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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  1. Introduction
  2. Hardware
  3. Initial System Setup
  4. Firstboot setup -- create MythTV user and enable ntp
  5. Get your system up-to-date
  6. Configure 3rd-party package repositories
  7. Get and install video card drivers
  8. Audio setup
  9. Get and install MythTV
  10. Get and install capture card driver(s)
  11. Get and install lirc
  12. Set up MySQL
  13. Set up MythTV
  14. Configure automatic startup
  15. Configuring MythTV add-ons
  16. Upgrading your system
  17. Miscellanea
  18. Trouble-shooting
  19. Changelog

1. Introduction

MythTV is an open-source project, with its primary functionality being similar to that of a TiVo on steroids, with far more features, much greater flexibility and the ability to handle an extremely wide variety of content. The project's founder and leader is Isaac Richards. The official documentation can all be found on MythTV's official web site, at http://www.mythtv.org/. The project is supported by the contributed time and effort of the open-source community, with the primary lines of technical support being the documentation on the project web site, and the project's mailing lists. It is highly recommended that if you are intending to install MythTV, join at least the mythtv-users mailing list, which you can subscribe to here: http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users/, and read through the official docs.

While the official documentation attempts to be as distribution-agnostic as possible, this document is geared specifically toward building a MythTV system on the Fedora Core 4 Linux distribution put out by Red Hat, with all components installed from binary packages using automatic dependency resoltion tools (i.e., you won't need to compile anything or manually deal with any twisted dependency issues). Note that for various reasons, things aren't entirely smooth if you're using an x86_64 system yet (apt doesn't support multi-arch systems, so you need to use yum or smart instead). I finally just got a new Athlon 64 system myself, so look for more x86_64-specific instructions in the future. Quite a few people following this particular body of documentation have successfully created their own MythTV systems, and many of them frequent the MythTV Users mailing list. Someone on the list can generally help you if you have a problem. I also frequent the mailing lists, and will help out in any way I can, though my spare time is in very short supply these days. However, please search the mailing list archive, found here: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/, before you mail the list, because there is a good chance you'll find your answer there. If you are unable to find the answer there, then read this document: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html, after which you may address your question to the mailing list. ;-)

2. Hardware

I suggest you start here for information on hardware:

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1

An excellent place many folks get their Myth box hardware from is NewEgg.com.

And those looking at building the quietest Myth box possible should probably check out SilentPCReview.com for advice.

Just about any computer that runs Linux and has enough processing power can be used as a MythTV box. For example, I had zero problems playing back full-resolution PVR-250 recordings on an Athlon 800 with a GeForce 4 MX. I've recently shuffled around a ton of hardware at home, so the systems listed below are merely examples of setups that I'm familiar with and know to be functional.

3. Initial System Setup

This guide is geared toward using Red Hat's Fedora Core 4 Linux distribution. For the most part, this document should still be applicable to Fedora Core 2 and 3 as well. You can download the CD images for Fedora Core from one of the many Red Hat mirrors out there, the official list of which can be found here:

http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html

The 2.6 kernel series includes several journaling file systems, some of which are a bit better suited for use with large files -- like Myth recordings -- than Red Hat's default file system, ext3. However, Red Hat doesn't let you use anything else at system install time, unless you type in "linux <otherfs>" at the boot: prompt when firing up the installer CD, where <otherfs> is something along the lines of reiserfs, jfs or xfs. I'd *highly* recommend a custom partitioning scheme rather than auto-partitioning, with a dedicated /video (or similar) partition for storage of all your recordings. Previously, XFS was my personal recommendation for the file system to use for such a purpose, but some additional stability issues with using XFS on Fedora Core's stock kernels have been brought to my attention. In the case where you're stacking software RAID, LVM and XFS all together, stack overflows tend to crop up. I'm still running XFS myself, and have for ages without a problem, but I'd have to lean toward suggesting JFS right now, so boot the installer with "linux jfs", then choose JFS for your /video partition. ReiserFS is also an option, though I believe JFS performs a bit better (XFS is even better still, at least, when its stable...). An example partitioning setup can be found below.

At the Installation Type screen, you want to choose a Custom installation (rather than Personal Desktop, Workstation or Server), because none of the defaults give us everything we need and/or add junk we don't need.

On the Disk Partitioning Setup screen, choose to Manually partition with Disk Druid. A suitable custom partitioning setup is as follows (assuming a single IDE hard drive):

Partition Mount Point Size Format
/dev/hda1 /boot 50-100MB ext3
/dev/hda2 swap same as RAM (ex: 512MB) swap
/dev/hda3 / 8-12GB ext3
/dev/hda5 /video Everything else jfs

Be sure to choose JFS (or XFS or ReiserFS) as the partition format type for the /video partition, as the selection will default to ext3. Note that there's really no point in using anything but ext3 on / and /boot. Red Hat tests ext3 heavily, its the only one that is pretty well guaranteed to be problem-free for / and /boot. Those expecting to add additional hard drives to their system for more video storage might want to set the partition type for hda5 to LVM, then create a logical volume over the top of it, formatted JFS. That'll allow you to increase the size of your /video partition transparently across multiple drives (which is exactly what I'm doing w/three 200+ GB drives in my master backend). Details on how to do that can be found in the official MythTV docs, at http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-23.html#ss23.3.

On the Network Configuration screen, I highly recommend setting a static IP address (could either be truly static, or a staticly mapped DHCP address). It really isn't a huge deal if you only have one Myth box (though you probably don't want MythWeb to be a moving target), but it could cause major headaches once you have more than one machine, since non-primary systems wouldn't know where the master backend was anymore if the address changed.

On the Firewall Configuration page, life will be much easier if you simply disable both the firewall and SELinux. Again, the firewall being enabled probably won't cause a problem if you only have one Myth box (though I'd allow at least ssh and http traffic), but if not properly tweaked, would prevent any secondary systems from being able to contact the master backend. As for SELinux, there are a number of things that just plain won't work right if you have it enabled. ResierFS doesn't work well with SELinux (known bug in Red Hat's bugzilla) and MythWeb (or more specifically, the web server, apache) can't communicate with MySQL without some work. I don't know enough about SELinux yet to know what changes are needed, or care enough to want it on a Myth box, so I just assume make life easier and disable it.

On the package selection screen, select (at least) these package groups:

  • X Window System
  • KDE Desktop Environment
  • MySQL Database (be sure mysql-server is selected under the "Details" section)
  • Web Server (if you want to use MythWeb)

Some other packages that might be of interest, but are not required:

  • Graphical Internet
    • Gaim
    • Firefox (very handy for following this very guide -- think copy and paste)
  • Sound and Video
  • Windows File Server
  • Network Servers
    • vnc-server
  • Development Tools (if you want/need to compile anything)

As suggested on the MythTV site, we're going to use KDE as our X environment for running MythTV. If you happen to be running another window manager, you can fire up a terminal session, and issue the command:

$ switchdesk KDE

Or, you can try your luck with another window manager. Others will work, but this doc is geared toward using KDE. As an aside, I've used MythTV under Gnome 2.2 through 2.10, all without issue, as well as under XFCE4 (which I didn't care for, since I couldn't get a shell to overlay video -- bad for debugging). It should be noted that full-featured desktop like KDE or Gnome does add some memory and cpu overhead that may be undesireable for lower-end systems. If you're short on cpu power, you should probably take a look at something like WindowMaker, twm, Black Box or Rat Poison. Jim Chandler has already gone down the WindowMaker path, and contributed these notes, and Greg Hawley has compiled some notes on setting up Myth on a low-end system, which include notes on using twm. Users on the MythTV mailing lists have written assorted information to the list about using Black Box and Rat Poison. I've actually successfully used Jim's WindowMaker setup and damn! The desktop loads a helluva lot faster than KDE.

4. Firstboot setup -- create MythTV user and enable ntp

At the first boot setup screen, create a user called mythtv, with a password of your choosing. All further documentation assumes you are logged in as the user mythtv. Lines with $ as the prompt are executed as user mythtv, lines with # as the prompt are executed as root. You should NEVER log in to your machine directly as root. Log in with the normal user account, then assume root privs with 'su' wherever a command needs to be run as root.

For the beginners out there, type 'su' (without the quotes) then hit return, and you'll get prompted for the root password. After entering that, you'll have a root prompt. Do what you need to do as root, then type 'exit' (again, without the quotes) to get back to your normal user prompt.

In that same first boot setup area, there is an option to enable ntp. This is highly recommended. You want your shows to start (and stop) recording at the right times, don't you? ;-) Check the box to enable ntp, and either enter an ntp server you know of near you (I happen to know time-nw.nist.gov is just up the road from me in Redmond, WA, on the Microsoft campus) or leave it with the pre-populated values, which are from the ntp.org pool (pool.ntp.org aliases to a bunch of time servers around the globe). I actually have one system on my network that slaves off time-nw.nist.gov (and a few others for redundancy) then serves as the ntp server for the rest of my home network.

5. Get your system up-to-date

In prior versions of this document for earlier Fedora Core releases, apt was used in conjunction with the atrpms-kickstart package to update your system and install ATrpms packages. However, apt doesn't work properly on multi-arch 64-bit systems, which are becoming more and more prevalent. The yum utility, which has always been included with Fedora, does work properly on multi-arch 64-bit systems, has also progressed to the point where I don't take (much) issue with using it anymore. Using the distro-provided yum streamlines the whole install process a little bit, since its already there, and because it handles upgrading your kernel in a much easier way than apt.

To get your system fully updated, simply run the command:

# yum upgrade
(answer 'y' when prompted)

WARNING: Do NOT attempt any other rpm activity while the upgrade is in progress. Performing multiple exclusive rpm operations at the same time can lead to very bad things happening (rpm database inconsistencies, race conditions, completely hosed database, etc). After the big upgrade, you MAY get an error about being unable to open the rpm database (this used to happen to me w/RHL9, but hasn't ever with FC). If you do encounter this error, try the following:

# rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
# rpmdb -vv --rebuilddb

The database rebuild will take quite a while to complete. After it completes, you'll see an error message, but you can safely ignore it and move on to see if the rebuilddb cleared the problem. If not, good luck... Note that the presence of those __db* files doesn't indicate a problem, they're supposed to be there, they just get corrupted every once in a while.

Getting back to what I said about yum handling new kernel installs better than apt... With apt, you had to specify the exact kernel you wanted to upgrade to. Among the packages upgraded just a minute ago with yum should be your kernel, to the very latest errata release, be that the single-processor one or the smp one. Additionally, your boot loader should have been automatically updated to use the new kernel, so all you need to do is reboot to start using the new kernel, which you'll want to do in just a minute. As of this writing, 2.6.15-1.1831_FC4 is the latest released errata kernel. You should be using at least this kernel (or kernel-smp), if not a newer one.

Generally speaking, you should always install the latest errata kernel, shortly after the release of which Axel should have all the needed kernel modules available. Kernel modules are NOT maintained for older kernels, because of two things. First, a new kernel from Red Hat usually fixes some flaw in earlier kernels (security hole or bug fix), so its good practice not to use the flawed kernel and second, building kernel modules for every kernel would take forever and a day and cause assorted other headaches for Axel. To make providing kernel modules feasible, only the very latest one or two kernels are supported.

To make life simpler after we've rebooted and are prepared to start installing drivers for some of our hardware not supported natively by the kernel, we're going to set up a custom environment variable, KVER, that will help avoid problems from typos, user error, confusion, etc. Simply drop a file in /etc/profile.d, like so:

# echo "export KVER=\`uname -r\`" >> /etc/profile.d/kver.sh
(those are back-ticks, not single-quotes)

Now you're ready to reboot into that new kernel and start installing kernel modules for your tuner card(s), remote, etc.

# reboot

On with the show, once your machine comes back up...

6. Configure 3rd-party package repositories

We won't touch any packages from and 3rd-party repositories until a bit later, but you'll need to tell yum about the ATrpms and FreshRPMs package repositories, and since we were on the subject of yum already, go ahead and set it up now. This is a simple matter of adding a configuration file for each repository in /etc/yum.repos.d/. Pre-configured files can be simply downloaded to your system like so:

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
# wget http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/atrpms.repo
# wget http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/freshrpms.repo

As hinted previously, note that Axel maintains a few different channels of rpms, including many packages besides those needed for a functional MythTV install, with varying stability labels on them. This entire installation can be done using nothing but packages classified as "stable", but even "testing" is generally pretty stable. The only channel to *really* watch out for is the "bleeding" channel. If you enable it, you've been warned; things may break. You're on your own to fix 'em, so be prepared (Axel appreciates bug reports though -- http://bugzilla.atrpms.net/). The primary classifications are as follows (from Axel's web site):

  • stable packages imply minimal upgrading risk. They are considered very well tested. You will usually find slight modifications to Red Hat's own packages here.
  • testing packages are provided on a "works for me" basis.
  • bleeding packages means asking for trouble!

Generally, any problems encountered with ATrpms and ATrpms packages should be addressed on the atrpms-users mailing list before being taken to the MythTV list. You can subscribe to the ATrpms lists here:

http://lists.atrpms.net/mailman/listinfo/

FreshRPMs is structured a bit different than ATrpms -- it generally only provides add-on packages, while ATrpms provides both add-on packages packages that replace/upgrade/enhance packages originally provided by Red Hat. FreshRPMs only has one channel of packages. You can subscribe to the FreshRPMs mailing list here:

http://lists.freshrpms.net/mailman/listinfo/freshrpms-list

As with any other mailing list, please search their respective archives first (you can find links to them in the same locations as above).

7. Get and install video card drivers

While Fedora Core includes video drivers for most video cards, they aren't always the best ones for the needs of a MythTV user. For example, many video cards require experimental 3rd-party or proprietary drivers to enable TV-Out. Without nVidia's own proprietary video drivers, the performance of cards based on their chipsets will suffer greatly, even if you aren't using TV-Out. Instructions for installing accelerated drivers for nVidia and SiS cards can be found below. You're on your own for other cards. Click to expand the appropriate section for your video output device...

8. Audio setup

For starters, let me say that aRts (the KDE sound server) does NOT work well with MythTV in many cases, though work has been done recently to remedy that (I have no problems with it enabled on my systems anymore). It is still highly recommended that you disable aRts from starting up if you encounter audio problems. To do so, while logged in as your mythtv user, choose "Control Center" off the Fedora (Red Hat) menu. Navigate through "Sound & Multimedia" to "Sound System" and deselect "Start aRts soundserver on KDE startup" ("Enable the sound system" on KDE 3.3 or later) and then click "Apply". On subsequent logins, aRts will not launch.

Note: outside of setting your audio mixer levels, this step is not essential. Just set your volumes with the mixer program of your choice and move on to the next step if you like. ALSA is the default sound system in the 2.6 kernel, so you've already got it, and your sound card should have been auto-configured during firstboot. If you have some flashy new card, there's a chance you might need a newer ALSA version, which ATrpms does provide. Those wanting to install the latest ALSA packages from ATrpms should do so with these commands:

# yum install alsa-kmdl-$KVER
# yum install alsa-driver

If you have multiple sound cards you want to use, you may have to edit your /etc/modprobe.conf file for your specific card. Details for supported cards can be found here:

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/

I'm including a copy of my /etc/modprobe.conf ALSA configuration excerpt, which is for a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card. This should be valid for SB Live! and Audigy2 cards as well. If your card isn't one of those, check out the ALSA site's sound card matrix to find information for your card. The differences are very minor for most cards, and usually only the driver name has to be changed. For example, to configure ALSA for use with the onboard audio of an nForce2 board, it should be a simple matter of replacing all instances of "emu10k1" in the following modprobe.conf and .asoundrc with "intel8x0".

# Example modprobe.conf entries for my Audigy
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-emu10k1 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-emu10k1

For those folks out there unfortunate enough to need dual sound cards, I'm including a theoretical modprobe.conf ALSA snippet for a SoundBlaster Audigy and nForce2 onboard (i810) audio.

#Example modprobe.conf entries for Audigy and nForce2 onboard (i810) audio
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
options snd-card-0 index=0
install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-emu10k1 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-emu10k1
alias snd-card-1 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-1 index=1
install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0

Next, create a .asoundrc file for your mythtv user (full path of /home/mythtv/.asoundrc). Technically, this isn't necessary, but it can help out quite a bit in some cases (especially if you're outputting via an S/PDIF connection), and can't hurt. Anyhow, just make a new text file called .asoundrc like so, adjusting for your specific card, substituting for "emu10k1" where necessary:

$ cat > ~/.asoundrc
pcm.emu10k1 {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.emu10k1 {
type hw
card 0
}
(Now hit Control-D to end cat input)

This is a *very* basic .asoundrc file, which worked for me just fine for some time, but I'm currently forging forward with native ALSA digital output in Myth, which requires a bit more complex setup. Mike Dean did an excellent writeup on the matter of digital sound, with details on a fully fleshed out .asoundrc, which you can find at:

http://www.mythtv.info/moin.cgi/DigitalSoundHowTo

I put together my own tweaked-out .asoundrc for my Audigy based on the long version for the nForce2 sound card found at the above link. It basically amounted to four changes. You can grab my full .asoundrc here:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/asoundrc.txt

Note that it is set up with output via S/PDIF and hardware decoding (by my external amp) as the default output method, so adjust accordingly. I'm actually not certain everything in here is correct, but audio on my box does everything it should, so I've left well enough alone.

Anyhow, now fire up the audio controller of your choice (aumix, alsamixer, kmix or gnome-alsamixer) and adjust the volumes, inputs and outputs to your liking. While enabling S/PDIF out for my Audigy was a matter of a checking a box in gnome-alsamixer, some folks have reported having to set a particular slider (IEC958 something-or-other?) to zero to enable the S/PDIF output on their sound cards. Go figure.

A simple way to test whether or not you've got sound is to use ALSA's aplay utility, like so:

$ /usr/bin/aplay /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup.wav

For whatever reason, one of my boxes doesn't like to restore all my audio levels, despite my having stored them with an 'alsactl store'... To get around this, along with my nvidia-settings not loading, I used a short shell script you can check out in the Configure automatic startup section below.

9. Get and install MythTV

Now, here's why we REALLY like yum... MythTV has numerous required dependencies to function correctly, which are automatically taken care of with one simple command:

# yum install mythtv-suite

The last time I looked, that one-liner installed 94 different packages, totalling about 85MB. Just a wee bit easier than hunting down all the rpms by hand, let alone compiling everything from source... :)

10. Get and install capture card driver(s)

MythTV supports a myriad of different video capture cards, and as of version 0.17, firewire input from certain cable boxes as well. See the official MythTV docs at http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1 for details on exactly what are and are not supported. Below you'll find details on setting up a number of popular capture devices under Fedora Core.

Click on the links by the + signs to expand and/or collapse the sections you need. Enable or disable display of PVR-350 Output information right here.

Show PVR-350 Output info   |   Hide PVR-350 Output info
*** Current setting: Hiding PVR-350 Output info

11. Get and install lirc

There are lirc rpms available from ATrpms, installable via yum and everything. However, it should be noted that they don't work with every single remote out there. Axel has attempted to roll in as much support for the most popular remotes as possible, and quite a few do now work. It is also possible to obtain the source packages, and rebuild for your specific remote, if the prebuilt packages don't work for you.

The earlier "yum install mythtv-suite" command installed part of LIRC for us already (lirc-lib). To finish the install, we need the appropriate kernel module as well. Simply install the remaining bits like so:

# yum install lirc-kmdl-$KVER
# yum install lirc

Expand the appropriate section below for your IR receiver interface.

UPDATE: I think I finally have a completely viable, universal fix to get both ivtv and lirc modules (no matter which lirc module you're using, as long as its in modprobe.conf) loading very early in the boot process. I simply made a few changes to rc.sysinit, which you can add to your system via a patch I've generated, which you can simply download and apply:

# wget https://svn.wilsonet.com/svn/mythtvology/trunk/rc.sysinit-mm.diff
# patch /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit < rc.sysinit-mm.diff

With these little changes, everything initializes correctly at boot time on my boxes, no need to poke around or do ugly things in rc.local.

Anyhow, at this point, you should be able to start up lircd:

# /sbin/service lircd start

The start command should return an OK or two (look in /var/log/messages if you don't get an okay for some possible insight as to what went wrong). Now fire up irw to verify that lircd is receiving signals from your remote:

$ /usr/bin/irw

You should see some output when you press buttons on your remote that correspond with each button press. Hit ctrl-C to stop irw.

At this time, you're on your own to create a lircrc file for your remote. I have mostly implemented one for my AVerTV Studio remote, mostly just to verify that it work and until I get something better (quite frankly, it is utter junk, especially for use with MythTV).

Hopefully, this section will be of some aid to those using a different remote interface also...

Other routes to consider for an IR receiver if you either don't like the one that comes with your capture card or have a remote frontend without a capture card are serial port and USB receivers. I'm a huge fan of the USB receiver from Windows XP Media Center Ed., because they have a nice long cord to get them optimally placed (versus the very short cord on the PVR-x50's receiver) and have much better range and multi-directionality than any other one I've used. I've also got a serial one on the way shortly.

You can get a USB XP MCE receiver from NewEgg.com, but its a touch spendy, since you don't have the option to buy it without the MCE remote:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=80-100-202&depa=0

It should be noted that there are two different lirc USB MCE remote drivers, one for an early model (which I have and love), which uses the lirc_mceusb driver, and the newer-model ones (which is all NewEgg carries now), which use the lirc_mceusb2 driver. Both are bundled in the ATrpms lirc packages.

Another popular USB combo is the ATI Remote Wonder, which isn't actually IR, but RF. RF doesn't have nearly as many directionality or range issues as IR, but I don't believe you can control anything but your Myth box with a Remote Wonder, and the receiver is only good for the Remote Wonder. These ship with some ATI TV tuner cards, and you can also find them as a stand-alone at NewEgg.com:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=80-100-401&depa=0

Those using an ATI Remote Wonder probably want to check out Tim Litwiller's doc on how he set up his:

http://www.litwiller.net/mythtv/remote.html

You can easily build your own serial IR receiver, per the diagrams on the LIRC web site, or you can just pick one up online for a few bucks. One popular source for pre-build serial IR receivers is Zapway.de, which while in Germany, does ship globally.

12. Set up MySQL

We'll need to enable MySQL to load at startup, set some passwords, and create the MythTV database, which we'll populate shortly. The population of this database is handled by mythtvsetup in the next step, and all MythTV add-on module database additions must be done AFTER running mythtvsetup at least one time.

# /sbin/chkconfig mysqld on
# /sbin/service mysqld start

Set the mysql root password, replacing ROOT_PWD with your chosen administrator password:

# mysql -u root mysql
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('ROOT_PWD') WHERE user='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Now we create the mythtv database (called mythconverg) to get us started:

$ mysql -u root -p < /usr/share/doc/mythtv-0.19/database/mc.sql
(enter the password you just set above when prompted)

Again, all subsequent database population for MythTV's add-on modules must now be done AFTER running mythtvsetup at least one time. And if you get an error that looks like this...

ERROR 1064 at line 4: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'TEMPORARY TABLES ON mythconverg.* TO mythtv@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "mythtv"' at line 1

...you are probably running MySLQ 3.x and probably aren't running Fedora Core 4 (or later), but you can safely ignore it. Everything got created just fine, that syntax is for people using MySQL 4.x, which FC4 and later use. No real discernable difference bewteen 3.x and 4.x though, until you tweak your MySQL config a bit. It's worth customizing some parameters in /etc/my.cnf for optimal performance with Myth. I know next to nothing about the topic, but from experimentation and listening to people who do know what they're doing (I think), I found these adjustments to my.cnf under the [mysqld] section improve performance with both MythTV (esp. in the GUI) and MythWeb:

key_buffer = 16M
table_cache = 128
sort_buffer_size = 2M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M
query_cache_size = 16M

Note that these are MySQL 4.x-specific, check out the old FC3 version of this doc for 3.x settings.

13. Set up MythTV

There are a number of things you might want to figure out in advance to successfully complete your setup. First, recall what your video device was set up as (likely /dev/video0 if you have a single v4l card, DVB #0 if you have one DVB card). Note that the actual device number is NOT what determines what order MythTV will use your cards in. What matters is the order that you enter them in mythtvsetup, so your best card doesn't have to be /dev/video0. Set up /dev/video8 first, and it'll be the first card used for recordings.

You will also need your zip code (please tell me you know this...), and it would help to know the right listing from http://www.zap2it.com/ (for US users, other countries use different listings sources) that matches your service provider, so xmltv gets the right program listings (I screwed up the first time, because I was guessing, and most of the programming info was askew). US folks will also have to fill out some paperwork to use zap2it's new xml data feed listings (the only way to go now). See this page in the MythTV docs for details:

http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.4

Before you dive into the setup, you may want to make one little change so that you can actually see all the text you're supposed to see. There's a bug in Fedora Core 4's urw-fonts package that causes fonts to display MUCH larger than they should. Details on how to fix this can be found here:

http://www.users.on.net/~jani/dvico-mythtv-10.html#ss10.1

Now on to launching the MythTV setup utility. For this part, you need to have an X session started up, as the setup utility is an X application. Fire it up like so:

$ mythtvsetup

I'm told that non-US folks may have issues correctly getting through the tv_grab_xx/xmltv part of the setup if "focus follows mouse" is already set (in KDE's Control Center), so keep that in mind. Just set "focus follows mouse" when everything else is already configured.

Recent changes in the mythtvsetup and database population methodology broke the default path settings for the MythTV rpms, which should be /var/lib/mythtv/ for storage of recorded shows, and /var/cache/mythtv/ for live TV buffer. These directories are automatically created at install time, but you'll have to manually enter them in section 1 of mythtvsetup.

Those using a dedicated /video partition, per my example, should obviously set /video/recordings/ for storage of recorded shows and /video/buffer/ for their live TV buffer. However, you can do pretty much whatever you like here, such as recording to an NFS or samba mount, a software RAID array, or even to an LVM group so you can expand your /video partition sometime down the road (I use LVM myself, someday I'll write about it more...). Just make sure your mythtv user has permission to read and write to whatever location you choose.

It is highly recommended that you go through the setup steps in order. Follow the on-screen instruction, with aid from the MythTV website's documentation on this page:

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-9.html

NOTE: your system may appear to hang at step 3; give it time, it isn't locked up, that part just takes a while!

Once you've gone through the setup, you have to populate the MythTV database with some program info. I spent a good long time tweaking my channel lineup on zap2it's site to remove all the junk channels I didn't really care to have show up. Once you have your listings to your liking, you're ready to fill your database with programming info. A change in MythTV 0.17 requires that you start up the backend first. We'll daemonize it a bit later, but for now, just start it up like so:

$ mythbackend &

Assuming all goes well and the process doesn't exit on you (if it does, check out the troubleshooting section below), lets get some guide data:

$ mythfilldatabase

If you're using a guide data source other than zap2it (i.e., anyone outside the US and Canada), I'm told that you may well need to add a "--manual" flag to the end of that command to get it to work. Look at the output of "mythfilldatabase --help" for more clues if you have problems.

Also, BE PATIENT! This step can take a fairly long time, depending on your internet connection speed and how many channels your service provides... It is also recommended to run mythfilldatabase every night from cron, to keep your show information up to date. To help mitigate possible flooding of our listings provider's servers, we'll set mythfilldatabase to run at some random time after 2:30am, as suggested by David Rees on the mythtv-users mailing list. We'll simply add an entry to the mythtv user's crontab, like so:

$ crontab -e
----Insert the following text into your mythtv user crontab----
### Run mythfilldatabase every night at some random time after 10:01am
01 10 * * * sleep $(expr $RANDOM \% 14400) && mythfilldatabase > /var/log/mythtv/mythfilldatabase.log 2>&1
----Cut above here (don't include this line)----

Myth also has built-in support for scheduling when mythfilldatabase should be run. You can find it somewhere in the frontend's setup. The randomization wasn't as good as the above the last time I looked (its been a while), but probably sufficient. I still use the cron job myself, actually running sometime mid-day, to help easy zap2it's traffic load (most people hit them in the dead of night).

Now start up the MythTV front-end (I recommend doing this in a separate shell window, so you can distinctly see the different output for the backend and frontend processes)...

$ mythfrontend

There are various options within mythfrontend that you can tweak... In the past, I've recommended enabling "De-interlace Playback", even if you're using an interlaced display (like a TV). However, I've found with the latest nvidia driver and its flicker filter, this is no longer necessary for TV output (note that the flicker filter can only be used on SVideo or composite TV-Out, it isn't an option for DVI or VGA). You're on your own for the rest of the settings. Just be sure to go through every section, and get to the point where you click a "Finish" button, otherwise some values seem to not get initialized (most notably, you may get crashes that say something about not being able to open the dsp). Another setting I'd recommend enabling, especially if you're using an nVidia video card (not sure about others) is OpenGL VSync, which recently became a toggleable option. It isn't stable for everybody, but works very well for me on several systems (and I find it to be a must for optimal HDTV playback). If everything appears to be working, once you've gone through all the configuration steps, you can set your system up to automatically load everything at startup. And congrats, you've done the bulk of the work. You can stop here if you want, but if you're like me, you'll want everything to load automatically when the system boots.

14. Configure automatic startup

The necessary init script for the MythTV backend to automatically start at system boot is already in place for you, just simply turn it on:

# /sbin/chkconfig mythbackend on

If the backend isn't already running, save yourself a reboot and issue this command:

# /sbin/service mythbackend start

Now, because I have a few things that don't seem to want to play nice anymore (i.e., nvidia-settings don't load like they should, alsa volume levels aren't restored), I decided to create a quick little shell script in ~/.kde/Autostart/myth-load.sh to handle loading up all the extra goodies I need/want to auto-start, as well as force stubborn things to work. This script loads my nvidia settings, restores alsa volumes, launches irexec for my little power button script (on the Tips 'n' Tricks page), then launches mythfrontend, all in one fell swoop. Just copy and past all this into ~/.kde/Autostart/myth-load.sh (adjust accordingly for different desktop environments):

#!/bin/bash

# Only do this stuff if we're on the main display
# (i.e., don't do this in a vnc session)
if [ `echo $DISPLAY | grep -c ":0"` -ge 1 ]
then
    # Load nVidia driver custom settings
    nvidia-settings --load-config-only &
    # Restore audio settings
    /usr/sbin/alsactl restore
    # Launch irexec for myth power button stop/start
    irexec &
    # Launch myth frontend
    mythfrontend &
    # Disable dynamic power management (screen blanking)
    /usr/X11R6/bin/xset -dpms
    # Disable screen saver
    /usr/X11R6/bin/xset s off
fi
exit

Don't forget to make it executable:

$ chmod +x ~/.kde/Autostart/myth-load.sh

While logged in to an X session, you'll also have to run gdmsetup, to set autologin for your mythtv user. You'll have to get a root terminal open (if you aren't logged into your X session as root already, which is a no-no), then:

# gdmsetup

In GDM Setup, on the first tab ('General'), you should see a section "Automatic login". Check the box for "Login a user automatically on first bootup" and select your mythtv user from the popup menu. Alternatively, if you are not very comfortable with Linux just yet, and you suspect there may be occasions where you've mucked something up to the point that an auto-login will lock up the computer, you might not want to use Automatic Login. Instead, you might opt to use the "Timed Login" option, to log the mythtv user in a few seconds after the login screen first appears. This way, you can circumvent the mythtv user logging in, and log in as root to hopefully correct whatever you've broken.

NOTE: if you installed the packages from kde-redhat, they probably supplanted gdm as your display manager and put kdm in its place. I like the look of Red Hat's gdm much better than kdm, so I changed it back by editing /etc/sysconfig/desktop and setting "DISPLAYMANAGER=GNOME". Not that you should be seeing the login screen often, my box is always sitting there logged in with the Myth UI up. Maybe I'll add some kdm info in a bit...

Anyhow, I recommend setting the Kicker (the panel at the bottom of the screen) to auto-hide, so it doesn't end up on-screen during video playback, disabling the screen saver, and disabling any monitor-related dynamic power management, or you may not be able to wake your system up if you don't have a mouse and keyboard connected. You can use the KDE Control Center to disable your screen saver, and edit your xorg.conf file to disable dpms (or at least the screen blanking parts). Note that the above myth-load.sh script actually issues a pair of commands at login time that should also disable dpms and the screen saver, but you can turn it off everywhere you can to be sure...

And finally, to turn on auto-hiding of the Kicker, right-click on the Kicker, choose 'Configure Panel...', then select the 'Hiding' tab, and select the radio button for 'Hide automatically'.

15. Configuring MythTV add-ons

When you installed MythTV using "yum install mythtv-suite", you not only installed MythTV, but also all of the add-on modules currently available. You've still got a bit of work to do to make them all functional though.

MythBrowser-

I've never used this one myself. Check out the docs for it in /usr/share/doc/mythbrowser-0.19/.

MythDVD-

Within the Setup section of the MythTV frontend, you need to specify the storage location for your DVD rips (MythTV → Setup → DVD Settings → Rip Settings). There are a number of other options you can set in this section, but the defaults will work for the most part (so will the DVD rip storage setting, for that matter, but I wanted to customize it).

You can also use the DVD playback application of your choice (MythTV → Utilities/Setup → Setup → Media Settings → DVD Settings), and as of version 0.12, there are preconfigured launch command lines for ogle, xine and mplayer. While mplayer doesn't properly support DVD menus just yet, both ogle and xine (with the right libraries) do.

The most critical part to getting all this to work is probably making sure MythDVD is pointing to your DVD drive. Under Fedora Core, the device /dev/dvd isn't automatically set up. You'll either have to change this to /dev/cdrom, or create a link to /dev/cdrom. Note that some playback applications (Ogle comes to mind) require that you have a /dev/dvd entry, one way or another, so I went this route:

# ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd

Another common problem is KDE auto-mounting DVDs (and CDs), which can interfere with playback, ejection, etc. You can easily disable auto-mounting like so:

$ rm ~/.kde/Autostart/Autorun.desktop

Also note that if you happen to have multiple CD/DVD devices in your system, it is possible your DVD drive is actually /dev/cdrom1. (This is the case with my test system, which has a DVD drive and a CD burner).

For MythDVD's ripper to work in any mode other than perfect (i.e., to be able to transcode to xvid), you'll need to launch the Myth Transcode Daemon, mtd. I'd suggest simply sticking a line in rc.local to daemonize it at system startup:

# echo "/usr/bin/mtd --daemon" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Also note that Fedora Core 3 and later use HAL and udev, which as configured out of the box, break Myth's monitoring of optical drives for inserted discs, so to get it to work again, you need to change the line for your CD/DVD drive in /etc/fstab, altering the fstype from auto to iso9660 and add ",user" to the end of the mount options.

MythGallery-

Within the Setup section of the MythTV frontend, you need to specify your image storage location (MythTV → Setup → Image Settings).

MythGame-

There are several packages you'll have to install to get a functional MythGame, namely all the emulators -- x-mame, fce ultra and snes9x. First, you'll need to add another repository to your apt sources, if you aren't running the medley apt config. Add Dag's repo, then update your apt metadata and finally, install the needed packages via yum like so:

# echo "# Dag's repo (Added for MythGame emulators)" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# echo "rpm http://apt.sw.be fedora/4/en/i386 dag" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# yum install xmame fceultra snes9x

You'll then have to configure MythGame through the MythTV configuration section (MythTV → Utilities/Setup → Media Settings → Game Settings). Pretty much everything is already correctly configured when you use the mythtv-suite install method. MythGame launches fine for me, appears to find all my rom files, and drops me to the selection screen. The few roms I've tried with xmame all seem to do exactly what they're supposed to, though the volume level is a bit on the high side, and I haven't taken the time to try and adjust it. I have yet to try snes9x (works great on my Mac, just haven't got around to it on a Myth box), and my nes roms do launch fceultra, but in a very tiny window, or tiny, centered on a black background if I add a '-fs 1' to fceultra's location (I'm not sure how to make it fill the screen yet; other switches in the man page did pretty much nothing). More to come, if/when I have time, and/or when someone else can provide some insight...

For more information, you might want to check out http://mythtv.info/moin.cgi/MythGameHowTo.

MythMusic-

All prerequisite packages should have been taken care of when you installed the mythtv-suite, so it should simply be a matter of setting up your audio storage directories within the MythTV Setup section (MythTV → Utilities/Setup → Media Settings → Music Settings). Further information with respect to use and configuration can be found on the MythTV web site, at this address:
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-15.html.

MythNews-

There isn't much to say about MythNews. Simply go into MythTV → Utilities/Setup → Info Center Settings → News Settings and select the news feeds you want, and you're done with the setup.

MythVideo-

Within the Setup section of MythTV, configure your movie storage directory (MythTV → Utilities/Setup → Media Settings → Video Settings → General Settings). You might want to look at the Tips 'n' Tricks page for some additional info on configuring mplayer and/or xine, especially if you have a wide-screen TV. Edit/insert metadata about your video collection in Utilities/Setup → Video Manager.

MythWeather-

Not much to do, other than select your location and tweak the aggressiveness for the speed of your connection (MythTV → Utilities/Setup → Info Center Settings → Weather Settings). The MythTV website has plenty of documentation on this module, found here:
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-16.html.

MythWeb-

The mythtv-suite put almost everything where it needed to be. You need to read conf.php (/var/www/html/mythweb/config/conf.php) and configure things in that file accordingly. Once that's done, all you have to do is enable apache:

# /sbin/chkconfig httpd on
# /sbin/service httpd start

Now just point a web browser to http://your.mythtv.box.ip.or.dns.name/mythweb/ and go to town. Please note: MythWeb provides listings, lets you schedule recordings, and see what is already recorded. You cannot use this interface to control playback on your MythTV box in any way. There are also some controls for MythMusic and MythVideo.

Personally, I don't plan on using the web server on this box for anything *but* MythWeb, so I opted to move everything in /var/www/html/mythweb/ to /var/www/html/ and remove the mythweb folder, so I get to MythWeb with just http://htpc/ (htpc is the hostname for MythTV box). Alternatively, Zachary Hamm suggests creating an index.php file in /var/www/html/, containing the following to achieve the same effect:

<?php header("Location: /mythweb"); ?>

This works better for those who also run other web-based apps on their MythTV box (like phpMyAdmin, for example), and keeps the apache doc root a bit tidier.

16. Upgrading your system

Upgrading your MythTV installation to a new release is fairly straight-forward. As of MythTV 0.13, all database changes are handled automagically, so you merely have to upgrade your mythtv rpms when they become available. Occasionally, driver updates are also required (such was the case with the ivtv driver when upgrading to MythTV 0.13, and PVR-350 output in 0.14+ required ivtv 0.1.9+). The basic upgrade process should be as simple as:

# yum install mythtv-suite

Note that this will NOT suffice to upgrade all sub-packages in the event of an updated build from ATrpms of the same major version. In other words, say 0.18.1-115 packages are released with some bugfix not in 0.18.1-114 (-114 and -115 are ATrpms build numbers), but mythtv-suite is already satisfied w/0.18.1-114 (mythtv-suite only needs 0.18.1 packages of any build number), so you'll have to specify all components manually (rpm -qa | grep myth for a list of 'em). If a driver update is required, you may need to:

# yum install <somedriver>-kmdl-$KVER <somedriver>
(<somedriver> could be ivtv, lirc, nvidia-graphics, etc.)

A general note about upgrading and installing rpm packages: you should NEVER use --nodeps to install or remove a package. If you can't get around using --nodeps, there is likely a packaging problem, which you should report upstream, to have it fixed. A tanked rpm database can do Very Bad Things™ to your system, and recovery is sometimes impossible. Try 'yum check' to verity its integrity, should you happen to have committed the --nodeps sin in the past.

Upgrading your kernel is a little bit more involved than upgrading only MythTV, because all custom kernel modules, both rpm-installed and source-installed, will have to be updated also. Kernel modules carry two different versions, one for the kernel they are for (the 'kernel version') and one for the actual module itself (the 'module version'). Everything but kernels and their matching kernel modules get upgraded automatically by 'yum upgrade'. However, note that cases where the kernel version on a kernel module remains the same, but the module version is incremented, an 'yum upgrade' will upgrade that kernel module. Essentially, you really only need to take extra measures when upgrading your kernel, as everything else gets handled automatically.

When you do come to a point where you need to upgrade your kernel, one of the nice features of installing from packages, rather than source, shows itself. For all the ATrpms kernel modules, you can simply type in the command...

# rpm -qa {alsa,ivtv,nvidia-graphics,lirc}*

...to get a full list of all the kernel modules you have installed on your system. With that list in hand, you can now install your new kernel, along with all the corresponding updated kernel modules. For example:

# yum install kernel#2.6.15-1.1831_FC4
# yum install {alsa,ivtv,lirc,nvidia-graphics7676}-kmdl-2.6.15-1.1831_FC4

You can also uninstall an older kernel and its kernel modules with a single command:

# yum remove kernel-<oldversion>

17. Miscellanea

This section has been moved to its own page, titled Tips 'n' Tricks.

18. Trouble-shooting

First and foremost, READ THE OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION!!! Specifically, the page on Troubleshooting, at http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-22.html. Second, search the MythTV users *and* developers mailing list to see if this isn't already a known problem that might be fixed in CVS or have a work-around. Again, you can search the archives online at Gossamer Threads. Third, check out the wiki over at http://www.mythtv.info/, which also contains quite a bit of valuable information. Fourth, take a look at ATrpms Bugzilla and the Fedora Myth(TV)ology Wiki and Bug-tracker.

When trouble-shooting, I suggest exiting the frontend, stopping the backend and opening a pair of terminal windows. From one, start up the backend (as root, just type "mythbackend"). In the other, launch the frontend with verbose output (just type "mythfrontend -v all"). There should be a fair amount of output spit to the terminal windows that should give you (and the developers) a better idea of what is going wrong with your system. Please include that output when asking for help. Additionally, if you're getting a segmentation fault, your best bet for getting help determining the cause of the problem is to download the myth source code and compile it yourself in debug mode, then run it with gdb, the GNU debugger (how to do that is detailed at the above link). Only with a backtrace can the developers really help you if your setup is causing Myth to segfault.

I plan to further populate this section over time, when I can...

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