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[burakkucat]

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.

[sevenlayermuddle]

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.

 

[burakkucat]

Thank you for that information . . . which has now been carefully stored.

[sevenlayermuddle]

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.

[roseway]

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.

[AArdvark]

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.

[sevenlayermuddle]

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. 

[sevenlayermuddle]

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.   

[burakkucat]

I trust B'Cat did not interpret my earlier response as lack of gratitude for his attempts to help.   

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".    The CentOS wiki Available Repositories page should be your guide.)

[sevenlayermuddle]

(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".    The CentOS wiki Available 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.   

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.   

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?   

[burakkucat]

   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) 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) and a main-line kernel (kernel-ml). The youngest, 7, being so new is only provided with a main-line kernel (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 . . .

[sevenlayermuddle]

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.   

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. 

[burakkucat]

I had just retired to my sleepy-spot at gone silly o'clock^* this morning when it occurred to me.    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.

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. 

That reads as a definite result! 


^* 0225 hours.

[sevenlayermuddle]

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.

There's a program about Scottish Islands that sounds interesting on BBC2 later, a recording has been scheduled...

[burakkucat]

There's a program about Scottish Islands that sounds interesting on BBC2 later, a recording has been scheduled...

I wonder if you will see a Weaver, searching for a fibre optic cable that he can tap into?