I searched for the problem and found a command to change the colour of the line to black, xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 0

I added this to one of the mythtv startup files, but during one of the updates it got replaced. So we have been living with this annoying blue line for longer than we should have. I have been asked a few times to fix it and haven’t got around to it, oops sorry Jo.

Anyway, using the suggestion here http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/NVidiaProprietaryDriver, I have added it to the X11 configuration and now the problem has gone away again.

This then provided the next challenge with Mythtv, how to get a recording onto a DVD in a playable format. Mythtv has an archive utility, so here’s what I did.

On the main menu, select Optical Discs, Archive files. The first time I selected Create Archive – this isn’t the option I wanted, what this does is copy the recording to DVD, rather than create a playable DVD. Anyway, select Create DVD and then choose the type of media, I used DVD+/-RW and selected to burn to DVD and force overwrite DVD-RW.

Next you select the theme for the DVD menus, I used the first one, G.A.N.T. Animated.

Then you select the recording, file or videos that you want to burn to DVD. Select Add Rec and then when the list appears, go up to change from All Recordings to the individual groups, it makes it much easier to find the one you want. Highlight the one you want and press enter (space), then select OK, this takes you back to the screen showing the recording that you want to burn and how much space they will take. Press Next and the system will start to check the recording for any errors. This is where my first problem came:

Failed to run mythtranscode to fix any errors
ERROR: Failed while running mytharchivehelper to get stream information from “/mnt/usb1/mythtv/2001_20101229195800.mpg”

After searching , I found the answer (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=610856) was to delete the .ICEauthority file in the user home directory. This allowed the software to progress past this stage. I need to find a better solution for this as the file is recreated every time you log on.

The next error I got was ‘IOError: Cannot open resource‘. Searching (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/463495) found that this was related to to location of a font file. I could have linked the file, but just copied it to the expected location.

I thought I’d got there, as it proceeded for a long time, before giving me the next error, ‘OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted‘. This turned out to be case of removing the tick from the FIFO setting (http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17169&sid=0dbdb1f878b278a481a2998c613cf107)

It did fail to actually burn the DVD, ERROR: Failed while running growisofs, but it had created all the files, so I burnt them myself. The burning problem was either due to permissions or the disc not being blank ( I know, I selected to force overwrite), we’ll see what happens the next time.

Edit: OK, with a blank disc it was able to write the DVD, but then I got unable to reload tray: No such file or directory. The DVD did burn and is playable. The error seems to be a bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dvd+rw-tools/+bug/615382), but as it isn’t causing me a problem, I won’t worry about it for the moment.

A few months ago we picked up a usb TV tuner at Costco and that got me thinking about a PC based solution for the problem. About 9 years ago when we first attached a PC to our HiFi system, it was a very low specification and although we had a TV tuner card, the PC wasn’t powerful enough to record anything usable. As time went on, the PC has been replaced a few times and about 5 years ago we installed a piece of software called Meedio that we used to manage/play our video and audio files. There was also Meedio TV to record from TV, but we never explored it as the PC was still fairly low spec. At the time we chose Meedio, I had been aware of a Linux based program called Mythtv, but due to the fact that the PC was low spec and I was more familiar with Windows, this was discounted.

Roll forward to this year and I explored the options again. This time Mythtv sounded worth investigating, so I downloaded a copy of Mythbuntu, this is a Ubuntu Linux operating system bundled with Mythtv. I am currently using Ubuntu on a PC providing filtered internet access for the kids, so was more familiar with this than any other distribution. Using a 120GB disc in the old Dell desktop we replaced 18 months ago, I installed Mythbuntu and started trying it out. In the past few years Linux installations have become a breeze. My first installation was Slackware 2 back in 1995, and that was a command line experience that was challenging. Now, you just put the CD in and get lead through the install just like a Windows operating system installation. Anyway, after less than 30 minutes, I had the operating system installed, Mythtbuntu configured with my usb TV tuner and the first TV programs recording. I set the program guide to pick up from the cable guide and that gave me a few days available programming.

One of the first things I experimented with was changing the program guide to get its data from Radio Times using the xmltv program. I found configuration information for UK xmltv on the Mythtv website to help with that. Once I got this working, I then had 14 days of program guide which gave a lot more flexibility in programming. At this point I was only able to record Freeview channels.

Having proved that the concept worked, I set about gathering the required parts. The existing PC attached to our HiFi was an old HP Evo small form factor which would enable me to install 2 PCI cards to provide the connections to cable and aerial. I selected a Hauppauge Nova-T 500 dual digital card to allow recording/viewing of 2 Freeview channels. To connect to the cable box, I needed an analogue tuner with composite input, so a Hauppauge PVR 150 card was selected. As usual, my thoughts turned to Ebay as the source for all of the parts and quickly acquired the needed cards. While contemplating the plan for how I would build the system while providing the minimum downtime for the existing functions for the HIFi PC, I concluded it was best to get a second Evo SFF PC and build the system in that and then swap once it was setup and working. I bought a used 160GB disc off ebay (not a good idea – more later) and started to assemble the new system. Needless to say this was only a week before we went on holiday, so it wasn’t going to be in full operation before we went.

Hardware

• HP Evo SFF PC (2.53GB Processor, 1.2GB RAM, on-board sound and graphics)
• Seagate 160GB IDE Hard drive
• Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB PCI tuner card
• Hauppauge WinTv PVR-150 tuner card

Initially, I installed the PVR 150 in the bottom PCI slot and the T 500 in the top PCI slot, however the system would only boot sometimes that way around, so I swapped them over.

I installed Mythbuntu from the CD using the Mythbuntu installation guide for help. The last step of Mythbuntu installation launches the Mythtv backup setup. This is where you configure the cards for recording and the locations for storing your files. Mythtv software is split into 2 halves; there is the backup that controls the cards and the recordings and the frontend that displays the recordings and is the user interface. As I intended to possibley attach multiple frontends to this backend, I set a static IP address for my network during the configuration. As I’m in the UK I selected PAL-I for TV format and left the channel frequency table at try-all. Local timezone was set to auto. All the other settings in the general section was left as default.

Next setting up the cards. The order that the cards are added to the system detirmines the priority of the card. It took me a few goes to get the cards working and then get them in the right order ( I have currently have cards 7,8 and 12). First add the first channel of the digital card:

• DVB DTV Capture card (v3.x)
• /dev/dvb/adaptor0/frontend0

finish. Then add the second channel

• DVB DTV Capture card (v3.x)
• /dev/dvb/adaptor1/frontend0

finish. Then add the analogue card:

• IVTV MPEG-2 encoder card
• /dev/video0
• Composite1

finish. Once the cards are added, press Esc to return to the main menu.

Setting video sources. I created a source called Cable and another called Freeview. Both were initially set to use the transmitted guide only (EIT). Once the sources are added, press Esc to return to the main menu.

Setting input connections. This is where you connect the card to the source. For DVB adaptor0/frontend0 I selected Freeview as the source and selected scan for channels. This then scanned and populated the channel table with the Freeview channels. I set DVB adaptor1/frontend0 to Freeview as well, but didn’t re-scan for channels. MPEG /dev/video0 Composite1 was set to Cable source. I scanned for channels but shouldn’t have.

The storage directories can remain the defaults for the moment.

The backend is basically setup at the moment. Press Esc to exit the backend setup menu and allow mythfilldatabase to run.

Run the Mythtv Frontend and hopefully you will have some channels and be able to change between them.

The next thing I did was to configure the program guide to get its data from Radio Times. As mentioned above, I found the configuration information for UK xmltv on the Mythtv website helped get this working. I went back into the Mytv backend setup and configured mythfilldatabase to run daily early in the morning. I found if I ran mythfilldatabase from the command line, it worked fine, however if Mythtv ran it then an error occured. It failed with error 512. I found the following on the unbuntu forums http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=624517 which gave the the answer. The configuration was setup in my account, but not for the mythtv account that was running the software. The solution that I chose was to link the configuration files in my account into the mythtv account

• cd /home/mythtv/.mythtv
• sudo ln -s /home/ian/.mythtv/Cable.xmltv
• sudo ln -s /home/ian/.mythtv/Freeview.xmltv

Changing the permissions on my files so that mythtv could read and write to them resolved the mythfilldatabase error. There was another error when filling the database:
XMLTV requires a Date::Manip timezone of +0000 to work properly.
I found the answer to this bug here http://www.artificialworlds.net/freeguide/FAQ/DateManipError and following the instructions downloaded the Debian packages to resolve this problem. Finally to resolve a permissions problem with the cache file, (~/.xmltv/cache) I changed permissions to write for other. At this point xmltv would download the guide information automatically from Radio Times every morning.

This was the state the system was left in when we went on holiday. It was scheduled to record all the Freeview programs we wanted while on holiday in parallel with the DVD recorder. When we came back it had performed perfectly, so it was time to swap it into full use.

That’s for another post.

So I rang them up and renegotiated my package. I have upgraded my broadband to a 20MB connection, removed the sports channels, added Caller ID and am still £15 a month better off.

I had to enter into a new 12 month contract with VirginMedia, that’s not a problem, I’ve been with them (and NTL before them) for over 10 years. The moral of this story is not to assume that you are on the best deal available, ring up and let them work out the best package for you.

I thought I’d check out my connection. The image above is my 10MB connection just after I got off the phone. It took overnight for the Caller ID to be added and a day and a half for the broadband and TV changes. Below is my new 20MB connection.

Quite a way off of the doubling I was expecting, but maybe Saturday’s a bad day to test.

What, you’re still reading. I am surprised!

OK, here is some background. HP Web JetAdmin is software that monitors network attached printers and provides alerts when certain conditions are met. For example, if the toner is low or there is a paper jam, it can alert you, allowing you to be proactive with support. It means that you can purchase toners when alerted rather than holding a large stock or being caught on the hop when all the colour printers are out and no-one has mentioned it until 5 minutes before a critical print job.

Anyway, we had been using this software for some years at work without any problems. You would just get the alert email with a summary of the issue and a link allowing you to open the admin interface in a web browser. Recently, we had some major network changes which resulted in the IP addresses being changed for all our network devices (including computers and printers). After the changes, and rediscovering the new printers (some of their details changed as well), the Web JetAdmin software continued to work as before. Unfortunately, this also included the link to open the admin interface. It was still using the old IP address which was no longer valid.

After ‘googling’ for the solution without luck, I tried several approaches, some of which got me into a bit of a mess with the database. In the end I got the software re-installed, only to find it was still hooked into the old database and the old information.

To cut to the chase, the solution is really simple. In the c:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP Web Jetadmin 10\WJABackupRestore folder run the backup script to produce a backup set. I had to modify the location of ‘set OSQL’ in the script due to a non-standard installation.

Once you have the backup, open the file ‘HP.Imaging.Wjp.Core.WebServer.config.xml‘ in the Settings\WjaService\config folder and modify the IP address to the new address.

e.g.
<property name=”HostIPv4Address”>
<type>HP.Imaging.Wjp.Sdk.Core.Framework.ConfigurationItemString</type>
<value>192.168.50.125</value>
</property>

Run the restore script and allow it to overwrite the existing database. I also had to modify the location of ‘set OSQL’ in this script due to my non-standard installation.

Your emails will now contain the correct link to launch the admin interface.

Hopefully this will save someone a lot of time.

Dell do a range of computers for Small Business, called Vostro which are very well specified and which also offered the option to ‘downgrade’ from Vista to XP for £10. This seemed a very good solution to me. We specified a Vostro 220 mini tower system with a dual output graphics card to match the functionality we already had. This also became the point at which we changed from a pair of 17″ CRT monitors to a pair of 19″ widescreen TFT monitors. The thought was to re-arrange our desk to minimise the items on it. To accomplish this we bought a Belkin OmniView Pro2 KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch which would allow us to run both the new computer and Jo’s laptop sharing one of the screens and the other screen only attached to the new system.

When the system arrived, I was in for a surprise with the dual outputs on the graphics card. I was expecting a pair of DVI (white digital connector on the left) outputs. I should have checked the specifications of the ATI Radeon HD 3650 card that Dell provided more carefully. It had one DVI output (which I promptly had to convert back to VGA to attach to the KVM switch) and a Display Port and HDMI output. I had to get a HDMI to DVI cable to attach the second monitor.

I had planned to move my Creative Labs Audigy 2 soundcard and Live Drive (drive bay mounted additional inputs including Firewire which I use for my negative scanner) from our old system to the new computer. Installing and configuring the sound card was easy and then I tried to install the drive bay expansion. The old system had the required Molex power connection (white connector with 4 wires) to power the expansion device, however the new system only had SATA power connectors for the drives, even for the DVD drive. I had to buy a convertor cable to change from SATA power to Molex power before I could install it. Then when I tried to reattach the front of the case, I found that it was designed for optical devices in the drive bays and didn’t provide a full 5.25 drive bay hole. I could have tried to hack the case to make it fit, but in the end replaced the sound card with a Creative Labs Audigy 2ZS with external expansion. This still required the SATA to Molex power convertor to provide the additional power to the sound card to power the external box, but is a better solution.

I purchased a second hard disc this week to enable RAID 1 on our Vostro 220 mini tower. RAID 1 is when the same data is written to 2 discs, meaning that the discs are mirrored. This provides redundancy if one of the hard disc fails; the computer will carry one working as normal. You then just replace the failed disc and re-create the mirror to restore the fault tolerance. We didn’t buy the second hard disc at the time we bought the system from Dell, for a couple of reasons. First, we were spending enough at the time and it wasn’t necessary to make the system work. Secondly, Dell wanted £130 for an additional 500GB hard disc, but sourcing it seperately would be about £50.

I installed the second drive in the lower hard disc bay in the tower and attached the available power connector to it. There wasn’t a spare SATA data cable attached to the motherboard, so I had to use a SATA cable from a USB to IDE/SATA kit that I had. This only need to be a short cable as the motherboard connections were almost under the hard disc. After restarting the computer, I entered the BIOS (F2 on startup), the second hard disc was already detected and then I changed the SATA Mode to RAID from AHCI (under Integrated Peripherals). I saved the settings and restarted the computer. Windows informed me that new hardware was detected and wanted to restart, so I let it. The next time it started I ran the Intel Matrix Storage Console. I switched to Advanced Mode and saw that both drives were showing (the original on Port 0 and the new one on Port 2).  I selected Actions, Create RAID Volume from Existing Hard Drive. I then selected RAID 1 (mirroring), the other option RAID 0 (striping) creates a single volume striped across both discs. This gives a single large partition, but in my opinion is worse than two separate discs because if one drive fails, you will loose all data stored on both discs instead of just loosing one disc worth. Anyway back to the RAID 1 creation, I then selected the disc on PORT 0 as the source and the one on Port 2 as the member disc and let it get on with creating the mirror. It took just under 3 hours to mirror the existing 500GB drive. I am now protected if my system disc fails, which is a good place to be.

I originally got myself a Bluetooth headset. Initially, I had problems connecting the headset to the Bluetooth on my laptop. I upgraded the Bluetooth stack to the latest Toshiba stack and then was able to successfully connect the headset to my laptop and configure Skype to use it. However, shortly afterwards, the headset locked up completely and I was unable to use it.

While looking around for an alternate handset, I came across the Kensington Vo200 Bluetooth Internet phone. This is a PCMCIA sized telephone handset. It plugs into a laptop’s PCMCIA card slot to charge and then connects to the laptop using Bluetooth.

You have to install the software that comes with it for the charging to work. Once I installed the software, it told me that it only worked with the Widcomm Bluetooth stack. Great that the instructions don’t mention that. After googling the problem, I came across a user comment on the Expansys-usa website, commenting that the Kensington Vo200 works with the Toshiba Bluetooth stack. It mentioned that the charging light didn’t come on for about 2.5 hours, and I found this to be accurate. After the handset was charged, I was able to create a new connection to it using the Toshiba Bluetooth Settings.

It was then possible to change the Skype audio settings to use the Bluetooth wave audio device. The handset gave clear audio when used as a handset. In testing, I found the handsfree operation to be noisy. When charging, the handset sticks out of the PCMCIA socket about 1/4 inch. All in all, for just over £10 on Ebay for a new handset, I think it was a good buy.

I initally set this to my local NTP server with a backup on an online one. However, there is no way to manually set the time initially. When you power on the router the date is set to 1st January 2005. The problem with this is that using NTP will only correct a small time difference; 3.5 years is a big large to correct.

I had almost given up on resolving it when I thought to try connecting using telnet to the router.
The user name and password for the telnet session are the default admin credentials (not the ones I had changed for the web interface). Once connected, press Ctrl C, then type Cli (Capital C is important). This gets you to a unix type shell. Then cd config cd sntpc show This will confirm that the time is sychronised and gets around the large time differnece. Then type exit and logout.

The bonus of fixing the time is the firewall logging now works properly.

I wasn’t able to reply on Tuesday as I was replacing a failing hard disc and reinstalling Windows XP on a laptop for a colleague at work. I’d forgotten how long it takes from plain XP, through Service Pack 2 and then downloading and installing the remaining 91 security patches. Still, after all that I was able to install Avast as a free Anti-Virus program and Open Office as a free office suite (much better than MS Works that was previously on the system).

On Wednesday at work, I got called to look at a printer with a paper jam. Usually a simple fix, in the worse case maybe a pair of tweezers to remove the last bit of torn paper. The printer was an old, but very serviceable LaserJet 4000, not very heavy use, so plenty of life left in it. Of course, no maintenance on it, its not worth it for a printer that’s getting on for 9-10 years, so if I didn’t fix it, we would replace it…it would be cheaper than getting it fixed. After 10 minutes at the printer location pulling scraps of paper out of it, I took it back to my desk. I ended up unscrewing just about every bit that would come off, before I could finally get the tweezers to the last bits of crinkled paper and pull it out. All in all, I removed a piece of paper about the size of my hand, but it was finally working again. Just time to get it back on the shop-floor and get the toner off my hands before going home.

One of my memorable tech troubles was a few years ago, I can’t remember if it was on a Tuesday or not. We were upgrading our local SMS server (used for software and patch distribution) from Windows Server 2000 to Windows Server 2003. On the face of it all the hardware was supported, so there shouldn’t be any issues. Any applicable updates had been deployed successfully to the client PCs in the morning, so the afternoon was an acceptable timeframe for the upgrade. The upgrade was run and completed successfully. Big sigh of relief when the logon screen came up. However, the network card didn’t detect on logon, so the server was shut down and restarted. Watching the message that no RAID array was found was not what I wanted to see. For those non-technical reading this, a RAID array is a collection of discs that your data is spread across to provide redundancy is case of a single disc failure, if it couldn’t find the RAID array it meant it couldn’t find any data on the server, in essence I had a box with some pretty lights, but not serving its purpose.

So, some urgent searching of the Dell site and Google uncovered the answer. I should have upgraded the firmware on the RAID controller before upgrading to Windows 2003. The firmware is the program that controls how the RAID controller works. On investigation, it was several versions older than that needed to work with Windows 2003, oops. Needless to say, the version that was currently installed wouldn’t upgrade directly to the version I needed in one go, so several updates and restarts later, all was working well again. No downtime as far as the use of the server went, but got the adrenalin going. The moral of this story, ‘if the instructions states there are prerequisites like firmware and driver updates, there is a reasonable chance they are not optional’. From it I learnt to carefully read and follow instructions when upgrading operating systems – especially on a server in a production environment.

So, a bit later than Tuesday, but there’s a triumph and a trouble that became a triumph.

The data on the discs includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25 million people; 15 million children and 10 million adults.

We are now being advised to carefully check all transactions on bank statements. It’s madness that the entire database should be copied to disc and posted. Surely in this age of technology, a secure datalink could have been established between the two locations, after all they aren’t small companies.