Topic: VMWare, sme server, and Mythtv

[imcintyre]

Has anyone tried to run mythtv front/back end (mythbuntu) and sme server on vmware? I'm trying to cut down on the number of computers that are running. I have my home server which is very lightly txed, a test server, and now a mythbuntu set up. Invariably these get left on all the time and I'd like to cut back somewhat.

I have seen the myth back end install but as I said above I would like to use vmware to cut back on the number of pc's running all the time. The test server is already running sme 7.3 with vmware and a couple of virtual servers on it.

I was thinking of the following;

modem
  |
box with vmware on top of smeserver
  |                                      |
virtual smeserver               Mythbuntu
  |                                      |
wireless router                      T.V.
  |
LAN

Any encouragement/discouragement is welcome. Thanks in advance

[Arnie]

Depends on your tuners. IIRC, VMWare won't give you access to PCI tuners on the host machine. USB tuners should be O.K.

I remember seeing a post by Duncan about getting mythbackend to run on SMEServer. It involved installing 2 X libraries as dependencies. Do a search, it might be a solution without using VMWare.

[cactus]

Depends on your tuners. IIRC, VMWare won't give you access to PCI tuners on the host machine. USB tuners should be O.K.

I remember seeing a post by Duncan about getting mythbackend to run on SMEServer. It involved installing 2 X libraries as dependencies. Do a search, it might be a solution without using VMWare.

Instructions are in the wiki, hardware cards can not be accessed in a virtual environment (not in VMWare AFAIK).

[Arnie]

Instructions are in the wiki, hardware cards can not be accessed in a virtual environment (not in VMWare AFAIK).

USB DVB-[T|S|C] sticks should be O.K., since you can attach them to the VM. VMWare has had USB2 support for a while now.

I have a Compro VideoMate U300 I can try to get working on a VM. I'll give it a shot and post back to let you know.

[imcintyre]

That would be great, I was just about to buy a pci tuner but this changes things somewhat. Knowing that a usb tuner would work would be invaluable.

[Arnie]

O.K. I thought I'd cheat and just get the U300 working in a Windows XP VM first. XP sees the U300, but when I try to install the drivers, the installer just freezes copying the mod7700.sys file. I'll give Knoppmyth a try tonight and report back.

I really want this to work so I can have a virtual MythTV environment to test new KnoppMyth releases. Up until now I've had to use fake tuners to test functionality.

[Arnie]

Success!!

I've got the U300 working in a KnoppMyth VM!

It recognised tuner, scanned the transports and detected the channels and I can watch live TV.

[imcintyre]

congratulations!
what are you using for sound/graphics cards?

[Arnie]

Well........

This was just a Proof-Of-Concept to see if it could be done. I said I can watch live TV, but I didn't say it was pretty!!!!!

As the OP stated, he just wants to run a backend, so sound and video shouldn't be an issue.

Having said that, If I run the VM fullscreen, it is watchable. VMWare passes audio through to the default wave device via DirectX (I'm testing this on a WinXP machine) and with the VMWare video drivers installed on the VM via VMWare-Tools, video is fairly good when in full screen. I only tested SD resolution though, as my test machine only has a 15" LCD monitor (1024x768).

I'm off to get some sleep now......