Has anyone on the list used MythTV particularly with the front-end running on one machine and the back-end on another?
I have set up a low-end machine with a TV adapter to run MythTV on the assumption that I wouldn't need X running on the back-end machine but I find that the mythtv-setup programme is graphical! So I need to install a lot of X packages just to run the setup.
I find that in selecting to install the Debian Testing MythTV-Backend package it installs other packages such as xterm and QT but NO xorg server packages. Very odd. I would have thought that X packages such as xterm would depend on xorg-xserver packages - but no.
Has anyone else been in this situation?
Barry Samuels wrote:
I have set up a low-end machine with a TV adapter to run MythTV on the assumption that I wouldn't need X running on the back-end machine but I find that the mythtv-setup programme is graphical! So I need to install a lot of X packages just to run the setup.
Given that the backend will need to do a lot of "graphical" stuff (handle the TV cards and other input sources, transcode video, etc) I'm not surprised that the dependencies pull in X packages, although whether they're all needed in your setup I don't know.
Last I looked the MythTV forums and mailing lists were quite helpful, but I haven't looked at MythTV for a year or two so I'm a bit out of date (and never got a working system out of it, mostly as a result of not following through on the setup properly).
I'd be interested to see where you end up on this one.
Barry Samuels wrote:
I have set up a low-end machine with a TV adapter to run MythTV on the assumption that I wouldn't need X running on the back-end machine but I find that the mythtv-setup programme is graphical! So I need to install a lot of X packages just to run the setup.
On 05/02/08 15:36:19, Tim Green wrote:
You don't need a local xserver to run X applications.
I didn't know that. Well you learn something new every day.
On 05/02/08 15:16:59, Mark Rogers wrote:
I'd be interested to see where you end up on this one.
I now have the MythTV backend running on my low-end machine and the frontend on my normal desktop. I am now running a test recording.
I must say that the mythtv-setup software is one of the most frustrating bits of software that I have ever used.
The instructions say to use the up/down arrows to select a field (that works) and make the field active by pressing space. That worked sometimes but mostly seemed to move me to the next screen which I didn't want.
I tried using a mouse but the cursor was visible only when it moved into a text input field. There were some dropdown fields and fields with a small checkbox but no instructions on how to change the values. Pressing space with those just took me out of the current screen.
In the end I resorted to moving the mouse cursor into a text field where I could see it then moved it blind to where I wanted it and clicked. Took a few tries with some fields but we got there in the end. Talk about Russian Roulette.
I need to improve the TV signal as it is a bit low at around 30% for BBC1. The signal strength for the same channel on our television is around 80%. I also need to swap the cardboard box that it's all running in for a new case.
Still, it appears to be up and running and scheduling recordings seems easy (assuming my test recording actuall works - due to finish in 30 minutes).
On 06-Feb-08 17:36:28, Barry Samuels wrote:
Barry Samuels wrote:
I have set up a low-end machine with a TV adapter to run MythTV on the assumption that I wouldn't need X running on the back-end machine but I find that the mythtv-setup programme is graphical! So I need to install a lot of X packages just to run the setup.
On 05/02/08 15:36:19, Tim Green wrote:
You don't need a local xserver to run X applications.
I didn't know that. Well you learn something new every day.
There's a potential confusion of terminology, in that the "X server" and "X client" are the opposite way round from what one's intuition thinks.
If you're sitting at a machine whose display is running X, and you're looking at windows displaying X applications running on a remote machine, then your machine is the server, and the remote machine is the client.
The logic of this is that the X application needs display resources, so it requests them from the server and thereby acts in "client" role. he machine you're sitting at is supplying them (so that you can see them) and acts in a "server" role.
Your intuition, however, will tell you that you have requested the remote machine to run the application for you, so you're the client (for the application) and the remote machine is the server (running the app for you).
That being said, Tim's statement "You don't need a local xserver to run X applications" could be misinterpreted.
YOu certainly need a local X-server to display an X application, otherwise you won't see it (and the machine running the application will probably refuse to play if it can't succeed in soliciting X resources from your local machine).
But you can certainly run X applications on your loca local machine, and have them displayed elsewhere; in which case your local machine does not need any "X server" resources.
Best wishes to all, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 06-Feb-08 Time: 18:40:37 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Feb 5, 2008 2:20 PM, Barry Samuels bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
I find that in selecting to install the Debian Testing MythTV-Backend package it installs other packages such as xterm and QT but NO xorg server packages. Very odd. I would have thought that X packages such as xterm would depend on xorg-xserver packages - but no.
You don't need a local xserver to run X applications. If you have SSH setup with X forwarding, or you set your DISPLAY environment variable appropriately, then the X applications (eg. xterm) will display on the other computer.
Regards, Tim.
On Tue, 5 February, 2008 3:36 pm, Tim Green wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 2:20 PM, Barry Samuels bjsamuels@beenthere-donethat.org.uk wrote:
I find that in selecting to install the Debian Testing MythTV-Backend package it installs other packages such as xterm and QT but NO xorg server packages. Very odd. I would have thought that X packages such as xterm would depend on xorg-xserver packages - but no.
You don't need a local xserver to run X applications. If you have SSH setup with X forwarding, or you set your DISPLAY environment variable appropriately, then the X applications (eg. xterm) will display on the other computer.
It's shame that you need to run the GUI to configure mythbackend, and forwarding your display might not help either, I even had to switch to KDE to get things working properly locally, let alone remotely. Once that initial setup is done though, you can shutdown X and forget about it.
I have P4 with a DVB-S card in it, and use my iBook G4 for frontend, works a treat.
I was going to take a look at MythBuntu or MythDora, since I don't use the mythbackend box for much else, seemed like a trouble free way to go. If you do take a look, I'd be interested in knowing how you get on.
Cheers.
-Mark
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Barry Samuels -
Mark Ridley -
Mark Rogers -
Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk -
Tim Green