[Luna] Ubuntu/myth install

[Andrew Roazen]

The setup I'm using is a CD-based Ubuntu install which is followed by a 
stew of apt-get installs, source code wgets/makes and editing several 
system config files. Hyams' tutorial is complex for a few reasons.

MythTV isn't an application, it's a fullblown LAMP backend stack and a 
frontend that requires comprehensive multimedia codec support. Ubuntu 
does well on medium-powered machines because out of the box it doesn't 
install AMP, a build environment, too many codecs or fine tuned video 
drivers.

Getting Myth on Ubuntu is a matter of the fast and the tedious (but 
educational). The fast is upgrading Ubuntu to a LAMP stack with nVidia 
support; apt-get does that neatly. However, the tedious is going into 
bash and manually downloading/building from source (Myth 0.19, tuner 
card/infrared remote drivers, multimedia codecs, etc.) and then finally 
configuring Gnome to recognize the HW and quietly do everything at 
startup, so that the box can boot and go directly to MythTV. That last 
part is the least trivial: Myth is powerful but it does not configure 
itself into your OS for you. In part, this is because Myth can be 
configured so many different ways, but mainly because configuring 
startup services is wildly inconsistent across distros and even DEs.

The alternative is to burn and boot the current KnoppMyth release, which 
is based off Knoppix's mainstream Debian. I chose the more difficult 
path so I'd learn more about Linux, but also because it was designed 
around the specific tuner/IR hardware I bought. Plus, Hyams seems to be 
obsessed with both fine tuning user experience and hardening against 
system failures (e.g. the MySQL dbs silently backing themselves up every 
night), and both of these are Good Things.

luna-request at lists.flaglug.org wrote:
> Hey Andrew,
>     Just had a thought, is Ubunto/Myth a DVD or CD install?  I have 
> _a_ DVD rom available, and _a_ CDRW; just trying to figure out which I 
> should put in my server and myth-box-to-be.
> Thanks,
> Kyle

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Andrew Roazen, Application Systems Analyst
| Cline Library, Northern Arizona University
| ? 928.523.6764 vCard <http://www2.nau.edu/%7Ear24/aroazen.vcf>

The opinions expressed are those of the guy who sits at this desk, not 
his employers.
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