Audio out over HDMI is broken with the Intel DH87RL mainboard and Ubuntu Linux 14.04.1. While it all looked all right the speakers gave a mere tenth of a second sound with a several second pause in between. It all seemed to be a driver issue related to the Intel hardware as several posts on the Intel forums suggested.
So I finally opted to give the newer regular Ubuntu 14.10 a shot and audio was working right away. But the vanilla Ubuntu was missing a key component: MythTV and all that makes Mythbuntu great in my eyes.
Installation
UEFI vs. BIOS
The new system is a modern UEFI based board. These boards also support legacy BIOS style bootup process.
The trouble comes when the CD boots in UEFI mode and installs a BIOS version of the OS. The system may fail to boot in that case.
I am currently still trying to figure out what works reliably. Read the UEFI article here.
In my case I ended up turning of UEFI support in the BIOS an installing in legacy mode. This was the only way that worked reliably.
Install Ubuntu
Do a base install of Ubuntu 14.10 Desktop 64bit.
Removing Ubuntu Desktop Crap
There are quite a few things that are completely useless on the new machine that can be removed. In my case that was the following.
sudo aptitude remove unity-lens-video unity-lens-photos unity-lens-music
If you don’t see any sideeffects you can always also run the purge option to remove all files related.
Remove LibreOffice
sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice*
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoremoveNetwork setup
To get a static IP address run the network manager and create a new connection instead of simply adapting the existing DHCP. It seems that changing the existing connection to static does not work.
Neither does editing the usual files in /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf by hand as these are ignored by the network manager. Using these files would require the removal of the network manager. I decided against removing it as this has been reported to cause more issues.
Some routers allow to have DHCP provide a specific address to a give MAC. Mine does not, otherwise this would have been a nice option.
Install mythbuntu
aptitude install mythbuntu-control-centre xmltv
This will setup the control center and all related software, i.e. MythTV, XMLTV etc. Basically turning your Ubuntu into what I liked so much about Mythbuntu.
Install drivers for Digital Devices Cine CT V6 DVB-C Card
Migrating MythTV to a new host
If you set up a new machine and would like to move your mythtv installation to the new host these are the steps required:
Make sure the old host is at the most current version of mythtv. ideally the same as the new host.
Shutdown mythbackend on all machines.
Backup mythconverg MySQL db on both machines just to be on the safe side. If everything goes smooth you’ll only need the dump of the old machine.
/usr/share/mythtv/mythconverg_backup.pl
Copy the backup to the new host and restore the dump
/usr/share/mythtv/mythconverg_restore.pl --drop_database --create_database --directory /home/tv/Desktop --filename Desktop/mythconverg-1317-20150111134903.sql.gz
If the new machine has a different hostname change that
/usr/share/mythtv/mythconverg_restore.pl --change_hostname --old_hostname="oldhostname" --new_hostname="newhostname"
Now is the time to run mythtv-setup and change the IP to the IP of the new host. Also run mythbuntu-control-centre to customize your MythTV installation and add lirc support and required plugins.
Check these two posts outlining in more detail how to migrate all:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Backend_migration#Building_a_new_backend_to_replace_an_existing_machine
Running MythTV dual headed
As before I run MythTV on my TV set in the living room and have a monitor connected in the Office. Mythfrontend should automatically launch on the TV screen. The monitor is used to display the Linux Desktop.
The Nvidia control panel of the proprietary driver made this very easy. Luckily on Ubuntu 14.10 it is a simple click in the display settings panel.
- Turn on both monitors
- Do not mirror
- Launcher only on primary monitor
- mythfrontend -> /setup/appearance/ display on display 1
So the graphics stack is all good out of the box.
Video acceleration VAAPI
Works out of the box. You only need to set this in the mythtv frontend.
See here for more info: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VAAPI#Configure_MythTV_for_VAAPI
Audio
The reason to use Ubuntu 14.10 was out of the box HDMI audio. Nothing required here besides hooking up the TV and setting sound in the sound settings panel.
Adjust sound in the frontend to use software so the sound volume control works in myth.
Power Management
After all parts and devices work as intended use the powertop utility to check possible power management optimizations. See here.
sudo aptitude install powertop
Use the tab key to navigate.
Postfix
Install Postfix MTA as described.
LM-sensors
Install lm-sensors. You can answer all questions with default. At the end have the necessary modules added automatically to /etc/modules
sudo aptitude install lm-sensors
sensors-detect
sudo service module-init-tools restart
Currently sensors-detect will only find the thermal sensors of the CPU. An update to the sensors-detect script has already been written but also needs a new driver to access the respective chip. So for the time being, lm-sensors offers only limited information.
webmin
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib"
wget -q http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install webmin
VNC
To run the VNC server issue
x11vnc -rfbauth /home/tv/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5900 -shared -forever -nowf -norc -notruecolor -bg -x
I’ll have to check why it is not started at bootup.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2090922&highlight=session.sh
What to do.
https://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/to-do-list-after-installing-ubuntu-14-04-trusty-tahr-os/
Settings on the Desktop
sudo aptitude install compizconfig-settings-manager unity-tweak-tool
Add a nice system load indicator
sudo aptitude install indicator-multiload sudo aptitude install grsync
Set MySQL root password
Optical Drive
I had /dev/dvd missing so had to change a frontend setting.
Frontend > setup > Media settings > Videos settings > Player settings > DVD Drive
Had to change it from /dev/dvd to /dev/sr0.
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