Mythtv gotchas when upgrading from Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) to 7.10 (Gutsy)

I upgraded my Mythtv server from Feisty to Gutsy for no good reason (other than I like the pain).

Gotchas I ran into when trying to get MythTV working again:

1. The upgrade lost/removed the libqt3-mysql support from my computer. This resulted in the MythTV applications (frontend and backend) giving "unable to connect to database" errors. As the upgrade had also upgraded my MySQL install, I spent a good amount of time checking that the mythtv user still existed and had the proper permissions before I figured out it was a QT database library problem.
  apt-get install libqt3-mt-mysql fixed it.

2. LIRCD stopped receiving commands from my HDHomeRun receiver from SiliconDust. Turns out you have to change the LIRCD_ARGS="-d 5000" line in the /etc/lirc/hardware.conf file to LIRCD_ARGS="-H udp -d 5000".  After this, typing irw showed that LIRCD was now receiving the command codes as it was supposed to.

3. The module name for my D-Link GWL-G122 usb wifi-adaptor have changed, so I had to change entry in the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist  file to reflect the new name(s) of: rt2x00usb and rt2500usb.

On the fly external monitor support (mirroring / spanning) on Ubuntu 7.10

My IBM X31 laptop has the capability to drive an external VGA monitor in addition to it's built in XGA (1024×768) Laptop Video Display Screen (LVDS). The new xrandr extension allows non-privlidged users to change monitor layouts on-the-fly. And now, thanks to my friend Tracy, I know the "extra magic" to make it all work.

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