A few tweaks were necessary, however:
- Ubuntu's default action when DVDs are inserted is bringing up Totem (and it has another default for CDs), and those defaults had to be disabled.
- Most importantly, the default location for the recordings needs to be reset in mythtv-setup. If you don't, it defaults to /var/lib/mythtv, which is outside the giant XFS partition we set up specifically for this purpose. Everything under /home is on that partition, so I created /home/mythtv/recordings and set mythtv to store recordings there instead.
Tweaks yet to do:
- Figure out how to stop mythbackend without killing its process.
- Reconfigure Myth to use 0.19's own DVD player instead of mplayer (which skips menus)
- Increase mythbrowser's default font size. Mythbrowser's cookie messages imply it's Konqueror-based.
- Edit channels to show callsigns.
- Install xmame and configure it to recognize the remote's keys as the default input device.
- Map color keys to alt-F1 and alt-Tab for quickly accessing Gnome menus/switching windows, unless there's something else already doing this in Myth.
Overall, it was an interesting experience comparable to installing Debian stable (Woody) for the first time: a steep learning curve, a lot of configuration, and a reasonable amount of burr-sanding at the end. Mistakes, reinstallations, and a ton of Googling. If I had to do this again on another box, it would take less time, but I'd also insist on a T1 and >=1GHz CPU as the process involves downloading over 100Mb of source and binaries, then compiling them. If I were an installer who favored Ubuntu over KnoppMyth, I'd probably put all the files on a 1Gb memory stick along with a copy of his webpage.
A recap: Hyams' instructions are good, but he clearly got tired of writing them towards the end. His chief error in the documentation is the one where he assumes the myPHPadmin root password becomes mythconverg's password in all the config files. mySQL's permissions model changed after that documentation was written, and mythconverg has its own randomly generated password visible in Myth's own settings page. Do not change that password. Write it down and insert it into all the config files that default to 'mythtv' for a database password.
His startup script for forcing the 0.19 PATH to the beginning of $PATH does not work. It just doesn't. Accept this and do what I did to ensure 0.18 is neutered. Arguably the test of how well I understood his instructions would be rewriting them to omit the entire 0.18 installation altogether.
Perhaps 0.19 will make it to the Dapper repositories and make all that unnecessary.
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