Helius branded mvp with OEM linux 6.5

[SuiDog]

Ok I'm having problems with getting my Helius mvp to work with my linux box. Ok .. this is going to be a huge post telling you everthing I've tried to get this working.

System specs:
IBM server w/dual power supplies
Dual 2.4 Xeons
2GB memory
Mirrored 2x36gb Hot swap scsi HD's (OS & programs)
eSata card with one 1TB external sata drive connected (storage)
Onboard Gigabit Ethernet (eth1), PCI 10/100 Ethernet (eth0), PCI Netgear 54g Wireless (ath0).
Hauppauge WinTV 500 MCE (dual tuner)

OS setup:
Ubuntu 8.10
SageTV OEM 6.5
Virtualbox 2.1
Samba
Dhcp3
Ubuntu restricted modules for wifi card w/madwifi tools, bridge-tools.
Gnome-desktop
Firestarter firewall

Configuration:

*Network
I've got my wireless card acting as an AP and it works perfectly.
I've created a br0 interface and bridged the eth0 and ath0 interface. I can connect a hub to eth0 port and clients have no problem receiving dhcp and routing.

My eth1 card is connected to my cable modem and receives an DHCP address from y ISP.

*SageTV
I installed Sagetv OEM via the deb package using the howto I found forums. I'm NOT running the sagemc (wasn't sure if it would work with linux). Everything as far as I can tell is working great. Live tv, the Client and placeshifter works perfectly via wired or wirelessly. It pretty much worked great out of the box. The only thing I'd append is adding that you will need to grab quicktime from synaptic in order to play mp4 movies on the client or placeshifter.

*DHCP config
ddns-update-style interim;
ignore client-updates;
allow bootp;
allow booting;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option routers 192.168.1.1;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option domain-name-servers 68.87.76.178;
option ip-forwarding off;
range dynamic-bootp 192.168.1.100 192.168.1.254;
default-lease-time 21600;
max-lease-time 43200;

group {
next-server 192.168.1.1;
}
host mediamvp {
hardware ethernet 00:0f:22:00:06:45; #mac of my helius
fixed-address 192.168.1.95;
option routers 192.168.1.1;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option domain-name-servers 68.87.76.178;
filename "mvp.bin";
option root-path "/home/mvp,rsize=4096,wsize=4096,nolock";
}
}

NOTE: I added the mvp.bin to the dhcp because it wasn't picking up the mvp.bin automatically. (we'll get to that later)

Setup atftpd and configured the tftp root to point at the mvp.bin in /opt/sagetv/server dir.

NOTE: THIS WORKED FOR UPLOADING THE BIN TO THE HELIUS.

*SageTV properties (not going to post the whole thing.. only the relevant parts)
..
linux/network/gateway=192.168.1.1
linux/network/ip_address=192.168.1.1
linux/network/netmask=255.255.255.0
linux/network/primary_dns=68.87.76.178
linux/network/secondary_dns=68.87.76.178
..
miniserver/clients=MVP/00\:0f\:22\:00\:06\:45/192.168.1.95
miniserver/delay_between_connections=15000
miniserver/forced_server_ip=192.168.1.1
miniserver/gateway=192.168.1.1

......

Ok I think I've told you enough.. Heres what I tried and the results.

First hooked up without dhcp changes or sage.properties changes:
Nothing but red Helius screen.

Did some research and found that people got it to work by installing MVPmedia server on windows box and replacing the dongle.bin with mvp.bin. Installed mvp server on an xp box. Could boot the dongle.bin and menu would load for hauppauge interface. Changed dongle to mvp.bin and it would load but just goto black screen. Nothing else, just black screen. I figured that maybe it needed to be running on the same box as Sage. (spent hours trying to get this working via wine, getting an open source version for linux that I found online, couldn't get it to run for nothing..) Then I decide to do more research on how the mvpmc firmware was loaded and found that I could make changes to my dhcp server and add a tftp server to the mix and serve out the mvp.bin that way. So I did (man... did that suck! Trying to figure that out. I'm not an expert at linux but I got it.). I can get the mvp.bin to load .. but once again was met with black screen. ARGH!!

I've also bought 2 additional wireless MVP's and I really hope I don't have the same problems when they get here.

P.S. I enabled the debug log for sage and I don't see anything in the logs (good or bad) about the MVP. I've verified that my box has the ports for the mvp client open and my firestarter is configured to allow everthing on the LAN.

Any help would be appreciated.

SuiDog

[SuiDog]

Nobody yet eh? I haven't been able to verify if the Helius MVP even works with the 6.5 version of SageTV, or has ever worked with the Linux version. Can anyone confirm or deny that the Helius version of the MVP will work with the Linux version? I was hoping to get this model working because I have an old TV in my garage that doesn't have stereo RCA jacks and the coax option would be nice.

Sui

[gk1]

I have 2 Helius mvps running with Sage 6.5 no prob. Must be something with your linux setup.

[SuiDog]

it's funny that you mention that. I found out something today. When I run a netstat I don't see it listening on the ports for the mvp. Well actually I did see them at first. They were listening on IPv6 but not on IPv4. I thought IPv6 was causing the problem so I blacklisted the IPv6 module and they still aren't showing up in netstat. Can anyone think of a reason why this might be? I can use the placeshifter client without problems if I tell it the ip but it doesn't auto find the server.

FYI I got in my Wireless MVP's and they are having the same problems. Can anyone help me? Is there support for the OEM version?

Sui

[SuiDog]

I'm thinking my setup might not be the norm. I'm also using my box as a wireless AP and it's running firestarter as it's firewall software. Here's the thing. I was able to get the ports to show up in netstat by adding them to firestarter allowed services for lan. I don't know if this has fixed it all the way as I'm not at home right now. Whats weird is that I had already setup the local ip range of my internal network as a trusted network in firestarter, but it doesn't look like it would allow the ports to start listening until I manually add the service ports in the firewall. I have a webserver on this box, samba, vnc, vuze, and a few other things running and all of those ports open and listen correctly. I'm wondering if it has to do with the way Sage opens the ports .. or a bug with java.. (1.6.0_10 via apt-get). Any input on this would be helpful.

I'll post tonight to see if this has resolved my problem with the Wireless MVP or not.

Sui