> SHOWSTOPPERS:
>
> (S-1) The installer, by default, picked a 15 GB size for my
> ringbuffer, but picked a 12 GB size for the /cache partition in which
> it's stored. This means that, after 5.3 hours of sitting in Watch TV,
> the machine blew up. (The disk thrashed -continuously- and the video
> went completely black, while it logged "ENC stream overflow/stealing a
> buffer" errors to at least three different logfiles at hundreds of
> entries per second; given enough time, this would have filled up the
> root partition, too.)
>
> This is a subtle bug---some people might not see it for days or weeks
> after installation, and many inexperienced users will have no idea how
> to fix it or even what caused it.
Of course, most people will never see it at all because a PVR,
particularly MythTV, isn't really designed for live TV, and certainly
not for 5.3 hours of live TV.
<snip>
> (S-2) The SQL database is being mis-initialized, or whatever is
> using it is becoming confused, in a way which is causing brand new
> installations to fail, in the case where the backend and the frontend
> are different machines. The failure typically manifests as follows:
>
> The frontend can talk to the backend's SQL server enough to initialize
> when mythfrontend is run, and the backend's SQL log will emit 100+
> lines of logging. However, selecting "Watch TV" on the frontend will
> yield an instant error claiming that the frontend can't talk to the
> backend, and, if "mythfrontend -v all" is being used, you'll see
> errors in the shell it's run from claiming that it's trying to talk
> to localhost instead of the backend machine. Fixing this involves
> bashing a NULL into one of the rows of the backend's SQL database!
Never seen this, but then again, I like to make sure that my BEs are
properly set up and network addresses properly set before adding FEs.
The steps are fairly well documented.
> (S-3) The installer's default choice of monitor sync rates isn't
> conservative enough. This came up (I think!) because I'm using a
> crappy old video card to do my installations, because I -know- that my
> real frontend is going to be the video-out on a PVR-350 and my -good-
> cards are in other machines.
Why would you have a PVR-350 in a front-end? If it's capturing, then
it's not a FE. If you're going out to a monitor, you're not using the
350. Why use a 350 at all when you can get just as good a picture for
less money with a cheap nvidia card?
> picked H: 35.2Khz, V: 86.4Hz and my (fairly new ProView) LCD monitor
> instantly choked and said "invalid refresh rate".
You really shouldn't (can't) be sending a signal out of a PVR 350 to
an LCD monitor. That is pointless.
> So: C-Alt-F1'ed and got a text console, spent a while figuring where
> the heck an editor was
$vi
> ANNOYING:
>
> (A-1) The installer asks me -twice- for my timezone and current time:
> once, when the CD is in control of the machine, and once -again- when
> the installation is proceeding from the hard disk. Nowhere that I can
> find is it documented whether either one of these queries matters.
So skip them. There are other ways to set your system time.
> But even given that, does
> it matter if I ignore the timezone/date prompt from the CD, and then
> set it correctly when running from the disk? No idea.
No. It doesn't matter.
> (A-3) If you mistype the root password when the machine comes up just
> after ejecting the CD, the window simply vanishes, leaving you with no
> installer at all. I guessed that simply rebooting the machine would
> rerun the installer, and it seems to have worked.
Typing the root password carefully would take care of this problem.
> (R-2) Somewhere near the end of the installation, there's a canned
> error message that tells me to run mythfilldatabase if this is the
> master backend---and then it immediately goes off and runs it for me.
Yes. That is a fairly common behaviour for a script -- finish one
thing then start another.
> (R-3) I got the error below even though I supplied a NON-loopback IP
> in configuration, which indicates that something is ignoring it.
Since you're only configuring one machine, why not let it keep
127.0.0.1 until you have everything running and can set all the
addresses properly. Just because you tell mythtvsetup that your
machine is 192.168.1.10 doesn't mean that ifconfig knows that.
> I can't figure out
> if the error is important or completely ignorable, though, and some
> guidance would be nice. (It's also got a typo in it; see "sic";
> typos matter 'cause they make it harder to grep for errors.)
>
> 13:40:15.539 connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543 (try 1 of 1)
> 13:40:15.587 connection timed out
> you should probably modify the Master Server settings in the
> setup program and set the proper IP address
That last line sounds like pretty good guidance to me.
> That error message has a couple of other problems: It talks about
> "Master Server" but I presume it should say "Master Backend Server" to
> be consistent with terminology elsewhere.
I don't really think many people are confused by that one.
> I should note also that I saw timeouts making backend connections to
> 127.0.0.1 as well at -some- point (but my memory is foggy about
> exactly when---I think it scrolled by while the installer was doing
> its thing, but of course I could neither pause the output nor find it
> later in a file); this made me wonder if a non-loopback IP is required
> -all the time- (despite the defaults), or if the error was spurious
> and should be suppressed or something.
If you had left the default at 127.0.0.1 you wouldn't have had this problem.
> (R-4) The "localhost" above might be related to Setup->General
> Settings->Database Configuration 1/2 claiming "Host name: localhost"
> even though I supplied one. (This is a vague report, because I wasn't
> keeping careful notes about exactly when I supplied the hostname, and
> when I saw this error, but if it rings any bells...) [The "localhost"
> resetting keeps happening at various times in the install; I kept
> having to check it to make sure it "stuck". But it's probably
> unrelated to the MySQL initialization bug above.]
Again, when you install, it is to one machine. There's no reason to
change any of the default network settings until your box is up and
running. If you hadn't monkeyed around with it, it would have worked
without a problem. Just because you can change something doesn't mean
you should.
> (R-6) It would be really, really nice if Emacs could be included by
> default in the ISO.
#apt-get install emacs
But why do you need a complete programming environment to tweak a
couple of text files?
> Yes, I know you probaby get tons of requests for
> this and that random program, but really, Emacs is the most likely
> non-vi editor that someone might want, instantly upon or even during
> the installation, in order to edit files to set up the machine, and
> adding it to the ISO would only add 13.4 meg to the image.
I'd be more concerned with reducing the size of the ISO.
> Making users use unfamiliar editors precisely when
> they're in the middle of installing a new OS image is a good way to
> get them to make mistakes.
There's no reason why vi should be unfamiliar to anyone who has used
Linux for more than an hour.
> if they don't
> already know it, they're totally stuck and don't have any editor
> except vi, if they can use it---which newbies can't.
Why is it that a newbie can't use a very simple editor like vi but
would be at home in emacs?
> -I- can't, having used Emacs from the days of TOPS-20
> before vi even existed.
What the hell is so complicated about
$vi myfile
[arrows]
[Ins]
[type text]
[Esc]
:wq
> CONFUSING:
>
> (C-1) The default theme ("blue", with the six circles) is an
> unfortunate choice. Why? Because the colors of selected and
> unselected fields are almost identical (they're two very slightly
> different shades of blue), and neither one screams out "selected".
> This means that whenever I'm presented with the "erase all your
> cards?" sorts of setup questions, I have to bounce back and forth a
> bit with the cursor keys until I've convinced myself which one is
> -really- the selected one.
If you're doing a new install, you don't have any cards defined and
you don't have any channels defined. It doesn't matter if you delete
or don't delete something that isn't there.
> Some of the other themes (e.g., at least
> G.A.N.T., where selections are red and nothing else is) make this much
> more obvious, but it isn't even obvious there -are- other themes until
> you've already configured at least once. (I only discovered this
> today, despite having unfortunately had to configure several times,
> and only because of a database-connection problem that apparently
> reset my theme from the blue circles to something else without my
> specifying anything---boy, was -that- a shocker...) So I'd like to
> argue really strongly that G.A.N.T. or something else is made the
> default theme, and not the blue circles with the hard-to-read
> selection fields.
The theme can be very easily set from within the FE Setup menu.
> This is especially
> crucial because so many of the submenus have a "General" menu under
> them, and it's difficult to figure out where you are in the hierarchy
> if you haven't already memorized it and aren't keeping track of where
> you're going---
If you're setting up an application for the first time, you really
should be keeping track of where you are. If you forget, you can
always go up a menu to remind yourself.
> (C-2) I find the cursor-based navigation in the installation setup
> screens confusing. I know you're trying to avoid depending on the
> mouse, and I'm a big fan of avoiding mice, but it means that, e.g.,
> one needs to use the up & down arrows to go -sideways- between Cancel,
> Back, and Next.
Think outside of the box. Up and Down change what item is selected.
Left and Right change the item that is selected.
> I seem to get it wrong when navigating these things fairly frequently,
> despite practice, so there's -something- going on here.
Practice makes perfect.
> PECULIAR, BUT PROBABLY NOT IMPORTANT:
>
> (P-1) I've noticed, on two machines now, that the very first time I do
> an installation, it claims that every filesystem has not been checked
> in 49710 days (or so; I may have misremembered the exact number).
#updatedb
Set is as a cron job and you never have to worry again.
> Whew! Hope that's been helpful... Let me know if I can help fix any
> of this.
>
> - - - End - - -
I think you're making this a whole lot harder than it needs to be. The
installation steps are pretty well documented and work smoothly
provided you have standard hardware and follow the directions.
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