Transition from Windows to Linux Sage Server

[tsheal]

Hi,

I am looking to transition from my "working" sage server on Windows 7 to using the linux solution, in an attempt to consolidate various services onto 1 machine, and I was after some advice on whether this would be advisable or not.

I live in the UK, and therefore use the GUI XMLTV importer tool that StephanE produced to import my EPG data. Clearly I could not use that under Linux, so what could I use instead. I could use MC2XML as the grabber, but not sure what as the importer.

Also, I use Nova-HD-S2 cards (4 of them) in my sage server - do these play nicely in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server - does anyone have experience of getting them to work in this OS? Also once configured in the OS, do they work well in Sage Server for Linux.

I guess that's about my 2 main concerns - everything else is fairly bulk standard - I use a mix of Windows & Mac clients and a couple of media extenders (Hauppauge MVP) which I assume will continue to work fine whatever OS my server runs.

Grateful for any help and/or advice.

[Nelbert]

According to the LinuxTV wiki, the card should work fine, support was added in Kernel 2.6.28

In this post Neilm's multiple line ups plugin works on linux. Could be worth seeing if it's available for v7.

[peterjb]

I'm in the process of doing a similar transition to Linux. I'm running Xubuntu Lucid 32 bit version under VMWare to validate things. I'm using both DVB-T HDHomerun and TT S2-3600 DVB-S2 USB Devices. The HDHomerun now works out of the box for Oz as of 7.0.23. The TT S2-3600 devices work using the drivers from s2-liplianin but SageTV under Linux can't use them as it doesn't yet support the DVB S2API. I'm using Demideus XMLTVImportPlugin to load my XMLTV feed from IceTV here in Oz. It works as well as it does under Windows, but I needed to put the xerces.jar file in the /opt/sagetv/server/JARs subdirectory.

From a look on the V4L wiki, it would appear that your DVB cards are supported OTB by the kernel in Lucid. Which is good.. You may then find that you get stuck by the lack of DVB S2API support in SageTV under Linux if your device requires it.. If enough people report it - we may be able to get it moved up the priority list..

Cheers

Peter

[tsheal]

Excellent - thanks

I am now taking an image of my current server setup, so if it all goes Pete Tong I can easily revert.

However, I will be giving it a go today and will report back later.

[tsheal]

BTW - Where on Earth does one get the xerces.jar file nowadays.

Do the ones gzipped up on the apache site work?

[peterjb]

Good Question.. I've attached the one that I use which comes from Nielms original xmltv plugin - I think!!

[tsheal]

Originally Posted by peterjb

Good Question.. I've attached the one that I use which comes from Nielms original xmltv plugin - I think!!

Many thanks

First gotcha of the day !! The Debian Install package only want to work on the 32 bit version of the OS, and I installed the 64 bit version. Given I can't find half the libraries specified in the installation instructions, I'm now downloading the 32 bit (i386) version of Ubuntu Server and will have another go.

[bcjenkins]

You could use the tarball instead or force the install of the deb.

B

[tsheal]

Only thing with the tarball is needing to install all the dependent libraries manually - half of which I couldn't find.

Just trying the dpkg --force-architecture option - I'd forgotten about that - doh !

[tsheal]

Struggling a bit now - Package installs, but then when I enter the activation key, the script terminates at line 12 because the call to ./validatekey fails with the error: No such file or directory.

Is there a dependent package I am missing perhaps?

[bcjenkins]

Even if you force the deb you still have to nail the dependencies. Check this out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=474790.

B

PS - Validate key is a script in the sagetv/server dir.

[tsheal]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Even if you force the deb you still have to nail the dependencies. Check this out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=474790.

B

PS - Validate key is a script in the sagetv/server dir.

Thanks. - Yes I found the file - it's in the right place. I even tried invoking it manually, but it still fails.

I think the "No such file or directory" error is a response from the validatekey executable rather than the keygen.sh script not being able to find validatekey.

[Nelbert]

Are you now on the 32 bit version?

If you're still using the 64 bit version you'll need to install the ia32-libs package. The script will be calling something that has a dependancy on the 32 bit library.

I've had the same thing where Java itself won't run, but is on the machine, because of a missing core system 32 bit library.

Ubuntu Lucid Details of package

[tsheal]

Progress Report:

Have installed Ubuntu Server 32bit 10.04 LTS version now - Have successfully installed dependencies and the application, and didn;t get the validatekey error taht I got before.

Server setup - now having some fun with my TV cards Not getting them to work just yet

[tsheal]

Okay - Got cards to work under Linux okay by installing new available firmware:

sudo apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree

Interestingly, in SageTV when I do Source setup, I am offered 2 conexant devices and 3 HVR400s (I have 3 Nova-HD-S2s).

If I select an HVR400, it doesn't allow me to select an input.

If I select a Conexant it allows me to select Digital TV - however when I then try a channel scan it starts and then stops immediately.

Scanning manually from the command line using: scan -x0 /usr/share/dvb/dvb-s/Astra-28.2E | tee channels.conf

does give good results.

Any ideas?

[tsheal]

I wonder if it has something to do with DiSEcq settings - as when I select teh Astra 28 satellite in options it present the DiSECq settings as all "Not Set"

I don't remember ever having to do anything with these before.

When it bins out, the following is reported by dmesg:

[ 183.877727] DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 156500000 out of range (950000..2150000)
[ 210.001720] DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 156500000 out of range (950000..2150000)

[tsheal]

I've tried some DiSEqC settings - but no avail.

It seems that SageTV is trying to tune to 156,500,000 Hz which is obviously outside the range of the card. Does anyone have any ideas as to why this would happen and what I can do about it?

[bcjenkins]

I would suggest an email to SageTV support on this. Since I am in the US, I don't have the info to help.

B

[tsheal]

Okay. It seems I have everything working "except" for getting the cards to scan in SageTV.

Given the wife would like to watch television tonight - a quick system image restore back to my W7 system is underway.

Does anyone have any theories of why my Nova-HD-S2 cards will work and be detected in Linux, but not work properly in SageTV.

SageTV will present the cards as options, and even allow me to select them,
but 2 strange things happen. Firstly Sage asks me for the DiSEqC setting for the LNB - never been asked for those before, and also when starting a scan - it says about to scan channel 1 and then immediately exists without having found any channels.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Nelbert]

Not sure about the scan, but it's not a linux specific thing. I received my USB DVB-S2 tuner last week and it did the same thing in WHS. Asked for LNB/Diseqc settings then fails a test scan. It worked fine with other DVB software in my pc. I was only quickly testing it before taking the server down as we're in the middle of a kitchen refit.

One thing I did notice was the lnb config file was created on my SageTV Client PC and not the server, so I suspect, in my case, it's related to using a SageTV Client rather than a using the SageTV app on the server to config it. Once I get everything plugged back in I'm going to try running set up using RDP into the WHS instead of using a client.

It's times like this the lack of linux trial is a drawback. I wanted to run a linux server, but not being able to do a trial install and confirm all the hardware and plugins would work put me off. Ended up going with WHS as I couldn't be bothered with hacking and patching Server 2008R2 to make it work.