When changed my ISP, outbound e-mail stopped working, which I expected, for reasons that I did not.

I could have sworn that all my outgoing e-mail was being relayed via a server at my old ISP. This turns out not to have been that case. Specifically, I could find no trace of any reference to any ISP smtp server.

I have to assume that the old ISP was not stopping my system delivering e-mail directly. The new ISP quite definitely does.

So, I added an entry to my /etc/postfix/main.cf file as per http://nlug.org/mail/nlug__2004_01/0177.html. This re-enabled my outbound e-mail.

Getting DVGRAB to just work

Despite previous attempt, I could not get DVGRAB to work unless I typed some magic words. Turns out I was casting the wrong spell.

The machine concerned runs FC3, and connecting a camcorder would create a entry at /dev/raw/raw1394. DVGRAB looks for /dev/raw1394, so I needed a fix. I had found a post somewhere that suggested an alias based approach, but this would not stick, needing to be invoked after each reboot.

I had figured out that this was all connected with UDEV, and google took me to http://www.linux1394.org/faq.php#udev, which I tried, but to no avail.

When I gave up the trial and error approach, I discovered that I was ever so close. My FC3 setup has the UDEV rules in /etc/udev/rules.d, so I moved the file I had placed /etc/udev/10-ieee1394.rules into rules.d and hey-presto, it worked.

Mystery solved : why MythFillDatabase does not just work

If you keep plugging away, you get the answer in the end. Ever since I rebuilt my first myth box, the option to have mythbackend run mythfilldatabase did not work. For ages I just lived with it, running MFDB manually. Finally I got fed up with that, and we were going away for a couple of weeks, so I trawled around and found a fix.

The fix revolved around configuring mythbackend to invokde mfdb with an explict reference o the grabber config file. Being an utter newcomer to linux et-all, I had trouble but I got it working.

When I cloned this set-up and added a second video source to the clone, it all went pear shaped again. The fix that I had applied made no provision for multiple sources, so I was back where I started; The second source would not download. I should have exepcted this.

Anyway, I stopped stabbing in the dark and actually looked at the problem. Turns out that my grabber config files were in the wrong place all along. Mythbackend runs under root, but it's home directory is '/' not '/root'. I don't fully understand why this is, but I am kind of new to all this.

So... I created a soft-link to /root/.mythtv and called it /.mythtv . I figure that this is less likely to confuse me later on. It also fits the pattern where I already had links the make the grabber config files appear in /root/.mythtv when they are actually in /home/mythtv/.mythtv .