myth to mac
Sat Feb 2 12:39:40 EST 2013
mythtv stores its recordings in files with human-unfriendly file names based on the channel source (which isn't the same as the channel's number) and the start time (yyyymmddhhmmss). People do better with the show title and episode name. I installed a script that goes through the recordings database and links the file names into several alternate formats in another directory tree. This is making it easier to copy the files to my laptop (I don't have to use the web browser.), and I was hoping to use it to copy files to an external disk to free up more space. But the mythtv server is not recognizing my 4TB external disk. ☹
At first I thought the USB front-panel sockets might be disconnected or bad (I've been using only the 2 sockets on the back, for the infrared remote receiver and the mouse), but I moved the mouse from the back to the front and it works. I've just tried connecting an older USB drive and it's recognized and shows files and the appropriate amount of free space. I guess this server, which has not been patched in a couple of years (There were mentions of updates breaking MythTV, and this server is not used for surfing or email.), may need some updates to be compatible with USB 3.0 - although I thought the new hardware was supposed to be backwards compatible with the old standard.
In any case, it throws a wrench into my plans to free up disk space before I go to NC for the rest of the weekend. (Which isn't all that much time, since I haven't left VA yet.)
Sunday 23:54
One of the things I was stumbling through today was copying files from my Ubuntu laptop to Mom's Macs. I wanted to copy some TV shows to the external drive I use for her backups. It seems the Mac-native partition format on the disk is not writeable from Linux, so I couldn't copy the files directly from my laptop to her drive. What I'm doing now is scp from my laptop to her laptop, where the external disk is mounted. I tried copying ssh to her iMac first, but that had much slower throughput - older computer? slower WiFi? farther from the router?
I put the iMac on the WiFi today for the first time. Mom never wanted it on the network because she was afraid someone would get to her files. (Her laptop was on the network, but nothing more personal than email was on it; no business or tax files.) I installed Firefox, but the latest version compatible with her OS was FF 3.6.28 (FF 18 is current). The iMac has MacOSX 10.4.11; it might possibly take 10.6.8, depending on whether it's an early or late 2007 model. This still won't take it to the current MacOS, and this is why I left Mac for Linux. They orphan perfectly good older hardware. They want to force me to buy newer hardware when I'm happy with what I've got. (And if your hardware can run the latest OS, but you're several versions behind, you can't just install the current version, they want you to (buy and) upgrade through all the intermediate versions.) There's only one Mac app I miss, and I wouldn't have had time to enjoy it anyway.
Back to tonight's copying - the first file that eventually made it accross "is not a movie file", according to QuickTime. The Unix cksum utility matches on Linux and Mac, so the copy is good; there must be some magic Apple bits not set someplace. And that is the downside of life with a GUI. You do something outside of their expectations and all sorts of things that should be simple stop working. Hmmm, QuickTime thinks the 2nd file is 9 seconds long. I think QuickTime just doesn't understand this file format. Time to install VNC.... (Next trip. It's past my bedtime to be on the road early tomorrow.)
I did do backups of both of Mom's computers today. (There is a 3rd computer, but it's old, running MacOS9, and doesn't have an Ethernet port. (Yeah, that old.))
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/582271.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
mythtv stores its recordings in files with human-unfriendly file names based on the channel source (which isn't the same as the channel's number) and the start time (yyyymmddhhmmss). People do better with the show title and episode name. I installed a script that goes through the recordings database and links the file names into several alternate formats in another directory tree. This is making it easier to copy the files to my laptop (I don't have to use the web browser.), and I was hoping to use it to copy files to an external disk to free up more space. But the mythtv server is not recognizing my 4TB external disk. ☹
At first I thought the USB front-panel sockets might be disconnected or bad (I've been using only the 2 sockets on the back, for the infrared remote receiver and the mouse), but I moved the mouse from the back to the front and it works. I've just tried connecting an older USB drive and it's recognized and shows files and the appropriate amount of free space. I guess this server, which has not been patched in a couple of years (There were mentions of updates breaking MythTV, and this server is not used for surfing or email.), may need some updates to be compatible with USB 3.0 - although I thought the new hardware was supposed to be backwards compatible with the old standard.
In any case, it throws a wrench into my plans to free up disk space before I go to NC for the rest of the weekend. (Which isn't all that much time, since I haven't left VA yet.)
Sunday 23:54
One of the things I was stumbling through today was copying files from my Ubuntu laptop to Mom's Macs. I wanted to copy some TV shows to the external drive I use for her backups. It seems the Mac-native partition format on the disk is not writeable from Linux, so I couldn't copy the files directly from my laptop to her drive. What I'm doing now is scp from my laptop to her laptop, where the external disk is mounted. I tried copying ssh to her iMac first, but that had much slower throughput - older computer? slower WiFi? farther from the router?
I put the iMac on the WiFi today for the first time. Mom never wanted it on the network because she was afraid someone would get to her files. (Her laptop was on the network, but nothing more personal than email was on it; no business or tax files.) I installed Firefox, but the latest version compatible with her OS was FF 3.6.28 (FF 18 is current). The iMac has MacOSX 10.4.11; it might possibly take 10.6.8, depending on whether it's an early or late 2007 model. This still won't take it to the current MacOS, and this is why I left Mac for Linux. They orphan perfectly good older hardware. They want to force me to buy newer hardware when I'm happy with what I've got. (And if your hardware can run the latest OS, but you're several versions behind, you can't just install the current version, they want you to (buy and) upgrade through all the intermediate versions.) There's only one Mac app I miss, and I wouldn't have had time to enjoy it anyway.
Back to tonight's copying - the first file that eventually made it accross "is not a movie file", according to QuickTime. The Unix cksum utility matches on Linux and Mac, so the copy is good; there must be some magic Apple bits not set someplace. And that is the downside of life with a GUI. You do something outside of their expectations and all sorts of things that should be simple stop working. Hmmm, QuickTime thinks the 2nd file is 9 seconds long. I think QuickTime just doesn't understand this file format. Time to install VNC.... (Next trip. It's past my bedtime to be on the road early tomorrow.)
I did do backups of both of Mom's computers today. (There is a 3rd computer, but it's old, running MacOS9, and doesn't have an Ethernet port. (Yeah, that old.))
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/582271.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]