1n73r.net

More Mythtv

Alright, I am back at it and getting closer to being satisfyed. First of all I would like to give a line to a new site I have found thanks to a comment left on one of my other posts. Mythpvr is one of my new favorites for searching, news, and setup of mythtv. They even have some cool screencasts of setting up mythtv and I am sure there is more to come. All I have to say is thanks a lot for making me read another RSS feed. WhereTF is the RSS feed? Even my crappy sites has RSS!! Oh well, still posting a link to the RSS feed in my comments. Mythpvr.com is a good resource for understanding what Mythtv is and all it can do.

Now onto what I have found in the past week. BTW If you are just starting out and going to install mythtv. Do yourself a favor and install onenote (or some other note taking software) on another computer and take notes of everything you do. I really wish I had done that in the beginning because now I have to track down all the changes I made over a year ago.

So I install knoppmyth again and this time I have a bit more sucess because NVIDIA drivers are working once again. I found the following instructions in the knoppmyth forum so feel free to follow the link to read the original.
First you will want to do this (copied from another section of the forum)

wget ftp://knoppmyth.net/R5/linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13_2.6.18-chw-13-10.00.Custom_all.deb
dpkg -i linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13_2.6.18-chw-13-10.00.Custom_all.deb
cd /usr/src
tar xjvf linux-source

Then follow the instructions from the forum

follow the directions in the above post so that you have the /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13 directory. Now perform the following:cd /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.18-chw-13
cp -r . ../linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13

This merges the kernel-headers with the kernel-source, since the source by itself doesn’t have the configuration files that were used.

Next, on my system at least, I had to at least partially make the kernel again, because certain kernel module scripts weren’t in a usable state until you did that. So I did the following:

cd /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13
make
[wait about 20 seconds and then hit ctrl-c]

Now we’re ready to install the new driver. The easiest way to do this is the rename the startx script and reboot so that X is not even trying to boot up.

mv /usr/bin/startx /usr/bin/startx.save
reboot

For some reason the NVidia install script isn’t yanking out the original nvidia kernel module, so I manually pulled it out with this command:

rmmod nvidia
lsmod | grep nvidia

The second command will let you verify that you no longer have the module loaded.

Now we’re actually ready to run the binary package from NVidia. It doesn’t quite detect everything correctly, so issue the command as such:

First you need the NVidia driver package though so run this command

wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9746/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9746-pkg1.run

Then carry on where we left off

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9746-pkg1.run \
–kernel-source-path=/usr/src/linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13

You will most likely get a message during the installation process that it had to make assumptions about the paths for X.org. The assumptions that it made are fine.

Once the installer is finished you should be able to safely start X back up, but don’t forget to rename your startx executable.

mv /usr/bin/startx.save /usr/bin/startx

As always, check the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file for hints as to what the problem may be. That’s how I figured out that the original kernel module was still loaded!

I stumbled across an easy way to get my 720p working in a flash. (once the driver is installed that is).
Mythtv documentation has a really nice Modeline Database that I just copied and pasted into my xorg.conf file. Wow, I must me a nerd because that all made sense to me.
To make it a little bit more legible…a modeline is kinda like telling the computer what resolution you want to use and the xorg.conf file is just where linux puts a lot of information (like resolution, keyboard layout, etc). You can probably find a lot better explanations on the internet but that is what I know about it.

I found documentation on how to make my QAM channels actually have information in the guide. You have to get what is called a XMLTVID from zap2it.com (if you are in the US and using zap2it as a source for your channels).

To get the ID you need I followed this forum over at Silicondust

The list of xmltvid values for lineup population. This can be found by going to zap2it.com (not labs.zap2it.com) and viewing the digital cable lineup for your area. When you click the call letters of the channel you are interested in, it is found in the URL variable stnNum. For example, the required value from my local NBC affiliate is “20358″ in this URL:
tvlistings5.zap2it.com/tvlistings/GridAction.do?method=getSingleStation&stnNum=20358&lineupId…<EDITED>

Really I promise that is all for now. At least until I find more helpful information (like how to make my HD not go crazy when the overlay is on screen

Edit: link to original in bold and checked some of the code blocks.