Since no one seems to be sharing the DVD easy install, does anyone know a hosting site for it?

As far as I know it is not being hosted anywhere currently... but we have downloaded all the release torrents and are sharing now... so that might help a little ;-)

I'm just trying out as much as I can and document what I get to work in the wiki, at least that way I won't have to figure it all out again (from scratch) when the final arrives.  Some experience is better then none I reckon.

ddamron, here is a hint that could get you started: Building From Source 1.1 + pluto svn

Linuxmce-0704 was released earlier today...

I'm pretty sure that is not a valid installation sequence. From everything I've read RC1 only installs on top of a fresh (Unpatched) version of 7.04 Kubuntu installation. After LinuxMCE is installed it should be okay to update.  Though, I found if you update the kernel libs you break some of the mods. In my instance the lirc and tuner drivers .. had to revert back to previous kernel to get to work again.

Linuxmce RC1 will only install successfully on Kubuntu 7.04. After the 7.04 install do not do any updates before applying the RC1 install. Once RC1 is installed Linuxmce manages updates for you and the standard Kubuntu Adept update manager is disabled.

I'm using linuxmce RC1 and I have problem playing DVD.
The DVD starts playing and stop immediatly. Any hints?

Hi Nicola,

It sounds like you need to configure libdvdread3 which is the lib that allows lmce to playback DVD discs. try the following at your lmce machine;

Open a console window and type;

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh <Return>

This should start the config script for libdvdread3 and then you should be able to go back into the LMCE Orbiter and play DVD's successfully. If you get an error when running the above command that says it can't find the script then try the following;

sudo apt-get install libdvdread3 <Return>
(the above line will install libdvdread3 for you... now try the line below again and it should work ok this time)

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh <Return>

Hope the above gets your DVD playback working for you.

Regards

Andrew

I have the same problem -- the Adept manager and "Add & Remove program" disappear from the menus. I believe this is a bug as a result of instally RC1. Does anyone know if some modules got uninstall and fail to reinstall?

In RC1 and the eventual linuxmce-0704 release version Adept has been removed and all updates etc are handled directly by linuxmce. I think this is a temporary solution to the problem of the automatic Ubuntu software update mechanism breaking some of the functionality inside linuxmce by updating packages behind lmce's back.

You can still use apt from the console though and you can change the sources.list if you need to.

Andrew

That did the trick ! Thanks.

Another similar question, I tried doing a network boot on a third machine.

It found the core and got issued the ip 192.168.80.2.
However it wasn't able to mount the image correctly. I assume this is because the core only has one nic with ip 192.168.1.17 (and 192.168.80.1), i'd probably have to do something funky with the route table ?

You should not have to do anything to the routing table to add a 3rd MD (or any number of additional MD's). However based on the 80.2 address this looks like it is your 1st MD that your adding.

...searched the forum for quite a while and got partly answers but none so far could convince me so far...

I'm searching hardware to be used as media director together with a 12'' Touchscreen. The MD should be mounted in the room so a fanless, less power consumption system would be appreciated. I came over DTResearch product and ordered a DT160 with VIA C7 cpu (1 GHz). But that one running embedded XP (no ressources for linux so far) and the video output is quite poor... (although video quality is not too much important to me but I don't want to forget about video comletely either...)

can anybody give an advise whether it would be better to send this one back and recommend me another similar product?

thanks in advance,
thomas

Hi Thomas,

Any of the C7/CN700 or C7/CX700 mini-itx fanless motherboards should be fine (eg VIA EX15000 and NX12000 or Jetway J7F2) and  there are numerous mini-itx compatible enclosures that will mount behind and LCD/Plasma screen using VESA mountings. We have several on test here and they work nicely using the Openchrome drivers under UI1.

For good UI2 performance your best bet is to go with the fire-station back mounted C7 based box below. They are expensive though...

http://www.fiire.com/fiire-station.php

Hope the above helps you.

Regards

Andrew

Go to Web Admin -> Advanced -> Network -> Network Settings

I think you will find what you need there.

Regards

Andrew

Hi all,

Forewarned, I'm a newbie, so I'm sorry if the answer to this is obvious and I'm just missing it.
I've searcched the forums and google, but nothing yet.

I've installed the latest Kubuntu and LMCE beta versions. When I clicked on install.mce on the descktop, I chose to go with the Nvidia drivers (have a 6600 card) I switched to the cach CD, the system rebooted, and now just comes up on a blank screen.
when I type ctrl, alt F1 I can get to a shell, but every time I type -r screen, it says file not found.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

I would suggest installing again but not using the Cache CD as this currently causes problems. Secondly unless you want to use UI2 i would stick with the standard nVidia not the ones offered during install. Then you should be ok ;-)

Hello everybody.  I just heard about LMCE recently, and I just want to make sure that I'm understanding both the purpose and function of it.

First off, it is designed to *be* the house, in some respects.  It is capable of multiple inputs from such things as security cameras, motion detectors, light control, etc.  Essentially, if somebody can contrive a way for LMCE to understand input, LMCE can control it.

Secondly, LMCE is user-, house- and media-centric.  If I move around in the house, so long as a LMCE front is configured in that room, my session will follow me (is this with tracking devices, or do I need to authenticate at each front-end?).  By house-centric, I mean that LMCE is designed to know everything about your house, from lighting, to location, and everything between.  This way, LMCE can deliver the best media and control environment for the user.  And media-centric because it organizes and displays all your data in a friendly, intuative way.

So that is the purpose of LMCE, to my understanding.  The function is something I'm not entirely clear on yet.

From what I can gather, LMCE is capable of learning about a multitude of input/output devices (or rather, it will be capable of a wide variety; right now the device set is limited).  My concern is with the integration.  For instance, let's say that I want to completly wire LMCE into my house, from top to bottom.  Everything will be controlled by a very capable media distribution system.  What kind of options do I have for that?  Things I am interested in are typically found in a "Smart Home": full lighting control, music, video, news, food and drink, inventory of consumables.  If there is a sensor available to give me telemetry on those variables, could LMCE hypothetically be set up to control them, or at least facilitate control?

Another situation, similar to above, is if I decide to network only my bedrooms and living room, but then decide to add a kitchen sometime later.  How easy will this be when I'm not using the initial setup?

I obviously don't have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.  I keep some of my media on a local fileserver, but the majority of it is available on DVD.  For the media that is available on my network fileserver (music, movies, TV shows, pictures), will that be accessable throughout the LMCE network?  From what I gather, this would be possible, due to the core/frontend environment LMCE uses.

My last hypothetical concern is that of distribution.  If I were to use LMCE to run media services in an entire organization, with around 200 computers in the building, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect one LMCE server to provide or administrate content, let alone house services, to that many frontends.  Would having multiple cores, say 5, with media content available on a SAN, be an option?  I suppose another topic of distribution would be having two locations, be they in the same city or opposite ends of the Earth.  Can LMCE communicate with external cores, if it has the ability to communicate with other cores to begin with, and co-ordinate local and non-local content and management?  The core(s) in location A would obviously control the security at location A, and B would do the same, but can both locations dynamically send/recieve/share content, if the network infastructure were set up properly?

I thank you for taking the time to read through my thouroughly hypothetical questions.  I really like what LMCE can do, and it hasn't even matured yet.  It will be exciting to watch the functionality and features to grow over time!

Hi,

I think the lack of response is partly for the reasons that Bulek mentioned but also because its a lot of effort to answer so many questions! ;-)
Yes your right above. LMCE can do all those things but in some cases would require effort to get there on your part at present. In terms of media this can be located essentially anywhere on your home network - on your Core, another MD (if it has an HD built in), a Windows/Linux PC, a Windows/Linux fileserver or NAS and then can be played back anywhere you have an MD. Yes it can 'follow' you from room to room (or be moved from room to room manually) and this 'follow-me' feature can be triggered changing the 'suer' on an MD in the room you've moved to to 'You' or could be triggered by LMCE 'sensing' your presence using Bluetooth, or the presence of your LMCE Gyration remote or in the future some other similar technology.

The physical network is really down to your performance needs, budget, sensitivity to the disruption in the decor of your house. Running Cat5 cabling to any location where you think you may want to have network access is a good strategy and will give you flexibility later (a general rule is if in doubt... put more cat5 in rather than less as its always more disruptive to add it later). Of course you can 'mix'n match' your network with Wifi and Powerline etc in locations where you don't want to run cat5 or you need the freedom of a wireless connection (SD TV and playing back a DVD over my Wifi network to my laptop works ok...with some drop outs and for all other purposes its completely ok).

A multi-house configuration is certainly possible but would require more configuration/setup and none of that currently is 'automatic' and would have to be carried out manually by you. Essentially you would build a VPN between all the properties.

Some people here on the forum, possibly most people, would want to so some or all of these things themselves as this is an activity they enjoy. Others here may not want to do very much of this but do want to do some work themselves.

My company (based in the UK) is aiming at delivering LMCE based systems to users who just want the capabilities offered by LMCE but are not interested in installing/configuring it themselves. Most people here in the forum are interested in installing/configuring & experimenting with LMCE themselves - we believe the two do not overlap really at all so we contribute here freely and we learn from others here too.

Anyway... hope the above is of some help to you :-)

Andrew

I have read about Pluto and Linux MCE two weeks ago and since then i am trying to test it in my computer.
It sounds like an amazing software with lots of posibilities as a residential bridge. I have read about residential bridges capable of managing home automation, communications and video about two year ago. It sounded great for me, but soft and hard was too expensive to try them.
Now my dream can go to live with Linux MCE.

I have made a Linux MCE 1.1B2 test installation in one computer. I installed it as hybrid Core/MD and booting directly in Linux MCE.
The Core seems to be working properly, as DHCP and web admin works and it dispatches orbiters properly.

When Ubuntu installed, I could manage the KDE desktop and all seem to work properly (in 1280x1024@80Hz)
Then I installed MCE and select booting as MD instead of KDE. My problems just started. First my computer showed just the basic 640x480. Then I could manage to change it to 1280x1024, but the MD doesn't display properly, the orbiter does not work well and i cannot see video or even pictures correctly.
I have been playing with U1 and U2 (with and without transparencies) and the interface does not work. I can see the buttons but not the background pictures/video. Transparency does not work at all.


I think it is a problem with my display drivers, but have not experience in Linux (i haven't used Unix or Linux since lots of years ago, when X11R6 display systems developed).
My computer has a Pentium 4 3.2GHz and a Gygabyte GA-8I915G-MF motherboard wich has a Intel 915G integrated video adapter.
The Linux MCE installer seems to configure the system to use a basic i810 device driver.

What driver should I use? How can I select the correct driver and install it in Ubuntu? I remember that installing display drivers in Linux required kernel recompilation and some makes....

Thank you for your help.

The i810 driver is the right driver to use with the onboard Intel graphics on a i915 motherboard but UI1 is your only option with this hardware in our experience. Kubuntu will automatically detect the i915 motherboard so you should not need to do anything special on install.

what port does the web admin run on? I have the same problem but can't access anything from another machine - can't do anything on the linuxmce box itself because the signal is out of range. I'd have thought it would choose a res/refresh the hardware it detects during install would actually support?

Its on port 80 and if you accepted the defaults on install it will be at the IP of 192.168.80.1

The CN700 / Via based MB is the problem. There may be a workaround coming but many people have had problems getting the VIA stuff to cooperate with Linux past basic computing. I got most of the way with a CX700 and then both the video and audio drivers weren't working. Looking deeper there was a tedious process to build both with no indication on the via boards that it would actually work.  I decided to wait since I know the developers are looking at the Via platform and they will make something with a higher chance of working.

Once you build/install Openchrome then then CN700/CX700/CLE266 boards work fine in our experience with LMCE.

Andrew

I can't open a terminal window as I cannot see anything other than my mouse pointer.

The screenshot would be a complete black screen with a movable mouse pointer on it.
http://82.77.255.214/kubuntu-linuxmce.iso
I can ctl-alt-F1 - F6 for cmd line sessions, but that ain't much good unless I can change the config from the command line.

What is the URL for the web admin? 

If you open a console with ctl-alt-F1 - F6 then login... once your logged in type 'screen -r' <return> and then copy the text output back here then one of us can see what causing your problem :-)

Hi people,

From posts on this list, there seems to be a prevailing notion that to get your first MD set up (which requires a working orbiter) you need to install LinuxMCE as a hybrid. This is not entirely true, but not surprising as the better solution isn't exactly widely advertised... so for anyone who haven't heard about this yet:

What you want to use is the web orbiter, which in the interest of clarity was named "generic Proxy Orbiter" and which runs inside the equally-clearly-named "generic web device". In the admin interface of your core, click on "Show Devices Tree" ->  "CORE" -> "Create Child Device". Select "Generic Web Device" from the Device Template menu, then click "Pick device template". Reload the router, then go to http://dcerouter/pluto-admin/weborbiter.php. Log in, select "Generic Web Device" from the Device menu, click "Submit", and you got an orbiter.

Be worn - it's a *very bad* orbiter. It's bad even in Pluto standards. But it works, mostly, at least well enough to get your MD set up.

Itai

A good point. The Web Orbiter is a possible way to get the 'New MD' announcement. However in our experience this can be somewhat hit and miss due to the way the Web Orbiter is implemented - sometimes it just misses the announcement message. If you miss the announcement then you can get into a situation where that machine's Mac address gets stuck in a kind of 'limbo' and does not get re-announced if you attempt a 2nd time to kick off an initial pxe boot.

Another solution... though is to add the Windows Orbiter to a Windows XP machine. Just boot your Windows machine on the LMCE network and use your browser to go the the Web Admin login page of your Core. You will see a link there to download the Windows Orbiter. Just install it and then launch the Orbiter and follow the on screen setup instructions. Once installed and added you then have the Orbiter running on your Windows machine and this allows you to see the announcement messages when you add a pxe booted MD.

Hope this helps

Andrew