After trying multiple times to get MythTV working with Ubuntu 8.04 I kept running into problems.  It seemed that the majority of the problems centered around getting the latest ivtv drivers to compile correctly on the system: I just was not able to get it to work.

I am a very stubborn person, so trust me when I say I tried lots of different ways to compile the driver.  For whatever reason, it just would not work right for me.  I even tried Mythbuntu, which was gave me even more problems with database passwords and such.  That being said, I started to look for alternatives.  The hardcore geek in me turned to Slackware Linux, the stubborn guy said “lets give Ubuntu one more shot”, the adventurous spirit insisted that Gentoo Linux looked like fun, and finally the practical guy said that MythDora seemed like it would just work.

I have had a Slackware install before; it is an awesome distribution with a very cool name & logos.  When I installed it last it seemed all the configuration stuff was done command line style and they kind of just set you loose on the system – I ultimately wasn’t in the mood for this much work.  I couldn’t bring myself to try Ubuntu again – it was obvious it was just becoming a time sink for me.  It seemed that every new way of installing my PVR-150 would just end at a new type of error.  I have only heard good things about Gentoo Linux, including Myclawz compiling it completely from source to get a server working.  Again though, I wasn’t in the mood for that much work.  I know I could have just installed it the easy way, but what is the point of installing Gentoo if you don’t compile for source?  So, if you have been keeping track, you would know that left me with MythDora 5.0.

I had tried MythDora when I believe they were on release 3.0 (maybe).  It installed, but was giving me lots of issues – not something I wanted out of the “easy way”.  It was time to give 5.0 a shot.

I downloaded the DVD ISO and burned it to a disk.  It was at this point that I remembered that the old system I was dealing with only had a CD drive – I had to wait another 20 minutes to download both CD ISOs.  On the first attempted install everything was going smoothly – they even had an option to install the ivtv drivers during the install process…I was impressed and encouraged.  About 50% way through copying the files over my system restarted – I don’t know why exactly, but looking back on it, it was probably because something shorted out (I had the board resting on a book with wires all over the place).  I restarted the install and everything went smoothly.  I didn’t have to enter passwords for the database or anything too special – just a root password.

At the end of the install it had a button to configure MythTV – I just had to tell it I had cable and sign up for a SchedulesDirect account (20/year) so I could get the listings.  After configuring everything it automatically asked me to run mythfilldatabase, which puts all the channel listings in the database.  Once the computer finished doing this, I was off and running.  MythTV worked perfectly with my old PIII 933 on 384 MB of RAM.  The real trick was having a hardware encoder for the TV stream: PVR-150.

I must say I was really impressed with MythDora this time around and would recommend it to anyone.  All I have left to do is to buy a remote and also a video card with a TV out.

Like always, if you have any questions about exactly how I did this just leave a comment.

Yesterday I helped my girlfriend upgrade her Toshiba Portege M400 from Windows XP to Windows Vista.  We stuck the Vista CD in the drive and booted up.  The computer recognized the CD and brought us into the setup program.

Unfortunately – Vista did not recognize her RAID driver.  Consequently, it didn’t see her hard drive.  We stopped by Toshiba’s support site and got the file.  Their instructions said to put the file on a USB drive and then point the Vista install to it…we did just that.

Unfortunately – after browsing to the USB drive location Vista failed to find the driver – their instructions were wrong.  We rebooted into Windows XP.  We tried extracting the file by double clicking it.

Unfortunately – it just opened the installer, and tried installing the Vista driver on to Windows XP…not cool.  luckily, Windows XP still worked.  Once we got back into XP we installed WinRar.

Fortunately – Winrar allowed us to extract the files (without launching the installer).  We extracted the driver files onto the USB drive and rebooted into the Vista installer.  Once we pointed the installer to the extracted files everything worked well.

We decided to eliminate the recovery partition since she ordered a recovery disk from Toshiba.  We used the Vista partition manager to delete both partitions that were on the machine.  We then created a single partition with all of the disk – we gained about 7 GB of storage.

To finish off the install we went through all of the driver and utilities that were available on the driver site and then ran Windows Update a few times.  Everything seems to be working as good or better than in XP aside from the fact that it keeps asking us to install Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool...but that is a battle for another day.

Hopefully this helps someone out there – if you have any questions just leave us a comment!

Tonight I was installing Ubuntu 8.04 on an old PIII system when I came across an odd error:

ata1.00: exception Emask 0×0 SAct 0×0 SErr 0×0 action
0×2 frozen

After some googling, I found that I was not alone. After looking through a bunch of sites I came to this one (Ubuntu forums rock!).

It turns out that having your jumpers/cables setup the wrong way will cause this error. I unplugged my CD Drive and my HDD. I then changed my HDD to be master and my CD Drive to be slave. I replaced the IDE cable and what do you know…everything worked!

Hopefully this helps others! Be sure to visit the Ubuntu forums often. They are a great source of information sharing.

I just found this out today – if you get the “/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lz” message when you are trying to compile code in linux, it means you need to get the zlib development packages.

This took a long time to figure out, so I figured I would share the love.

if you are using Ubuntu:

Go to the package manager and search for zlib. Add the packages that appear that mention development in their description.

EDIT: It seems this post is getting a lot of hits. If you found it useful or have anything to add please reply to help other out too!

My old Ubuntu install recently crashed (trying to get dual monitors setup), so I decided to give Ubuntu 8.04 a shot.

I have the Quadro 3500/4000 Nvidia video card.  It was causing some issues for me when I did an upgrade install to 8.04 – installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu fixed the problem (wasn’t recognizing my second monitor properly).

I will give you a quick overview to how I got things working (skip to step three if you already have Ubuntu installed):

Step Zero: Backup all of your movies, music, documents, etc.

Step One: Get Ubuntu – you have a few options:

• Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/ and download the latest desktop release
• Hop in your car and head to Best Buy and pickup a copy for 19.99
• Find a good torrent of it
• Ask your friend to download it for you and pay them in beer

You might ask yourself why you would buy Ubuntu when you could just download it for free.  Well, when you buy the boxed copy you get some support for it, which isn’t a bad thing. (Personally, I just use the free Ubuntu forums for support).  Secondly, by buying Ubuntu you are supporting the open source community, which is an awesome thing.

Step Two: Install Ubuntu

• If you decide to download Ubuntu, you will have to burn the ISO image to a CD. If you are already using Linux, you know how to do this.  If you are using Windows – I would recommend downloading CDBurnerXP.  It makes this painless.
• Once you have your Ubuntu CD made – reboot your computer with the CD in the drive.  Most computers will automatically detect it and bring up the Ubuntu splash screen – if you need help, just post a comment.
• Follow the instructions to install Ubuntu – it is fairly easy…just make sure you have backed up your Windows files or are installing to a second hard drive.

Step Three: Install Restricted Drivers

• Once on the Ubuntu Desktop go to: System->Administration->Hardware Drivers
• Click the Enabled Button.

• You will be required to restart your X server (hold down CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE)

Step Four: Installing and Configuring Nvidia-Settings

• Once you log back in open the terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal)
• Type in the following:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

This will install the nvidia settings controls.  Next type:

sudo nvidia-settings

This will bring up the following window:

• Click Configure and then select Twin View
• Restart your X Server again (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE)

That is it!  You should be working now.  If you have any questions just leave me a comment here.

Upcoming posts: How to get Everquest Two working under Ubuntu 8.04!