Quirks?

[mhorst]

Hello,

I'm new to LinuxMCE, and quite impressed by it. I've been playing with it for about two weeks now, and I noticed some quirks. Probably because I don't understand LinuxMCE yet, but possibly caused by my tinkering.

So I wondered if anybody else noticed the same things. So here goes:
- When I log in on the core as "mhorst" (the account I used during the Ubuntu setup) and then SSH to one the media directors, I my user id suddenly becomes "sambahelper". When I try "su mhorst", I still end up in the sambahelper account.
- The sambahelper account does not seem to have sudo rights, unlike the mhorst account. Combined with the previous quirk that severely limited my ability to do anything on the media directors. My workaround is currently to enable the root account on the core, and then SSH as root to the media director.

- In the AV setup wizard I indicated the boundaries of my screen (my TV only displays 91% of the actual screen), but mythTV still tries to use the full screen. Strangely MythTV setup does seem to use the boundaries.
- The previous quirk wouldn't be much of an issues since there is a "Screen Setup Wizards" option in the "Utilities / Setup" - "Setup" menu of MythTV. Unfortunately, that wizard doesn't seem to have any effect.

- I also suspect Xine tries to use the full screen, and not the boundaries I set in the AV wizard. At least, I had to set the subtitle offset to 30, exactly the number of pixels that falls off the bottom of my TV.
- Some subtitles seem to work in Xine and some don't. Subtitles in ".srt" files work. Subtitles in ".idx"/".sub" files don't seem to work. I haven't tried any other subtitle format yet. I guess it's just a matter of setting the right values in /etc/pluto/xine.conf, but I haven't found them yet.

I'll continue to experiment to see if I can find a way around these things. But before I put too much time in them, I thought I should ask if anybody else has notices and/or solved the same things.

EDIT:
Oh and one I alsmost forgot:
- I use the tv_grab_nl_py script to get my TV listings. It uses a cache, which is stored in /root/.xmltv/program_cache. Somehow, during a mythfilldatabase run it doesn't have rights to modify this cache, and it fails. It is supposed to use the home directory of the user that starts it for caching, so I don't get how it is possible that it does not have the rights to remove that file. For now I have to work around this by manually running mythfilldatabase as root.

[jimbodude]

The ssh to the media directors is not a surprise.  See http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Logging_In#Media_Director - ssh into the core, then do:
sudo ssh moon##
where "##" is the device number of the media director.

Your boundary issues are not a surprise to me either.  From what I've seen, the AVWizard settings only affects the On-Screen Orbiter.  I've not been motivated enough to set boundaries for the other applications - I'm only losing about 4 pixels on each side.

I believe the myth update is run by "mythtvuser", which uses /home/mythtv/ as a home directory.  I'm not sure though.  It happens automatically - look in mythtv configuration for the name of the LinuxMCE script in change of such things.

[merkur2k]

yes, the screen controls in the av wizard only affect the orbiter.
overscan issues on digital monitors are usually due to incorrect resolution/modeline. for instance my tv overscans badly if i use 720P, since its native resolution is actually 1360x768 rather than 1366x768. The TVs themselves often report incorrect info here, making it very hard to solve.

[mhorst]

Thanks,

The sudo ssh thing works, I'll disable my root account.

There is a mythtv user on my system and it seems logical that that one is used to update the listings. I just don't understand how that script comes to the conclusion that /root is the home directory of the mythtv user.
I'm looking in to this. If I do "su mythtv" (as root) and then run mythfilldatabase, everything seems to update fine.
So, I guess its not the update script or the mythfilldatabase, but it has something to do from where the mythfilldatabase is started.
Unfortunately I can't find that location, at least I couldn't find a cron job that runs mythfilldatabase.
So could somebody tell me how, and from where the update is started?

The overscan on my TV is really bad; I have to reduce the screen by 9% before everything is visible. So quite a bit falls of the edges in mythtv (especially in the config screens, which makes setup quite hard).
Am I right in thinking that the AV settings not only affects the orbiter but also the applications spawned from the "Advanced"-"Computing" menu (which includes  MythTV Setup)? At least I don't seem to lose any part of the screen in those applications.
So I guess I'll start looking there, search for the differences and see if I can apply the same trick to the "Media"-"TV" menu.

Anyway, thanks for the help so far.

[merkur2k]

MythTV has its own separate settings to control the ui size, which you get at in the settings in the frontend, not in mythsetup.
It would help to know what TV you have, and what resolution you have chosen to use on it.

[mhorst]

My TV is a Thomson Intuiva (don't know the exact type number, I will look it up).
I bought it a few years ago as a HD-ready TV, so I'm using it at 720p on its HDMI port.