MythTV epic battle

Since no one reads this thing anyway I can confess that I'm on the beta testing list for my MythTV distribution of choice, KnoppMyth. I did some graphic work for the developer and got on the testing list.

Recently I decided to upgrade my main KnoppMyth server. It was underpowered since it's about 3 or 4 years old, so I decided to gut it, get a CPU that could play back HDTV without XvMC support, and get some energy-efficient components in there too since it's on 24/7.

The upgrade consisted of a Biostar TForce TF7025-M2 motherboard with onboard Nvidia 7025 graphics, a low-wattage AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core BE-2350, an 80 PLUS certified Antec EA380 power supply, a Western Digital "green" 500GB SATA drive, and some dumb Sony DVD burner.

The good news was the energy-efficient components definitely paid off. I got a Kill-A-Watt device to check things around the house, and checked the system before and after. Before it idled at about 120 watts, and after it idles under 60 watts! Yahoo!

That's it for the good news. The bad news was that the current release version of KnoppMyth wouldn't install on the system; there was a "c7 respawning" error that had been reported on the forum and that I couldn't get to go away. So I thought I'd take advantage of my tester status and download the next release version, which also included the current MythTV, 0.21. Install on the main server went OK other than a few snags, the main one of which (one of my encoders will occasionally disappear after reboot) doesn't happen often enough to matter much.

Installing the same version on my remote frontend (by the treadmill, see my Dancing with the Stars post), however, just refused to work. Wouldn't connect to the backend. I'd done all the things I needed to do, I thought, but still wouldn't connect. I finally did a few MySQL command lines recommended for two-year-old versions of KnoppMyth, and my remote frontend FINALLY connected.

Then I had to fight with the new way you enable XvMC on slower machines like my remote frontend. Finally got the xorg.conf file configured with the proper magic commands (found on the XvMC wiki page of the main MythTV wiki) and now that seems to work.

Anyhow, I was tearing my hair out but things now seem to be working OK. Of course, now that I've typed this, both systems are probably in flames at my house right now.