Kitz Forum
Computer Software => Linux => Topic started by: sevenlayermuddle on October 05, 2015, 10:25:12 AM
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As noted elsewhere in these forums, following a fairly catastrophic hardware failure, I am now awaiting delivery of a nice new HP Proliant Microserver.
I also intend to transition to a newer OS, from the old system running a very ancient and long-since unsupported Fedora. It will, of course, be another Linux , that is not negotiable. I am currently thinking 'CentOS', mainly as (I think?) it has a reasonably long support cycle, overcoming my biggest regret in choosing Fedora last time around.
So the main question I am posing... is CentOS a good choice?
Duties of the old server, that I want to continue, include...
Mass storage, via Samba.
Subversion source control.
Bugzilla bug tracking.
MythTV backend which in turn mandates good kernel support of DVB TV tuners.
Cron backup scripts that 'suck in' snapshots from other networked machines, and perform IMAP mail backups using 'getmail'.
Another essential, since it will be powered virtually 24/7 and loaded with several HDDs, is good power management, such as disk spin down when idle.
A further question... When my new hardware arrives, as a temporary measure while I ponder the full rebuild, is it reasonable to expect my existing (ancient Fedora) system disk to boot and run in the new hardware?
Any well-reasoned opinions on any or all aspects, or even just chat, would be welcome. :)
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My personal choice would be Debian, but that of course is strongly influenced by the fact that I've been using Debian on my own machines for years. It would certainly meet your long term support requirements in that there's about 2.5 years between stable releases and security updates continue to be provided for several years more.
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Thank you Eric, I shall certainly investigate Debian too.
In terms of purely personal preferences one strong influence may be the fact that better-half and co-adminstrator, in her day-job, is reasonably familiar with Redhat from which CentOS is descended (/ascended?). While there is no particular reason to assume that such familiarity would necessarily be any significant advantage, I'm sure it wouldn't be a significant disadvantage.
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centos is basically a free version of red hat, in other words it's like fedora only less bleeding edge and has a much longer life cycle. It's intended to be used on servers, and I manage numerous servers running it.
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I could take the first sentence and a half of Eric's reply and pass it through sed 's/Debian/CentOS/'. :D
As regards to longevity, I installed CentOS 5 when it was first released and it has approximately 18 months to go before it reaches EOL. I also have systems with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the upstream parents of CentOS 6 and CentOS 7.
Here is a link to the CentOS Product Specifications (https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product).
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I could take the first sentence and a half of Eric's reply and pass it through sed 's/Debian/CentOS/'. :D
:D
One thing of which I am not entirely certain... on previous encounters with Linux, the kernel supplied with the distribution has sufficed for all my requirements. But for CentOS 7 I notice, 'kernel foundation' is listed as 3.10, whereas it is rumoured that a TV tuner I may want to use requires 3.16.
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/PCTV_Systems_tripleStick_T2_(292e) (http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/PCTV_Systems_tripleStick_T2_(292e))
I have found some very good step-by-step guides for updating the CentOS 7 kernel from ELRepo. While I realise that specific and obscure hardware support may require a 'suck it and see' approach, I assume it is reasonable to hope that such a kernel update would provide the drivers for that device, assuming it is true that they are included in 3.16 and later?
From the sound of things there may be other challenges and problems, specific to MythTV, with that tuner - I don't yet own one. But that's outside the scope of this thread. As long as I can expect required kernel support I'd be happy enough for now. :)
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I should explain that Red Hat (https://www.redhat.com/en) backports code to all of the packages that make up RHEL. That concept is described here (https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/backporting/). Not only are security fixes backported but with the kernel, drivers, etc, are also updated by backporting. In the case of RHEL7, whilst it is true that the basis of the kernel is linux-3.10.Z (and it will be described as such for the entire lifetime of the product) there are considerable portions of linux-4.X.Y -- the wireless stack, is one example -- that are backported to the RHEL7 kernel.
<Cough!> (Pesky fur-ball.) Having looked at the ELRepo Project (https://elrepo.org/)'s web site you might have noticed references to kernel-lt (https://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-lt) and kernel-ml (https://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml). I do not think it is appropriate for me to mention who maintains those kernel packages. :-X
Everything that I have typed above is also applicable to the CentOS equivalents. :)
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My new hardware is expected tomorrow but as yet no delivery time.
The suspense, waiting for a van in the driveway, will be considerable. But I think I have pretty much decided that I shall put that time to good use, downloading and preparing a CentOS installation DVD. :)
I will update this thread if and when installation has been attempted but that may be a few *day's time as I have yet to decide whether to also purchase a new system disk, as none is supplied with the server. Not sure how much free space remains on the old system disk, and not sure if I am ready to 'burn the bridge' by overwriting the old Fedora system.
Thanks a lot.
* In consideration of the 'apostrophe' thread, genuinely not sure if that should be day's or days'? I reckon it's debatable. :-\
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My new hardware is expected tomorrow but as yet no delivery time.
Once you have decided, perhaps you would update this thread with the final details of your new system's specifications, please? (Links would be appreciated, by me.) :)
* In consideration of the 'apostrophe' thread, genuinely not sure if that should be day's or days'? I reckon it's debatable. :-\
:hmm: Hmm . . . In that sentence you are using the word "day" as a unit of 24 hours. Can a unit of time actually possess something?
I think I might have used "but that may be in a few days time". Insert the word in and use no apostrophe.
Perhaps we need Weaver to adjudicate? ;)
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:hmm: Hmm . . . In that sentence you are using the word "day" as a unit of 24 hours. Can a unit of time actually possess something?
You may be right, there is of course that additional alternative, beyond the options I considered. Funny how the older I get, the more it seems, nothing is as straightforward as I think. Even when I already think it's not very straightforward.
I shan't even mention the fact my iPad's spelling corrector suggested that 'straightforward' might or might not have an 's' on the end :-[
:D
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I shan't even mention the fact my iPad's spelling corrector suggested that 'straightforward' might or might not have an 's' on the end :-[
:D
It does not.
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It does not.
Thank you, one less thing to keep me awake at night. :)
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if you are used to fedora then centos is probably your best choice.
Also in the newer versions of centos they are finally implementing methods to do online remote upgrades to the next centos version.
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Also in the newer versions of centos they are finally implementing methods to do online remote upgrades to the next centos version.
Unfortunately the CentOS implementation of that Red Hat tool is horribly broken and has caused significant problems for those who tried to use it.
Note the emboldened and underlined warning: CentOS Upgrade Tool (https://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/CentOSUpgradeTool)
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The new hardware arrived today, all very cute looking and seemingly well built. The front 'door' clicks shut with an incredibly satisfying magnetic assistance. :)
Power consumption when idle (no disks installed yet) is low 20s Watts, which bodes well.
Attention to detail is superb, there is even a dual headed torx key clipped inside, to facilitate hardware maintenance. It would be even better if the torx key actually matched the machine's screw sizes, but that would be expecting too much.... The disk caddies have old fashioned cross-headed screws, rendering the torx key useless for the most common maintenance of all. :D
Most of today has been spent reorganising the data on my existing HDDs, trying to get the proverbial quart into a pint pot. The disk involved in the 'burn up' still works fine, but its connectors are visibly scarred and damaged and so I don't want to risk install it in the new system, would be heart breaking if it damaged the HP's connectors. So whereas the old system had 4 disks, I hope the new will have only three or even just two, in interests of minimising power usage.
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Also in the newer versions of centos they are finally implementing methods to do online remote upgrades to the next centos version.
Unfortunately the CentOS implementation of that Red Hat tool is horribly broken and has caused significant problems for those who tried to use it.
Note the emboldened and underlined warning: CentOS Upgrade Tool (https://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/CentOSUpgradeTool)
yeah I know its currently in development , not polished. But the main thing is its at least now been worked on.
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Attention to detail is superb, there is even a dual headed torx key clipped inside, to facilitate hardware maintenance. It would be even better if the torx key actually matched the machine's screw sizes, but that would be expecting too much.... The disk caddies have old fashioned cross-headed screws, rendering the torx key useless for the most common maintenance of all. :D
That is a bit of a slip as the older Microservers had the Torx key and it DID fit the screws !!. Very good build quality as well.
May be worth giving HP a call, their support is very very good and if the Torx is supposed to fit they will send you the right key and/or screws.
(At least the HP of old would. Very good Customer Support but must have cost them a lot as they sent out replacement kit for most problems, rather than make you wait for engineer visits. ;D ;D )
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That is a bit of a slip as the older Microservers had the Torx key and it DID fit the screws !!. Very good build quality as well.
May be worth giving HP a call, their support is very very good and if the Torx is supposed to fit they will send you the right key and/or screws.
Heh heh, the plot thickens. I just noticed the user guide (dated Sep 2015) says the tool is T-15 one end Philips #2 the other. But mine's torx both ends. With that famous attention to detail, the mounting slot is even labeled with the sizes, T-15 and T-10.
I'm guessing there may have been a manufacturing switch to all-torx screws at some time, and they didn't get the logistics quite right? :-\
Not that I'm worried, a Philips screwdriver is never far away in my cluttered study, and a 'proper' screwdriver will often get the job done in half the time anyway.
One thing that is worth mentioning, doesn't worry me but might worry some... the Gen 8 ships with no optical drive. The HP drive kit isn't cheap (£90-odd on Amazon) and it doesn't look easy to substitute a generic - all a bit too customised, fancy cabling etc. Have HP been taken over by Apple while my back was turned? :D
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Do you actually need an optical drive? Most Linux distros these days will install from a USB stick, and you can always attach an external USB DVD drive if you need one (for about £20).
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mine runs nas4free from an internally mounted usb flash drive. it has a 5.25" bay at the top which I mounted a 5th hard disk in.
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Do you actually need an optical drive? Most Linux distros these days will install from a USB stick, and you can always attach an external USB DVD drive if you need one (for about £20).
Personally, I don't, I have a decent USB drive that I can use. That is why I said it doesn't worry me.
But reading my post again, it could be interpreted as saying that it didn't worry me because I am loaded and have money to burn. I can assure all that is not the case. :D
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mine runs nas4free from an internally mounted usb flash drive. it has a 5.25" bay at the top which I mounted a 5th hard disk in.
I have no need for a 5th disk thanks, but of interest... was yours a Gen 8?
Mine (Gen 8) only has space for an ultra slim laptop-style optical drive, which is another reason why I won't be bothering with one.
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mine runs nas4free from an internally mounted usb flash drive. it has a 5.25" bay at the top which I mounted a 5th hard disk in.
I have no need for a 5th disk thanks, but of interest... was yours a Gen 8?
Mine (Gen 8) only has space for an ultra slim laptop-style optical drive, which is another reason why I won't be bothering with one.
no it's an earlier one. 4 hard disk bays and a full size 5.25 at the top, and an internal USB A port. disks are configured as zfs raidz1
my biggest complaint about it is HP decided to use the one broadcom gigabit nic that doesn't support jumbo frames.
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I know at least one member will be especially disappointed to hear it, but life with CentOS 7 has not got off to a good start. :(
Installation was smooth and easy, and the system booted up fine. I then logged in, played around with this and that such as software updates, and rebooted. An that's when things went wrong...
kernel panic on boot. I noticed a new kernel had appeared in the grub boot list and was able to get booted by manually selecting the old one, set by the installer. It seemed to have got it's grub somewhat messed up, presumably as a result of initial updates. The initramfs file, corresponding to the new default in grub, was missing from /boot. From some quick searches this seems to be a (supposedly) rare issue with RHEL & Centos, dating back some years. Plenty of instances on the forums, similar and sometimes almost identical to mine.
I could have tried to repair it, but I am more interested in regaining some confidence that the problem is genuinely 'rare' - my system will run 'headless' so I need to be able to trust it to boot up again on its own after updates. So I am now doing another full install. This time, instead of 'playing around' I will be a bit more methodical and record exactly the things I do.
It was also late when above took place, and I think I may have accidentally point forced an early power off during that reboot by pressing the 'wrong' mains switch on the wall. If that is what caused the problem then, while my confidence is dented a little, I will at least accept a portion of the blame myself. Time will tell... :-[
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And the news this time is better. :)
After the initial boot, I simply open a terminal window to confirm connectivity. I didn't, so I (*)corrected that so I could ping bbc, and rebooted. All OK, still on the original kernel.
I then selected 'System Tools'/'Software Update', and was offered 196 updates including the same kernel that caused grief last night:
3.10.0-229.14.1.el7.x86-84
I allowed the updates to run and then checked whether the initramfs for the new kernel was installed in /boot. Unlike last night it was indeed present , the subsequent reboot worked fine, uname confirms the new kernel is now running.
Having seen how long the updates took to install I wonder, with hindsight, whether I may have rebooted the system before they were done? Quite apart from the silly power-off, that may be another factor. In my view, neither of these 'human error' explanations is a terribly good explanation, but better than none. None of the other instances that I found from web searches had confessed to any human error.
FWIW, all file systems (except swap) are xfs, in 'traditional', non-LVM, partitions.
Anyway I will now proceed with a slightly dented confidence, but at least with fresh enthusiasm. :)
* I have not detailed the issue with networking after today's install as I am sure it was not relevant. Merely something I'd got wrong in the install sequence.
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Anyway I will now proceed with a slightly dented confidence, but at least with fresh enthusiasm. :)
Please knock out your slight dent. :)
It was probably nothing you did but a peculiarity that has not yet been "tracked down". It has been known to occasionally occur on the first kernel update following a fresh installation. The problem, so I have been told, is finding the elusive, common, trigger. The simple solution is to boot the earlier kernel, remove the updated kernel and then re-install it. The more complicated way is to execute dracut to recreate the initramfs, etc.
However upon reflection of your confession of abruptly powering off the system, your choice to reinstall afresh was probably a wise choice. ;)
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It has been known to occasionally occur on the first kernel update following a fresh installation. The problem, so I have been told, is finding the elusive, common, trigger.
And that, of course, is exactly what happened to me. Another reason for reinstalling was of course, the possibility that it would happen every time. While that would have annoyed me terribly I had a distinct feeling that, if I had indeed stumbled on an elusive common trigger, 'somebody out there' might have found my information useful. ::)
Today has been busy trying to install MythTV, building from source as there don't seem to be many repos hosting CentOS 7 RPMs. It is challenging indeed with many obscure dependencies though I'm consoled that I did succeed another time, a few years ago. And once I get myth built, everything else really ought to be plain sailing. In theory. :D
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I hope you made the point of enabling the EPEL repository. It is just a yum install epel-release away as the epel-release package is available from the extras repository.
Rather than me typing out any more, I'll just point you to the Repositories (https://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories) page in the CentOS Wiki. Look for EPEL and nux-dextop as those two repositories should cover most multi-media requirements.
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Yes I already have EPEL configured.
I'm aware of nux-desktop too, but not yet encountered a problem that it solves - it does host versions of MythTV but not particularly recent whereas I am being quite fussy about vintage as some fixes have only recently gone in for the currently available crop of Freeview HD tuners. That is one reason I decided to build from git source, I might even need to resort to a development build.
Biggest headache so far was 'Lame' as in 'Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder', of which I'd never heard before. The only credible Repo I could find, supposed to host an El 7 version was ATrpms. But the ATrpms server seems to be off the air and judging from other posts on various forums, has been mysteriously off the air for a good few weeks. :-\
I eventually found a copy of the ATrpms' 'Lame' on University of Kent's www.mirrorservice.org, which is the last obstacle I cleared before stopping work for today. Tomorrow, the chase will resume for whatever is the next dependency to surface. :)
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Once you have decided, perhaps you would update this thread with the final details of your new system's specifications, please? (Links would be appreciated, by me.) :)
B'Cat I have not forgotten that request but have not yet settled on final system spec. I know exactly where I am headed right down to HDD and tuner module part numbers but until I have MythTV working there will remain a risk of 'back to the drawing board'.
Meanwhile, assuming eventual success, is there any particular level of detail you would like to be recorded especially in terms of software versioning and sources? I am attempting to record everything in some detail, but feel free to emphasise any detail that would be especially useful..?
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I am interested in details of the hardware, rather than the software, that you eventually use for this project.
That said, it may prove useful to others if you would also list the software, please.
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I am interested in details of the hardware, rather than the software, that you eventually use for this project.
That said, it may prove useful to others if you would also list the software, please.
Then the short answer is provided by HP part number 819185-421
http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=8507043
It is supplied with no HDD, I have so far installed just a Western Digital WD2000FYYZ , partitioned as xfs (or 'swap') non-LVM.
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771444.pdf
CentOS Installation was from an external DVD drive that I assume to be of no interest.
:)
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Thank you for that information . . . which has now been carefully stored.
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Thank you for that information . . . which has now been carefully stored.
Cost does of course not form part of a hardware spec but I might add it was a combination of cost and spec that led me to it. Mine was circa £166 from dabs. HP are offering £55 cash back to which my attitude is always, "I'll believe it when I see it". But providing it materialises, that brings cost down to £111.
One very nice feature is the ILO 'Intelligent Lights Out' management. I particularly like the remote console, which allows a browser elsewhere to view and interact with the hardware and especially the BIOS. This is excellent for headless. For example, from my Mac, I was able to boot up the HP and select a different kernel from grub.
You are supposed to pay a licence for ILO, which I won't be doing. But they seem to have implemented it in such a way that the licence enforcement only kicks in after a significant time, plenty long enough to see the grub menu and make a choice. :)
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HP are offering £55 cash back to which my attitude is always, "I'll believe it when I see it".
HP often offer cash back deals on their Proliant servers. I bought one about three years ago on a very similar deal, and there was no problem getting the promised cash back.
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Can confirm 3 HP cashbacks with no problems.
The company dealing with them even accepted email instead of post, when asked, and this made it even quicker.
I am sure it was 10 days max from email to receipt of cheque for me.
The delays are usually when there is high demand and the processing can slow down.
They where very helpful when contacted.
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One wonders, if cynical, and I am, what's the catch?
Even the spam/junk mail option, on the paperwork I filled in, was quite clear and easy to opt-out, none of the common trickery towards accidental opt-ins.
Planning already though, how to spend my £55. :)
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I'm aware of nux-desktop too, but not yet encountered a problem that it solves
I'd just like to publicly correct myself on that earlier statement, I am now a convert to 'nux'.
If all else fails it has a mythtv rpm but I'd still rather build myth myself so as to get latest version. Even apart from Myth however Nux also hosts, among others, the 'lame' package that I was having trouble finding. So I didn't have to resort after all to a mirror of unknown adequacy. :)
I trust B'Cat did not interpret my earlier response as lack of gratitude for his attempts to help. :blush:
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I trust B'Cat did not interpret my earlier response as lack of gratitude for his attempts to help. :blush:
Not at all. :)
(In fact it was rather remiss of me not to have cautioned you against the use of the ATrpms repository. It does not rank amongst "the bad" but it does have tendencies such that it is classified amongst "the ugly". :D The CentOS wiki Available Repositories (https://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories) page should be your guide.)
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(In fact it was rather remiss of me not to have cautioned you against the use of the ATrpms repository. It does not rank amongst "the bad" but it does have tendencies such that it is classified amongst "the ugly". :D The CentOS wiki Available Repositories (https://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories) page should be your guide.)
Hmm, am I missing something? The linked CentOS page lists both ATrpms and also Nux.
Good progress today, MythTV is now running again. :thumbs:
Unfortunately it only runs with some tuners, and my Freeview HD tuner that has been working for about 3 or 4 years on an ancient Fedora, no longer works. :(
Signs are that it is a kernel issue, as symptoms (from logfiles) exactly co-incide with an outburst of complaints in 2013. Not sure why I am hitting it now, but symptoms and logging appear identical, and other tuners work fine.
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66861
I do appreciate that the term 'small world' springs to mind in that thread, which was simply first hit from searching for vague symptoms. :D
But it does now leave me undecided... If I need to resort to an El Repo ml kernel, am I negating all the perceived stability advantages of using CentOS in the first place? ???
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:hmm: Hmm . . . You are, of course, using CentOS 7 and the distributed kernel is based on linux-3.10, with many patches being applied by Red Hat. So I can "see" why that problem, reported at the tail end of 2013, could be present in the distributed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 / CentOS 7 / Scientific Linux 7 / ClearOS 7 kernel.
Currently there are three versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- 5, 6 and 7. The eldest, 5, has about another 18 months before EOL. As a consequence, the ELRepo Project only provide a long-term support kernel (kernel-lt (https://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-lt)) for that version of RHEL. The middle-aged, 6, still has a significant number of years of life and the ELRepo Project provide both a long-term support kernel (kernel-lt (https://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-lt)) and a main-line kernel (kernel-ml (https://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml)). The youngest, 7, being so new is only provided with a main-line kernel (kernel-ml (https://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml)) by the ELRepo Project. (It was only at the end of last month / beginning of this month that a consultation with users of the ELRepo Project's kernels concluded that a kernel-lt would not yet be appropriate for RHEL 7 (and thus its clones). It was decided to review the situation in six months time.)
For your current project, having found the Red Hat distributed kernel to be lacking, a kernel-lt from the ELRepo Project (if such an entity existed) would be justified. Using the kernel-ml would mean that approximately every 10 weeks the kernel would be replaced. (During that approximate 10 week period there would, undoubtedly, be updated versions of the then current kernel.)
Here is the master list of configuration files for the ELRepo Project's kernel-{lt|ml} packages --
[Build64 kernels]$ find -type f | sort
./el5/config-3.2/config-3.2.71-i686
./el5/config-3.2/config-3.2.71-i686-PAE
./el5/config-3.2/config-3.2.71-x86_64
./el6/config-3.10/config-3.10.90-i686
./el6/config-3.10/config-3.10.90-i686-NONPAE
./el6/config-3.10/config-3.10.90-x86_64
./el6/config-3.18/config-3.18.22-i686
./el6/config-3.18/config-3.18.22-i686-NONPAE
./el6/config-3.18/config-3.18.22-x86_64
./el6/config-4.1/config-4.1.10-i686
./el6/config-4.1/config-4.1.10-i686-NONPAE
./el6/config-4.1/config-4.1.10-x86_64
./el6/config-4.2/config-4.2.3-i686
./el6/config-4.2/config-4.2.3-i686-NONPAE
./el6/config-4.2/config-4.2.3-x86_64
./el6/config-4.3/config-4.3.0-i686
./el6/config-4.3/config-4.3.0-i686-NONPAE
./el6/config-4.3/config-4.3.0-x86_64
./el7/config-4.2/config-4.2.3-x86_64
./el7/config-4.3/config-4.3.0-x86_64
[Build64 kernels]$
And here is the current list of the source code tarballs --
[Build64 LKA]$ find -type f | sort
./linux-3.10.90.tar.xz
./linux-3.18.22.tar.xz
./linux-3.2.71.tar.xz
./linux-4.1.10.tar.xz
./linux-4.2.3.tar.xz
./linux-4.3-rc5.tar.xz
[Build64 LKA]$
As things stand, I find myself in a rather difficult position and do not feel capable of giving you any unbiased advice. :-\ Perhaps I should just suggest that you make enquires to other users of the ELRepo Project's kernels . . .
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Thanks B'Cat, I wasn't really expecting you to make the decision for me regarding mainline, I was merely 'blogging' about the dilemma I face.
As a short term fix, I have enabled El Repo Mainline, and now have my MythTV working once again in glorious High Definition, or as glorious as Freeview bitrates permit. Many thanks to the good folks at El Repo for providing such a painless way of overcoming that problem in the RH kernel. :drink:
I'm still undecided about the long term plan. The problem may simply evaporate if I buy & install a different tuner which, for different reasons, is already on my wish-list. But if I do need to seek guidance from others over detailed SW configurations, it would probably be best addressed in the various communities of MythTV, Centos or even El Repo. :)
FWIW... As a crude performance evaluation I am currently recording three HD channels while watching a fourth, CPU use according to 'top' is hovering about 7-8%, nothing to worry about. Power draw at the server's mains socket is 34W, probably less than half that of the old machine. :thumbs:
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I had just retired to my sleepy-spot at gone silly o'clock* this morning when it occurred to me. :idea: Perhaps the CentOS Plus kernel has what you require configured and built . . . :-\
That C-Plus kernel is the distributed kernel with added features and bug-fix patches which have not yet made their way through the Red Hat system. That kernel can be found in the CentOSPlus Repository (https://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/CentOSPlus).
FWIW... As a crude performance evaluation I am currently recording three HD channels while watching a fourth, CPU use according to 'top' is hovering about 7-8%, nothing to worry about. Power draw at the server's mains socket is 34W, probably less than half that of the old machine. :thumbs:
That reads as a definite result! :)
* 0225 hours.
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Thanks I will certainly check out CentOS Plus.
Probably next week though as Myth is no longer such an urgent priority and there's other stuff to be restored and installed. Right now I am looking forwards to a night in front the TV. My nice new, bang up to date MythTV, that is. :graduate:
There's a program about Scottish Islands that sounds interesting on BBC2 later, a recording has been scheduled... :fingers:
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There's a program about Scottish Islands that sounds interesting on BBC2 later, a recording has been scheduled... :fingers:
I wonder if you will see a Weaver, searching for a fibre optic cable that he can tap into? :-\ :D
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Rather than use digital tuner cards with (usually) somewhat questionable long-term support I ended up using stuff from :
http://www.silicondust.com/products/models/hdhr4-2dtuk/
That's their latest model, I have previous stuff from 2011 in the loft which still works (not HD the UK way) although hardly anyone here ever watches live TV now.
The unit basically takes the incoming digital video signal & feeds it to whatever logs in - works with pretty much anything IME as long as your client app (MythTV/VLC/whatever) can auth/connect & most do. Myth works for sure.
NB : I haven't used the latest product as linked above but they work the same way in hardware terms - take the DVB-T/T2 signal & make the video bitstream available to network clients.
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That's an interesting device Rizla, I'd not come across it before.
But MythTV already uses pretty much the same architecture.. all it wants is a raw data multiplexed bit stream from the tuners, which is then captured bit by bit onto disk. It's quite clever in fact, if the bitstream from a single tuner carries more than one channel in its mux, Myth can demux and record up to five of those channels from that single tuner. I had a quick look and I think the multiple record benefits apply to the the 'HomeRun' too so I'm not surprised it works, but I see no great advantage either over cheap USB sticks or internal cards.
Long term support isn't usually an issue as all the tricky stuff, like graphics hardware and video rendering, are completely dissociated from the tuners - in my case they are in two physically separate LAN distributed PCs, which can be more 'modern' if needs be. The bug I hit last night wasn't a long-term support issue, it was just a bug, and it was fixed PDQ - just my rotten luck that RH had meanwhile 'frozen' their kernel. :D
I think you are right about live TV being on the decline but I still find that the live TV picture (and sound) quality far surpasses internet equivalents. And you just don't get these occasional freezes and glitches that ruin iPlayer for me. :(
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Seems its similar is some aspects to the vix based set top boxes, they are running on linux so not reliant on propriety third party software that expires when they want to sell a new model. Like that box rizla linked to I can watch live tv or any recording from any device on my lan via http streaming.
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But I bet you can't double up any of these STBs as a server hosting Bugzilla, Subversion, Nas etc... ;)
Another advantage of Myth is 'enhanceability', you generally can be as 'bleeding edge' as you want. Some of my Myth hardware (still in use) dates from 2008/9, when Freeview HD standards hadn't even been agreed upon, let alone any hardware sold. Yet on the actual morning that Freeview HD started here in 2011, I had all (/both) our TVs showing and recording HD in time to see the end of BBC Breakfast. :)
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sevenlayer, probably could actually :)
I have shell access to my stb, can install various linux packages like on a normal linux distro.
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but I see no great advantage either over cheap USB sticks or internal cards.
The advantage is that you never need to concern yourself with what OS you use & whether it has drivers for the hardware which are any good :)
I had them working on a Pi with XBMC for a while but frankly nobody here watches live TV except once in a blue moon...
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As the saying goes...
There are many ways to skin a cat
Even if saying so on these forums might get me in quite serious trouble. :D
Suffice it to say, I'm happy with Myth. :P
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I am finally (tempting fate) declaring this project to be a success. MythTV is running well, and old recordings & rules restored. My SVN repos are all back up with intact histories, and today my bugzilla database has been restored in all its glory. :thumbs:
Satisfyingly, instead of simply restoring the user filestore, above were laboriously restored from database backups that are created on a nightly basis using home brewed cron jobs. So at least I can now be confident that my backups actually work and really do save the required data. :graduate:
I have yet to decide what to do about the ML kernel issue, but that is not urgent or pressing. I have looked at CentOS Plus kernel and while I don't think it will resolve the problem I encountered, I admit I have not actually tried. I would rather come back to that question once I have decided whether or not I want buy any new DVB tuners, as the new tuners might 'move the goalposts'.
Many thanks, especially to B'Cat, for assistance. :clap:
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Well done 7LM :)
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Excellent news, 7LM. :)
I'm pleased to know of your success. :thumbs: