MythTV: build or RPM?

[blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

David Kramer wrote:
> I now have FC6 running on my server (instead of SUSE 10.0), and would
> like to make another go of installing MythTV.  I understand it's a
> little more difficult when installing it on a server doing a bunch of
> other things, but that's what I've got.  I can't justify the electricity
> to run a second computer 24/7.

So it's not the cost of a second computer, but the electricity that 
concerns you? You might be over estimating the cost of electricity, 
compared to the cost of your time in dealing with the problems you might 
encounter by trying to use one server for everything.

The kind of hardware used for a general mail/firewall type server can be 
quite different from what you want for a MythTV back-end. Will your mail 
server tolerate high CPU usage while videos are being transcoded? Will 
your CPU get loaded from spam filtering and interfere with recording 
video? Do you have a few hundred gigabytes available on your server?

If you want to save on power, you might be better off building a 
combined back-end/front-end machine that uses low-power components. You 
could even set it up in a wake-on-LAN mode and have your main server 
wake it up during prime time, if that's when you record shows.


> The Myth install directories explicitly say, though, if you install
> things from RPMs that things might work a little differently.
> 
> So, do you think I should build and install, or use RPMs?

I can't comment on RPMs, as I went the Ubuntu route, but I'd recommend 
using build packages of some sort, if you can get them. Unless you plan 
to tinker with the code, they'll be less hassle in the long run. I don't 
think you'll notice any difference, aside from the usual limitation that 
the packages might lag behind by a revision. Ubuntu seems to have a 
dedicated MythTV community, so they have packages that stay current with 
the latest releases.

I started with Dapper (6.06) and noticed the latest MythTV packages were 
only available for the newer Edgy (6.10), so I upgraded to that, 
installed MythTV and video capture drivers (ivtv) from packages. It 
worked, but there were problems with the video capture drivers, which 
supposedly were fixed in the next version. Packages for that version 
were only available for the "bleeding edge" Feisty release of Ubuntu. I 
upgraded to that, updated the packages, and everything worked well. 
Feisty is still rough around the edges, so I wouldn't recommend it for 
general use, but for a machine dedicated to being a MythTV box, it's fine.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/

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