Throughout this document you'll see certain key phrases highlighted in various colors. If you get lost, use this key to figure out what they mean.

Also, for brevity, some of the sections of this document are hidden.. You can chose to hide or reveal various portions of the document by clicking on the section headers.

Eventually I'd like to set up a public subversion archive for users who wish to contribute to this document. For right now, feel free to edit the XML version and send me diffs. If you're interested, you can find the XSLT sheet here, and the CSS sheet here. What you're reading is the XML source that should have been translated by your browser automagically. If someone wants to give this some serious design loving I would appreciate it. Please email diffs to wagspat at iit dot edu.

This document has taken a long time to prepare and the creation of the nice XSLT sheet was not the most straightforward of tasks. If you find this useful, you can send some money to me on paypal. I'm not trying to make a lot of money from this, but at some point it would be nice if I could get a real hosting service for this. So help a brotha out. Give me a dollar for the tip jar.

The ASRock on board NIC does not work well with the stock Ubuntu kernel. This certainly creates a chicken and egg problem as you need a network connection to download the new driver. If you'd like the network to work, you can download this module which is compiled for Ubuntu kernel 2.6.12-9.amd64-k8. Then copy the file to your root directory and run the following commands:

There is one final requirement. Apparently the device is still not properly picked up by the hotplug infrastructure. Here's a complete and total hack you can do to get it to work. If someone knows a better way, let me know. Open up /etc/init.d/networking. Go down to the start function, around line 80 or so. And add the following lines at the beginning of the function:

modprobe -r tulip
modprobe -r uli526x
modprobe uli526x

This forceably removes the old drivers and reloads the drivers in the correct order when starting up the network. Like I said, it's a total hack. Also, you'll need to recompile the module whenever you switch kernels. If you're running the stock 2.6.12-9-amd64-generic kernel this module might still work.

For future reference, you can download the driver from ULI's download site and recompile the driver. I haven't found a need for the other drivers yet. Also, I've been bad and haven't checked out the license on this module yet, so if you're a GPL zealot, this might break stuff. Then again, later in this walkthrough you'll be installing the proprietary nVidia drivers.

Now that you've got your shiny new AMD64 system, you probably want a kernel to take advantage of it. Also, I'd imagine you'd like to have support for your video card in X. Ubuntu, being based on Debian, uses the apt utility to handle package dependencies and automatically download required packages. The configuration for this program in stored in /etc/apt/sources.list. You need to modify it to enable to universe and multiverse repositories. In this file you'll see a line that looks something like this:

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.

Uncomment those lines, and after the word universe add the word multiverse. This will give you access to the full range of software available for Breezy. If you're ambitious, you might want to changing the location for mirror site too. I use mirror.cs.umn.edu and typically have found that updates are an order of magnitude faster than from the main Ubuntu sites.

Next, we'll tell apt to update the list of available packages with the following command: apt-get update Now your system knows what packages are available, their versions, sizes, and dependencies. You can now begin installing lots of wonderful new software. Most of this stuff is not supported by Canonical, and may break your installation of Ubuntu. First up, upgrading the kernel, installing the packages to compile software, and getting the updated drivers for your shiny nVidia video card. Running this single command should take care of all that for you. Just answer yes to the prompt it gives you. sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-settings nvidia-kernel-source linux-headers-amd64-k8 linux-image-amd64-k8 build-essential gcc-3.4 g++-3.4 module-assistant If you're lucky enough to have an x2 processor, add a -smp after the amd64-k8 above. Now, reboot to take advantage of the new kernel that is customized for your AMD Athlon64 processor. If you're running an SMP system, this should also provide the support for both of your processors.

However, if you're like me, there is a good chance that your graphics display won't come back up. This is because we need to compile the nVidia kernel module to go along with the new kernel. Luckily, module-assistant, a program which we installed in the last step, makes this very easy. Run the following command as root: module-assistant Select update, then prepare and finally select. On the select menu scroll down to nvidia-kernel. Highlight it with space, then hit return. Select build and then install. This should build and install the module.

Now, we just make sure that the system knows to use the driver. First, we'll build the new database of available modules using this command: depmod After the new database of drivers is compiled, you can load the driver using following command: modprobe nvidia Finally, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and scroll down to the Device section. Make sure it says Driver "nvidia" rather than the old Driver "nv". The nv driver is the open source driver, while the nvidia is the accelerated closed source driver. Finally, run the following command to enable the usage of the new nVidia driver. Reboot after this command and you should have a graphical display back. Most of the reason for this problem is because the nv Free driver for Xorg does not support some of the newer nVidia cards. The proprietary driver offers more features and is still "free enough" for me. nvidia-glx-config enable As an alternative, if you don't want to reboot, you may be able to issue the command to just restart the graphical display system: /etc/init.d/gdm restart

At this point, it might also be useful to install openssh-server on your computer. My MythTV sits in the entertainment center and isn't the easiest thing to work on. apt-get install openssh-server Now you'll be able to do most of the rest of this walkthrough from a laptop or other computer in your house.

MythTV supports the use of a DCT-6200 digital cable box as a tuner for high definition television. This is mainly because the FCC has mandated that "must carry" channels be sent unencrypted out the firewire port of new cable boxes. Translation: you can take a firewire cable from your PC to your cable box and tune in the high definition feeds for your local broadcast stations. Pretty slick. Your other option is to use the box to tune SDTV digital cable, which won't come out of the firewire port, but you can still change channels over the firewire connection.

There are three different components that we'll be working with. Unfortunately, I didn't document what you need for just channel changing and what you need to do to use it as a tuner.

• libavc1394 - provides audio visual support for working with IEEE 1394 (firewire) devices.
• libiec61883 - provides a high level API for streaming MPEG over IEEE 1394.
• libraw1394 - allows for raw access to IEEE 1394 devices (to change channels etc)

The bad part is that Ubuntu doesn't really ship with up to date version of these and I could not find a source for them. So we'll need to just go download them ourselves. The next three subsections document how to go about this procedure. In all cases, we're going to be performing a normal installation and not really worrying about the Ubuntu packages. Not good form, but it seems to work well enough.

The IVTV driver is used by Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150/250/350/500 analog tuner cards. This driver has been in development for some time and is reasonably feature complete. For the WinTV PVR 350 line of cards it also provides accelerated MPEG output to a television. However, being as I'm not using the PVR 350, that issue is not addressed here.

The build process is really straight forward for the driver, but there are some catches that you need to pay attention to. Notably, it installs the drivers to the wrong directory and also conflicts with one of the modules that the pcHDTV card needs, but we'll tell you how to get around this.

We're not quite there yet. Now we need to hide some of the old modules and move the new modules somewhere that depmod can find them.

Your driver is now installed, but you'll still need to get the firmware for the driver. There are lots of versions, and while the version on your install CD will probably work, it's not the ideal version. For that, you'll need to trust me that the version you can pull from the internet is better. Here are the last commands you'll need to run:

If everything is going okay, you should be able run the command dmesg and see a bunch of output from the loading of the driver. Here is what it looked like on my computer:

[  527.049576] ivtv:  ==================== START INIT IVTV ====================
[  527.049580] ivtv:  version 0.4.0 (tagged release) loading
[  527.049582] ivtv:  Linux version: 2.6.12-9-amd64-k8 gcc-3.4
[  527.049584] ivtv:  In case of problems please include the debug info
[  527.049586] ivtv:  between the START INIT IVTV and END INIT IVTV lines when
[  527.049587] ivtv:  mailing the ivtv-devel mailinglist.
[  527.050711] ivtv0: Autodetected WinTV PVR 250 card (iTVC15 based)
[  527.051113] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC2] enabled at IRQ 17
[  527.051118] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:07.0[A] -> Link [APC2] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[  527.051124] ivtv0: Unreasonably low latency timer, setting to 64 (was 32)
[  527.052469] ivtv0: i2c attach to card #0 ok [client=tveeprom, addr=50]
[  527.055894] ivtv0: i2c attach to card #0 ok [client=(tuner unset), addr=61]
[  527.057705] tuner 3-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[  527.093153] tveeprom: Hauppauge: model = 48052, rev = I110, serial# = 6124656
[  527.093156] tveeprom: tuner = Philips FI1236 MK2 (idx = 10, type = 2)
[  527.093159] tveeprom: tuner fmt = NTSC(M) (eeprom = 0x08, v4l2 = 0x00001000)
[  527.093161] tveeprom: audio_processor = MSP3445 (type = 12)
[  527.125649] saa7115 3-0021: saa7115 found @ 0x42 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[  527.204219] ivtv0: i2c attach to card #0 ok [client=saa7115, addr=21]
[  527.220596] msp34xx: ivtv version
[  527.220598] msp34xx: init: chip=MSP3445G-B8, has NICAM support, simple (D) mode, simpler (G) no-thread mode
[  527.220602] msp34xx: $Id$ compiled on: Nov 12 2005 16:12:19
[  527.386240] ivtv0: i2c attach to card #0 ok [client=MSP3445G-B8, addr=40]
[  527.391827] tda9885/6/7: (ivtv) chip found @ 0x86
[  527.700157] ivtv0: loading /lib/modules/ivtv-fw-enc.bin
[  527.702773] ivtv0: loading /lib/modules/ivtv-fw-dec.bin
[  527.810041] ivtv0: Encoder revision: 0x02050032
[  527.815045] ivtv0: Decoder revision: 0x02020023
[  527.815965] ivtv0: Allocate DMA encoder MPEG stream: 128 x 32768 buffers (4096KB total)
[  527.816993] ivtv0: Allocate DMA encoder YUV stream: 194 x 10800 buffers (2048KB total)
[  527.818045] ivtv0: Allocate DMA encoder VBI stream: 120 x 17472 buffers (2048KB total)
[  527.819058] ivtv0: Allocate DMA encoder PCM audio stream: 455 x 4608 buffers (2048KB total)
[  527.819292] tuner 3-0061: type set to 2 (Philips NTSC (FI1236,FM1236 and compatibles))
[  528.273607] ivtv0: Initialized WinTV PVR 250, card #0
[  528.273614] ivtv:  ====================  END INIT IVTV  ====================
      

There are two different ways that you can get support for your remote control, both require some work because unfortunately Ubuntu doesn't ship with great LIRC support and the lirc-modules-source still doesn't work for building kernel modules for Linux 2.6. Both of these methods will require the installation of the LIRC package.

Most of this part is specific to my style remote, as pictured in figure 2. Newer cards from Hauppauge have a different remote that has dedicated arrow keys and the colored buttons near the bottom. I consider that style remote superior to mine because you're not doing double duty for the channel and volume keys. With that being said, don't be surprised if a lot of this does not work on your remote.

Ready to compile more drivers? Too bad. The drivers for the pcHDTV are already built into Breezy. However, there is one caveat, you need to make sure that ivtv is loaded before cx88-dvb. Furthermore, you'll cannot use the IVTV tveeprom.ko as this will cause errors. If you have PVR-250 card you should be okay at this point, if you have a PVR-150 or a PVR-500 you may need to play around with some module ordering. This is an issue with the IVTV drivers, and not the pcHDTV drivers.

You'll need to do one more small step to get the card working, download the firmware. This is a simple matter of downloading the firmware and then placing it in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware.

From this point, you'll need to decide whether or not you're going to use over-the-air HDTV broadcast (called ATSC) or the signal from your cable provider (called QAM). Over-the-air works quite well for most people, especially if you live someplace flat. The drivers are well tested and generally stable. QAM is an option for people who live places not-so-flat (like Pittsburgh) and need to get their HDTV signal from their cable provider.

MythMusic required a small bit of modifications to compile properly. On line 57 of mythmusic/mythmusic/aacdecoder.c change unsigned long sample_rate; to unsigned int sample_rate;. I've heard reports that this may break some things, but it seems to work fine for me.

The current SVN version of MythTV has a built in DVD player, but the stable release does not yet -- in order to play DVDs you'll need to install an external DVD playing application. The most popular are xine and mplayer.

MythWeather built without any modifications to the source code. You can configure it from the setup menu of MythFrontend.

MythVideo also built without any modifications. You'll probably want to install Xine or MPlayer for watching the videos as discussed earlier in this section.

MythGallery required two changes to the source code in order to function. First, modify line 77 of mythgallery/mythgallery/qtiffio.cpp to read (long) MAP_FAILED instead of int MAP_FAILED. This is a fix required for the x86_64 architecutre only. The second fix is to modify the area around line 61 of mythgallery/mythgallery/galleryutil.cpp and remove the evaluation of the new lib exif stuff. For some reason Ubuntu has problems with this otherwise.

#if NEW_LIB_EXIF
                        exif_entry_get_value(entry, exifvalue, 1023);
                        QString value = exifvalue;
#else
                        QString value = exif_entry_get_value(entry);
#endif

You should be ready to go for MythGallery now.

I don't currently use MythPhone, so I can't really comment on how easy it is to use. In the future, I'd like to hook MythPhone up to an Asterisk setup so you can receive phone calls at the television.

I don't use MythBrowser.

I don't use MythNews.

You'll probably want to make MythBackend start automatically at system boot. Here's a set of commands you can use to make this happen automatically.

It is now possible to have MythTV automatically connect and download television listings without the need for using cron, however, if you're old school like me and would like to still use cron here's a line you can use. First run crontab -e and then enter this line in the file.

55 13 * * * /usr/local/bin/mythfilldatabase

The above command will automatically fetch the schedule at 1:55pm localtime. Most users setup their system to download the schedules sometime in the night, but the folks at Zap2It have requested that all times be set between 9am and midnight Central time. Obviously, you'll probably want to move the time some. It would be horrible if everyone started downloading their schedules at 1:55pm.

I've got a slight modification to my file. I would like my HDTV tuner to only record high definition programs, to achieve this I actually use the following line (put all on one line by removing backslashes):

55 13 * * * /usr/local/bin/mythfilldatabase ; \
  echo "delete from program where chanid > 3000 and chanid < 4000 and hdtv=0;" \
  | mysql -u mythtv -pmythtv mythconverg

You'll most likely have to do some hacking in the MySQL database to get the exact command line here, so make sure you know what you're doing. Basically, MythTV assigns each video source a number and then appends the channel number. On my system, the HDTV is source 3 (it's configured to be only HDTV), so I wipe everything from channles 3000 - 4000 that is not HDTV. In the future there is a good chance that it will be possible to mark a tuner as HDTV only, but as of 0.18.1 that is not possible.