Topics

16

Feature requests & roadmap / Getting rid of the wiki spammers

« on: August 29, 2007, 12:15:11 pm »

Could somebody please get rid of the accounts that are regularly being used to add spam to the wiki?  Preferably blacklisting the email domains from where they registered.

I, for one, won't be removing anymore spam unless at least some form of action is taken.

17

Developers / Core to Hybrid

« on: August 28, 2007, 08:36:47 pm »

I was wondering if it was possible to change a core install into a hybrid. 

So I installed a core system and added a Generic PC as MD with the web-admin.  Unfortunately I couldn't add it to the core directly but it could be added as a top level device.  Then changed the "This device is controlled via" to CORE, put it in a room and emptied the "IP Address" field.  After a reboot it came up (took a while with lots of installage) but the UI was displayed clipped (only showing the upper left corner).  To fix that I clicked in the bottom left of the screen (normally the LMCE logo in UI1) and then the "Video Res & Audio Setup" button, which took me through the AVWizard that fixed the problem. 

I'm guessing the other way around is even easier.

18

Users / GC100 + input sensors

« on: August 24, 2007, 08:30:46 am »

Has anybody got any experience configuring these? 

I have one hooked up to my doorbell, and it's not clear to me how I need to configure it in LinuxMCE.  I already added a "Generic Input Ouput" device to the gc100, but I'm not even sure what to put in the "Port/Channel Number" device data field.  For now I'm using the value 3 as it's connected to (IR-)port #3. 

Now (I'm guessing) I need to add a "someone rings the doorbell" event and tie it to some action, this is where I get really lost.  Ideally I would just like to have the text-to-speech say something like "tring" or "there is someone at the door", maybe even just turn a small light on in the livingroom for a few seconds when the house is in sleep mode.

I see the following in the 34_LaunchGC100.sh.log:

Code: [Select]

05      08/24/07 8:06:07.701            Creating child 63 <0xb795f6d0>
05      08/24/07 8:06:07.701            Note: Device manager has attached a device of type 43 that this has no custom event handler for.  It will not fire events. <0xb795f6d0>
05      08/24/07 8:06:07.701            Note: Device manager has attached a device of type 43 that this has no custom handler for.  This is normal for IR. <0xb795f6d0>
05      08/24/07 8:06:09.636            statechange Reply: Sorry, after all that searching, I can't determine which child device should be sent the pin_changed <0xb615bb90>
Not sure what it exactly means, but I don't like the sound of it.

Any suggestions at all (things to try, logs to check, etc) are welcome.

19

Users / GC100 + CM11 setup

« on: August 20, 2007, 10:20:28 pm »

Somehow I seem unable to setup my GC100 properly, even after using workarounds.  The CM11 works fine on both the core (with USB-serial cable) and a media director (with serial cable), right up to the point where I hook it up to the GC100's serial port.

Is there anyone around who has experience with this?

I have eventually added the gc100 successfully (or so it seems) to the LMCE system, tried both workarounds on the LMCE and Pluto gc100 wiki page.  They both seem to work fine and get the device added (the latter one leaves the device unlocked, which can be handy for testing).

I have set the parameters on the serial port to "4800 8N1" as listed among other places on the pluto gc100 page.  According to GCSupport aparently every browser but IE is broken (funny how I never noticed that before, not to mention ping being broken under linux as well, I mean come on).  Whether this broken firmware can ever be upgraded is anybodies guess (and I'm not desperate enough yet to email their techsupport), but I digress.

Meanwhile there is a new serial device on the core available in the web-admin: /dev/ttyS_84_0 it would seem to me that this has to be the serial port on the GC100 (which just happens to be device #84).  Now this is where things get confusing for me. 

When I reconfigure the CM11 in the web-admin to use that serial port (like I've done moving back and forth between the core and MD) it doesn't work anymore.  Then I noticed that the gc100 also has a "Com Port on PC" setting, so I tried setting that to /dev/ttyS_84_0 as well, which was accepted but with the same disappointing result.  I have no idea how this is supposed to work, but here is what baffles me: the /dev/ttyS_84_0 "device" is actually a symlink to /dev/null.  Any thoughts on this are more then welcome.

In the mean time I guess as a last resort I can put this device under my arm and go visit a windows-using friend, just to reconfigure it with IE (ffs).  Not that I expect much of that as the settings are reported what they should be, but just to rule that out and who knows...

PS. I got a GC100-06 with Firmware Version : 2.4-06 and a CM11A (w/opt. USB cable) for what it's worth.

20

Developers / small patch for auto.PlutoStorageDevices

« on: August 13, 2007, 05:13:18 am »

Here is a little modification I needed since the fileserver I used doesn't seem to like cifs, but does like smbfs for some reason.  All this does is enable you to specify "smbfs" instead of "cifs" in the web-admin for a certain share.  Just locate the share in the devices tree, there is an input field called "Filesystem" (under "device-data") which didn't do much without the attached patch.

Maybe it's of use to someone else as well.

EDIT: I uploaded a patch file instead, copy paste wasn't working right.

21

Users / Video Disk Recorder (VDR) broken?

« on: August 09, 2007, 07:34:34 pm »

I guess my curiosity got the better of me again and I enabeled "VideoLan Client" and "VDR" under webadmin > Wizard > Media Directors > Software modules

Now after every reload of the router, the system tells me that "there are some devices on this Media Director that failed to start", and I find this in the DCERouter's screen session: "Starting Linux Video Disk Recorder: vdr - aborted (to enable the daemon, edit /etc/default/vdr)".

Being the good sport that I am I opened this file and found the following contents:

Code: [Select]

# /etc/default/vdr
#
# See also /usr/share/doc/README.Debian
#

# Change to 1 to enable vdr's init-script
ENABLED=0

# Change this to 1 if you want vdr to be able to shutdown the
# computer
ENABLE_SHUTDOWN=0

# Options that will be passed to vdr's commandline
# for example: OPTIONS="-w 15"
OPTIONS="-w 60"
If only I had a clue what would need changing, supposing that indeed that is the problem (the /usr/share/doc/README.Debian does not exist, not that I would expect it to contain anything useful anyway).

The screen session for VDR, doesn't tell me anything either:

Code: [Select]

+ /usr/pluto/bin/Spawn_Wrapper.sh ./VDR -d 58 -r 127.0.0.1 -l /var/log/pluto/58_VDR.log
VDR, v.2.0.0.44.0708032200
Visit www.plutohome.com for source code and license information


Now I have tried disabeling VDR and VLC again, but the system keep trying to start them and keeps telling me that devices failed to start.  So any hints on either fixing this or removing them from the system again would be greatly appreciated.

22

Installation issues / /root/.ssh/authorized_keys with "pluto-generated key"???

« on: August 08, 2007, 07:16:42 am »

After installing 1.1 0704 I found this file: /root/.ssh/authorized_keys containing what appears to be a "pluto-generated key".

I'm kind of curious to know what this is doing on my freshly installed linuxmce system considering the implications it might have as a possible security breach. 

23

Installation issues / Finding GC100

« on: August 02, 2007, 02:58:38 pm »

I have reset my gc100 to factory defaults, clicked the "Add GC100" button which brings me to a screen saying "Finding GC100" with an OK button.  The lights on the GC100 blink a few times, and then nothing happens.  I have left it like this overnight only to find the "OK" button missing the next morning.  It's not showing up in the web admin either.  I had the same thing with Beta2, only this system now is cleanly installed and has not been messed with (yet).  When I try it again it says "GC100 Not Found as factory default", unless I reset it to factory defaults again and start over (with the same result).

I haven't done this (sucessfully) before, so I must admit that I do not really know what to expect (or what I'm doing for that matter).  Any hints on where to look or what could be wrong would be greatly appreciated.

24

Developers / Core won't start anymore

« on: August 01, 2007, 06:33:06 pm »

Well I finally managed to break my 1.1 Beta system.  For the record, I do not intend to fix this as I will simply move on to RC1.  However I would like to do an autopsy to see what the final straw was that broke the camels back, for educational purposes, and I'm hoping someone could give me a few pointers in the right direction. 


Symptoms:
- Core hangs during startup whilst generating skins for Orbiter #136 with the progressbar animation crawling.
- Huge numbers of automount errors (on tty11) lookup failed/no such device. (these also seem to be filling up dmesg)

dcerouter_21704:~# screen -r
There are several suitable screens on:
        8611.UpdateMedia        (Detached)
        6383.VoiceMailMonitor   (Detached)
        4704.XWindowSystem      (Detached)
        4556.DhcpdPlugin        (Detached)

According to top the CPUs are about 80-90% idle.

At a glance there doesn't seem to be much unusual in the logfiles either.


Obviously something is wrong but I'm not sure where to start looking, any pointers would be appreciated and please keep in mind that I only want to learn some more about LMCE troubleshooting, not completely fix the system I very likely broke myself (by messing around so much).

25

Developers / What about processor optimization, i586 and below supported?

« on: July 23, 2007, 08:44:59 pm »

I'm having some trouble running an old pentium-1 machine (586) as a media director, could it be that the LMCE (1.1 Beta2) binaries are optimized for 686 and higher?

There could be other reasons as well so I'm hoping that someone who tried running on anything less then an 686 can either confirm or deny this.

26

Developers / default shell /bin/dash vs /bin/bash

« on: July 11, 2007, 06:38:04 pm »

I noticed some errors being reported in some bootscripts, but when I looked at the scripts in question, everything seemed fine.

I recall having similar issues, tests giving errors in scripts while they shouldn't, with some of my own shellscripts (on another Kubuntu install).  I ended up making /bin/sh a symlink to bash instead of dash as changing #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/bash in the scripts didn't work for me either.

I have done the same thing on my LMCE's Kubuntu, and things seem to be running a lot smoother.  Has anyone else noticed this? 

The command to change this is:
root@dcerouter:~# ln -sf bash /bin/sh

Substitute bash with dash to restore the default, and watch out for typing errors.

27

Feature requests & roadmap / Adding voip phone lines not on the providers list

« on: July 06, 2007, 06:02:27 am »

Does anyone know how to add phone lines from providers that are not on the list?  Or even better, is there a way to add my voip provider, as I already have one, to this list?  And save some people the hassle in the future.  I looked through the admin site but couldn't figure it out (I'm not that familiar with LinuxMCE yet), I'm using version 1.1 Beta 2 by the way.  Thanks.