I started using the 'roll your own' mythtv long time ago, had to learn a lot just to get it to work... then I 'discovered' mythdora and installed on a new machine, and it worked beautifully....
I learned so much simply by reading your scripts, understanding how it's done..
I showed my wife how easy it was to record her fav shows....I soon lost that machine to my wife. It started with a 180GB disk, and now, years later, it has nearly 4TB of recordings. She loves it, will not tolerate any type of error, and as long as I leave it alone, it works.
She liked it so much, she had me build another system for the kids / living room as 'hers', could not be 'fiddled' with.

Your work is simply magic to to uninitiated, it has taught me many things, and added happiness to this one person's life.

Hat's off to you and Jared.
Peace be with you

As I grow older, I find myself in the same predicament - So many things to do and so little time.

No matter what happens in the end, I want to express my sincere THANKS to all who worked on (and perhaps continue to work on) the MythDora project.

I 'cut my teeth' on MythTV using Jarod's "MythTV on Fedora" guide several years ago... And I'm still running Fedora on all the Myth boxes in the house. The only change I made over the years was to start building from source instead of using packages. ;-)

Jeff

So what is the plan for Mythdora going forward? I love the way it is set up for the menu system and such. Can a "How To" simply be documented on how to install/setup the latest version of CentOSMyth or MythOS through packages or what not?

I also agree with the possibility of add-on packages and scripts. I feel that doing the initial install is the easy part..pulling all the packages and pieces together is the headache I'm looking to avoid. That and I want to stay with a Redhat based system.

Please let me know if I can help. I'm no developer, but if you have any sysadmin type needs, I should be able to help out.

I run 3 frontends and 1 backend, it all works great and I'm always finding new uses for it.

Thanks again for everything you all have done in the past.

Kids certainly divert ones time.
This is another example of the debt-based monetary system disabling people to be productive and creative in such things as this. Anyway...

I've followed Jarod's setup since before he joined the Mythdora team so I'd still be appreciative of that step by step approach if it meant having a good stable system like Mythdora in the end.

Frell...and
I've been waiting for the next grandeos update.

I'd like to continue to run a Fedora-downstream MythTV setup. CentOS, RHEL, or SL shouldn't be a big deal. The value-add these days isn't installing the OS, it's integration.

RPMFusion already has most of the packages for MythTV needs. Where would be a good place for those interested to talk about setting up a 'groupinstall'-able MythTV setup?

This board is fine for what it is, but development discussions on here would be painful.

I don't really understand the scope of work required, but I'd like to hear about it from those who know.

Thanks for all your work over the years! I joined you at the release of 10.21 and have followed and grown my mythtv system from there.

I'd agree that there's little point sticking with fedora. I think a build script that takes RH/Centos/SL from fresh install to mythtv installed would be great, and would shift OS maintenance and support off you and team, and move more to a repackaging of existing code instead of writing and modifying large lumps of code.

Perhaps a script that updates kernel, ALSA etc to a known stable with DVB support and installs mythtv to create a reliable installation.

My sort of code runs on PIC chips not computers so I can't help there but happy to be around in the forums to support other users with the knowledge I've acquired over the years.

I used Mythdora in the Past was was checking in to see where it stood. But alas ...

Well I have been working on a Fedora 15 LXDE myth environment and I was considering packaging up for learning purposes. I will have to touch base once I have the time.

This should be posted on the MythTv-users email list. Maybe others will come out of the wood work?

My heart sank when I read this. It's very sad. I realize you have a life other than computers and probably would rather do that than this. I really really appreciated just being able to throw a CD / DVD in and having EVERYTHING available and working! It made it all so painless compared to the days of installing one package at a time. I could focus on getting the remote working, which usually happened a month after I started.

Yes, definitely at least some sort of package that would drag in all the other goodies would be great, plus the web interface for configuration. I'd be willing to help test.

Pisani,

I have been using Mythdora for a couple of years and used CentOS as the base for a custom build myth prior to that. I have a lot of experience with the depth of components in CentOS. I don't have a great deal of time, but I might be able to help out. Is your current development work in Subversion somewhere?

My current system is need of updating and was considering going back to my custom built CentOS based install.

Brandon Saunders

This is sad news, but its also understandable. I have been the beneficiary of this great distro for several years now, with lots of WAF karma you guys deserve far more than I. I hope this isn't the end of "mythdora" or this community, but if it is, then a BIG THANK YOU to all who have helped make it so!!

I regret I can not personally contribute more time or effort to help the project, but I will gladly donate some funding to see you out with a bang, OR help to revitalize and keep the lights on!?!? Is there a paypal link anywhere??

Now I "know" you did not send a power surge just get me back in here to see that mythdora might shut, however as it did happen I am glad (even though it will take 6+hours to rebuild my raid array).

It would be a shame if mythdora should fall.

Jan 2009 I installed my current system and this is the first time I am having any truly serious issues with it. That kind of stability is missing from a lot of stuff available out there. I have been using Mythdora for years and hope to use it for many more.

So I propose a few things:

1) Send a PM to all the accounts signed up here. With such great stability it can be easy to take for granted that everything will just keep running. I don't have the technical skills to help however some that do might just be reminded that Mythdora is here at a time when they are looking to step into a new project.

2) Everyone who sees this here and wants to keep mythdora going should rebroadcast it. After I am done this I will mention it on the message groups I am a part of. I don't use twitter or facebook but I am sure some of you do, so go make a positive fuss. Who knows maybe a sponsor will come along and offer to help with support costs.(and yes with such an enterprise I would consider child care a support cost)

3) If possible please choose limited activity vs closing the project. With the releases that exist at the moment there is a lot of functionality that is provided. Even if it is just minimal website maintenance. Life will continue to change for yourself and others who have been involved. Any of you may stumble upon a life change that provides the contacts, time or drive to work on pushing this project even further than it has achieved.

This project has helped me to learn more about using linux and a variety of technologies that I may not have looked at with out it.

I really hope we can find more options than the ones you currently face.

Sincerely and enthusiastically,
Justin Perreault

I would completely abandon trying to do anything with Fedora. The release cycle is ridiculous and it's not always a very stable platform to run MythTV on. Fedora reminds me of what used to be called Mandrake Cooker, bleeding edge, buggy and things guaranteed to be broken. The only way we got 24.1 for a year old version of Fedora was because YOU compiled it for us as a courtesy, your schedule from the sound of it would not tolerate doing this over and over for us. On the other hand, EL6 based stuff including Scientific Linux, stock is limited to the 2.6.32 kernel and Alsa 1.0.21 but this has a far easier solution to make it work for myth than trying to keep up with Fedora. I had to compile much newer versions of Alsa against the MD12 kernel in order to be able to have HDMI audio in the Nvidia 460GTX based card I have. The 2.6.32 kernel may be a bit old for newer DVB hardware or even more mature drivers for hardware that 2.6.32 barely supports out of the box.

Mythdora Tools renamed to ELMyth Tools, Scientific Linux with a newer kernel and alsa stuff would make sense to me. Even just the tools, a newer kernel and alsa packages would get us in business.

I came to Mythdora a complete punter. I knew nothing of Linux or mythtv other than I wanted to give it a go. Mythdora was perfect for me and your teams help has been invaluable. From that start on a patched together machine (to demonstrate to the wife) I now have a multi-tuner system that acts as a samba server and distributes media around the house. I don’t think i could have done that with any other system. Sadly, I don’t have the upper end knowledge to keep this alive either.

Looking back, it was the lack of choice that attracted me to Mythdora.
Every time I tried to read about mythtv the article offered me thousands of options on how to do it and then explored each one till my head spun.

Mythdora's 'install and go' was the perfect way for me to jump in the deep end.

From my perspective, I think the best way to go would be to work on this strength and have either a static package that the user installs after they have installed the latest Fedora offering - say a simple 'yum install myth-for-fedora'. You could then have all the other stuff as dependencies that get installed / updated along the way. This would reduce the one-step install mythdora is famous for, into a 2 step process, but keep an up-to-date fedora system.

The other option is a list of the packages needed to build the complete system. It wouldn’t have to do it all for the user, but a simple cut and paste list of yum commands - and their expected output would help newbies, I think. If the first package was webadmin, the rest could be done from the couch with a laptop.
It would be great if it included all the things that I love about mythdora, WebAdmin, VLC, SMB, Handbrake etc those extra packages have made exploring the possibilities fun and helped me fine tune the perfect system for us.

What ever you choose, no doubt it will be as good as your previous work.

Thanks again to the team.
Good luck in the future.

AN

This is sad news, but understandable. I would offer assistance, but I don't have the level of technical knowledge (or the time with 2 young kids).

I started out using Fedora and following Jarod's instructions on his web page and moved to Mythdora from about version 3 (just playing around) and finally replaced my PVR with version 5.

I think the add-on approach would be a good idea. To be honest, I'm not sure that the Mythdora users are really a newbie crowd. Perhaps people like me could contribute more to a wiki to help people get things running than we could to building a distro. Whether it's a RHEL base or Fedora base is a good question. I personally don't mind the upgrade every couple of years, but people may expect the add-on for every Fedora release. Is that something that would be feasible? I haven't really used RHEL with the repositories available, will the range of packages keep people happy? I have a few other things running on my Myth box (XBMC, Squeezebox Server etc).

I would probably be happy just to have a well documented method of installing on Fedora with what was included in Mythdora and to have this forum stay alive as a place for Fedora MythTV users to get help.

I suppose there are 2 other distros - MythBuntu and LinHES (formerly KnoppMyth) that provide a similar service. I have tried MythBuntu and while it's not bad I prefer MythDora. MythBuntu users seem to be always upgrading and trying to work out why the sound or LIRC no longer works.

Thanks for all the efforts of Ryan, Jarod and Dennis and all the best
Ben