[Uncle Skeleton]

Does anyone have mythtv running on their mac? I can't get the front- or back-end to install. The compiled set-up apps from sourceforge both trip up on one of their included frameworks (mythtvsw something), which I confirm exists, but I don't know what the problem is, they just refuse to run. When I download the source, the configure script fails. I already installed MySQL and wget (at least I followed the mythtv wiki instructions to do so).

Can anyone shed any light? I am on 10.5.8
TIA

[besson3c]

Do you have XCode installed? If not, this is why the configure script is failing - you need a compiler.

What is your capture card? Running this in a Mythbuntu VM will probably save you a lot of headaches if your device is USB based that can be presented to the VM. I'm certain that getting the MythTV backend running in OS X is an afterthought for the devs given the poor quality of the front end, it will probably be a PITA to get working. If you are set on getting the backend to work in OS X, invoke the GUIs through the command line or look at your console for error messages.

I've mucked around with MythTV in Ubuntu, have gotten the front end setup in OS X (although it kind of sucks), have gotten my remote working with lirc, and have gotten recording working, but my experience in OS X beyond the front end is limited.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Ok I'll give it a shot. How do I get a Mythbuntu VM?

Thanks

The hardware is the newly released Hauppauge WinTV DCR 2650 (the USB CableCARD tuner). It tunes ClearQAM channels even when the CableCARD isn't working, so at least I would be able to tell whether the MythTV is working even if it's stumbling on the encryption. I also have a few Elgato USB tuners to test it on.

[besson3c]

Mythbuntu.org

[Uncle Skeleton]

Yeah I got that part, but what about the VM? This would be my first, I don't even know where to start

[besson3c]

I doubt that there is a ready-made vm image sonewhere, but you can make your own using one of Vmware Fusion, Parallels, or Virtualbox (free), using the Mythbuntu image to install from.

You'll need an Intel Mac to do this too

[Uncle Skeleton]

Can I move a vm image from one mac to another? Do I need dev tools installed to run a vm?

Thanks

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Can I move a vm image from one mac to another?

Yes, not only from one Mac to another, but one machine of any kind to another providing you can find support for the disk image format you use. There are plenty of tools for accessing and converting the main ones supported by the main VM vendors (VMDK, VDI, qcow2, RAW, etc.)

Do I need dev tools installed to run a vm?

Nope.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Well the mythbuntu seems to be running ok, but it can't see the tuner. I installed the extras pack or whatever, because it mentioned USB 2 support, but that didn't help. Next I'm going to try running the VM from Windows, since Windows is verified working with the tuner. If that doesn't work I'll trying dual-booting into mythbuntu directly. That will be a pain. Some other forum post said that linux and myth see this tuner automatically, which is the only thing keeping my hope alive

Some place online mentioned firewall settings, because this tuner behaves like a USB ethernet card, as if it's on the network. Can you tell me how to check the firewall settings of the VM/linux install?

[besson3c]

What vm host are you running? You have to setup your vm guest to see your host's USB device.

[Uncle Skeleton]

VirtualBox (is that what you're asking?). How do I set it? I think I did that. Is there an easy way to test that usb is working (what sort of USB devices would be natively supported)?

[besson3c]

Yup, that's what I was asking..

From your Devices menu -> USB Devices click on your tuner to present it to the guest, and rerun the MythTV backend setup so that it hopefully sees the tuner now.

I hope this helps!

[Uncle Skeleton]

Certainly sounds promising... I wish I was home right now so I could try it

[Uncle Skeleton]

Ok I tried clicking on it, and I got an error: "Failed to attach the USB device Hauppauge OpenCable Receiver [0100] to the virtual machine <name>. USB device <yadda> with UUID <yadda> is in use by someone else."

What can I do about this? Is Mac OS monopolizing it somehow?

[Uncle Skeleton]

Another question: would mythbuntu boot from a USB disk? I already have bootcamp set up on the internal disk, so I can't use boot camp assistant to dynamically add another partition for linux (or is there another way to do that?).

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Ok I tried clicking on it, and I got an error: "Failed to attach the USB device Hauppauge OpenCable Receiver [0100] to the virtual machine <name>. USB device <yadda> with UUID <yadda> is in use by someone else."

What can I do about this? Is Mac OS monopolizing it somehow?

Possibly... Do you have some sort of Mac app open that might be using it? Have you installed a driver for it on the Mac side?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Another question: would mythbuntu boot from a USB disk? I already have bootcamp set up on the internal disk, so I can't use boot camp assistant to dynamically add another partition for linux (or is there another way to do that?).

Sure, you could install Mythbuntu to a USB disk, but you'll need an Intel Mac or later PowerPC Mac to support USB booting.

[Uncle Skeleton]

There is no Mac driver to even try. I tried installing from a mythbuntu cd onto a (mac formatted) usb stick, letting it "erase" (don't know if that means reformat). Afterwards, the mac would neither boot from nor mount the USB stick. Ideas?

It does seem to be booting a netbook I happen to have. I suspect that some drivers were installed based on the Mac though, so it might not work right. The netbook would be inadequate for a HTPC, so I have to get it somehow working on the Mac.

Edit: mythbuntu on the netbook sees the tuner, and pulled in an unencrypted channel before I had to stop playing around and plug the tuner back in to Windows to record an actual show I don't yet know if it can change channels, or get encrypted channels, but at least this is progress. Now... why would the thumb drive not boot the mac (it was installed with), but it would boot the netbook?

[besson3c]

The Mac has that EFI boot loader stuff to contend with that restricts what OSes it will boot from that I forgot about. Check this out:

rEFIt - An EFI Boot Menu and Toolkit

It should let you boot other OSes including Mythbuntu. rEFIt is what many others use to dual boot with Linux, you can find a lot of information on it by Googling this. Sorry, I forgot about this component.


MythTV allows full keyboard control over stuff including changing channels, and remote control by programming a remote and mapping buttons to the LIRC daemon. For now, if you can find that page that lists the MythTV keyboard controls, that should help in your testing.

Promising that Mythbuntu is able to detect your tuner!

[Uncle Skeleton]

Hmm. It seems that booting from external or internal drives is not supported (might work). What does it allow you to do? Only a partition of the "primary" drive? Can I set another internal to the "primary?" (I have a Mac Pro to test on, in addition to the mini which would be the ultimate goal)

[besson3c]

I'm not sure, I've never done this, but I'm operating off of what I'm reading here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ma...elInstallation

Additional partitions can be created for installation of an additional OS (Linux, Windows, BSD) or shared storage. Mac OSX can be installed on an external drive, and Linux on an external is possible with the installation of a small boot partition on the HD.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Ok I got it working! (in mythbuntu, on a non-mac, booted from a thumb drive) It tunes both encrypted and unencrypted channels, but it's pretty sluggish, probably hopefully just because of being booted from a thumb drive.

The trick was to follow this guide:
Configuring MythTV for the HDHomeRun Prime - MythTV Official Wiki

(the other trick was to stop trying it with a virtual machine)

The tutorial is for a different cableCARD tuner, which is why I didn't know to use it, and you have to sign up for a paid account for guide data before it will work (still don't know why). Fortunately there is a 1-week free trial of the guide service, so I didn't have to pay before even finding out whether it works.

So the following challenges still remain:
1. Myth doesn't work AT ALL on Mac (I hadn't had the dev tools installed on my htpc (d'oh), but installing them made no difference whatsoever). Does anyone have MythTV working on Mac (front or back)?

2. Dynamically repartition my mini's internal drive to install linux, and hopefully then rEFIt will work. This morning I left it working on that, hopefully when I get home it will be done, rather than making the whole mini a smoking wreckage.

3. Learn how to use MythTV. The advantages over WMC will hopefully be:
• "soft" commercial skipping (meaning it's not tied to converting the whole recorded file multiple times, and it can be edited before deleting content),
• "smart" searches (meaning I can set search conditions for automatic recording and save them (like in EyeTV 3), such as "title contains 'simpsons' AND day is 'sunday' AND time is '8:00' AND repeat is 'false'" and record them all until I say stop)
• blacklist of titles like I made with EyeTV and applescript, so it can remember the episodes I've seen and only record the rest.
• ditching the 10-ft interface would be great.
• Also my copy of win7 is legit, but it doesn't know this and it's making me worried.

Any tips are appreciated. Also if there's actually a way to accomplish these goals in Windows I would be interested in that too.

Thanks for the help so far, besson3. I wouldn't have been able to jump all the way to booting linux (just to get one peripheral working!) without you filling in the gaps for me.

EDIT (from the FUTURE): In the end, I bought a core1duo thinkpad with a busted trackpad for $110 from craigslist, to use as a back-end running mythbuntu, leaving my mini free to be a front-end with Mac features like netflix and sound (stupid linux was always losing the ability to play sound ). Soft commercial skipping and duplicate detection are automatic, in fact turning duplicate detection OFF has been a challenge. Smart searches are under "custom record." Blacklist is still unsolved. Ditching the 10-ft interface was partially solved by switching to the a-forest theme on the front-end, but this is still sub-optimal. But scheduling recordings using the mythweb interface is both fast and customizable, and I can access my blacklist by running javascript on the search results through applescript (safari is the only browser that lets javascript access the page's content though). And actually filtering manual search results is something I always wanted to do in EyeTV but never could, so this is better than before.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

So the following challenges still remain:
1. Myth doesn't work AT ALL on Mac (I hadn't had the dev tools installed on my htpc (d'oh), but installing them made no difference whatsoever). Does anyone have MythTV working on Mac (front or back)?

I've gotten the frontend working. The frontend is a piece of cake, just a simple binary installer.. It's the backend that's the real trick!

As far as the TV guide info requiring a small fee (SchedulesDirect?), yeah, that's a bit of a pain. They explain that this costs them money, which is why they can't offer the service for free.

3. Learn how to use MythTV. The advantages over WMC will hopefully be:
• "soft" commercial skipping (meaning it's not tied to converting the whole recorded file multiple times, and it can be edited before deleting content),

Yeah, commercial skip is very nice.

Thanks for the help so far, besson3. I wouldn't have been able to jump all the way to booting linux (just to get one peripheral working!) without you filling in the gaps for me.

Sorry I wasn't more help, it's been a little while for me since I played around with MythTV. It wasn't fun with infrared based channel changing.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Little update...

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

1. Myth doesn't work AT ALL on Mac (I hadn't had the dev tools installed on my htpc (d'oh), but installing them made no difference whatsoever). Does anyone have MythTV working on Mac (front or back)?

After noticing the string "10.6" in the filename of the compiled Myth dmg downloads, I tried upgrading to 10.6 and now they seem to work. This doesn't appear to be documented anywhere (that 10.6 is a requirement).

Unfortunately, MythTV on Mac is only a subset of features, and one of the absent ones is apparently needed to use my tuner. I may keep tinkering, but this appears to be a dead end

2. Dynamically repartition my mini's internal drive to install linux, and hopefully then rEFIt will work. This morning I left it working on that, hopefully when I get home it will be done, rather than making the whole mini a smoking wreckage.

This seemed to work, at first. Actually, at FIRST Disk Utility sat there like a lump for about 10 hours, then I looked in the Console and saw that it had stalled on an "[NSDictionary setObject:forKey:] attempt to insert a nil key" AND the log of what partitions it was attempting to create had "nil" for the new file system (even though my setting and in fact the only option was for HFS+). So I fiddled with the DU interface randomly until I got it to run (needing to quit in between, scary when it claims to be mid-repartition), I think what I did was drag the partition boundary but make sure not to "select" one of the partitions, or change any settings, then it worked.

However, a day or two later, my mini (right now) can't boot, I've tried everything*. It may or may not have anything to do with dynamically re-sizing the boot partition and then installing rEFIt and THEN upgrading to 10.6. We'll see if the Apple store can get to the bottom of it, later today.

*well, I would like to try booting from a system disk, but the rEFIt disk is stuck in there and the stupid slot-loading drives don't offer any way to get it out of there, considering that I can't boot. eject key, 'c' key, option key, and mouse button on boot all don't work. Target disk mode from a working mac doesn't work. deep power cycle doesn't work. waiting it out doesn't work (one tip online was that after 10 minutes or so, it would eject the disk and try to boot from there).

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

Unfortunately, MythTV on Mac is only a subset of features, and one of the absent ones is apparently needed to use my tuner. I may keep tinkering, but this appears to be a dead end

Are you referring to the front end or backend?

This seemed to work, at first. Actually, at FIRST Disk Utility sat there like a lump for about 10 hours, then I looked in the Console and saw that it had stalled on an "[NSDictionary setObject:forKey:] attempt to insert a nil key" AND the log of what partitions it was attempting to create had "nil" for the new file system (even though my setting and in fact the only option was for HFS+). So I fiddled with the DU interface randomly until I got it to run (needing to quit in between, scary when it claims to be mid-repartition), I think what I did was drag the partition boundary but make sure not to "select" one of the partitions, or change any settings, then it worked.

However, a day or two later, my mini (right now) can't boot, I've tried everything*. It may or may not have anything to do with dynamically re-sizing the boot partition and then installing rEFIt and THEN upgrading to 10.6. We'll see if the Apple store can get to the bottom of it, later today.

*well, I would like to try booting from a system disk, but the rEFIt disk is stuck in there and the stupid slot-loading drives don't offer any way to get it out of there, considering that I can't boot. eject key, 'c' key, option key, and mouse button on boot all don't work. Target disk mode from a working mac doesn't work. deep power cycle doesn't work. waiting it out doesn't work (one tip online was that after 10 minutes or so, it would eject the disk and try to boot from there).

Sorry, this is outside of my experience. I've never messed around with rEFIt and dual/triple booting and stuff, I just know that several people have done this sort of thing and that it is possible.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Are you referring to the front end or backend?

It's hard to tell. In Mythtv-setup (as illustrated in the guide I linked earlier), I have to choose a different, related tuner, the HDHomeRun. In mythbuntu when I do this, it lets me choose between manual IP entry (of the tuner's ip), or picking what it finds. The latter works (and is easier), but the guide seems to show using the former (which I'm not 100% sure but didn't work the first time I tried it, before I found the guide), which kind of makes sense since the HDHR is actually out on the network, whereas my DCR-2650 is a USB device that pretends to be on the network (as an ethernet card). Anyway, the Mac version only presents me with the former option, not the latter, so that might be a problem with the backend. But from there on through the set-up, it nominally keeps working, right up until I try to use the tuner. Then it says "unable to tune channels" or some such, which implicates the front end(?). Back in windows, I can read the device's log file and it shows those attempts to tune (with the correct channels and everything, and says they are "subscribed" channels, which is a good sign), but it doesn't indicate why it wouldn't have succeeded.

Sorry, this is outside of my experience. I've never messed around with rEFIt and dual/triple booting and stuff, I just know that several people have done this sort of thing and that it is possible.

It's ok, partly this is for the benefit of the next person who tries this combo of Mac and WinTV-DCR-2650. I might be the first.

So you run linux all by its lonesome, or just not at all? If I can get it working all in mythbuntu, I might just wipe the other partitions, or use them as Mac-readable storage area. The one caveat will be lack of netflix streaming (right?)

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

It's hard to tell. In Mythtv-setup (as illustrated in the guide I linked earlier), I have to choose a different, related tuner, the HDHomeRun. In mythbuntu when I do this, it lets me choose between manual IP entry (of the tuner's ip), or picking what it finds. The latter works (and is easier), but the guide seems to show using the former (which I'm not 100% sure but didn't work the first time I tried it, before I found the guide), which kind of makes sense since the HDHR is actually out on the network, whereas my DCR-2650 is a USB device that pretends to be on the network (as an ethernet card). Anyway, the Mac version only presents me with the former option, not the latter, so that might be a problem with the backend. But from there on through the set-up, it nominally keeps working, right up until I try to use the tuner. Then it says "unable to tune channels" or some such, which implicates the front end(?). Back in windows, I can read the device's log file and it shows those attempts to tune (with the correct channels and everything, and says they are "subscribed" channels, which is a good sign), but it doesn't indicate why it wouldn't have succeeded.

MythTV is definitely one of those products where the Mac port is not in parity with the Linux version. I didn't want to come right out and say this because this may have changed since I last looked at MythTV, the project could have acquired some developers interested in supporting OS X better, but this was definitely the way it was when I looked. Sometimes these open source projects seem to make ports to different platforms available primarily to sort of keep the developers honest and not writing code that is too dependent on platform specific stuff.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton 

my mini (right now) can't boot, I've tried everything*. It may or may not have anything to do with dynamically re-sizing the boot partition and then installing rEFIt and THEN upgrading to 10.6. We'll see if the Apple store can get to the bottom of it, later today.

*well, I would like to try booting from a system disk, but the rEFIt disk is stuck in there and the stupid slot-loading drives don't offer any way to get it out of there, considering that I can't boot. eject key, 'c' key, option key, and mouse button on boot all don't work. Target disk mode from a working mac doesn't work. deep power cycle doesn't work. waiting it out doesn't work (one tip online was that after 10 minutes or so, it would eject the disk and try to boot from there).

Follow up:

Apple genius was as unsuccessful as I was at getting the CD out. Since the mini was worthless in that state either way, I took a stab at disassembling the DVD drive itself. I had to take the upper half of the mini completely to pieces (I had opened it about 5 times before, but just to access the HD and RAM, which only requires lifting the top half of the computer off the bottom half). I had been hoping to find a hardware eject mechanism hidden under the casing, but no such luck. Even though I was able to remove all the actual screws from the drive with just the mini's covering off, there were several... let's call them "brackets" holding the top of the drive "clamshell" to the bottom, and while easy to pry open non-destructively, I couldn't really get a good access (or confidence) until I had the drive separated from all the framing and circuitry. Once the drive's roof was even partly off/open, it was easy to lift the stuck CD off the spindle and it fell right out.

In hindsight, I am about 75% sure I could have forced the roof of the drive up high enough to stick something inside and "pry" the CD up off that spindle, before having done any work on the mini. If only I had known what was inside of course

After getting the rEFIt CD out, the mini started like normal (in rEFIt). Of course, yesterday it failed to boot (failed to even get a bootloader, inbuilt or rEFIt) before the CD got stuck, that's why I tried creating and inserting that CD in the first place. So I'm still a little nervous that the mini is toast. Hopefully I won't have to restart it very often. The mini might be on borrowed time anyway, as it was subject to some smoke damage two months ago and apparently that's pretty bad for computers...

I haven't tested the DVD drive to see if I broke it doing this.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Another update. I guess this thread is going to be a blog of this ordeal, for the benefit of those who come after as well as me if I forget the sequence of events later. Anyone feel free to chime in with related or unrelated ideas or stories.

It booted once in OS X and twice in Windows. Then I restarted it from windows (again) with the mere intention of choosing mythbuntu, and I was back to the gray screen of death (GSOD; doesn't make it to the boot loader). (the last incident was directly after being booted in windows too, maybe a coincidence. Since I rebooted already from Windows to Windows (WMC seemed to have crashed, wouldn't tune channels), this doesn't seem to be a pattern).

This time I tried the OS X install CD, which booted a few times, but Startup Disk didn't work and I didn't know what else to try, and then after 2 times I couldn't even get it to boot off the CD anymore. Back to GSOD. I tried another new thing, reseting the PMU (hold down power button while plugging power cord back in), after which it was the same except full fan speed all the time. Another PMU reset and the fans quit, and miraculously it booted straight to OS X (hard drive, skipping the CD and rEFIt). I immediately rebooted, to see if it would "stick" and to try to get to mythbuntu, which I intend to stay in for a while. Unfortunately, it was back to the gray screen, and I had forgotten to eject the CD. Next I opened the case, and tried my trick mentioned above to get the CD out. Didn't work. So I unscrewed the 3 screws on the drive itself, and two more attaching the top segment to the casing, and disconnected the small ribbon cable behind the drive. From there I was (eventually) able to wedge the DVD drive open far enough to jimmy the disc off the spindle with a credit card and (carefully) a screwdriver, and yank it out of there. Fast forward and it boots to rEFIt again (yay!). So I have two possible theories of what "did it," the removal of a stuck CD (causing the CD drive to spaz out a little and maybe reset something), or the disconnecting and reconnecting of that ribbon cable behind the DVD drive. I'm reasonably sure nothing else got moved, unless there is some sort of sensor for when the mac mini casing gets opened.

I'm going to try not to restart for a while, but if I do and it leads to GSOD, I'll try the ribbon cable by itself, then the stuck CD thing by itself, then both together. I'm going to leave the case open for a while, just because it's so hard to get on and off.