: chose 1080, appears to be scaled?

« on: January 12, 2009, 04:54:46 am »

I found that for my Panasonic 1024x768 display that

Option "UseEDID" "True"
Option "UseEDIDDPI" "False"
Option "DPI" "100 x 100"

worked fine, so it would read the EDID info from the panel and choose the right modeline settings for the screen (I set max vert and horizontal refresh rates as per the Pana manual).  I also set the panel explictely to max of 1024x768.

I'll append my xorg.conf here or put it into the Wiki.  Have been meaning to do it but been trying to get around other problems with my LMCE core (which are now solved or pretty much solved anyway).

I found setting the screen size to the correct physical dimensions or the correct physical DPI (something like 25 dpi on the 42" plasma) made the fonts ultra tiny as they are set to be "points" which are related to DPI.  IN other words the video driver tries to make a 12 point typeface physically be 12 points- i.e. if you printed out a word in 12 point on a typewriter and held it up to your plasma screen the video display driver is trying to make the on screen fonts the same size! So you have to lie about the size of the screen.

Anyway I found if I set my DPI explicitely and correctly in my xorg.conf then the fonts would be tiny.  If I pretended that the screen was 100 dpi then they were back to a readable size.  If you want bigger fonts you could try to set 150 or 300 dpi and the fonts should get bigger to "compensate".

18

Users / Intermittent problems on startup of LMCE- solved

« on: January 12, 2009, 04:43:49 am »

I've been having a problem where I would have to reboot 3-4 times to get LMCE to start up fully.

Sometimes I would get "can't connect to database" and other mysql errors reported in the LMCE Launch Manager.  Other times the Orbiter Gen would fail or the Orbiter launch would just fail.

I knew it was unlikely to be hardware 'cos if I rebooted and it made it all the way through to Media Director and Orbiter startup, that the system would run 100% reliably for up to a week.

After a day or 2 of looking at the system, I found the problem- during mysql startup it runs a fast check of all the database tables.  One of the pluto databases was corrupted, and it was corrupted in a way that would actually crash the mysqld process when it tried to check it.  The mysqld process would immediately get respawned but anything that had already connected to the DB during bootup would be disconnected.

So I'd be getting messages about "can't connect to mysql using socket", but when I would try it myself from the command line it would work fine.

I found it by disabling the mysqlcheck in the mysql startup scripts, enabling error logging in the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file, and I could then see which DB table  it was crashing on.

Then just had to open the DB in mysql using the command line interface to mysql, and optimize the table.  This has fixed the table enough to stop it crashing with the mysqlcheck step.  But it is still corrupt in some way (logs reporting incorrect timestamps) so will have to do a full fix tonight and try to unload/reload the database.  From memory the table was "File". Can't remember which pluto DB, easy enough to find cd /var/lib/mysql/ then do a find . -name "File".

Of course, the symptoms make perfect sense now, any processes that were connected to the DB during bootup when mysql was in the middle of checking and crashed/respawned would be disconnected and fail.  As my DB tables for Myth grew it would take longer to check until it got to the point where it was hitting the right point in the bootup process to disconnect the processes started before the mysqlcheck.

Will append more "how to recover the DB table" once I've done it.

This was a real stinker of a problem- intermittent ones always are!

One thing which is a pain is that the "InnoDB" style of database whcih is being used for the pluto DBs and tables does not have the ability to recover by doing a self repair, unlike the ISAM databases which are used by Mythtv.  It'd be interesting to know why the InnoDB engine was used in stead of the ISAM engine (MySQL gives you a choice) as it seems from my initial reading to be less robust and an "old" way of doing things.

OK I was wrong about InnoDB- InnoDB has a lot more function such as row locking and ACID etc so it is v good to use this instead of ISAM.  Though you don't get the self-repair facilities of ISAM

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1058872.html
http://www.linux.com/feature/46370

19

Users / Re: mythfilldatabase problem (ulimit)

« on: January 11, 2009, 05:51:27 am »

You can also do

Code: [Select]

date +%s > /tmp/MythTvInitialFillDBRun
This will get you out of the endless loop.  I should submit a bug report as this code is definitely buggy in terms of checking to make sure the file exists before trying to wait 2 minutes.  It is probably OK on the 1st run as the file has actually been created during the install process, but when /tmp gets cleared out (at reboot I think) then the file vanishes and next boot you get the infinite loop.

The other issue is that the mythfilldatabase job runs as root (which you found out).  This causes problems with the "shepherd" grabber often used in Australia.  I have just set the
mythfilldatabase arguments to say

Code: [Select]

--graboptions '--version'which effectively disables the mythfilldatabase being run from inside mythtv (I hope).

You can't delete the mythfilldatabase job from the Setup menus inside Mythtv frontend because LMCE (bless its little cotton socks) will just put it back in next time the Orbiter is regened- as far as I can tell this is when it resets all of the Mythtv settings.  Too bad if you tuned some of them for your own needs (e.g. deinterlace method).

20

Users / Re: Mythtv or Xine player play same IPTV recording differently - interlace ?

« on: January 11, 2009, 05:29:43 am »

Try
/etc/pluto/xine.conf

21

Users / Re: mythfilldatabase error

« on: January 06, 2009, 08:52:54 am »

This can be an issue with your Mythconverg database. There is more info in the Mythtv forums. http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User_Manual:Periodic_Maintenance

All sorts of weird problems happen with Mythtv if the DB is stuffed up.

Go to Main KDE desktop Menu-settings, Mythtv backend setup, follow prompts to stop mythtv backend, go into Mythtv setup, exit without doing anything, then leave the panel "Do you want to run Mythfilldatabase" open, this stops mythtv running and stops LMCE from restarting it.  There is probabablu a more elegant way to do this but it works (and /etc/init.d/mythtvbackend stop does not).

Code: [Select]

sudo su - mythtv
cd /var/lib/mysql/mythconverg/
perl /usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/optimize_mythdb.pl
cd <wherever your grabber stores its output.xmltv file>
mythfilldatabase --file 1 7 output.xmltv
Now go to panel asking you if you want to run mythfilldatabase, answer "no"

See if you can see something now in your program listing. I like to use Mythweb, open the LMCE admin website from the main LMCE launcher, then you can just access the URL http://localhost/mythweb/

Good luck!

22

Users / Re: Navigation problems in DVD

« on: January 06, 2009, 08:37:24 am »

I am having the same issue.  No DVD menu cursor is visible though the actual DVD menus work, if I navigate "blind".

23

Users / Re: blue ray

« on: December 29, 2008, 01:39:47 am »

I have not researched this recently, but last I checked Blah-Ray would not work natively with Linux- that is, play directly from a Blu-Ray disc.  You have to rip the disc and then play from a hard disk image.  Don't know if LMCE can do this, but it is possible to do manually.

There is some hope on the horizon http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2908

More info about Blu-Ray and Linux:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD

In reality, you are unlikely to be able to see the difference between DVD and Blah-Ray.  You are much better off to stick to DVD for the time being, and not get sucked into the "upgrade for real HD" Blu-ray marketing.

I can't remember where I found the following chart so can't give credit to where it is due (it is not my chart).  But it shows the resolving power of average eyesight vs the screen size and viewing distance.  Note that for the USA (NTSC format, 480 lines) the difference between Blu-ray and DVD is more significant than for PAL (576 lines).

24

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Core Redundancy:What if?

« on: December 29, 2008, 01:25:19 am »

It probably sounds like a reasonable option to "just" backup your core regularly. 

So you have to take the core down for an hour or two while you do it.  If you have the air con, phone, all your TV recordings reliant on the core then when do you want to do this?  2 AM backups are not fun to do.

I have been thinking that a 2nd server with http://www.drbd.org/ DRBD might be the way to keep another backup server image "in sync" with the core.  Then a documented procedure to get the 2nd server up and running.

And then another procedure to "fail back" (which is often forgotten and is as hard as the "fail over").  Because you want any updates done to your data over the week it takes you to fix the original server to not be discarded.

25

Installation issues / Re: Trying to update nVidia drivers

« on: December 29, 2008, 01:05:57 am »

Please post more details about your symptoms- e.g. system boots, I see a BIOS screen, and the boot process starts then everything goes black etc etc

There is a known bug with the Nvidia cards that have a VGA port and a DVI port, than all video comes out of the DVI port no matter if you ask for VGA port of not.  A simple cheap $5 DVI to VGA adapter plug solves this problem.  If you get no video at all then try this first.

Also, you can hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 during boot to "flip back" to a full view of the boot process.

26

Installation issues / Re: 7.10 Kubuntu installation fails to find harddrives in setup wizard

« on: December 29, 2008, 01:04:03 am »

Many motherboards have the ability to make the SATA ports for the hard disks emulate the older IDE ports, so that older operating systems can run unmodified.  Check out your motherboard's manual for more info about how to do this.

27

Installation issues / Re: Tuner Card's not being detcted at install

« on: December 29, 2008, 01:01:35 am »

If you are referring to the 'FusionHDTV Dual Digital 4' card then this can be made to work under the 0710 kernel... see here; http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_PCI_Cards#DViCO. We have tested this card and even with the latest linuxtv drivers under the 2.6.22 Kernel you will not get a smooth ride.

I agree with Andrew- I bought the DViCO dual digital 4 card (rev 2) and did not realise that it would have problems with the new drivers on the standard LMCE 710 kernel.  The same drivers work on later kernel versions brilliantly- I had to upgrade my kernel to get the card to work.  This was pretty involved so I would not recommend it.  You might be better off waiting until LMCE 810 is available and stable, as the DViCO tuner should work fine then.

If you have a DViCO rev 1 card then this should work fine on the standard LMCE kernel, the problem lies with the kernel support for the USB chips on the rev 2 tuner card.

This is one of the biggest problems with building a PVR using Linux- the manufacturers of tuner cards keep changing the designs on us!  Just when linux coders have written and debugged a driver for a tuner card, the manufacturers change the card (and don't tell anyone they have) or you can't buy it any more!

28

Installation issues / Re: Linux mce, xmltv_grab_de_prisma and mythfilldatabase

« on: December 29, 2008, 12:54:39 am »

Were you trying to run mythfilldatabase from a terminal session?

Try running the mythfilldatabase while you are logged in as user 'mythtv'.  It looks like your mythfilldatabase is not picking up the correct password to access mysql.  If you can't access the database then you can't populate it with data!

In a terminal session try

Code: [Select]

sudo su - mythtv
Then try the mythfilldatabase again.  Type Ctrl-D to exit back out of the mythtv user.

29

Users / Re: mythtv looks stretched vertically/skinny. Can't find setting

« on: December 27, 2008, 03:43:06 am »

I just connected my LMCE hybrid server to a plasma TV, so had to set up the right aspect ratio.  If you are having problems you can check the "use separate modes" box, then you can choose just the GUI aspect ratio and resolution (1st line), and then leave all the other lines alone- the ones that set overrides for particular source media video resolutions.  This means the GUI and all videos accessed by Mythtv will default to the GUI setting.

This cured all of my aspect ratio woes!

30

Users / Re: Adjust AV Sync in Xine/Mplayer?

« on: December 27, 2008, 03:19:39 am »

Thanks guys I sort of thought that would be the case.