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timdog82001 · 2008-10-23, 03:12

Hey guys

I'm always hesitant to post questions like this on here, but i've done a fair share of searching and still have come up with nothing to answer my questions. Forgive me if this is a stupid question/idea (I know next to nothing about linux)...Obviously you can install mythtv on a standard full linux install, but would it theoretically be possible to install mythtv onto the thumbdrive with xbmclive and have it run in the background for use in XBMC? If so, any pointers or suggestions of where I could find out more about how to do this would be much appreciated Smile

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miked2024 · 2008-10-23, 05:23

you can already use xbmc as a limited myth frontend, either via the old python script or by adding a source such as myth://your_myth_server. there's a thread on this in the developers section with links to numerous other threads which discuss the details:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=28918

miked2024 · 2008-10-23, 05:27

there is an effort underway as part of the GSoC to make xbmc a frontend to any and all DVR/PVR systems. the pilot will be a myth implementation:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=28918

that thread has a lot of good info from gamester and tons of links to other threads discussing implementation details, etc...

timdog82001 · (This post was last modified: 2008-10-23, 05:44 by timdog82001.)

I am aware of the plans for the ability to use xbmc as a front end...that's actually why i want to be able to run myth on this machine in the background of xbmc, not for mythtv itself. I was just hoping, when that does get officialy merged, to not have to have a separate linux machine just for mythtv to record/view tv, i'd like to have it both on one box, for obvious reasons and do it all through xbmc. But thanks for the tip regardless. Maybe I'll take another look through that thread to make sure i didn't miss anything in there.

miked2024 · 2008-10-23, 06:05

on a flash disk? are you contemplating a diskless backend of some sort?

i spent most of today reading about this very subject... there is mention of running mythbackend and xbmc on the same node, but not specifically on the Live version. you'd have to add a lot of extra packages to make that work, i'd wager. the distro for Live is stripped to the bare essentials.

my own plan is ultimately to have some sort of myth distro for the backend (mythbuntu, mythdora, etc...) on a box with large disks and a few hauppage cards (maybe with that snazzy component capture device) and/or hd-homeruns and then use XBMC Live frontends in place of diskless mythfrontends.

i guess you could have your mythbackends writing to a NAS from the Live flash drive... i've never tried it, but that might work.

ptipton · 2008-10-23, 11:11

XBMC can already be used as a MythTv frontend for watching live tv and recordings, still needs the epg etc that is being worked on to become a full replacement for the standard linux myth frontend. However I would note that for Livetv XBMC seems more responsive and with quicker channel changes than the standard linux frontend!
You can certainly run a mythtv backend ( I would recommend Mythbuntu) and xbmc on the same machine.
I have XBMC frontends running on Xbox, Windows and Linux and all work well with the Mythbuntu backend, I did try XBMC Live once and had trouble connecting to the backend but that may just be my setup, I didnt play with it for too long.

timdog82001 · 2008-10-23, 11:41

ptipton Wrote:I did try XBMC Live once and had trouble connecting to the backend but that may just be my setup, I didnt play with it for too long.

Was that on different machines or were you trying to connect to myth on the same machine as xbmclive? I'm just interested in keeping with xbmclive without having to have more than one machine running. The reason I'm shooting for this is xbmclive is so much faster loading, silent, and makes dual booting as simple as pulling out a usb stick if wanted. However, are my hopes in vain? Would all the extra packages or whatever needed to allow myth to run (even without any of its gui) negate the faster speeds of xbmclive?

ptipton · 2008-10-23, 16:57

timdog82001 Wrote:Was that on different machines or were you trying to connect to myth on the same machine as xbmclive? I'm just interested in keeping with xbmclive without having to have more than one machine running. The reason I'm shooting for this is xbmclive is so much faster loading, silent, and makes dual booting as simple as pulling out a usb stick if wanted. However, are my hopes in vain? Would all the extra packages or whatever needed to allow myth to run (even without any of its gui) negate the faster speeds of xbmclive?

Just tried XBMC Live on my machine that normally runs windows, in livetv it shows the channels and programs but wont display the live channel when selected. I'm guessing its something simple and will check when I get more time. ( Not sure where the debug log is in live to be honest) .
There is an option with mythbuntu to use diskless mythtv frontends but have no idea whether this would run from a USB. To me XBMC is way ahead of the Mythtv frontend in most respects that I would stick with this. XBMC Linux , which XBMC Live is based on works fine as mythtv frontend so getting XBMC Live to work cant be a big jump. I'll look into it more when I get some time.

d4rk · 2008-10-23, 18:19

There's nothing preventing MythTV and XBMC to coexist on the same machine. That part is easy. So, if you have a dedicated partition for Linux, it would be a non-issue. I've tried it (albeit for testing) with no issues at all.

The real issue, IMHO, would be using a flash based "live" distro (XBMC or otherwise) to achieve this. MythTV uses a persistent database (mysql) to store all its data. In addition, it routinely fetches updates online (EPG etc) and ingests the data into the database. I'm not sure how feasible that would be with a Live distribution (primarily because it's all persistent). Maybe it's a non-issue these days, but generally most Live distributions do not write to the drive (maybe XBMC Live does, not certain).

My recommendation would be to create a partition and install Linux on it, or use an external USB drive and install Linux on it. Both cases would allow you to dual boot to Windows (fast boot times can be achieved as well - since bootup can be tweaked).

timdog82001 · 2008-10-23, 19:18

alright. Looks like i'll be moving over to a hard drive then. Thanks d4rk Smile

bmfrosty · 2008-10-24, 01:31

I think I see where all this is coming from, and a lot of it boils down to the idea that Live is a Linux Distribution, and can be installed on a hard drive. My PC that I used for XBMC has had a hardware failure that's made it undesireable for audio playback, so I'm in the process of deciding on a new computer to install Linux and XBMC on, and one of my concerns is that I think I'd like to have a torrent client and a usenet client on the machine as well - possibly Torrentflux and Sabnzbd for their reliance on a web interface instead of a local GUI. I know that these are fairly straightforward to install on an Ubuntu installation, but wouldn't it be nice if they were available as optional installs with XBMC Live? If I'm building something for mostly media center purposes, I'd rather do that than an installation that covers anything and everything a desktop user might want.

For that matter, I really don't know a whole lot about how Live is structured... Is it an Ubuntu branch? Does it have it's own repositories for updates? I looked in the FAQ, but I didn't see much about it.

d4rk · 2008-10-24, 02:56

timdog82001 I was misinformed, XBMC Live does allow installation onto a USB stick, which permits persistent storage. So theoretically you can install MythTV as well on it. I still wouldn't recommend it on a USB stick though, for the following reasons:

If you're going to use MythTV as a DVR then that means lot of writes + possibly lot of deletes, something flash drives are generally not suited for (shorter lifespan etc).
MPEG2 captures are generally quite large so they will probably fill up a flash drive quite quickly.

Other than that, it should be technically feasible. Luigi will definitely have better insight than me.

bmfrosty, it's based on Ubuntu Hardy. By default, it uses Ubuntu repositories and XBMC's PPA repository.

bmfrosty · 2008-10-24, 03:30

I see. So given that I'm comfortable on the command line, it should be fairly easy to add other software.

Another question. Will future versions of Live be built on future versions of Ubuntu, or is the stay with the previous version of Ubuntu for stability reasons? Or is that still undecided?