MythTV tv output problems
 

I have been setting up mythtv on Fedora core 4 and everything has been going pretty well. Using PVR350, GForce 4 with svideo out for display. I had everything working except the svideo out it was displaying the tv on my monitor sound was working, etc. After I added lines to get my svideo out working the problems started. when I boot up I have video on both the computer monitor and tv. Myth boots up just fine. Everything in Myth appears to be working just fine except when I try to play the tv. My screen just goes black, I still have sound and I can hear it change channels or exit back to the main menu, but I have no video. I can no longer jump back to the KDE desktop to look at the terminal windows I have open to look at error messages I just have no video. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have tried to go back and remove all the things that were added for the svideo out and I am still having no luck getting it back.

Thanks,

John

I don't have any specific help for you. But a general suggestion would be: When your video goes out and you can't look at error logfiles, go to a different computer and ssh into your MythTV box and check the logfiles remotely. You can probably recover by logging in as root via ssh and running something like "/etc/init.d/gdm stop; /etc/init.d/gdm start" (assuming you're using gdm, of course).

Also, make sure you changed your sync rates to be compatible with your TV in xorg.conf (or XF86Config-4). Otherwise, you might damage your TV set.

Did you save a backup copy of xorg.conf/XF86Config-4 before starting to make changes? When I'm messing with this file I always keep backup copies and also set my system to default boot to runlevel 1 (no X startup) in /etc/inittab. Then I manually move to other runlevels with "telinit". This makes recovery simpler if you get carried away and jump off the cliff with your modifications. I would recommend using RCS or some other simple source control method to keep a backup chain of every modification you make to every system config file. This makes it trivial to see what you did, when you did it, why you did it, and recover from it if things got messed up. Keep a Knoppix CD handy, and you're all set to save yourself (usually!) It sounds like your situation isn't so bad that you need to boot Knoppix to (conveniently) recover, but it can easily get to that point when you start messing with X. Especially when you start installing drivers.

I was digging around in my xorg.conf file and the driver it is trying to use for the gforce4 is nv, when I change it to nvidia I get a nvidia splash screen to come up when the computer starts to boot, but X keeps crashing whenever I try to boot with the nvidia drivers. If I change it back to nv it will boot just fine. I will post the output this evening if I can.

John