Latest revision as of 13:49, 13 September 2025

This page is up-to-date as of MythTV version 35.0, the current release is 35.0

Introduction

This page will describe how to build MythTV from source and then install using the package manager.

See Packages to install pre-built packages.

Build your own Packages

Dependencies

First install the dependencies by following the instructions at https://github.com/MythTV/ansible/blob/master/README.md, for example

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install git ansible
mkdir -p ~/build
cd ~/build
git clone http://github.com/mythtv/ansible
cd ansible
./mythtv.yml --limit=localhost --extra-vars='{"venv_active":true}'
export VIRTUAL_ENV=/home/whu/.virtualenvs/mythtv # actual path with be provided by command above

As of v35, MariaDB is installed by default, but the client compatibility package is not. This will cause one of the configuration steps to fail. For now, just install manually:

mariadb-client-compat

Getting and compiling the source code

Note: The following example builds and installs the Debian packages under the user's home directory. Once the packages are built, the user _apt must have read access to the location of the packages, which includes execute access for the entire path. It is likely the user's home directory will not allow execute access to others, and therefore apt will not be able to access the packages unless permissions are changed or the packages are moved (or built somewhere that _apt can access).

In general, you should probably choose the stable version. If you don't mind if your MythTV system is non-functional or has serious bugs that may prevent proper operation/result in lost recordings or inability to play back recordings, you may try using the unstable, development code by replacing the above fixes/35 with master. If using unstable, development code, you should follow the mythtv-commits and mythtv-dev mailing lists.

After about 30 minutes the build will complete and there will be a lot of .deb files in the current directory.

Choose Your Package

Decide what type of installation you need.

If this is your first system and you are using a single box for recording and watching, you need a complete frontend, backend and database. Choose the mythtv package.

If you are adding a Frontend to an existing system, to allow for watching on another TV or computer system, choose the mythtv-frontend package.

If you are adding a Slave Backend use mythtv-backend. This is an advanced usage that few people will need.

There are packages for installing a complete system, or for installing parts of a multi server system.

Install Software

Install one of the newly created packages, as follows:

dpkg-scanpackages -m . | gzip -c > Packages.gz
echo "deb [trusted=yes] file:/`pwd` ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mythtv.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install packagename

Note: The procedures in this article have created packages as a non-root user, and configured the system to trust packages created by that user which reside in a certain directory. This is quite insecure, as should the user account be compromised, an attacker could put arbitrary packages in the directory and have them installed and executed with root privileges. /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mythtv.list should be removed once the packages are installed.

The packages do the following:

• Create the user mythtv, if necessary.
• Install MythTV software and all prerequisites.
• Install MariaDB database software, if necessary.
• Create a MariaDB database user for MythTV, if necessary.
• Set up the MythTV configuration file.
• Create the mythtv-backend service for systemd to automatically run the backend at system startup time, if applicable.
• Configure a weekly backup of the database using cron, if applicable.
• Create desktop entries to launch MythTV from various desktop menus.
• Install rsyslog configuration (but does not install rsyslog)

Once the software is installed, proceed to Post Installation Tasks.