Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 90,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I do not apologies for saying that I absolutely hate GRUB. In fact I’ll be more specific, I hate GRUB2. Just when I had mastered GRUB v1, out pops GRUB 2 and all the rules change! 

Now to be clear, I love what GRUB does and what it does as a boot loader it does really well. What it totally fails at doing is providing an easy to use interface to modify the GRUB settings, without a high possibility of ‘bricking’ your computer!

Well that was until now when I found KDE GRUB Editor in System Settings in Kubuntu 11.10

The editor allows you to change:

• Menu entries

• Boot Default Entry delay

• Background image

• Hide Boot Menu

You can also:

• Create, restore and delete GRUB backups using an assistant

• Install/ Restore GRUB

• Find out how GRUB names your hard disks and partitions

• View configuration files

Whilst care should be taken in using this tool, it is an very useful tool to help you manage GRUB.

KDE 4.x has become really polished in 2011, I would strongly suggest you give KDE a test drive in 2012.

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Code:

$ sudo su
# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade
# apt-get remove unity-greeter
# apt-get install lightdm
# cd /etc/lightdm/
# mv lightdm.conf lightdm.conf.old
# pico lightdm.conf

In the lightdm.conf file put the following:

Code:

[SeatDefaults]
autologin-guest=false
autologin-user=<<your mythtv user ID, ie: superm1 or whatever>>
autologin-user-timeout=0
autologin-session=lightdm-autologin
user-session=mythbuntu
allow-guest=false

Problem #2 – MythTV Backend not automatically starting

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1860270&page=3

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I’ve been running my wireless access point up until now with WEP encryption, mainly to keep compatibility with older wireless equipment. In case you think I’m mad, the access point spends most of its time switched off and therefore is more secure than WPA!

Initially, I changed the MTU setting to 1500 from Auto (see instructions below) to see if this would fix the problem. Whilst it did not fix it it did get more reliable. Although I could not reconnect as I got an authentication failure

Looking deeper into the problem I noticed in the log files that the wireless was trying to authenticate using WPA and not WEP encryption. This would explain why it could not reconnect even if I reset networking and disabled/ enabled wireless.

As a matter of elimination I changed my access point to WPA-PSK authentication and then changed Kubuntu’s settings and authentication password.

This seems to have resolved my particular problem, which appears to be a bug in how WEP wireless connectivity is handled after a disconnect. 

My laptop is an aging Dell Latitude C640 with an Intel Pro Wireless (IPW2200) wireless G card.

How to change the MTU setting

The MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) setting for Ethernet should be 1500 bytes.

In Ubuntu this is set to automatic in Network Manager and I suspect this is where the problem arises.

To change the setting in Network Manager:

1. open Network Manager
2. Select the Wireless tab
3. Select your connection
4. Choose Edit
5. At the bottom of the page is the MTU setting, enter 1500
6. Click OK
7. Exit

or follow these instructions

If you just want to test you can enter from terminal the following command in the format

sudo ifconfig nwif mtu #

where nwif is the network interface name e.g. eth0

# is the MTU number

Example: 

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What I didn’t explain was that by default the Storage Group directories are shared in Samba so that they can be accessed remotely over the network by other computers/ devices e.g. your network enabled TV!

The process is quite simple to do, and because Mythbuntu comes with Thunar as the default file manager, which is unfortunately totally useless as the Thunar Shares Plugin is broken from Ubuntu 10.10 onwards due to dependency issues, I’ll explain how to do this from Terminal.

From Terminal, go to the /etc/samba/ directory

cd /etc/samba/

Edit smb.cfg as sudo

sudo nano smb.conf

You will see something similar to the following:

[global]

workgroup = MSHOME

server string = %h server (Samba, Mythbuntu)

log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m

max log size = 1000

syslog = 0

panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d

dns proxy = no

security = share

[recordings]

comment = TV Recordings

path = /media/data/mythtv/recordings

public = yes

writable = no

create mask = 0777

directory mask = 0777

force user = nobody

force group = nogroup

Edit the path for the following shares:

[recordings]

[videos]

[pictures]

For example for recordings we change the path from

path= /var/lib/mythtv/recordings

to

path = /media/data/mythtv/recordings

Save the file:

Press CTRL-o

To exit

Press CTRL-x

Restart Samba

Either reboot the PC

or from Terminal enter:

sudo restart smbd

You will now be able to browse and play your MythTV recording as you did prior to changing the Storage Groups.

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• Mythbuntu 10.10 to 11.04 (two PCs)
• Kubuntu (32-bit) 10.10 to 11.04
• Kubuntu (64-bit) 10.10 to 11.04
• Ubuntu (32-bit) 10.10 to 11.04

I was having a new bathroom fitted at the time so could spare a day to upgrade the PCs, as it turned out it took much longer than I thought!

Unfortunately there was an immediate set-back, the system hard disk on my FreeNAS server failed, I knew things were not right when it started making grating sounds on boot. I’ll be writing a separate article on how I fixed it and on the importance of backing up the FreeNAS config.xml file! So my upgrades were delayed by half a day whilst I sorted out my FreeNAS hardware.

I make it a standard practice to always backup my PCs using Clonezilla before embarking on any distribution upgrade. Although Linux is fairly “bullet-proof” when doing an upgrade, assuming you know what you are doing, there is always a risk of the unexpected happening, as I was about to discover.

Mythbuntu

MythPC1: MSI motherboard, Athlon 64 Socket AM2 3800, 2Gb RAM

MythPC2: ASUS motherboard, Athlon 64 Socket 939 4200 Dual Core, 2Gb RAM

This is my test Mythbuntu PC (MythTVPC1) and I had decided that I could afford to screw up the hard disk as I had a image on another after a hard disk upgrade.

I was delighted that this actually upgraded okay and the older image was not required!

I’ve since upgraded my main Mythbuntu (MythTVPC2) system and again the upgrade was flawless.

Verdict: 10/10 to the Mythbuntu team this is the upgrade experience every Linux user wants.

Kubuntu 64-bit

ASUS motherboard, Athlon 64 Socket AM2,  5200 Dual Core, 2Gb RAM)

Kubuntu detected that an upgrade was available, but failed to start the upgrade process

So decided to force the upgrade by entering in Terminal

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

This also failed and gave a message advising me to look at /var/log/dist-upgrade/, where I found the message below in red

2011-05-05 10:11:44,850 DEBUG nvidiaUpdate()
2011-05-05 10:11:44,860 ERROR NvidiaDetection returned a error: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument ‘datadir’
2011-05-05 10:11:44,861 DEBUG Installing ‘dontzap’ (kubuntu-desktop PostUpgradeInstall rule)
2011-05-05 10:14:18,202 ERROR Dist-upgrade failed: ‘E:Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.’
2011-05-05 10:14:18,203 DEBUG abort called
2011-05-05 10:14:18,207 DEBUG openCache()
2011-05-05 10:14:18,207 DEBUG failed to SystemUnLock() (E:Not locked)
2011-05-05 10:14:25,471 DEBUG /openCache(), new cache size 32578
2011-05-05 10:14:25,472 DEBUG enabling apt cron job

Searching for “An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade”

found http://fossplanet.com/f10/%5Bbug-775040%5D-%5Bnew%5D-update-11-04-failed-without-plausible-reason-148591/

which suggested:

dontzap is holding back python and prevents the upgrade. Please remove it and try again.

So from terminal entered

sudo apt-get remove dontzap

Then did a normal upgrade using Kpackagekit, which part way through crashed out!

Killed KpackageKit using System monitor and reverted to doing the upgrade in Terminal.

Except I could not, so tried

sudo apt-get -f install

Which produced the following

A quick search on dpkg: parse error, in file ‘/var/lib/dpkg/available’ found https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/10265

Entered

sudo dpkg –clear-avail

then

sudo apt-get update followed by

sudo apt-get upgrade

and the upgrade continued.

Then did another

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

then did a

apt-get update

apt-get dist-upgrade

Then got messge “errors were encountered processing” bluefish-data and bluefish-pluginser experience I would score you 3/10 and 4/10 respectively.

entered sudo apt-get -f install and the upgrade continued.

It then crashed out “not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Tried deleting the lock file using sudo but got error back

cannot remove read only file system. Also could not save screenshots to my home folder, same error.

As generic linux headers had been setup decided on a reboot to see what I got!

On reboot Linux found disk errors which it fixed and then booted into the login screen. [see screenshots].

apt-get upgrade

On login opened up terminal and entered[see screenshots].

which told me that dpkg was interrupted and to run sudo dpkg –configure -a, which I did.

The upgrade process resumed and completed successfully.

Then did sudo apt-get autoremove to clean up redundant packages

Verdict: 3/10 this is the upgrade experience every Linux user could do without!

Kubuntu 32-bit

Dell Latitude C640 laptop, P4M 2.4GHz, 1Gb RAM

Kubuntu refused to recognise that an upgrade to 11.04 existed, so decided to force the upgrade the "old way" by entering

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

then got the error

trying to overwrite ‘/usr/share/kde4/config/khtmlrc’, which is also in package libkdecore5 4

Installation aborted, rerunning KpackageKit caused it to crash had to Kill it!.

And system requested a restart.

Ignored the system restart request, as this is a good way to kill the installation, so instead continued the upgrade using Terminal by entering

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

Got into dependency problem due to the failed installation

so did a:

sudo apt-get -f install

This resumed the installation

Then another

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

and continued the upgrade

Got the “Configuring ttf-mscorefonts-installer” screen

Left blank, selected OK then enter and nothing happened. Repeated about 20 times before it accepted OK. Weird!

Installation then completed shortly afterwards.

Did another

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

and got message saying 167 packages had been kept back

Entered

apt-get dist-upgrade

The another

sudo apt-get -f install

sudo apt-get autoremove

A reboot later and…….

I had a fully upgraded (and working) system.

Verdict: 3/10 this is the upgrade experience every Linux user could do without!

Kubuntu 11.04 - The Bottom Line

I really like KDE4 and what the developers have done over the past two years. However, whilst it is very user friendly, the upgrade process to 11.04 has been nothing short of a complete nightmare.

Unless KPackageKit can be made to work 99.9% reliably and should it go wrong the user gets meaningful and useful information on how to resolve, maybe it goes off and puts the error message into a web search, then the developers should give up and advise users to use Terminal, because this is the most reliable way of doing an upgrade as it is more flexible when something goes wrong.

It should not be a necessary requirement to have a second computer on standby with access to the internet to find solutions to error messages which are generated as a result of the upgrade and without you are likely to end up with a broken system. If the upgrade fails part way through the system should create a log file, dump relevant information into it and then roll-back to a known working state. The log file should then be displayed to the user so they can establish by a web search what went wrong and how to fix. On restarting the upgrade it should resume the upgrade.This should apply to ALL Linux distribution upgrades, not just Kubuntu.

Based on my really poor upgrade experience to 11.04, all I can conclude is that KpackageKit is really a very poor relation to Ubuntu’s Update Manager and until something is done to make it better, I will be doing all my future upgrades using Terminal, if only to avoid some of this unnecessary pain.

Ubuntu 32-bit

Gigabyte motherboard, Athlon 64 Socket AM2, 5600 Dual Core, 4Gb RAM)

No problem starting the upgrade and it was going well when it totally hung on “Setting up libdu0(2.32.1-0 ubuntu4)"

With no choice available, I rebooted the PC into recovery console and selected repair broken packages DPKG

Logged in from the command line as X had not started.

Did a sudo-apt-get autoremove as suggested as part f the broken package repair

entered startx, which then asked for password for the keyring

The first problem, no menu bar on the Ubuntu desktop and ALT-F2 did not work.

After a couple of reboots, I eventually got a login screen and successfully logged in. I have to say that I came very close to doing a restore!

I then realised that my Gnome desktop had changed, it looked like the new GNOME3 interface, but different!

Eventually discovered it was the new Ubuntu interface, nice to have been told but I assume because of the broken upgrade Ubuntu defaulted to it new desktop interface by default. Now being a former KDE3 user I accepted KDE4 as an improvement to the interface and now a few years on absolutely love it. The new Ubuntu interface is terrible, so after two days switched back to the Classic Ubuntu interface. I don’t mind change but it has to be for a good reason and at this point in time in Ubuntu Gnome is my preferred interface not Ubuntu!

Verdict: 4/10 this is the upgrade experience most Linux users could do without!

Conclusion

Whilst I’m critical of the Kubuntu 11.04 upgrade process, I’m almost equally critical of Ubuntu. I’ve never experienced so many problems across most of my computers upgrading an Ubuntu distribution and I’ve been doing this for over 5 years!

The only Ubuntu variant which has upgraded to 11.04 without any problems is the XFCE based Muthbuntu, on which I run two PCs so this was not a one off but of good luck. So to the Mythbuntu Team for user experience 10/10.

To the Kubuntu and Ubuntu teams if you wish to keep new users using your distribution, this sort of experience is definitely not the way to go!

Finally, if you are thinking of upgrading based on your past experience of upgrading Ubuntu 11.04 then:

1. Think twice!

2. Make sure you have a second PC which you can use to connect to the Internet when things go wrong

3. If you do not normally clone your system before upgrading, think twice! Make sure that on this occasion you backup your computer with Clonezilla or similar before starting the upgrade.

4. When Ubuntu 11.10 comes out proceed with caution. I would like to think the upgrade process will be fixed by then but as they say "time will tell".

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When I first started working in computing I used to provide operational support for IBM mainframes, and to do that you had to know something called JCL (Job Control Language), a mainframe scripting language. The DD (Data Description )command was a core component to this scripting language, so was rather surprised to find it exists in Unix and Linux.

In Unix and Linux OSs, dd it is used to do low level copying of raw data and is actually used by Clonezilla to do a disk copy should all other methods fail. In my case Clonezilla tried to clone the disk using a method it though would work so never got round to trying dd.

To use dd, boot off a live CD, I use GParted as this shows me graphically the disk structure. As with any disk imaging tool, triple check what you are doing before pressing Enter after typing the command, otherwise you may regret being too hasty.

Open terminal and enter the following:

dd if=/dev/source of=/dev/destination

if stands for Input File and sets the source

of stands for Output File and sets the destination

for example if my source disk is /dev/dsa and my destination disk is /dev/sdb then I would enter

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

As with any traditional Unix/ Linux command, when you press Enter, nothing is displayed on the screen showing progress. If there is a problem, you will be told via a message. Your only clue that the copy is happening will be the hard disk activity light.

To find out more on what dd can do in addition to disk to disk copies, see this excellent article at backuphowto.info.

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ssh 191.168.1.67

your get an error message similar to that below:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!

Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!

It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.

The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is

b2:35:85:d3:e6:84:42:b8:3e:8f:e1:ae:54:dc:68:22.

Please contact your system administrator.

Add correct host key in /home/hostname/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.

Offending key in /home/hostname/.ssh/known_hosts:6

RSA host key for 191.168.1.67 has changed and you have requested strict checking.

Host key verification failed.

To fix edit /home/hostname/.ssh/known_hosts

In this particular example we are told that the offending key is in line 6 of the file, by the line in the original message "Offending key in /home/hostname/.ssh/known_hosts:6"

Delete line 6

Save the file.

Enter your ssh command again

ssh 191.168.1.67

You will now get the message

The authenticity of host ’191.168.1.67 (192.168.1.67)’ can’t be established.

RSA key fingerprint is b2:35:85:d3:e6:84:42:b8:3e:8f:e1:ae:54:dc:68:22.

Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Reply yes

You will then get the message

Warning: Permanently added ’191.168.1.67′ (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

and will then be asked fro your password.

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Installing Mythbuntu in Ubuntu 10.10 with a Hauppauge Nova-T 500 PCI DVB-T

Installing Mythbuntu 10.10 with a Hauppauge Nova-T 500 PCI DVB-T card: PART 2 – Configuration

Having created a working PVR in the previous two articles, in this one we are going to:

• Configure Storage Groups on a separate partition
• Set-up MythTV Automatic Wake-up/ Shutdown

Storage Group Configuration

Storage groups are lists of directories which allow you to store MythTV recording files.

When installed the following storage groups are created:

• Default
• LiveTV
• DB Backups
• Videos
• Trailers
• Coverart
• Fanart
• Screenshotsunder
• Banners

Their default storage location is under /var/lib/mythtv/groupname, except Default which stores its files in the directory called recordings.

If your system drive is rather small, you may wish to add an additional hard disk and set-up MythTV to store the above groups on that drive.

Note: these instructions assume that you have not yet used MythTV to record any programs. If you have then you may find that recordings stored in the original location may not be accessible, in which case you will need to move them.

You can add additional directory locations (mount points) in each of the storage groups. MythTV will balance concurrent recordings across the available locations detailed in the storage group in order to balance the I/O load.

When adding additional mount-points to storage groups you must set folder permissions so that the group mythtv has full read/ write access to the drive otherwise MythTv will not work.

Example

You have a second hard disk in your PC which you have set-up in /etc/fstab to mount as /media/data (see Ubuntu Community Documentation on fstab and mounting disks).

Rather than having MythTV store your recordings on your system disk, you want it to store the recordings in a directory called /media/data/mythtv which you have just created using the command

sudo mkdir /media/data/mythtv

Create the directories listed in the screen-shot below in /media.data/mythtv, these are the same directories found in /var/lib/mythtv/, using the command mkdir /media/data/mythtv/directory name

For example

mkdir /media/data/mythtv/banners

The above directories have to be a member of the Group mythtv, otherwise mythtv will not work as it does not have permission to access these directories. By default it does not have permission.

To do this:

Open Terminal and enter the following to make the directories Recursively Read/ Write for the Owner; Group and Read Only for Others:

sudo chmod -R 775 /media/data/mythtv

then change both the owner and group to mythtv and do this Recursively for all sub-directories:

sudo chown -R mythtv:mythtv /media/data/mythtv

The permissions for the newly created should directories look similar to those in the screenshot below

To double check, open up the file manager Thunar (if you are using Mythbuntu) Applications > Accessories > Thunar File Manager

Navigate to the mythtv directory created above and right click on one of the newly created directories e.g. banners

Select properties from the drop-down menu, and on the properties window select the Permissions tab.

You should see the following

Close the properties window and the Thunar file manager.

Launch Accessories > System > MythTV Backend Setup

Select option 6. Storage Directories

Then starting at the top and working through.

To change the location, select the Storage Group name, pressing <Enter>, then pressing <Enter> again on the directory name (e.g. /var/lib/mythtv/recordings).

For the Default group change the entry to something similar to that in the screen shot below

Select OK

You should now see the new path for the default Storage Group directories.

Press <ESC> to go back to the list of groups.

Now repeat the above process for the next storage group until all have been changed.

<ESC> out of the MythTV Backend Setup in the usual way, and allow mythfilldatabase to run.

Now test that this all works by launching MythTV Frontend and watch some TV.

If you select Watch TV and you just get a black screen and are then reverted back to the main menu, then you have not set-up your directory permissions correctly. MythTV, even when recording writes files into these folders enabling you to rewind live TV or record a program you already partly watched, in full.

Set-up MythTV Automatic Wake-up/ Sleep

By default MythTv is set-up to run 24/7, which may be convenient for you but not great for the environment or if you want to keep down how much you spend on electricity! It can cost over £300 a year keep a PC running 24/7 http://tinyurl.com/6atfc3t!

The good news is that this is not necessary with MythTV. If you use the ACPI Wakeup feature which comes as standard with most PC BIOSs manufactured in the past 7 years, your PC will automatically wakeup before a recording and shutdown/ suspend after the recording has completed.

The instructions below are a summary of those those found in the MythTV Wiki http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/ACPI_Wakeup.

Testing whether ACPI Wakeup works on your PC

From Terminal enter

grep -i rtc /var/log/kern.log

You should see something similar to

kernel: [ 0.474924] rtc_cmos 00:04: RTC can wake from S4

…..

kernel: [ 0.474987] rtc0: alarms up to one year, y3k, 242 bytes nvram

The above means that your PC can wake up and that the wakeup time can be set.

You will now need to check the BIOS in the Power Management section (see MythTV Wiki for more details)

With your BIOS configured you now need to disable the HWclock updates. As we are using Mythbuntu we will use the Ubuntu instructions:

Edit

/etc/init/hwclock-save.conf

Comment out the line exec hwclock so it looks like the following:

# exec hwclock –rtc=/dev/rtc0 –systohc $tz –noadjfile $badyear

To manually test wakealarm, enter the following commands from Terminal which will wake up the PC 5 minutes after the commands are entered. As the kernel shipped with Mythbuntu 10.10 uses kernel 2.6.35, we will use /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm.

Enter the following:

sudo sh -c “echo 0 > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm”

sudo sh -c “echo `date ‘+%s’ -d ‘+ 5 minutes’` > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm”

cat /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm

To check that this has been set correctly enter

Save the file.

cat /proc/driver/rtc

Check the alrm_time field is set to 5 minutes into the future.

Now shutdown your computer and see if it starts back up after approximately five minutes by entering

sudo shutdown -P now

On the basis that the above test worked (if not reference the instructions in the Wiki http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/ACPI_Wakeup ) we are now ready to set up this functionality in MythTV.

MythTV Back-end Configuration

From Terminal run

mythtv-setup

This will shut-down the MythTV back-end and run the set-up program.

From the menu, select 1. General

Keep selecting Next> until you get to the Shutdown/ Wakeup Options menu

and change the default setting so that they look like the following:

• Untick Block shutdown before client connected
• Set idle shutdown timeout (secs): 120 (2 minutes although you can make this longer or shorter if you wish)
• Set Max. wait for recording (min): 15 (you can make this longer or shorter if you wish)
• Set Startup before rec. (secs): 600 (If you have not disabled the occSave the file.asional disk check on boot, make this time long enough to complete the boot & disk check before the recording should start)
• Set Wakeup time format: time_t
• Set Command to set Wakeup Time: sudo sh -c “/usr/bin/setwakeup.sh $time” xtube
• Set Server halt command: sudo shutdown -P now
• Set Pre Shutdown check-command: mythshutdown –check

The results should look similar to the following screen-shot

Comprehensive information on the various settings on this screen as well as the other General screens can be found in the MythTV Wiki under User_Manual:Detailed_configuration_Backend

Now keep selecting Next> until you get to Finish and select it. You will be returned to the main menu.

Press ESC to exit mythtv-setup and allow it to run mythfilldatabase to complete.

The backend is now configured, we now need to configure the front-end!

MythTV Front-end Configuration

As our Mythbuntu configuration is for a combined Frontend/ back-end there are two options:

1. Follow the Desktop users instructions in the Wiki
2. Use Mythwelcome

I’ve found Mythwelcome to be easier to use and understand and it tells you what MythTV is doing, so this is the option we will use for this tutorial.

The first thing we need to do is set-up Mythwelcome to automatically run at start-up

Edit /etc/mythtv/session-settings as sudo

Remove the # from in front of MYTHWELCOME=true

Save the file

We are now going to add Mythwelcome to the list of applications which auto-start on boot-up

From the desktop click on Applications > Settings > Session and Startup and select the Application Autostart tab.

It should look like the following

Click +Add

A Add Program window will appear and compete as follows:

Name: MythWelcome

Description: Startup for MythTV

Command: mythwelcome

Save the changes and exit.

We are now going to setup mythwelcome.

In terminal enter mythwelcome – -setup

We now need to configure Mythwelcome.

Open Terminal and enter

mythwelcome –setup

Configure as follows:

Command to set wakeup time: sudo sh -c “/usr/bin/setwakeup.sh $time”
wakeup time format: time_t
nvram-wakeup Resart Command: make sure this is blank
Command to reboot: sudo -H shutdown -h -r now
Command to shutdown: sudo -H shutdown -P now
Command to run Xterm: xterm
Command to run to start the Frontend: /usr/bin/mythfrontend

It should look like the following screenshot

We are now going to create the wakeup script.

Open the following file as sudo in your text editor:

/usr/bin/setwakeup.sh

and copy and paste the following:

#!/bin/sh

#

# set ACPI Wakeup time

# usage: setwakeup.sh seconds

# seconds – number of seconds from epoch to UTC time (time_t time format)

#

# set UTCBIOS to true if bios is using UTC time

# set UTCBIOS to false if bios is using local time

UTCBIOS=true

%mythtv ALL = NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown, /bin/sh, /usr/bin/setwakeup.sh, /usr/bin/mythshutdown

if $UTCBIOS

then

#utc bios – use supplied seconds

SECS=$1

else

#non utc bios – convert supplied seconds to seconds from

#epoch to local time

SECS=`date -u –date “\`date –date @$1 +%F” “%T\`” +%s`

fi

echo 0 > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm # clear alarm

echo $SECS > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm # write the waketime

Save the file.

We now need to change the permissions of the file so it can be executed. From Terminal enter:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/setwakeup.sh

Add the following line to your /etc/sudoers by entering sudo visudo and then copying and pasting the line at the end of the file the following line:

%mythtv ALL = NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown, /bin/sh, /usr/bin/setwakeup.sh

Save the file.

From Terminal enter mythwelcome, a screen similar to the following will be displayed

Press m on the keyboard, the following screen will be displayed

Select Lock Shutdown and press Enter.

If you did not do this, then your Mythbuntu PC would automatically shut itself down!

When you have finished working on the Mythbuntu PC, repeat the above but this time select Unlock Shutdown.

The PC will then shut itself down according to the parameters set above for MythTV, you will see a screen similar to that below with a countdown from 180 seconds.

The first few times you run MythTV you may find that the countdown restarts when it gets close to 10 seconds left, whilst frustrating this seems to be normal behaviour for a new install.

MythTV is now configured for ACPI Wakeup/ Shutdown, we just need to test it for real!

A Final Test – Recording a Program!

Personally I place a Mythwelcome icon on the desktop, alternatively open up Terminal or press ALT-F2 and enter mythwelcome, the following screen will be displayed (you may need to Lock Shutdown to prevent MythTV from shutting down the PC).

Select Start Frontend, the following menu will be displayed.

As we are interested in managing our recordings, select the Manage Recordings menu items.

Select Schedule Recordings and then select Programme Guide in the subsequent menu.

A screen similar to the following will be displayed

Select a programme in the guide which you wish to record and then press enter.

The following screen will be displayed

Once in this recording menu, you will seeSave the file. that the default option is Do not record this programme. Choose an appropriate recording option.

The full set of options are as follows:

• Do not record this programme
• Record only this showing [S] at this specific time and this station
• Record one showing of this title [F] from any of the times which appear in the TV listing (no good for episodes)
• Record in this timeslot every week [W] records weekly, same channel, day and time ignoring title and program information
• Record one showing of this title every… [F}
• Record in this timeslot every day [T]
• Record one showing of this title every day [F] Record one showing of this show a day based on the program title
• Record at any time on this channel [C] Records a show any time the title appears on this station
• Record at any time on any channel [A]

More information is available on these options at the MtyhTV Wiki

In addition to the above you have Schedule Options. Which help refine way in which the recording is made, and preventing duplicate recordings.

As the broadcasters can be very unreliable for starting and ending their programs on time, I set recording to start and end 1 minute early.

The Post Processing menu allows you to do set the following options

Probably the two most useful options here is Commercial removal and transcoding the recording.

The MythTV Wiki has excellent documentation on “Using A Myth Box From Day To Day” which clearly explains how to fully use MythTV for day to day recordings, including using the remote control. This is well worth reading.

When you have finished setting up your recordings, ESC back to the Welcome to MythTV screen and remember to select Unlock Shutdown by pressing m.

Notes:

If you try to shutdown the MythTV PC less than 20 minutes before it is due to perform a recording, it will not shutdown as it will not consider itself to be in an idle state.

The following keys are useful in all MythTV menus

• m for menu
• i for information
• e for edit

Final Comment

I was going to include configuring the remote control in this article, but on investigation it appears be be a complete “train crash” mainly because the 1.20 driver does not work with the remote and you need to downgrade the driver. If you are feeling brave, try what is suggested in this post in Ubuntu Forums for Mythbuntu. When I get some more time I’ll look into this again.

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• Compress and Resize
• Convert and Rotate
• Apply Image treatments

If you are a programmer, you can write scripts to do such wonderful things but for mere mortals, this is beyond most of us!

KIM (KDE Image Menu) is a a kde service menu which allows to resize, convert, rotate your images without to use a graphical application like Gimp.

The DEB package 0.9.5 by Sam Rog for Kubuntu 10.10 can be downloaded from LaunchPad or directly from here

I’m using it in Dolphin in Kubuntu 10.10 (64-bit and 32-bit editions) and it works really well!

In the following example we will resize an image file to 800×600:

1. right click on the file (or files) you wish to work on
2. From the menu select Actions > Compress and Resize > Resize (800 x 600) pixels
3. You will be asked if you wish to replace existing file(s), if you reply no it will save the file prefixed with resized_. If you reply Yes it will overwrite the original.

This is a brilliant utility, so useful for anyone working with images. I can not recommend it more highly.

In fact I fail to understand why this is no shipped as standard with KDE4 in all distributions.

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