PCLinuxOS 2007 continue... (with problems)
Today we started to extend some of the features for our mythtv box, but there were many problems along the way. At the end of the day we had only made a few minor adjustments.
I'm also currently capped on my internet plan :(, so downloading things has been painful.
Autostart
First was to make mythbackend startup at boot time. mythtv automatically does this when you install, but it tries to run this as the mythtv user, well we don't use that user so we had to fix this up.
We had to make sure the 'mythtv' user had a shell.
As we have been starting our mythbackend with mythuser we had to delete /mnt/store/nfslockfile.lock
Now we typed the following to test it will work
# su mythtv
$ service mythbackend start
Also whilst we were in the area we made PCLinuxOS auto load in as mythuser
Emulators
We tried a few emaultors, and had the following problems.
ZSnes
downloaded the source for this off their website as it's not included in synaptic
untared it and configured it.
This had an error with libSDL, after doing a lot of googling people suggested we tried libSDL-devel. So we installed that. This didn't work either :(.
I knew a different SNES emulator and we decided to test this
Snes9x
Downloaded this from their site, untared and ran configure.
This bombed out with
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C++ compiler cannot create executable.
I installed g++, then tried again. This time it got a little further but still didn't finish compiling. It ended with a list of errors from the 'make' starting with:
Error: previous declaration of 'SDSP1 DSP1' with 'C++' linkage.
MythBrowser
Next we tried to get an easy to use browser to work within mythtv. There is a package called mythbrowser, this looked good, but turned out to be pretty pointless.
It worked, but you couldn't use a heap of keys such as 'm' or '2', 'space' counted as an enter. This was done by default. These are known as keymappings and are supposed to help the user, it only creates problems! To fix this you must install mythweb, but that will not install under PCLOS 2007.
We tried using firefox instead with the kiosk add-on you can make firefox start in fullscreen mode, and through the setup of mythbrowser you can tell it to use firefox, only problem is if you have multiple firefox windows open and closing them you need to use alt-f4, not really nice.
MythControl
This is for remote control bindings with myth.
The problem wasn't with mythcontrol it was with LIRC and how to configure it with our unknown undocumented onboard IR device. After a lot of work here, not getting anywhere fast we decided to leave this until I get my USB to IR device soon.
Mytharchive
This is used to burn DVD's basically. This works! but not straight away. As our cd device is /dev/hdc and the mythtv settings for this don't work we had to make a symlink.
# ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd
Now it will work, all we tested was burning a large AVI file in data mode to a DVD-RW, and we were happy.
Maybe next week we will test the rest of the burning. You can burn normal files, and AVI files to Video DVD's so people with normal DVD players can watch these as well.
TV Problems
After all this the TV part started to play up with timeouts, this was bad. I hate going backwards for a days work/hacking.
This was the dmesg error we were receiving.
cx88[0]/2: cx8802_timeout
EPG
Next we tried to get an EPG working, this seems near impossible. I remember we got half of one working under mythedition, so maybe we could look at that Hard drive and work it out.
It's all to do with this tv_grab_au file and how/where it phases xml data from about the TV stations. Seems like there are a few people making custom scripts for melbourne TV stations. Some use existing listings others use paid services such as icetv.
It's hard to setup and we haven't had any luck yet. This would be a nice feature as we would be able to see what's coming up on the TV and schedule recordings easier.
Conclusion
At the end of the day we have got the burner going and it's quicker to start up now.
All the other stuff we hit dead ends. We haven't had time to download MythDora4.0 as i'm capped, my mate is going to try this week so hopefully we will give it a go next Sunday.
As for the remote control, this will take some work to get this working I feel, but is high on our priority of things.
Priority of tasks left with current PCLinuxOS 2007
- Remote control
- EPG
- Emulated games
- Game pad
- make mythbrowser easier to use
- mythstream (internet TV and Radio)
I'm also currently capped on my internet plan :(, so downloading things has been painful.
Autostart
First was to make mythbackend startup at boot time. mythtv automatically does this when you install, but it tries to run this as the mythtv user, well we don't use that user so we had to fix this up.
We had to make sure the 'mythtv' user had a shell.
As we have been starting our mythbackend with mythuser we had to delete /mnt/store/nfslockfile.lock
Now we typed the following to test it will work
# su mythtv
$ service mythbackend start
Also whilst we were in the area we made PCLinuxOS auto load in as mythuser
Emulators
We tried a few emaultors, and had the following problems.
ZSnes
downloaded the source for this off their website as it's not included in synaptic
untared it and configured it.
This had an error with libSDL, after doing a lot of googling people suggested we tried libSDL-devel. So we installed that. This didn't work either :(.
I knew a different SNES emulator and we decided to test this
Snes9x
Downloaded this from their site, untared and ran configure.
This bombed out with
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C++ compiler cannot create executable.
I installed g++, then tried again. This time it got a little further but still didn't finish compiling. It ended with a list of errors from the 'make' starting with:
Error: previous declaration of 'SDSP1 DSP1' with 'C++' linkage.
MythBrowser
Next we tried to get an easy to use browser to work within mythtv. There is a package called mythbrowser, this looked good, but turned out to be pretty pointless.
It worked, but you couldn't use a heap of keys such as 'm' or '2', 'space' counted as an enter. This was done by default. These are known as keymappings and are supposed to help the user, it only creates problems! To fix this you must install mythweb, but that will not install under PCLOS 2007.
We tried using firefox instead with the kiosk add-on you can make firefox start in fullscreen mode, and through the setup of mythbrowser you can tell it to use firefox, only problem is if you have multiple firefox windows open and closing them you need to use alt-f4, not really nice.
MythControl
This is for remote control bindings with myth.
The problem wasn't with mythcontrol it was with LIRC and how to configure it with our unknown undocumented onboard IR device. After a lot of work here, not getting anywhere fast we decided to leave this until I get my USB to IR device soon.
Mytharchive
This is used to burn DVD's basically. This works! but not straight away. As our cd device is /dev/hdc and the mythtv settings for this don't work we had to make a symlink.
# ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd
Now it will work, all we tested was burning a large AVI file in data mode to a DVD-RW, and we were happy.
Maybe next week we will test the rest of the burning. You can burn normal files, and AVI files to Video DVD's so people with normal DVD players can watch these as well.
TV Problems
After all this the TV part started to play up with timeouts, this was bad. I hate going backwards for a days work/hacking.
This was the dmesg error we were receiving.
cx88[0]/2: cx8802_timeout
EPG
Next we tried to get an EPG working, this seems near impossible. I remember we got half of one working under mythedition, so maybe we could look at that Hard drive and work it out.
It's all to do with this tv_grab_au file and how/where it phases xml data from about the TV stations. Seems like there are a few people making custom scripts for melbourne TV stations. Some use existing listings others use paid services such as icetv.
It's hard to setup and we haven't had any luck yet. This would be a nice feature as we would be able to see what's coming up on the TV and schedule recordings easier.
Conclusion
At the end of the day we have got the burner going and it's quicker to start up now.
All the other stuff we hit dead ends. We haven't had time to download MythDora4.0 as i'm capped, my mate is going to try this week so hopefully we will give it a go next Sunday.
As for the remote control, this will take some work to get this working I feel, but is high on our priority of things.
Priority of tasks left with current PCLinuxOS 2007
- Remote control
- EPG
- Emulated games
- Game pad
- make mythbrowser easier to use
- mythstream (internet TV and Radio)
posted by Mick at 5:54 AM
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