Status update?
Submitted by benh on July 25, 2012 - 4:05am
I'm thinking I might need to upgrade my OS at some stage soon.
I suppose this is a question for Ryan. What is the status of the Mythdora/Elmyth addon package that was proposed?
I really like Mythdora. I can't tell you exactly what I like better than Mythbuntu, but it's always worked better for me when I've tried both.
I'm after something like:
- Going slowly but should be done in the next couple of months
- Nowhere near ready, probably next year if at all
- It's not going to happen anymore, seek your own path forward
If nothing else, it would be nice to have a list of all the packages and settings that Mythdora adds to a Fedora installation.
Thanks
Ben
The only reason I'm thinking
The only reason I'm thinking about going to Mythbuntu is the more recent kernels, daily fixes builds and semi painless dist upgrades but I haven't been able to get my test frontend remote working (which last I tested works fine in Mythdora) so I'm hestant on upgrading my master BE/FE also I much prefer the redhat way rather then the debian way.
keep alive
I thought there was some talk about trying to keep MythDora going as all that work that had been done... I have been doing more shell programming at work and have become a hack at it. Now with Virtualisation, I'd think we could use our MythDora boxes or other for development and testing?
Only if someone does it.
Only if someone does it. Everyone is gone, Ryan was the only one left and I certainly don't expect him to carry us any further than he already did with the courtesy 0.25 packages.
Most of the tools (the work that had been done as you say) would need rewrites as they won't work with current versions of anything from kernels to mythtv and especially the new and layered method of getting remote control support, half of it not using Lirc at all.
Were it not for me working with debian wheezy now I would be looking at Linhes. Pretty much anything that doesn't use the RPM package management system.
how to
The myth wiki and of course google have a couple how to's and blogs about installing Myth on CENTOS and latest Fedora, google is somewhat your friend.
while I love Centos as a
while I love Centos as a server OS for something like mythtv I believe newer kernels are much prefered, Centos 6 only gives you 2.6.32 which is exactly what Mythdora 12.23 is sitting on.
Fedora on the other hand comes with the 6 monthly upgrade cycle, choose your poison!
The 3.3 kernel and newer is
The 3.3 kernel and newer is preferred if you have an hdpvr. If you have one of the newer Nvidia cards and want to use the intel hd audio built into the card over hdmi, 2.6.32's version of alsa is just too old. You'd need to compile and install alsa modules from the svn repo as I did with mythdora. A Centos based system for this purpose would need a custom kernel anyway unless the stock kernel has all the multimedia drivers compiled in and the timer is at the right frequency, right scheduler etc. Just by virtue and version, centos needs a custom kernel which is in itself not a problem.
By the way, I think I know why lirc is such a pita these days. Much ir functionality is built into the kernel now and not many in kernel lirc drivers exist anymore or have been changed and renamed. Many just turn lirc off and use the in kernel IR drivers with the appropriate keymap. Keymap drivers that will use the keymaps also exist in the kernel for many remotes. There are quite a few kernel modules that need blacklisting if you are going to use lirc. Another scenario would be to use lirc only for ir blasting.
ELREPO 3.5 kernel-ml
Centos -vs- Fedora, I still keep switching back and forth. Fedora has my favorite frontend desktop LXDE and just seems to work most of the time. Things break but usually get fixed quickly. Centos is stable but sometimes the effort to get a working system is in vain. I have found F14 LXDE rpms can be made to install in centos 6. Enough about LXDE, I solved the centos 2.3.62 problem with the ELREPO repository.
I have two of my own sandy bridge ELMYTH creations one stock 2.6.32 kernel and one using the 3.5 kernel-ml from elrepo. One motherboard required 3.5 to handle the Intel graphics one didn't. So far Centos 6 + ATRPMS + ELREPO (kernel-ml and mesa) = working ELMYTH. May have updated lirc and alsa as well from ATRPMS for lirc and hdmi sound working wiht 3.5 - I don’t recall. Now that RPMFUSION has mythtv rpms for Centos 6 I may try that route next time. I found HDPVR 1.5.6 firmware to still to be my best option with the 2.6.32 kernel and the 3.5 kernel. I did have a sigfalut problem with the NVIDIA machines until I downgraded to the same driver version that mythdora uses.
F17 + RPMFUSION seems to work fairly well and, with the exception of the lirc pita, seems to be as simple as installing F17 adding rpmfusion followed by "yum install mythtv". I just can't seem to crack to code on netboot + nfs root for any version of fedora since F14 with systmd for my diskless FE's. I keep meaning to create a "how to" thread but I have yet to come up with a method that works more than once and doesn't require a few days of googleing.
I went ahead and plunged in
I went ahead and plunged in head first into debian and added the deb-multimedia repos. I was going to use Squeeze but Wheezy is in beta now and has about four months to go.
This at least starts me off with the 3.2 kernel and bleeding edge Nvidia drivers BUT, the newest HDPVR drivers only exist in the 3.3 or newer kernel. This addresses the bad color brightness hue and sharpness defaults when using the latest HDPVR firmware which otherwise is MUCH more stable. No more starts and stops while recording. It just records straight through again and again. Along with the stability came user adjustable picture controls which is nice but the existing kernel drivers weren't set up to start with good default values until recently.
I wound up compiling my own 3.4.7 kernel and compiled it with preemptive support using Debian's RT kernel config from 3.2 as a starting point. The RT stuff has been gradually making it's way into the main kernel. Patching with existing RT patches made a mess and the newest is 3.4.4 anyway. Even with a huge fuzz factor, the RT 3.4.4 patch would NOT work with the 3.4.7 kernel source. I wiped that and started with fresh 3.4.7 source and notice that preemptive options could be set in the config out of the box.
Debian has an Nvidia source package that will build a debian nvidia kernel package from the source of the running kernel which I left in /usr/src by chance. Skipping the debian Nvidia packages and manually installing the Nvidia driver from the shell wrapped driver doesn't sit well with the system. Debian sure made it easy to build their package to suit a newer user added kernel.
The 2.6.32 was already too old a year ago. For my Nvidia GTX460 card and to get HDMI audio, I had to rebuild Alsa and use a much newer nvidia driver with MythDora 12 to allow use of the native Intel HDA audio built into the GPU. With the latest stable kernel I have the drivers I need right away. The HDPVR driver is a must if you upgraded your HDPVR.
I have everything up and running except getting Mythweb to work is a pain. It and Lirc are all I have left to sort.
The setup scripts we all got used to with mythdora spoiled us. I do NOT miss the fedora part though. Debian testing is akin to other distros so called stable releases.
I'm using the 0.25.2 packages. Now for mythWeb........