Projects

MiniMyth

Currently I am building a Linux distribution that runs on a Via EPIA M system. The distribution, called MiniMyth, is designed to boot over a network and run on a diskless EPIA M system. It then automatically starts up X windows and runs mythfrontend from MythTV.

Note:  This page is very out of date, but development on MiniMyth is going strong.  Please check the Projects forum for the latest on MiniMyth development.

Old Stuff below:

In the current release (0.5.1), a few types of receivers are supported out-of-the-box. A homebrew IR receiver, a Pinnacle PCTV Pro external IR receiver, and the ATI RF receiver. See below for how to specify which one. It is also easy to add your own remote configuration.

This release provides TV Out (800x600) as well as CRT out. TV Out defaults to NTSC but can be switched to PAL with a simple kernel command line argument.

The release runs on Linux 2.4.24 -epia1. A compiled kernel is available in the download section, along with the .config file. It uses XFree86 4.3.99.902-epia7.

The image is currently about 66M, but since it runs in a cramfs file system, it really only takes up about 34M. On a system with 256M, this is plenty of headroom.

MiniMyth's Todo List:
  • Make a nicer website (any help graciously accepted!)
  • Convert to an NFS based distribution
  • Full MythTV stack to support diskless slave backend
  • Support booting from CF, CDROM, whatever
  • Build entire distribution out of GAR
  • Figure out how to make EPIA M powerdown when halted from mythfrontend. Freevix can do this, so I just need to spend the time to pick it apart.
  • Get consoles working; currently only shell access via telnet to MiniMyth
  • Figure out the low down on fonts. I'm pretty happy with them now that I am using 100dpi, but I still don't really understand how they work
  • Support more remotes
  • Better user configuration
  • Internationalization / Localization
  • Upgrade to a newer kernel
  • Optimize X? Works pretty well right now
  • Investigate ALSA
  • Add lmsensors support
  • Add NFS client support
  • Add other MythTV components, such as mythmusic, mythweather, mythgallery, mythvideo, and mythdvd. I don't have any interest in mythgame at this time. I also don't have a lot of interest in mythdvd until MPEG2 hardware decoding is supported with truly open source drivers
  • Add login support, i.e., username / password, maybe even ssh. (not high on my list)
LinuxBIOS

I've started tinkering with LinuxBIOS. LinuxBIOS replaces your current BIOS with a small BIOS and boot loader, which can then load any elf image (including the Kernel if you have room in your bios).

I have successfully built it and had it load etherboot. Etherboot, then downloaded a kernel over DHCP and tried to boot (which failed because I hadn't finished setting up an NFS root partition).

Anyway, I plan on trying to get MiniMyth to startup using Linux BIOS. I'm hopeful it could shave almost a minute off of the startup time.