The Think Tank

How to get EIT working with MythTV; MythTV Satalite EIT Woes

Sebastian Harrington — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:40:59 +0000

At work we've got a MythTV (mythbuntu) server with 2x DVB-S and 2x DVB-S2 cards.

For a while I struggled away at trying to get the tv grabber to collect tv lisitings but it required me to configure each channel individually, not a pain if it's a one off but for some reason I found myself doing it more often than not!

So I decided, a switch to EIT listings would be a better bet.

I imported my channels.conf and scanned existing transports, excitedly I clicked on 'Listings' expecting to see a full data guide but all I was greeted with was "NO DATA" for every channel.

After a bit of googling I found a command that let me see what the EIT scanner was up to under the hood so I issued the following:

/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend stop

mythbackend -v siparser,eit,channel

This allowed me to see exactly what was happening under the hood. Alas it looked as if it was scanning for channels fine but there were no informative error messages. Back to google.

After reading some more I found out about this bug which meant when channels were imported via a channels.conf (not detected directly by mythtv) it would lose or not detect it's network id.

So to see if I was being affected by this bug I opened up phpmyadmin and navigated to the mythconverg database and looked in the dvt_multiplex table. Sure enough under the networkid column all of the values were set to NULL.

So on to fixing it. I noted down the frequency and polarity from the dvt_multiplex table so I could access the values when the mythbackend was down. I opened up mythtv-setup and removed all the channels from the EIT source then under 'Video Source' scanned for new channels using a Full tunned scan, substituting in the values from the dvt_multiplex table. I waited for the scan to finish and when it had, I added the channels and ran mythfilldatabase for good luck.

After this I checked the dvt_multiplex table again and instead of a networkid of NULL there was a value of 2! Looking at the listings page confirmed that the EIT scanning was now working and this was also confirmed with the output of mythbackend -v siparser,eit,channel.

In hind sight a better way to have done this would have been to dump the SQL of the database, remove the channels in mythtv-setup, rescan using a full tuned scan using information from the dvt_multiplex table, add the channels, look at the dvt_multiplex table find the value of networkid copy it (I'm assuming it's the same for all) reimport your database and change the value of networkid, in my case:

mysql > UPDATE set dvt_multiplex.networkid = '2';

Doing it this way means you don't have to setup your channels a second time, but if you're well practised at it like me (with a little help from a few scripts ;o)) then it's probably quicker to do it the first way.

As a side note I have Use DishNet's long term EIT data set to ON, cross EIT data sources set to OFF and use Quick Tuning set to never. I have no idea if these options make a difference but some of the googling I have done infers that it might!

Anyway I hope this helps someone and saves them some time!

Network problems after a Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx install and what fixed them for me

Seb — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:30:19 +0000

After installing from a live CD where there was no problem with the network, I was supprised to boot a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 lucid lynx, with no network access. Fair enough, I thought probably just a one off, my PC. However after my work mate also had trouble with the network after a fresh install where the network was working on the live cd before hand I decided that something must be afoot.

Anyways this is how I fixed my network problem, hopefully it'll help someone else!

Edit /etc/network/interfaces and remove all traces of eth0 (remove both lines)
My Network Manager had failed to start at all so to manage the network connections open up System > Preferences > Network Connections
Add a new wired connection. I copied the mac address of my adapter in, although I'm not sure this actually matters. Click Apply and Save your new connection.
Reboot

All being well you should have network-manager running, with a live network connection.

How to set the multiple Nvidia GPUs to auto fan in Ubuntu

Seb — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:41:43 +0000

Just a quick one. I've recently purchased an additional card to go in my Ubuntu machine, but my cards when set up in SLI were running very hot.

Using the information found here I was able to stick one GPU into auto fan mode, however the second GPU would stay at a fixed value and be overheating.

Looking at the man page for nvclock I found that you can use a command line switch to list and control individual GPUs.

First install nvclock and nvclock-gtk

sudo apt-get install nvclock nvclock-gtk

Secondly open up nvclock-gtk

sudo nvclock_gtk

You may need to set a fan speed under 'Hardware Monitor' for each GPU, after you've done this use the following commands

nvclock -s

This command gives a list of all the (nvidia) GPUs connected to the system.

nvclock -c 1 -f -F auto

nvclock -c 2 -f -F auto

Repeat the above command for each GPU you want to be put in auto mode. You should now see in nvclock-gtk the fan speeds, under 'Hardware Monitoring' adjusting up and down, automatically on there own.

If you want this done automatically at login then you can add the commands (one at a time unfortunately, unless you make a script) to your sessions System > Preferences > Startup Application as shown here

Barnstormers ‘A Night at the Movies’ – Introduction

Seb — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:35:11 +0000

The introduction as shown at last week's DVD night.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Download Introduction Video

Barnstormers ‘A Night at the Movies’ – Credits

Seb — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:32:00 +0000

The credits as shown at last week's DVD night.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Download Credits Video

Barnstormers ‘A night at the Movies’ – Out-takes

Seb — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:27:47 +0000

The out-takes from last Saturday's DVD evening, available to download but I encourage you to buy a DVD from Bert who will have all the footage very shortly!

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Download Out-takes Video

Barnstormers ‘A night at the movies’ – Production Floor Footage

Seb — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:21:36 +0000

Here's the out-takes that didn't make it to the out-takes shown last Saturday either for technical reasons or because the didn't make the cut!

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Download Video

How to archive folders older than a certain date in Linux / Ubuntu

Seb — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:49:55 +0000

Using the GUI this task is trivial (Sort by list view, click on the Date heading to order by date, select the relevant folders then right click and Compress.)

Using the command line to achieve the same results is a trifle harder. Here's the command line I came up with:

tar zcvf ArchiveName.tar.gz `find * -maxdepth 0 -mtime +893`

The find command in the gets executed first and returns the folders and files in the CURRENT directory that haven't been modified since the number of days specified by the number in the find command.

Tar then does it's usual job and compresses it.

If you're wanting to remove directories using a similar command just substitute in the rm command instead of the tar command.

To find the number of days to a date in the past I used this website here but I'm sure there's something you can do with the date command that will give you a similar output!

Rehearsal recordings from 28-01-2010 (last Thursday)

Seb — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:36:08 +0000

Here are the recordings from last Thursday's rehearsal.

All of which can be downloaded by clicking the relevant song above.

Please note the above recordings are for rehearsal purposes only and should be used as such.

Thoroughly Modern Millie – Scene by Scene

Seb — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:34:43 +0000

Below is the list of acts and scenes and which characters have speaking parts. Each scene can be downloaded separately at the end of each scenes list. The directors overview of TMM can be heard here: Introduction

If you wish to download all of the scenes this can be done by clicking here.

Act 1

Scene 1

Speaking parts in this scene:

Millie
Jimmy

The Think Tank

How to get EIT working with MythTV; MythTV Satalite EIT Woes

Network problems after a Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx install and what fixed them for me

How to set the multiple Nvidia GPUs to auto fan in Ubuntu

Barnstormers ‘A Night at the Movies’ – Introduction

Barnstormers ‘A Night at the Movies’ – Credits

Barnstormers ‘A night at the Movies’ – Out-takes

Barnstormers ‘A night at the movies’ – Production Floor Footage

How to archive folders older than a certain date in Linux / Ubuntu

Rehearsal recordings from 28-01-2010 (last Thursday)

Thoroughly Modern Millie – Scene by Scene

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Scene 9

Scene 10

Scene 11

Scene 12

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8