First of all you need to install all sorts of packages that are needed to compile the drivers. I’m not sure whether you need all of these, but if you install these you should be okay.

I did everything below as root.

apt-get install fakeroot build-essential
apt-get install crash kexec-tools makedumpfile kernel-wedge
apt-get install git-core libncurses5 libncurses5-dev
apt-get install libelf-dev libdw-dev asciidoc binutils-dev

do uname -a to get the current kernel version you are using.

root@clumix:~# uname -a
Linux clumix 2.6.35-28-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 1 14:39:03 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

now install the headers for that version. Example:

apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic

wget http://www.medianow.com.au/data/Linux4Quad2.zip

unzip the package by running this

unzip Linux4Quad2.zip

You should then have a directory called “Linux4Quad” – change to this directory

cd Linux4Quad

Untar the tar-bzip file in this directory.

tar jxvf digitalnow-quad.tar.bz2

You should now have a directory called “digitalnow-quad” – change to this directory.

cd digitalnow-quad

And now there is yet another tar-bzip file to uncompress. Don’t run the install.sh script as it won’t work.

tar jxvf v4l_dvb_digitalnow.tar.bz2

Now you need to modify the “.version” file under the “v4l” directory to match your kernel version.

VERSION=2
PATCHLEVEL:=6
SUBLEVEL:=35-28
KERNELRELEASE:=2.6.35-28-generic

Now you need to compile the software and this will take time to complete depending on your PC specs. I found on a quad core machine it took about 10 minutes. Run this from the “digitalnow-quad” directory.

make

Once this completes successfully you need to run this to install:

make install

then reboot the machine.

I found that for some reason my MCE remote stopped working. I suspect the mceusb module was being loaded incorrectly due to the installation of a custom v4linux drivers (or something silly). So I edited /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and add

blacklist mceusb

rebooted again and all worked fine.

Note: you may find that if you update you kernel that you will need to recompile and reinstall these drivers in order for the card to work again.

First of all – I’m assuming you already have your remote control working under lircd.

Second of all I used this guide to get me started –> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Setting_A_Button_On_Your_Remote_To_Restart_mythfrontend

But I found it didn’t quite work for me, so I modified it a little.

First I created the script similar to the guide above in my mythtv user local bin directory (in my case /home/mythtv/bin/) and called it runmythfrontend.sh
#!/bin/bash
# script to restart mythfrontend
for x in `ps -C mythfrontend | grep -v PID` end; do
test $x != 'mythfrontend' && continue
RUNNING=1;
done
if [ $RUNNING = 1 ]; then
`killall mythfrontend`
else
`mythfrontend &`
fi

Next I created an entry in my .lircrc file to run irexec. irexec is used to run programs when a particular button is pressed on your remote – in my case I wanted the Power button on my remote to run the script above when pressed – this is defined in the .lircrc file and in my case it is stored under /home/mythtv/.lircrc – yours might be somewhere esle depending on your setup. Go here to read more about irexec –> http://www.lirc.org/html/irexec.html

begin
prog = irexec
remote = mceusb
button = Power
config = /home/mythtv/bin/runmythfrontend.sh &
end

Now you need to setup your session to run up irexec when you log in or the server starts up. This is done whilst logged into the user you run mythfrontend as. In my case I have gnome installed so I just go to “System” –> “Perferences” –> “Startup Applications” on the gnome display. You should get something like this (mine is a little cut-off):

Press “Add” and fill in the name as “irexec” or anything you want really; command as “/usr/local/bin/irexec -d /home/mythtv/.lircrc”; put in a comment if you like or not; then press “Add”. This should now startup irexec when your session starts up.

I suggest you now give your machine a reboot and test it – you might want to check whether your mythbackend is recording anything before you reboot otherwise you will interrupt your recordings. Also if you haven’t already, your might find it easier to setup Fedora to auto login at startup - I’ve written a guide here.

Once rebooted you should be able to press the power button on your remote once to kill mythfrontend and again to start it back up again. That’s it. I welcome comments, feedback and suggestions to make this better or easier.

Mythtv 0.22 frontend screen shot

In case you didn’t here, mythtv 0.22 has finally been released. I’ve been waiting more than 1 year for it to be released! Check it out now http://www.mythtv.org

For some reason on Fedora 9 gdm is different and you can’t easily configure it to auto login through the GUI, but here’s another way.

Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and add this to the file. You could use gedit or vi whatever suits you, but you need to do it as root.
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=username
TimedLogin=username
TimedLoginDelay=0

Obviously you would replace “username” above with the actually “username” you wish to login automatically.

Now reboot and test it!