Steps to set up MythTV Backend for remote access.
0) Shutdown MythTV frontend, and backend
A) Alt-F4 in frontend GUI.
B) on Debian (or Ubuntu, as appropriate), as root,
#/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend stop
or as appropriate on your distro.I) Setup the Backend server MySQL for remote access
(See section 6.1 MySQL of main MythTV document
"Modifying access to the MySQL database for
multiple systems")
A) Login to MySQL
$mysql -u root -p<password> mythconverg
$# see 'mysql --help' or 'man mysql'
B) grant access to other computers to MySQL:
mysql> grant all on mythconverg.* to mythtv@"%" identified by "mythtv" ;
where mythconverg. == the default mythtv database
% == MySQL wildcard character
This offers no security whatsoever, allowing anyone access.
Better is:
mysql> grant all on mythconverg.* to mythtv@"%.mydomain" identified by "mythtv" ;
To restrict to your domain, or
mysql> grant all on mythconverg.* to mythtv@"192.168.1." identified by "mythtv" ;
to restrict to your private subnet.
C) execute:
mysql> flush privilages
D) Leave the mysql interface.
mysql> exit
E) edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf to make mysql daemon bind to it's
network address instead of 'localhost':
....
# d.e.l., original value: bind-address = 127.0.0.1
bind-address = 192.168.1.231
....
F) Restart the mysql daemon:
#/etc/init.d/mysql restart
or whatever for your distro.II) Make configuration changes to MythTV backend.
(Documentation, section 9.1, 'Configuring the Master backend system')
A) open up a window in X, not as root.
On Ubuntu, there's a menu selection that
puts you at the command prompt as 'user0',
this seems to work fine.
For reasons I haven't probed too deep,
this needs to be someone besides root.
B) Run:
$ mythtv-setup
A GUI 'wizard' will startup.
C) At the appropriate 'wizard' form page,
change the address the backend server 'binds' to
(look for the word 'bind' :-) )
from '127.0.0.1' to whatever the actual LAN
address is, such as '192.168.1.231'.
D) Finish up the configuration menus, leave the
user0 command prompt with 'exit'
$ mythtv-setup
E) Restart the Backend server:
# /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend startIII) Change client configurations.
A) On KnoppMyth, during boot, point
the client to the server address.
B) You may also need to tweak the client
name suggested, seemed to default
to something like 'mythfe0' - may
want to give it a different name if
more than one remote client, not sure about this.
C) If you install mythfrontend on a hd installation
you may need to go through the setup/utility
menus to find the analog for KnoppMyth
of pointing to the server address.
Also may need to setup 'mythtv' account,
and login as that from X to start the frontend/client.
D) There is *some indication* Christian M.'s build
of a MythTV front end .deb package
from http://www.debian-multimedia.org assumes
an NVidia video card as the default.
(this may be wrong, just a guess)
When mythfrontend is run from a terminal emulator,
will mention problems with XvMCTex driver,
which is for NVidia card.
On the main menu, go to
'setup/utilities'
then to 'Television setup'
then to 'Playback setup'
then on within this set of menus to 'General Playback'
settings.
Make sure that 'Preferred MPEG32 Decoder' is set to
something other than "Standard" (defaulting apparently
to NVidia) or anything to do with 'XvMC'.
On the package I have installed, this is 'libmpeg2'.
E) There is *some indication* the frontend needs somewhere
around a 700 Mhz processor to run smoothly for live TV.
This may be less, but my 550 MHz processor seems to be
too slow for smooth playing of live TV from the server.
(extensive 'NVP: prebuffering pause' messages)
My processor can handle playing video over 100
ethernet/NFS/AVI files, but mention is made on the mailing
list (mythtv-user) of problems with playing live TV.
When ripping from the hodgepodge card,
(/dev/video0) the mpeg files
are much fatter than needed for the accurate TV reproduction,
apparently the card will provide a frame per request,
whether there has been any image change or not.