MythTV QUICKSTART ================= This Arch Linux package provides a generic MythTV installation. It requires extensive user configuration. This is a skeletal document, and more extensive information is available in /usr/share/mythtv/docs. MythTV is split into a backend and a frontend. The backend records television programming, keeps up with scheduling, does commercial flagging, transcoding, and other such jobs. The frontend provides a pretty GUI which allows playback and edition of the recorded programs. It also provides a means to schedule recordings. There are a number of plugins available for MythTV, and most of the official ones are available as Arch packages. There are two configurations; the backend and frontend can be on the same machine, or on two different machines on the same network. Backend Configuration --------------------- MythTV keeps the majority of its settings and program information in a mysql database. Before running the backend configuration program, it is necessary to initialize the datase. Make sure mysql is running properly. # mysql < /usr/share/mythtv/mc.sql If your frontend is going to be remote, you must allow other computers on your network to have access to your database. Substitute 192.168.1.% with whatever IP range you use. If you have a root mysql password (as you should), leave the -p in the mysql command line. Otherwise remove the switch. # mysql -u root -p mysql> connect mythconverg; mysql> grant all on mythconverg.* to mythtv@"192.168.1.%" identified by "mythtv"; mysql> flush privileges; mysql> quit In order to configure the MythTV backend, you will need to run the mythtv-setup program. Note that this requires X. If your backend is headless, considering using vnc as a quick and dirty "fix". # mythtv-setup Go through all the menus. You will need to know information like your capture card device (/dev/v4l/video[0-9]) and your program information acquisition method. United States users will most likely subscribe to Zap2it Labs' DataDirect service. It requires that users take a survey every three months in order to continue service. This isn't as hard as it sounds. It is necessary to update the database with all the current TV listings. Run the mythfilldatabase program to grab the listings using whatever method you specified in mythtv-setup. # mythfilldatabase Run mythbackend from the command line to make sure everything starts ok. # mythbackend If so, you may kill the task with "ctrl-c" on your keyboard, and add the backend to /etc/rc.conf. In the DAEMONS line, just add "mythbackend" to the list. In the future, you will need to run mythfilldatabase regularly. I allow my frontend computer to do this, as it runs continuously, and it is an option within MythTV. Otherwise, you can set up a cron job, or move mythfilldatabasecron to /etc/cron.daily cp /usr/share/mythtv/mythfilldatabasecron /etc/cron.daily