8.04.1 v 9.04

[Rayn]

setup :
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-US2H AM2+
AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2
Haup PVR-150
Haup HVR-1600

I've been running a similar set up on Gutsy for years, it works great. I never mess with it.

I got a similar system up and running with a PVR-250 instead of a HVR-1600 for my brother (I also use a PVR-250).

I wanted to use as much of the same hardware as possible because I'm a bit of a noob at troubleshooting these things.

Long story short, we bought two used PVR-250s and both were broken. I said, ok hey let's get the replacement. I set him up with Mythbuntu 8.04 and things were working great except the PVR-250 didn't work at all (picture all garbled, but remote control worked so whatever, it was ok)

We got the PVR-1600, I stuck it in, thinking ... turn her on and we're good to go. Wrong.

System would only start in low graphics mode. Desperate, I hit upgrade and the whole system got upgraded to ... Jaunty. Ok well nothing works anyway.

Finally, I found the cx18 issue and fixed the low graphics mode by added the vmalloc line to menu.lst. Happy day! However, now everything else is broken.

1) Mythbackend does not start at start up. I have to go into Mythbackend setup to get it going before it will start now.
2) My remote control no longer works.
3) HVR-1600 detects NO channels in us-cable mode. None. I just have a pink screen on them.
4) The PVR-150 still works, but at this point the system is hosed.
5) Myth front end / back end have OpenGL problems. For 5 hours I had no menu text until I overrode the settings to use QT instead. Now I have menu items, but apparently no OpenGL (I guess?)

I am not NEARLY SAAVY enough to try and fix this back to where it was. I think I broke everything by upgrading.

I feel I might be able to try and troubleshoot all these issues one at a time and get things going again, but looking at them, I don't think I know how to do it. I think my best option might be to format the boot drive and start over with Mythbuntu and work from there.

Maybe I should just forget the HVR-1600, too. Or should I?

I don't see any way I can repair all the damage I did because I don't know where to look. I only have an hour a night to work on this thing for my brother after work (long hours) and I'd really rather not give up my time to unwind every night for days on end.

Thus, I think I'll start over (and try and remember how I got all the quirks out of the system the last time I did this, things like sound..)

So to all of you out there, maybe you can help me --

question 1: Should I install 9.04 or 8.04.1- Is 9.04 stable? Will it support HVR-1600 out of the box?

question 2: Is there a good way to back up the important things I need like copying over my /etc/ and /var/www/ directories somewhere for reference? I should probably dump the SQL database and copy that too, right?

I realize this post in rambly and for that I apologize. Any insights that can be offered are greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Anthony

[klc5555]

setup :
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-US2H AM2+
AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2
Haup PVR-150
Haup HVR-1600

I've been running a similar set up on Gutsy for years, it works great. I never mess with it.

I got a similar system up and running with a PVR-250 instead of a HVR-1600 for my brother (I also use a PVR-250).

I wanted to use as much of the same hardware as possible because I'm a bit of a noob at troubleshooting these things.

Long story short, we bought two used PVR-250s and both were broken. I said, ok hey let's get the replacement. I set him up with Mythbuntu 8.04 and things were working great except the PVR-250 didn't work at all (picture all garbled, but remote control worked so whatever, it was ok)

We got the PVR-1600, I stuck it in, thinking ... turn her on and we're good to go. Wrong.

System would only start in low graphics mode. Desperate, I hit upgrade and the whole system got upgraded to ... Jaunty. Ok well nothing works anyway.

Finally, I found the cx18 issue and fixed the low graphics mode by added the vmalloc line to menu.lst. Happy day! However, now everything else is broken.

1) Mythbackend does not start at start up. I have to go into Mythbackend setup to get it going before it will start now.
2) My remote control no longer works.
3) HVR-1600 detects NO channels in us-cable mode. None. I just have a pink screen on them.
4) The PVR-150 still works, but at this point the system is hosed.
5) Myth front end / back end have OpenGL problems. For 5 hours I had no menu text until I overrode the settings to use QT instead. Now I have menu items, but apparently no OpenGL (I guess?)

I am not NEARLY SAAVY enough to try and fix this back to where it was. I think I broke everything by upgrading.

I feel I might be able to try and troubleshoot all these issues one at a time and get things going again, but looking at them, I don't think I know how to do it. I think my best option might be to format the boot drive and start over with Mythbuntu and work from there.

Maybe I should just forget the HVR-1600, too. Or should I?

I don't see any way I can repair all the damage I did because I don't know where to look. I only have an hour a night to work on this thing for my brother after work (long hours) and I'd really rather not give up my time to unwind every night for days on end.

Thus, I think I'll start over (and try and remember how I got all the quirks out of the system the last time I did this, things like sound..)

So to all of you out there, maybe you can help me --

question 1: Should I install 9.04 or 8.04.1- Is 9.04 stable? Will it support HVR-1600 out of the box?

question 2: Is there a good way to back up the important things I need like copying over my /etc/ and /var/www/ directories somewhere for reference? I should probably dump the SQL database and copy that too, right?

I realize this post in rambly and for that I apologize. Any insights that can be offered are greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Anthony

1) 9.04 is stable. I finally made the move from 7.10 to it because of improved hardware driver support. I never could get sound to work in 8.04. No problem in 9.04. cx18 is supported out of the box (since it has been included in the kernel tree since 2.6.26 --therefore not in 8.04). You will likely still need to add the vmalloc line in grub to use with the nvidia proprietary drivers. You may or may not be satisfied with the 1600's digital (sometimes it's kinda deaf), but the analog quality is top-notch. Better than the 150.

2) You'd normally save your recordings (of course)and a MySQL dump or two to go with them, in order to avoid the hassle of adding the old recordings into a new database, indexing them and commflagging them. But if your system is as hosed as you claim, I don't know how much else there actually is on your system worth salvaging, with a clean 9.04 install.