Well Its been about a week since my last MythTV update. So far, I’ve got it working and have done some recording. Here’s what happened.
I had Ubuntu beta 8.06 installed and installed MythTV, along with the plugins and themes, which I did from the command line. I went through the backend setup and configured for my TV card.
Day 4
I’ve made some progress since my last blog post. I was having issues with installing Ubuntu while hooked up to TV via the TV-out port on my ATI Radeon 7000. So I went over to my gf’s parents house and hooked the machine up to an LCD monitor. I have a bit more sucess this time. I got the installer working.
I was using the alternative install for my install as i didn’t need the LiveCD part. I booted up, and started to go through the install process. I got as far as copying and setting up the system and then it hung at 6% progress. I waited and finally got an error message which was no help at all. I tried once again and got the same thing.
This whole process took about 30 mins each time so I had just wasted an hour on this. My only solution was to go home and look into things.
After a bit of googling I found a possible issue. It might’ve been a bad burn. I checked my MD5 checksums on the ISO and CD after burning and had no issues. They were fine. I decided that I would try the 8.06 beta version as well. So I downloaded the ISO via BitTorrent (one of the many LEGAL uses!) and did a trial install in VMWare on my Macbook Pro. It went fine so I burnt a disc.
Day 5
Back at Katie’s parents house now. Trying the disc I just burnt. After a long wait, still no luck. Failed. So I tried one last thing. It was suggested that sometimes fast CD burns can cause problems, so I quickly burnt a new version of the 8.06 beta onto a CD with Disk Utility, this time selecting a 10X burn speed compared to the normal 24X.
I waited for the burn to finish and booted off the disc. All I can say is the difference was very noticable. The boot was a lot quicker this time. I launched the LiveCD and installed from there. Install didn’t take that long and I was soon happy to be greated by the Ubuntu login screen.
By this time it was late and almost time to go home. I did a quick update and also turned on VNC so I could manage this from remote.
I got home, and hooked the PC up to the TV again. No signal what so ever. So I fired up Chicken of the VNC and tried to log on. Now, I had reason to think it should work. I tried it back at the other house, and had no trouble. But for some reason, back home there was no luck.
So now I’m stuck again. I’ve bought a VGA to S-video and composite cable from eBay and will hopefully be able to get a picture on screen with that, at least long enough to get auto login set up and vnc working. Once thats done, I’ll get MythTV installed and get working.
I also need to get a new hard drive. I’ve got a 40GB drive in there now, and obviously need a bigger one. I’ll probably get a 200GB drive, and maybe clone Ubuntu across to it rather than clean install. That then gives me a a spare IDE connection for another drive.
Again we wait to fix unforseen issues.
Day two
Got a keyboard and USB adapter. Plugged in and boot. Blank screen. Lovely.
Need to check boot order. F2 to launch BIOS - no effect. Pulled out CMOS battery and boot.
We’re in. OK, hard drive detected, cd drive detected. Check boot order. Floppy, CD, Hard disk. Good. Reboot. Problem with CD drive. Change BIOS to ignore and swap cd to other drive. Works.
Install Ubuntu. Loading screen.
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block 15df9320
Google. Reboot and check disc. (This may take some time) - Errors found in 1 files Tried CD in different drive.
“Cannot operate in Low Graphics Mode” - Now I need to select my monitor. Well its a TV, so I’ll just try a monitor at 800×600. OK. Blank screen.
Damn, Reboot. Try again. Different resolution. Blank screen.
Damn. This isn’t looking good.So maybe the disk is bad. Heaven forgive me, I’ll install XP.
1 hour later and I’m downloading the first of 88 software patches, but I’m installed. I guess the disk is fine.
Day 3
I think that my issue is running it through a TV for install. Maybe the X11 engine can’t load properly. So I’ll download the alternative CD without the LiveCD and do a text based install. CD is inserted and I boot.
Install in text mode please. And now my screen is flickering like crazy. Its trying to display the image but its not got the right frequency. So I’m stuck.
I tried frantically hitting Enter in the hopes that an installation would eventually start up. Not so true.
Solution: Friday I’m going to my gf’s parents house to borrow their monitor so I can get Ubuntu installed and get the necessary drivers for my ATI Radeon 7000 card. Hopefully it will work when I come back here.
As I posted before, I took my A+ 220-601 exam recently and as part of the study, I got a few books that came with CD-ROM’s. They all contained test engine software which I was looking forward to using, but of course, cos of the narrow minded people, it was Windows only. Since I don’t have Leopard yet (Jan ‘08 after payday and I get an external drive to backup so I can clean install) I was encouraged by a friend to get VMWare Fusion. So I took the plunge and forked out the £45-odd quid for the software.
I downloaded the dmg file and installed the software, and put in the serial number supplied via email. And there I was, ready to install Windows. I pulled out a disc I had nearby and got to work on the dreaded install. I’ve already done this a few times with Boot Camp beta, so was more than familiar with the many many many many updates needed when you install Windows, and because they don’t do bulk updates like Mac OS gets (only their infrequent Service Packs) It took about 4 reboots, to install around about 90 updates, hotfixes, bug fixes and new software, included the fantastic(!) IE7.
So I finally got that sorted, downloaded Firefox, TweakUI, Acrobat Reader, and got them installed. Finally I was ready to actually get studying, but before that, a good nights sleep.
Well it seemed to do the trick cos I passed the exam, and now I have XP working for the future. I’m going to keep the virtual image on my laptop cos it will no doubt come in handy next time I need to tech support for my parents.
The next step for me is to set up a Ubuntu install. Its all done (off the Live/Desktop CD) and now just updating that. To make it work smoother, I need to install VMWare Tools, to allow shared folders and other business. Luckily, this website provides a great step-by-step for this as it seems a bit tricky.
So I’ll be a triple boot system soon, which is nice to have. And certainly one to impress the friends and family, and people at MMUG.
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