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boat
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Joined: 16 Mar 2004
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 Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:31 pm Post subject: xfree/epia m-10000/ebuild |
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hello,
im working on a pvr/mythtv project with an epia m10000 board (neh core) and have been following this HowTo for getting gentoo running on it. im currently stuck on the xfree install section. the way its numbered leaves me unsure as to what should be installed...it seems like theyre giving a choice to use teh open source driver or to use the via binary driver, but at the same time it can be interpreted as (to me at least) that once u install the opensource driver, then follow it up with the binary driver install.
as it stands now, ive followed the directions for the opensource install via an ebuild...:
"4.2 The Open Source Driver
For the Open Source Driver to work you'll need a special version of the XFree86 development sources. You can download the appropriate ebuild here: xfree-epia-4.3.99.902-r7.ebuild or at the epia.kalf.org mirror (cache) then install it with emerge /usr/local/portage/x11-base/xfree-epia/xfree-epia-4.3.99.902-r7.ebuild, of course replacing that with the latest one.
You may also want to manually 'inject' the normal XFree 4.3.0 package into your Portage system so that an emerge world (or an emerge of some other package) doesn't go an install it over the special version. Many packages have xfree-4.3.0 as a dependency.
e.g. emerge inject x11-base/xfree-4.3.0"
and it seemed to go thru ok, no errors, and i did the "emerge inject" as recommended, but when i go to configure X with xf86config its not resolving the app...unless i need to use the absolute path, which im unsure of because im not familiar with gentoo's file structure (got my first learning/taste of *nix via freebsd  ).
any help is appreciated, thanks  |
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pjp
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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Moved from Installing Gentoo.
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colin_stewart
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Location: England
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:29 pm Post subject: Re: xfree/epia m-10000/ebuild |
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| boat wrote: | hello,
im working on a pvr/mythtv project with an epia m10000 board (neh core) and have been following this HowTo for getting gentoo running on it. im currently stuck on the xfree install section. the way its numbered leaves me unsure as to what should be installed...it seems like theyre giving a choice to use teh open source driver or to use the via binary driver, but at the same time it can be interpreted as (to me at least) that once u install the opensource driver, then follow it up with the binary driver install. |
I can't help, but I do feel your pain. You're where I'd like to be by the end of this year or sooner as I got an Epia M10K too, but finding the right distro for it is not going to be easy sadly. In many ways it's an almost perfect target platform for this sort of thing, as the hardware is more fixed, and that should make getting it set up just right easier assuming the right bits of software are available, and whilst they're definitely comming, it's a pity they're not a little more advanced in development right now.
I am really hoping it will gain even more ground in popularity soon. (can't understand why so many seem to have missed the more than abundant charms of this little cutie) This one does fine serving Music and Video to the whole house given it's got 2 WD120s in there - and it's still not noisy!
The best bit is when you're using one, Esp. late at night, it's so quiet, it leaves your thought processes totally unmolested, in a way that nothing else "desktop" can. Even makes some portables sound pretty noisy!
More power to you! Hope you get there soon. I'm not able to set this Epia up for it, as it's already got a permanent job and the OS has to stay for some time to come, so, unusually for me, I'm going to invest in another one purely for some distro or other, I feel it's THAT worth doing.
I have been sorely hoping it might be Gentoo, as the mix would be impossible to beat in many ways, and not just at it's very modest pricepoint. I heard the older Epias were not that quick, well this newer M10K is plenty quick, not THAT muscular perhaps, but quick enough! They're a safe enough purchase now in my book! Just wish I could find a 1gig PC2100 at a sensible price now; 512 is ok, but when you're used to twice that, then it's not quite so fun all of the time! Having to watch it run XP isn't terribly amusing either.
If I could have my own way with Gentoo, then I'd have a bunch of Epias replaceing all my existing machines, and keep the P4 1.8 for the compiling work - so I could have peace most of the time and only have the "noisy boy" running only when I want to get the heaviest stuff out of the way quickly, as you do, sometimes. Mind you a gang of Epias could probably make that redundant too. Seen THE STACK at mini-itx web site? 
The very best of luck; maybe we need a Gentoo Epia Interest Group or something like that - it could only help getting folks linked up and focussed like that.
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colin_stewart
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | Moved from Installing Gentoo. |
That seems a great shame since it's about installing Gentoo. Poor Epia, always the Cinderella!
Absolutely your decision of course, I understand that concept well enough! 
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boat
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:01 pm Post subject: |
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oh - rest of the spec if anyones interested...:
512MB ram
80G hd (once i get everything up and running and have some more funds, plan on upgrading the hd...i want to upgrade my main machine to a sata hd, then that would allow its current 120G to go into the epia)
no dvd/cd planned as of yet
i picked up the serentini (sp?) case for it
like u said, a nice and quiet machine only noise really, with the case closed up, is teh hd spinning up and if u listen hard enough, the ps fan (and maybe the cpu fan) but if ur sitting across the room on the couch, it shouldnt be noticable a few people ive shown it too were like 'its on??'
yeah - that epia cluster was pretty kewl wish i had the time, exprtise, and most importantly, funds to do something like that 
so is this, at the present, more of an ebuild problem? i followed the directions for emerging the ebuild, and it had d/l-ed all the neccessary files, patch files, etc. and started compiling X and didnt spit out any errors when it was done...do i need to do any kinda "*-update" for the system to recognize the binaries and whatnot (can u say gentewbie? )?
thanks for the replies and sorry if i posted in the wrong forum..figured i was still in the install process of sort |
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colin_stewart
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| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:58 pm Post subject: |
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| boat wrote: |
512MB ram
80G hd (once i get everything up and running and have some more funds, plan on upgrading the hd...i want to upgrade my main machine to a sata hd, then that would allow its current 120G to go into the epia)
no dvd/cd planned as of yet
i picked up the serentini (sp?) case for it
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Hmm... I don't want to start anything here but did you know about this?
http://www.freepia.org/
I'd imagine from what you say that this "should" be a near tailor made fix for what you are attempting to end up with.
This is off topic I know, (there's nowhere that seems right for it anyway) but I just got to share this with you as you'll know what I'm on about! ;O)
I just had the greatest of good news, a chap I know likes to buy a load of hardware every year or two, and then leave it with me until such time as I figure out what's a good thing to do with it all, then he buys the stuff over again and I build him the proper final version! When we spoke tonight, he also and quite amazingly mentioned he was wondering about Linux! 
Well guess what he ordered tonight:
CL10000
512 PC2100
WD2500PB
Sony DDU1612 DVD-ROM (short length form factor)
A Morex Venus in black.
Oh happy day - I can hardly believe it
This is going to be one tough wait!
How is the Sereniti? it's one I was wondering about and seems very good value.
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boat
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| Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 3:39 am Post subject: |
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dunno if i had come across the freepia before, thanks.
but thru my other research into pvr solutions, mythtv was what struck my fancy the most, with its feature-set and whatnot, so if possible, id like to get that up and running
oh yeah - forgot to mention that im also using the haup pvr-250 tv/capture card. 
serentini - i like it, pretty solid construction, all metal, included ps and pci riser card, front connections for audio/usb/firewire, and even what appears to be a IR window for a possible future addon/feature, though looks like its not functional right now. it does seem like it gets warm, but then again, i havent had it in a 'production' environment yet, so to speak (on the A/V rack ) where itd have proper ventilation. though shouldnt matter much...from some of the stuff ive read, these epia boards handle heat pretty well, if i remember right
thanks. |
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colin_stewart
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Joined: 13 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:02 am Post subject: |
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| boat wrote: | | dunno if i had come across the freepia before, thanks. |
Welcome, I just found it by chance tonight - I think it's relatively new by the looks of it.
| boat wrote: | but thru my other research into pvr solutions, mythtv was what struck my fancy the most, with its feature-set and whatnot, so if possible, id like to get that up and running
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Well that's cool since while I figure out how to set up for the CL10K, you'll be figuring the M10K, and then maybe we can swap notes both ways. Once I got the CL10K set up as the server I can emtpy the drives in my M10K onto the server and then I can wipe/scrape XP off it and set that up with Gentoo as well; that would probably be a seriously nice situation.
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Colin |
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boat
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| Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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for anyone keeping tabs/interested, the problem i had was that the paths didnt resolve after the emerge, so i needed to do a env-update;source /etc/profile
for anyone else that may need some via/epia help, i got my solution from the Via Forums - Linux Arena
thanks.
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sklettke
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| Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 5:28 am Post subject: |
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Sorry to bumb this forum back up, but I'm going to be building a M-10000 system also. (I'll post the specs when it is finalized). However, I'm wondering: Is MythTV capable of recording a channel while playing a DVD at the same time (through its front end)? And, if this is possible, is the M-10000 powerful enough to do this? It looks like they got the MPEG-2 hardware decoding sort of figured out so my guess is that it will work.
Other than that, have any of you guys gotten your m-10000 systems functioning? I'm hoping to follow the excellent guide that was linked to in the first post of this topic. It will be great to have this to record tv, watch dvds, watch divx, listen to music, etc for the apartment next year.
Scott
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colin_stewart
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| Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2004 12:36 pm Post subject: |
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| sklettke wrote: | Sorry to bumb this forum back up, but I'm going to be building a M-10000 system also. (I'll post the specs when it is finalized). However, I'm wondering: Is MythTV capable of recording a channel while playing a DVD at the same time (through its front end)? And, if this is possible, is the M-10000 powerful enough to do this? It looks like they got the MPEG-2 hardware decoding sort of figured out so my guess is that it will work.
Other than that, have any of you guys gotten your m-10000 systems functioning? I'm hoping to follow the excellent guide that was linked to in the first post of this topic. It will be great to have this to record tv, watch dvds, watch divx, listen to music, etc for the apartment next year.
Scott |
I have now tried this on both Epias, the M and the CL 10000s and to be honest they both seemed to run much nicer when using WinXP. I have tried 30 discs full of the latest and supposedly greatest linux offerings and found only one which fully works as you might expect and allows you to have acces to almost all of the features on these boards. I think if you got an Epia, then it's probably best to avoid Linux for now. Eventually, once it's been polished then Linux on these boards could have much good to offer I'd imagine. It certainly is worth a try of the current crop if only to see how near it is to truly being an alternative OS to current windows offerings.
The point I'd like to make, is that if the much touted Linux community, were able to pull together enough to ensure that whichever favourite distro they like most was able to install itself on this very reasonably priced kit, then we could so easily see the birth of a "Volkswagen Bettle" of computing. It would offer "Adequate" computing with a capital A, most people could afford it, and the systems would very probably be quite long lived. Given the design is quieter than anything else in it's price point then it would be more welcome in more parts of the average home than any other variety of computer, and as convergance of media is what the next ten years (or more) is going to be all about then this would be one more way of getting linux in front of more eyes, than it other wise might.
I've tried to elicit the right level of help from the wider Linux community for something over a month now and it must be said that getting others to share a vision is really a very hard thing to do. In doing that, most Linux advocates evangelise some, and here am I interested in knowing more, even buying an extra set of hardware to dedicate to a linux project. I am clearly saying that I am ready to "learn more of" and "share in" and maybe even "add to" their vision, and at the same time having my vision ignored. I would imagine that vision really should be a two way street, but it seems that's not able to be the case just now. I can only see a tragic waste of potential as long as that situation is encouraged to obtain.
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sklettke
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2004 4:52 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the great post! I had been wanting to get a M-10000 on which to install MythTV because it was actually the cheapest of all the systems that I configured. Here's the system that I was going to build this summer:
| Code: | Via Epia M-10000 $150.89
Kingston 512MB 266MHz DDR SDRAM $98.99
Maxtor 120GB DiamondMax Plus 9 8MB $99.89
Sony CRX300E 48x24x48x CDRW/DVD $48.89
WinTV-PVR 250 $135
Morex Venus 668 Silver case $95
Total: $641.56
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All the other systems that I configured came out to about $100 more.
You had said that one Linux distribution works as one might expect, which one is it? Would it be worth getting the epia and using this? Also, a guy on the PVR Hardware Database says that he got his ME6000 working great with KnoppMyth. Is this one of the distros that you tried?
EDIT: Just found this guy on PVR Database who also uses the m-10000. He says that he used the gentoo ebuilds here: http://epia.kalf.org/portage/ to "make it work perfectly."
Also, has anyone pieced together an AMD system that works great (and can do support the DVD playing while recording), is small (probably micro-atx sized), and is as cheaper or cheaper than the above epia system?
Even the $640 is very expensive. I'm just a college student who is building this for use at our apartment next year. Some of the guys might reimburse me a little bit.
Thanks a lot!
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bheremans
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2004 7:00 am Post subject: |
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I'm using a Epia M9000 with Gentoo, I'm running freevo and mythfrontend at the moment with a 2.6 gentoo dev kernel. It works fine for me. I don't need the HW acc. , but when I have a pvr-250 that will change. I had a pvr-350, but this card doesn't fit in a serinity 2000 case. A find that these cases are verry noisy. After six months the psu blew up and I put my epia in an old vcr case
To get it silent :
* 150w psu modded with papst fan and temp controlled (doesn't spin up at boot when cold)
* cpu fan also changed with low noise papst fan
* 5400 rpm samsung spinpoint HD
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colin_stewart
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| Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2004 7:32 am Post subject: |
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| sklettke wrote: | | You had said that one Linux distribution works as one might expect, which one is it? |
Well, Ironically it's knoppix, and in it's CD form! And there's the rub of course! 
From what I've just experienced, I would venture to suggest that just about ALL distros could usefully learn loads from that one. I was left with the impression that it's very nearly there.
I'll use it again, since it's on CD, that won't be an issue either! So it's weakness for my use is it's strength for me carrying on using it. Can't do what I wanted to do with it, but that's how it is with Linux sometimes!
One thing I did note though, in general I'd stay away from anything with a hint of redhat about it, when it comes to Epias, there are some serious pitfalls in that line of country. Having Debian roots seems to result in it fairing about as good as it gets. Also, I'd give gnome a miss too, as sadly it's not as comfortable working with that hardware as say KDE for example, and KDE works the best of the bunch as far as I can tell. This is a great disappointment too, as I rather like the ideas I saw in fedora (it made windows XP look like a cheap hooker!) and I am quite partial to the look of gnome too.
Fact is, when I set out on this journey through today's Linux I felt it probably should not matter about which distro you chose or which desktop (if you're having one), but I found that not to be the case - not all linux are the same linux, for some unfathomable reason or other.
Best of luck, it may well be needed!
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sklettke
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| Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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Just repeating a question that I buried in a message above:
Is MythTV capable of recording a channel while playing a DVD at the same time? And, if this is possible, is the M-10000 powerful enough to do this? So, would I be able to be recording a tv program and then stick a DVD in and watch that (while the recording is still going), all through the mythtv interface?
Thanks,
Scott
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colin_stewart
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| Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2004 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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| sklettke wrote: | Just repeating a question that I buried in a message above:
Is MythTV capable of recording a channel while playing a DVD at the same time? And, if this is possible, is the M-10000 powerful enough to do this? So, would I be able to be recording a tv program and then stick a DVD in and watch that (while the recording is still going), all through the mythtv interface?
Thanks,
Scott |
I can only answer for doing things like that on XP, as linux won't behave enough for me to find this out. However I watch DVD on the M10000 and it's not a problem, I watch asf and mpg from harddrive while downloading plenty of multipart binaries, and generally the M10000 is remarkably up to the challenge - I hardly turn my P4 machine on theses days now with two of these diminuative workhorses at it. They team up on tasks rather well too, but with somewhat less than half the noise of the P4. I only bring the big guns out for larger chores, like rendering in Lightwave and the like, but that's pretty heavy stuff even on the P4 sometimes! (Having said this I did try LW on an epia, and it did work, and didn't struggle anything near as much as I would have imagined it might!)
It's that horrid time where you'll just have to "suck it and see" I am afraid. I had to, and it's not been too bad at all to be honest. Here's hoping you get a simlar experience - highly likely as I don't think linux in general taxes systems quite as heavily as most M$ products do. Odds are good I'd say.
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boat
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| Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 2:34 am Post subject: |
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oups - lost track of me own thread
welp, im still trying to work out the kinks, and right now it seems to be the audio, so if anyone has any ideas...:
link to another thread i started on the via forums
alright, here's where i stand:
i think i have aalmost everything ready to go before i start setting up and installing mythtv, have the pvr250 recognized, i have X installed and have started it w/ 2 different wm's (kde and fluxbox)...now my current stumper, the sound i followed the wiki on getting it installed, but i had never had a chance to test it...now that i have most of hte base system installed i had a chance to test the sound, and it didnt work properly when i use aplay or an audioplayer in kde the sound is nothing but crackles ...now, i did enable the S/PDIF out on the mb and alsa...is taht the problem? i was hoping to be able to run the standard audio out(s) and the S/PDIF out as needed (have a receiver that i plan on hooing this up to via S/PDIF out) i would assume what im hearing is the raw S/PDIF feed, but it doesnt quite sound "digital" if u know what i mean, and i have some headphones plugged into the front/green plug for testing (and i know the speakers and the sound works, because i had loaded up knoppix when i was trying to get some more specifics when setting up the pvr250).
oh, and /dev/video...i looked in /dev/ to check if the video devices were in there properly, and before i configured the pvr250, i had the /dev/video(0,1,2) like i was suppose to, and now, i checked the /dev/video listings and there are now...:
/dev/video0
/dev/video1
/dev/video2
/dev/video24
/dev/video3
/dev/video34
any ideas as to what the 24 and 34 are? or is that normal for this setup?
slowly but surely
thanks.
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