Solution: Mythtv somtimes doesn’t detect the tuner cards

As described here I fought the problem for a long time, that mythtv sometimes just refuses to detect the TV cards, when two TV cards are installed.

I think I found the solution to the problem now finally – the problem appears when the loading order of the driver modules are mixed up, so that Card1, which normally is linked to /dev/video0 is linked to /dev/video1 and vice versa for Card2 – that seems to confuse mythtv.

So, the trick is to define in mythbuntu (or Ubuntu+mythtv), that it should load Card1 before Card2 so that the corresponding linking to the video-devs is done correctly.

As Ubuntu uses udev, which is not really easy, I just did the old dirty trick:
1) blacklist both TV card modules (in my case: ivtv and bttv):

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and add :

blacklist ivtv
blacklist bttv


2) Load the modules in your desired order:

sudo vi /etc/modules

and add:

ivtv
bttv


That’s it – I hope it finally really works and will test it in the next days.

UPDATED2: Quick tip: Asus A8V-VM SE and mythtv

I am running Mythbuntu 8.10 on my Asus A8V-VM SE with a Athlon 64 3200+ and faced severe problems. The most annoying one was the problem, that mythtv periodically wasn’t able to detect the tuner cards, although they were detected by the kernel and were configured correctly.

I tried several tips like moving the daemon call of mythtv-backend in /etc/rc5.d to a later position, from S25mythtv-backend to S99mythtv-backend – this didn’t really help. Until I finally got a setup, which works now in most cases or let’s say, nearly with all bootups.

So to help you preventing one or another headache, this is my setup wich works now really well:

In the Asus BIOS, you have to disable:
APIC
ACPI 2.0 support

and in Ubuntu, you have to add

noapic


in /boot/grub/menu.lst, so that it looks like this:


kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=xyz ro locale=de_DE quiet noapic


The next article I am planning will describe how to setup mythwelcome and acpi wakeup with Mythbuntu 8.10 on the crappy Asus A8V-VM SE – stay tuned.

Update:
I recently posted exactly here another socalled dirty tip, which should solve the problem – but as I have faced the same problem today again, that mythtv sometimes just refuses to detect the cards, I deleted it. But I think (and hope) I found the real deal today, the problem, why mythtv sometimes just doesn’t detect the cards, although the kernel detects it correctly.

The solution is posted in another post here:
Link

Howto: Use Floppy in Ubuntu 8.10

By default, the use of floppy drives is disabled in Ubuntu 8.10.
The reason for a not responding floppy under /dev/fd0 (standard device) is the deactivated kernel module for floppies. To permanently activate the module loading of the floppy, simply run in xterm:

gksudo gedit /etc/modules

and add this simple line to /etc/modules


floppy


The Floppy will be now available after reboot – to use it instantly, simply type into xterm:


sudo modprobe floppy


To mount the floppy, add a mountpoint in /media like

sudo mkdir /media/floppy


and mount it with:

sudo mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy


To permanently have the device linked to the mountpoint, edit /etc/fstab:

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab


and add this line:

/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0


Generate strong WPA2 passwords with Ubuntu

To secure wpa/wpa2 keys from brute-force or dictionary-attacks, it is evident to use strong, that means long and purely randomly generated keys, which are in addition generated with a strong algorithm.

WPA/WPA2 limits the length of passwords to 63 digits, including upper/lowercase and special characters – so that’s what we are trying to generate….

Flash 10 on Firefox with Ubuntu 64 bit via script

I recently found a quick and successfull way of installing Flash Player 10 RC on Ubuntu 8.04 running a 64 bit processor.

First, download this deb:

http://www.boundlesssupremacy.com/Cappy/getlibs/getlibs-all.deb

And install it via:

sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb

Then create a script somewhere, for instance script.sh.

gedit script.sh

Fill it with the following code:

Howto: Mythtv with acpi wakeup and mythwelcome

I am running an Epox 8rda+ (nforce2 chipset) with MythBuntu and will try to show, how to setup this mainboard with ACPI and mythwelcome, so that it starts with scheduled recordings and will shutdown automatically, when recording is finished.

Prequesites:
* A working mythbuntu installation with Backend and Frontend on the same machine
* Disabled acpi function in the BIOS
* BIOS runs in UTC
* Epox 8rda+ board (I can only somewhat guarantee the functionality of this howto with this mainboard ! )
* Mythbuntu latest (with fixes) – although this howto should work basically with other combinations too – but just basically
* use of /proc/acpi/alarm
* You simultanously look at the mythtv wiki
* You don’t expect this howto to be perfect or complete

Update: New youtube downloader for firefox

In one of my previous posts I mentioned how to download flash videos, for instance from youtube, via plugin.

My standard Plugin for Flash downloading with Firefox 2.x, which wasn’t compatible with 3.x, has been released now in an updated , Firefox 3.x compatible version.

More info about the Plugin:

Download helper Website

How to convert a directory containing videos to .mp4 for mobile phones with one click

Recently I described how to convert videos to .mp4 for your mobile phone using the avidemux2 gui.

But there is a faster, easier and more comfortable way to do this. With the following solution, you are able to convert a whole directory containing video files automatically to a phone-readable .mp4 format with just one click.

As in the previous Post, we still are using avidemux but now are invoking a job script to avidemux, so that we don’t need to configure the different settings manually. Along with a bash script, the conversion is done just with one double-click.

Firefox3 Beta and flash video downloader

UPDATE: a better plugin for flash downloading has been released. Read more about it here.

As the recently released Ubuntu stable version Hardy Heron 8.04 comes with Firefox 3 (beta), my previous used plugins to download videos from Youtube aren’t currently supported, as they are mainly written for Firefox 2.x.

Therefore I had to use the Flash Video Resources downloader to be able to download those videos, which works flawlessly.

Clicking this blue symbol in the bottom right corner enables you to download the video you currently loaded via youtube:

A new page will popup after clicking the symbol, which is self explaining. Just hit the “Get Video” button, right click on the appearing “Get Flv” Field and hit “Save as” in the menu popup of firefox.

It is important, that you rename the video according to the desired name, following the type .flv.

That’s it.

How to convert movies to mp4 using avidemux2

I recently bought a Sony Ericsson K770 mobile, which is a pretty neat piece of phone.

The phone supports playback of videos in different formats, including .mp4 or .3gp. As I would like to be able to convert videos from different sources to .mp4 using Ubuntu, I found a nice and easy method to convert dozens of Source formats to mp4.

All you need is a decent version of avidemux2, which can be installed in Ubuntu using the following command:

(or your preferred apt gui)

sudo apt-get install avidemux

First look at avidemux: