Dialing for Donuts tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2009:/welsh059/blog//6197 2008-10-07T17:02:55Z Movable Type 4.25 Ubuntu 8.10 Beta -- Non-Review tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2008:/welsh059/blog//6197.147133 2008-10-07T16:48:20Z 2008-10-07T17:02:55Z I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to Ubuntu 8.10 Beta (Intrepid Ibex). Although this is the beta version, so far I have been absolutely thrilled with the results.... Joshua Welsh I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to Ubuntu 8.10 Beta (Intrepid Ibex). Although this is the beta version, so far I have been absolutely thrilled with the results.

]]> I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to Ubuntu 8.10 Beta (Intrepid Ibex). Although this is the beta version, so far I have been absolutely thrilled with the results.

A little back ground: My first successful install was of 6.06 on Ye Olde HP. Prior to this, the HP had sort of been running ME on it's creaky old Celeron 766. (Now it happily records TV for me to watch wiht Mythbuntu 8.04.) As part of the quest to built the Myth box, I ended up building a file/print server and desktop on a mini ITX motherboard.

I love Mini ITX. It's small, it's quiet, and it's cheap. What more could anyone want? But when I built it, I couldn't for the life of me get the soundcard to work. The sound did work under a Damn Small Linux live CD, so I figured it was something with 8.04. A little googling revealed that there was a bug with the kernel used in 8.04 not playing nice with the chipset in the via motherboard. A lot more googling and mucking around with the 8.04 installation did nothing to being cheer to my now silent basement office (remember MIni ITX is quiet...).

So I gave up, like any real man would. However, when I saw the announcement for the 8.10 releae, I thought, 'Maybe....'

I was going to wait for the final release, but with the Beta coming out last week, I just couldn't wait any longer. I first downloaded the ISO and tried the live CD, and lo and behold, Rythmbox played me some web streams. So I was going to do a fresh install, but got help up at the partitioner, which told me I couldn't have any more logical partitions. Rather than try to fix that issue, I backed out to the 8.04 installation and went for a simple distro upgrade, using these instructions. Yes, those are the instructions for upgrading to 8.04, not 8.10, but the key thing is to open the update manager with the command they give you. (Also to backup all your data first).

Anyways, under 8.10, I have noticed the following improvements:

Music Playback works for my motherboard and chipset.
Firefly Media Server (aka mt-daapd) now scans the collection automagically.

I will post other improvements as I notice them. Feel to ask questions or leave comments.

]]> -X on Windows? You bet! tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2008:/welsh059/blog//6197.144473 2008-09-24T12:42:36Z 2008-09-30T13:14:17Z Getting -X on Windows is easier than it is. More below.... Joshua Welsh Getting -X on Windows is easier than it is.
More below.

]]> So, I recently achieved a months-old dream of building my own Tivo like PVR. it's built on Sally's old HP computer with a Celeron 766 processor, a Hauppauge 350 TV Tuner card, and a reasonable big hard drive. The TV comes in through an over the air, digital set-top box, which is controlled by an Infra red Transceiver. Don't ask how much the whole thing cost, and don't ask what a plane jane Tivo costs. Can you really put a price on a dream? The whole thing runs Mythbuntu, and it runs great. If anyone is interested in specifics of the set up, let me know in the comments and I will answer any questions you have. A full how-to is the beyond the scope of this time-wasting blog posting.

What is within the scope is a brief description of how to log in to the Mythbuntu box from a PC and open windows from the Mythbuntu box on the PC. Or put more simply: How to export -X over SSH to a PC.

This is especially useful for a Mythtv box like mine because the computer it really only sending video and -X to the TV, and the only way to tell the computer what to do is with the remote, which doesn't really work for system maintenance and so on. So we can use ssh to log into and control the Myth box from any computer in the house.

There are two parts to this system:
1: the SSH server on the Mythbuntu machine.
2: the SSH client on the Windows machine.

1: Installing the SSH server on Mythbuntu:
1A: To set up the SSH server on Mythbuntu, open a terminal and type

mythbuntu-control-centre

If you installed mythbuntu itself the Mythbuntu Control Centre (MCC) is already installed, will prompt you for a password, and open. If you installed mythtv onto a regular Ubuntu install, then you probably need the MCC type this:
sudo apt-get mythbuntu-control-centre

Then type mythbuntu-control-centre to open the MCC.
1B: Now click System Services, and then enable the SSH Service. Click Apply and your done installing SSH on Mythbuntu.

2: Getting ssh and -X to display on Windows:
One thing to know is that if you just want to do this form another Ubuntu machine, just install the OpenSSH client (it's in Synaptic) and then open a terminal and type

ssh -X user@host

Where user is the user name on the Myth box and host is the name or IP of the mythbox.
Now you'll find yourself at a terminal logged into the host machine, and you can type any command (for example mythtv-setup to control the myth box from the client machine.

But back to getting this to work on Windows. This is a bit more involved but not too bad. I futzed around with a couple of different ways of doing this before stumbling upon this easier solution:

2A: First download cygwin. This is a Linux emulator that runs within windows. It's found at www.cygwin.com. Download the install file, and run it. Click Next a bunch of times until you get to this screen:
cygwin setup.png

Here you will select all of the components you want cygwin to install. Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the window and click X11, then select xorg-x11-base package. Click Next a few more times and wait for everything to install.

2B. Cygwin probable installed into a folder called cygwin right on the C drive. Wherever it installed, find the cygwin folder. Consider this the / folder in your new linux on windows box. Now navigate below that folder to usr\X11R6\bin\ ans find a batch file called startxwin.bat. As the name implies this will start cygwin in such a way that it uses -X. Create a shortcut to this file somehwhere handy. Double click it and wait for the cygwin terminal to open in an x-window.
2C Now log in to the Mythbox. I tried the same command as works from an Ubuntu computer (i.e. ssh -X user@host). And this works ok, but another command seems to work better:

ssh -Y -l user@host

You will be prompted for the users password on the myth machine. And then you are done. Type

mythbuntu-control-centre
and yoyu'll be able to configure your myth machine from windows to your heart's content.
MCC.png

Note: SSH is considered more secure than other ways of remote control. However, I don't know enough about that to comment on it. I don't open up my firewall to internet traffic, and I haven't opened it up for SSH either. This means that I can't log in to my myth box from outside of my home network, and that's just fine by me. If you want to do have access from over the internet, you should do some serious reading before you open up your firewall, in my opinion.

Also, if anyone who does know SSH sees a problem with this setup that involved vulnerabilities I'm not aware of, please let us know in the comments.

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