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Archive => Archive => Pluto Main General Issues => Topic started by: archived on March 27, 2005, 08:17:59 pm

Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on March 27, 2005, 08:17:59 pm
Hey,

Ive been modding Xboxes for a couple years.  Alot of fun, and a useful addition to my home entertainment center.  Ive used one of them as a frontend for MythTV.  I used the Xebian distro (customized debian for the xbox) and then installed some pkgs a mythtv user made.  Worked great.  Now heres the cool thing...if the Xbox has been modded with a mod chip and flashed with the legal alternative BIOS Cromwell/Xromwell (info at http://xbox-linux.org) or the TSOP on the xbox has been flashed with the same BIOS (meaning no mod chip is needed, but you still have a small bit of modding to do to get it flashed onto the TSOP), then you can use etherboot to boot the Xbox.  Looks like all the tools exist to make the Xbox a cheaper(er) alternative as a MD.  Is anyone else besides me interested in this?  I plan on looking into what all would be required to get this going, but from a cursory review of all the parts, it looks like I could do it.  If so, could this also be make its way into the pluto home distro, so that if a modded Xbox is plugged into a plug-n-play plutohome system, it would automatically boot as well?  If your worried about any legalities associated with this, the Xbox-linux group is dedicated to making a legal alternative for BIOS and software to run on the Xbox, and as such the BIOS mentioned, Cromwell/Xromwell is completely 100% legal in the USA.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on March 27, 2005, 09:11:06 pm
Actually that would be a great solution to get a whole-house solution for a much lower price.  We don't have any XBox specialists in-house, but will support and add stuff to our distro whenever we legally can.  Our network boot is pretty much a standard Debian net boot.  Let us know what we can do to help.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on March 27, 2005, 09:17:48 pm
Yeah, you can get Xboxes for $120 USD for a refurb, $140 for a brand new one.  To do a TSOP flash takes about 5 mins of modding time (solder one wire to 2 points on the Xbox mobo, not that difficult) and flash Cromwell. Im going to get used to playing with my pluto setup and play with the guts of it to better understand it....and another cool thing is the Xbox controller ports are really just USB ports, so the USB BT dongles will work with the Xbox as well.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on March 29, 2005, 09:16:12 pm
The main thing I see here is that the XBox is powered by a PowerPC chip (if I remember right). So the main issue would be porting everything over. That wouldn't be a huge issue with the Debian core of Pluto as I'm pretty sure Debian already has a PowerPC port. As always, it's the small things that would have to be worked out (and any stuff specific to Pluto, of course).
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on March 29, 2005, 09:22:37 pm
From the xbox-linux.org site mentioned above

Quote
The Xbox is a legacy-free PC by Microsoft that consists of an Intel Celeron 733 MHz CPU, an nVidia GeForce 3MX, 64 MB of RAM, a 8/10 GB hard disk, a DVD drive and 10/100 Ethernet. As on every PC, you can run Linux on it.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on March 29, 2005, 09:57:21 pm
Ah, whoops. I remember now. It's the GameCube that's a PowerPC. Of course there will still be issues with some of the proprietary hardware.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on July 20, 2005, 05:09:43 pm
Well, i for one definetly want to get this working, as i run mythtv on my xbox as a frontend in a couple of rooms, so in order to make this package xbox friendly, and of course legal ive decided to take this project on myself. With a little help from the devs. as i am not that linux friendly of a person, im going to need some help. The best part about the xbox, is that cromwell (xbox's legal linux bios) already has the ability to do a network boot. The only problem i can see is getting the hardware to be reconized. But since the xbox is a legacy free pc, it shouldnt be to difficult getting pluto to setup the xbox as a frontend (sorry since mythtv, i always call things frontends and backends) Tonight i am going to be converting my existing mythtb setup over to Pluto, and will start getting pluto working on the xbox. The only forseeable (is that a word?) problem i see is that the xbox has only 64 mb of ram, 4 of which are dedicated to the frame buffer.  This of course could be resolved by doing a ram upgrade (soldering new memory chips to the motherboard) or a ram drive (256mb or 512mb should be fine). So... ill keep you all posted on my progress, and would love the pluto team to read over this article, on making a release xbox ready.


http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Making_a_Linux_distribution_Xbox_compatible_HOWTO

Tons of info, and of course it would be nice to have the live cd be able to boot right off the xbox, or at least add the needed drivers for the remote (xbox remote) and Controller.

installing xebian (xbox debian) is rather easy to do, and i have already written a tutorial for doing it, and getting mythtv working on the xbox (http://www.controlaltdeleted.com/xbox/content/view/53/27/)

Now if we could adapt this to work with pluto, all is good!
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on July 22, 2005, 10:35:29 pm
I am really interested in this setup as well. It would be great if you could post an update on your successes and failures when you find out more info.

Thanks,
Garron
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on July 22, 2005, 10:39:53 pm
definetly will do, as i find this is a very inexpensive solution, i have not yet started the project (to much work to do, no time for play :( )  but will as soon as i can, look forward to something late next week!

- Scott
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on July 26, 2005, 05:05:53 pm
I am too really interested in this setup. Xbox is now quite inexpensive and have fast CPU et good quality video ! (One little issue : the noise is quite loud).
Thks

FXMX86
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on July 26, 2005, 05:40:37 pm
well, the xbox already can do good video, so the processor is not that bad (733) as for the noise, you could always open and replace the fans ! with much quieter ones!
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 06, 2005, 10:13:18 am
Excellent! I was only thinking yesterday when considering setting up a
pluto system to replace my seperate, Asterisk, Zoneminder and Tivo setups, wouldn't it be great if I could still use the 3 xboxes we have in the house for the clients!
I really dont want to have an aditional PC in each of these rooms if I can make do with the xbox.
Bring it on....
Mike
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 01:38:28 am
Quick question, following on from my post yesterday.

Is there anything stopping me using the Xboxes with the presently
available mythtv front end on them and just have it talk back
to the pluto mythtv backend?

Should that work for now? I realise I wont get all the orbiter functions but the TV side of things would be a good start?

thanks
Mike

p.s. are there any reasonable TV capture cards I should be looking at to cause me least hassle for a backend?
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 06:52:21 am
nothing should stand in your way, it should connect just fine to the backend, as well, the most supported backend cards (in my experience) seem to be the PVR-250's and 350's ... right now i have 2 pvr 250s in my backend, and 2 150s in the front... im having some issues with the 150's, but its just audio volumes pulled from the cards... i have yet to adjust them through the ivtv settings however, and now that its my weekend, im going to be building my Pluto system.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 11:25:34 am
Thanks for your reply j0ly. Looks like a pvr250 will be on order soon then.

I must say I can't believe how I've not managed to stumble upon
pluto before now!

Another question I'm afraid.  If you have a tuner/capture card in both your
front and and back end, I assume its possible to capture two seperate
programmes at once? (aasuming your cpu's etc are up to it)

Oh one more, sorry  :)  I'm in the UK, how good is the program guide date that is available over here? I have Tivo at present and thats pretty good, so something similar would be excellent.

thanks
Mike
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 11:49:18 am
I believe the UK and the USA are the 2 countries that both have good program data from Data Direct without screen scraping like xmltv does.  But the mythtvtalk.com forum may be the best source.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 03:30:56 pm
actually yes..... My system consists of this setup


Backend...

Amd athlon xp 1800+
1 gig pc 133 sdram
400 gb HD space (2 200 gbs in raid)
cheapo dvdrom
nvidia gforce mx 4000 video card (with video out)
2 - PVR 250's (one controlling analog cable, one controlling a Digital Cable Box)

Frontend...

AMD Athlong 64 2800
1 gig PC3300 DDR Ram
160 GB HD (single Drive)
Geforce mx 4000 Video Card with TV Out
2 PVR- 150's (1 digital cable, 1 analog)
Liteon DVDRW
Small Form Factor Case
(http://www.memoryexpress.com/productfiles/images/5802.jpg)

Frontends 2 3 4

Xbox's
with DVD Remotes (official ones, as i couldnt get the cheapo clone ones to work)


This enables me to watch on the 4 frontends, 1 channel each (everyone in my family has a frontend in their room)

if im the only one, i can switch which one im watching (Inputs), or enable Picture in Picture.

and yes, i can actually record 4 programs at 1 time... it was a bit to setup, and get working properly (lots of NFS shares, and beer is needed) - But im very happy with it now... and soon, ill have to get rid of it in order to try out my PlutoSetup - i know i can get the pluto on the xbox to work as a frontend (media thingy) just need some time... im building a new home, so all my extra time is getting devoted to wireing the hell out of it (cat5e in everyroom, rg6, and now im thinking fiber)... so as i get some time ill look in to it, but dont forget you can always install myth standalone, on the xbox's and just enter your server information in the setup, and as always my mythtv xbox walkthrough is at

http://www.controlaltdeleted.com/xbox/content/view/53/27/

- J0ly
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 04:43:48 pm
J0ly, thanks great info.
At present we have 3 xboxes which we run [cough] a certain media player
on.
All the movies and my mp3's are located on my windows server, 4 x 250gb disks.
Now I'd prefer not to move them to the linux box I build for the pluto/myth
backend, I assume I can smbmount them from the linux box?

I'll probably put another disk in one of the xboxes to try xebain/myth out on
so I dont trash what I have on there for the time being.

Cheers
M
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 04:46:50 pm
mike,


You shouldnt trash it, it takes barly any space what-so-ever on the edrive, mabey 2 -3 gig
are your running evox as a dashboard?
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:02:16 pm
as well, i should note, if you follow my guide, it wont remove anything from your existing install, i run XBMC and mythtv on the same install, just had to add a menu item to them... and yes you can use SMB share, you just need to install samba on your installation, but i would probably do that on my backend not the front end, and then NFS share it out from the backend!  (much easier, and more realiable).  i have my backend pulling my download dir on my windows box to a video dir on my mythtv, they all share the same database, so when i do an update videos, it pulls all the new "stuff" from my windows box into the db, then i can watch my divx, xvid's ect....

one of the challenges you'll have with mythtv is making sure all of them pull from the same directorys (on every machine) so basically you want to make sure all your video directory are setup like

video dir:
/mnt/video

tv dir:
/mnt/tv


and have sythlinks to these directorys (sythetic links)

so on the backend you would have a sythlink from /myth/video to /mnt/video  
and
/myth/tv to /mnt/tv

what i actually did was a little different... here is a great guide from the guys over at knoppmyth for a system he called LinHES: Linux Home Entertainment System.

http://mysettopbox.tv/linhes.html

i followed this pretty much to the "T" and it gave me a ton of ideas, i only had a few problems getting my frontend to burn dvd's from encoded shows, but that was more of a database issue since i use it as a backend as well.

if you have any questions, post away man, anything i can do to help this community out is great.. Now i just need to find a sweet deal on some X10  components and ill be a happy geek (i have none right now, and really dont know what im looking for, but ebay is being a bust, and being up in Canada, means i have to pay so much in shipping and duty - It Sucks!)

- J0ly
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:05:15 pm
Quote from: "j0ly"
mike,


You shouldnt trash it, it takes barly any space what-so-ever on the edrive, mabey 2 -3 gig
are your running evox as a dashboard?


I'm running Avalaunch.
So are you saying I can install Xebian and mythtv on the existing disk and leave my other dashboard and few apps on etc?

I should read your instructions fully, got the xebian files tarball coming down now.

thanks
Mike
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:27:56 pm
yes, xebian will be your mythtv....  so you can have all your exsisting stuff on your xbox, and have a xebian (linux) / mythtv on their as well.. did you upgrade your harddrive on your xbox?
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:33:09 pm
Great stuff. I've put a 40gb in one of them, although all the space is on F I think.
I've managed to clear 4.4gb on E, so I should be good to go.

ta
Mike
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:35:57 pm
when launching linux, (if you followed my guide) it will launch mythtv for you automatically. Do you have a usb adapter for your xbox at all? if not, you will probably have to install VNC on your xbox once it is up, so that you can enter the server settings and such from your computer on to it. a good guide for that is here.

http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=x11vncHowTo

but dont forget to do an apt-get update first
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:51:01 pm
thanks. I dont have a USB adaptor, sounds like I will have some vnc fun then.

Drat, I downloaded a later version of Xebian!

qqqqqqqMythTV-XBox **Warning**qqqqqqqqqqk
                  x You must use a Xebian 1.1.0-xbox CD,   x  
                  x found  Version : 1.1.4-xbox  .         x  
                  x Exiting ..


that will teach me! Any way round that or must I download again.

thanks
Mike
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:53:16 pm
yes actually.... one sec, ill find it
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:56:31 pm
if you downloaded the mythtv install package from
http://bit.blkbk.com/mythtv-xbox.0.4.5-beta.tar.gz

uncompress it, according to my walkthrough, then edit the file

install.pl  

ie:

nano install.pl

find the line

Quote
$version = "0.4.5-beta";
$distro = "mythtv-xbox.$version.tar.gz";
$TITLE = "MythTV-XBox (MXB-$version) Installer (c) 2004 Dennis Cartier <pvr\@trigger.net>";
$compatible = "1.1.0-xbox";
$feedback = "";


and change to

Quote
$version = "0.4.5-beta";
$distro = "mythtv-xbox.$version.tar.gz";
$TITLE = "MythTV-XBox (MXB-$version) Installer (c) 2004 Dennis Cartier <pvr\@trigger.net>";
$compatible = "1.1.4-xbox";
$feedback = "";


ive heard this works!
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 05:57:32 pm
sorry, then continue with the walkthrough, forgot to add that
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 06:35:26 pm
Quote from: "j0ly"
yes actually.... one sec, ill find it


Thanks j0ly!
I found the check in the perl file before I ready your post, so it seems fine past there, then it gets to the NFS section, I fill those bits in and then, when it starts copying:-

Code: [Select]
/dev/cloop/0: No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `/mnt/livefs/*': No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file `/tmp/target/etc/fstab': No such file or directory


It then prompts me for IP, subnet, gw etc. and then bombs out.

any pointers as to why it should do that?

Mike
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 07:06:41 pm
Hmm, there are some nasty looking errors from dmesg :-

sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 7, driver = 00
sda : sense not available.
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.  
 /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 unable to read partition table
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0

M
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 08:19:12 pm
sorry pal, feel asleep, to many late nights.... i would just download 1.1.0 instead of the 1.1.4 .... as i know the 1.1.0 works great!


Sorry i cant help you past that :(
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 07, 2005, 10:10:36 pm
thanks, 1.1.0 did the trick.
However I dont know the default mythtv usernam/password/dbase for
mysql connects?

thanks
Mike
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 08, 2005, 03:30:34 am
its

mythtv
mythtv


i think.... should be anyhow...
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on October 03, 2005, 02:37:51 pm
Sorry to drag up this old thread, and even sorrier for being a total Pluto noob, but...

I'm a seasoned Xbox modder, and I'd also had the idea of using Xboxes as media clients. However, would I be right in thinking that this thread has wandered away from controlling the system using Plutohome?

I understand that Pluto uses MythTV, and that a MythTV frontend is available for the Xbox, but are those the only salient points in getting this working?

It sounds as though (from my cursory reading of the Pluto docs) that the 'Core' squirts a network boot image to each client on request. If that is so, wouldn't this necessarily be some Plutonian (!) flavour of MythTV plus other network stuff? How then would a local Xbox version of the MythTV frontend help?


Just trying to get my head around all this!

Cheers,
tamper

PS - Does anyone have experience of using X10 automation stuff in Europe? I'm not sure whether that kit is US voltage only...
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on October 04, 2005, 05:44:06 pm
Actually it's not a 'plutonian' flavor of myth--we use the same myth that comes straight from them, prepackaged as a debian file.  The network boot has no effect--as far as the media director is concerned it's a local drive, just like any other.  This isn't our code, of course, it's just the way network boot works--it pulls its boot image from the core, and then mounts a directory on the core as it's local drive (ie root file system in linux-speak).

And the media director's don't have to network boot.  So if you can get myth running on an xbox, you can also run pluto.  our application is a 'normal' app like myth--it doesn't require anything special.  Pluto even runs on windows (and symbian).  In house we sometimes use windows pc's as our cores and clients, just without the network boot since that doesn't come standard in windows.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on October 05, 2005, 09:34:52 am
Thanks aaron,

That's all very positive. Does anyone know therefore if the Xbox can support wake-on-LAN, so that Pluto could fire up a remote Xbox, with that Xbox then booting its local Myth installation?

Aaaaand, what about the non media serving stuff like VOIP routing and home security? Is this done within Myth, or would it require Xbox support for other software?

Just let me know if I should be asking this stuff in a newbie forum :)

t
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on October 05, 2005, 10:58:37 am
All the other modules (voip, security, etc.) are standard pluto modules in ansi c++.  If myth runs on the xbox, so will all the other modules.  In pluto, mythtv is one module.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 23, 2006, 05:35:19 pm
hi,

does anybody use a xbox with Pluto???

best wishes
markus
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on August 27, 2006, 08:33:11 pm
when someone gets the xbox360 modded i will..
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on September 05, 2006, 02:27:31 am
Bumping this thread again....

Has anyone actually done anything here for getting the XBox to run as an MD?
I started to work on it on the weekend and would be keen to work with others or find out where they have got up to.

Ideally I would see it work as follows;
* A new device template for Media Directors which is specific to xbox and preconfigured to use the nvidia drivers, xbox lirc stuff, disk drive and relevant software.
* Network boot from Cromwell bios (or xromwell executable) and comes up just like normal MD.
* Navigation with Controller would be nice too.

Issues to solve;
* Standard Xebian (Xbox Debian) release is based on 2.4 kernel.
* It is a patched kernel
* Getting Pluto to allow different kernels for MDs?
* Compatible software in the registry for installation into the XBox diskless file system.
* Enough memory to actually work?

What I have done so far...

I installed the basic Xebian system on a modified xbox just so I have a working linux version to see what is on it. This installed without any problems, so far only had time to have a little look at it.

Put the xromwell executable on the same box enabling me to start it from the menus. This has an option for network boot.

Manually added the XBox to pluto, using the default template and with the correct MAC address.

Tried a network boot to see what happens (didn't expect much at this stage). Found the server but complained about the pxelinux.0 file or something like that (need to check exact message at home for those interested).

Tried to rebuild a kernel image for the Xbox using pluto kernel source. I had to use the old source as the current source is not available from the pluto repository at the moment and I didn't want to get it from standard kernel source as I am not sure at the moment what is different in the pluto version. The source requires pathcing for Xbox and I built the image on my core rather than on the xbox linux installation. Build completed without any problems. Note I used the kernel configuration that gets patched in by the Xbox patches. I am pretty sure that the Pluto config and the Xbox config might have to be both examined and merged to get an optimal build. At this stage I was just experimenting though.

At this stage I ran out of time so had to stop there but the next steps would be...
* Manually alter the configuration so that the Network boot from the Xbox is given the correct kernel image. This shouldn't be too hard as a one off but may need pluto help to have it stay that way after a reboot. I suspect that this may nee script modification.
* From what I can gather from Pluto scripts there is version checking to ensure that the kernel version on the MDs exactly matches the core. Not sure why this has been done exactly but suspect it is to only have one set of software that can be pushed out to the MDs and be sure to work. Assuming that I can get the current kernel source and patch it successfully I don't think that this should be a major problem.
* Get the thing to network boot and see where it gets to...

Assuming that it works then I would concentrate on getting all the bits to work correctly and ideally have this setup captured by a new Xbox MD device template which does it all for you.

Another option may be to not have a diskless MD and have the OS install actually on the XBox. As far as I know diskless MDs are still not supported even though there seems to be checkboxes for it on the MD screen etc.

Anyone got any further that wants to share or anyone have any comments.
I don't have a lot of time at the moment to play around with this but will try and put in some more time over the next few nights.

regards
Darren
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on September 06, 2006, 01:33:13 am
Update for anyone that is interested...

XBox uses etherboot to do the network boot (or at least it does from the xromwell executable). This seems to not like receiving pxelinux.0 as the first delivered file. Still trying to determine how all this actually works.
Changed the dhcp.conf to deliver the vmlinux file from the kernel source directory and the file is accepted and it seems like it attempts to load - but then it obviously gets an error (can't see one though) and comes back to the xromwell screen.

Tried a few different files as the boot file that is sent across - didn't seem to like any of them. Google found a dhcp.conf that had conditional entries depending on whether etherboot was calling it or pxe. Need to investigate why this is and what etherboot expects.

If anyone has anything to add, please feel free.
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on September 06, 2006, 05:10:07 pm
good idea to use a xbox as a md was thinking about it my selfs.

i asume a standard xbox whit 10 gig and a modchip will do the trick :) (bought it for 40 euro :)
i preffer a diskbased md above a network setup.
anyone got it working already ?
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on November 20, 2006, 08:05:16 pm
is it hard to setup a xbox as a Media Director (or maby it can use XBMC)
Title: Xbox as a MD
Post by: archived on November 21, 2006, 12:15:15 am
I have stopped working on it for the moment - getting my other MDs working properly became a priority.

I think it would be better to have them network boot as it provides a few advantages and Pluto staff has advised that a disk based install does not work - although I don't know why (I think it is just not supported)

It is quite easy to get Xebian (Xbod Debian) running on the XBox. My problem came with Etherboot (which was invoked via Menus in software) would not accept any boot images I gave it, but my experience here is quite limited.

The kernel configs that Pluto uses and Xbox needs were not that different but apparently they have changed this in the most recent release so I would have to compare them again and reproduce a combined config.

All this is do-able, it just takes time that I don't have right now.
I think it would need to use a local swap file as well, which again is doable but would take time to get working.

Feel free to give it a go. There is quite good information on the net and I am happy to help out where I can.
Hopefully, will get to put some time into it in a couple of weeks.

regards
Darren

ps: There is no reason why you can't use XBMC as the MythTV client, but it will not be a Pluto MD, just a MythTV frontend.