HELP!! "Official" Installation Procedures?

[maxres]

Hi everyone,

It sounds like we are all having a myriad of installation problems with LinuxMCE.  I have gotten it to (apparently) install properly in a VMWare VM (UI1 only - ) , but I am about 0/20 on installs on physical machines.  In order to help me and others getting this thing installed, does anyone have even somewhat definitive answers to the following issues?

a)  Should Ubuntu software updates be done before doing the LinuxMCE install?  There was the suggestion on a forum post that one should NOT, or the install will fail.

b)  Should graphic card drivers be installed prior to or after LinuxMCE installation?  I have a nVidia 7900GS and was using Envy to put on the nVidia driver.  That works to install the driver, but LinuxMCE always seems to clober the Xorg.conf files?  Does LinuxMCE try to handle the video card drivers itself?  What is the relationship between the installed video driver and the "Video Card" field on the media director's properties page in the web admin?

c)  How does one tell if the LinuxMCE install was successful or not?  In some of my installs, I get errors in the install log about no being able to connect to mySQL?  Should those be ignored as the installer seems to think the install completely normally?

d)  During the install process, random downloads of files seem to fail and cause the installer to die (Inability to install pluto-orbiter seems like the most common result).  Yet other times the installer seems to proceed happily after failing to download a file.  So again, how are we supposed to tell if the install succeeded or not?  Could some of our odd install issues be simply caused by random download failures that the installer doesn't deal with properly?

...I have not been able to get a PVR-150 board to display TV either...but one thing at a time...I will be very happy to just see UI2 running propely on top of live TV.

But it has been an incredibly frustrating experience so far.  I believe the install process not to be deterministic, as in do the same exact procedure multiple times and you get different results. 

To aid the discussion, I did:
...on a Pentium D (920?), w/2GB RAM, nVidia 7900GS, WinTV PVR-150, 2 NICs...
a) Ubuntu 6.1 Desktop Install
b) Performed all software updates
*** IMAGED the HD - "Baseline"
c) Installed Envy and dependencies - ran Envy and installed nVidia driver, rebooted
d) Ran LinuxMCE Install - "Hybrid", DHCP: yes, Start into Ubuntu...seems to complete normally
*** IMAGED the HD - "Installed1"
e) Boot up and run "Start Media Center" - eventually AV Wizard comes up...went through that...UI1 comes up.
f) Went into webadmin, added a user and a room, set the UI for the Media Director to UI2 (NO alpha blending)

...The on-screen orbiter now appears as either a black screen or a garbled screen.  Nothing I do seems to have any effect on that if I use UI2.  It also goes to a black screen during the PVR-150 setup even under UI1...don't know it that is related or not.

( so I can restore to either the "Baseline" or "Installed1" images in just a few minutes...but my numerous attempt don't seem to be leading me anywhere...)

Answers or suggestions?

-MaxRes

[John Taylor]

Here is a wiki page with a guide for installation http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Installation_Guide  and after that you can check
http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php?title=QuickStart_Guide hope this will help you.