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Topics - colinjones

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16
Users / Vote on Forum Charter
« on: March 27, 2009, 08:05:45 pm »
The charter is now up for voting on. Once adopted, members can suggest changes directly to the forum ops, and we will work to include any agreed ones.

Ethical:

Light Touch - when in doubt, moderators will take no action. They are here to protect the tone and facility of the forums, not censor it. All attempts will be made to avoid applying personal, subjective standards.

Swearing - Swear words are acceptable, this is part of normal everyday discourse. There is no need to get upset over such behaviour. Swearing used to increase the impact of an abusive attack is not acceptable. It is the abuse that is being actioned - See Unnecessarily Abusive Posts.

Free Speech - The forum is not an extension of any putative right to free speech. Cordial behaviour is expected and the charter should be respected. Abuses will be actioned when appropriate.

Discrimination/"isms" - Using the forum to communicate negative stereotypes and concepts relating to race, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or other group-identification is not acceptable. - Comments need to be assessed in context, but if found to be inappropriate, will be removed.

General Activities:

Spiralling Forum Thread - Continual posts and reposts, not related to the original subject or any related subjects, without any new posts on the original or related subjects, that are of an adversarial/argumentative/negative nature - Lock the thread.

Unnecessarily Abusive Posts - Repeated, personal, abusive posts that add no information to the original subject or related subjects - Remove the posts, if it continues, lock the thread.

Argumentative Thread - Repeated disagreement, no attempt to find common ground, thus no assistance to other forum members, setting the wrong tone. Should be taken offline - Temporarily lock thread for cool-down.

Trolls - Repeated posts across many threads over a period of time, where the nature of the comments appear to be to be willfully contradictary and contrary irrespective of subject - Warning via PM, if continues, lock the account.

Other:

Blatant, unrelated commercial posts - Posts/threads that seek to advertise or raise sales for product or service completely unrelated to LMCE. This includes hardware that is not known or suspected of being compatible with the system, particularly from unknown/untrusted posters - Delete thread

Spam - UCE, UBE - delete, lock account.

17
Users / Vote - on specific Forum Charter question....
« on: March 27, 2009, 04:46:17 am »
A proposal has been placed that an additional rule should be added that once all threads come to their natural conclusion, the moderators should lock the threads, preventing further contributions. Once the thread is locked, further contributions will go into a new wiki article.

Pro: This keeps threads from wandering off on tangents, keeping the board tidier, and keeping the threads on-topic

Con: This prevents a thread from acquiring new information, contributions and further questions down the line, particularly when a new user finds an old thread but needs further clarification. It also stops threads on subjects that continually develop over time, like the zwave driver and javamo threads.

18
Users / Forum Charter for discussion - Draft....
« on: March 27, 2009, 01:11:14 am »
Hi all - I have started to draft a charter for the forum, that the moderators (myself, Bulek and dlewis) can use to apply consistent, agreed standards of behaviour. Most importantly, we need to gain majority support from forum members for this charter for it to have any legitimacy!

As I say, this is only a draft. I have jotted down some fairly basic points that I feel will help make the forum a more reasonable and reasoned place to live in. They are off-the-top-of-my-head, so there are bound to be gaps, inconsistencies, and problems. Before we finalise this charter and publish it as a sticky topic, I need to get as much feedback from everyone as possible. Particularly so of the long time members. I will try to get a consensus, or at least majority, position, then republish a v2 we can have a vote on.

Here is the draft. The forum is Topic - Description - Action (if any)

Ethical:

Light Touch - when in doubt, moderators will take no action. They are here to protect the tone and facility of the forums, not censor it. All attempts will be made to avoid applying personal, subjective standards.

Swearing - Swear words are acceptable, this is part of normal everyday discourse. There is no need to get upset over such behaviour. Swearing used to increase the impact of an abusive attack is not acceptable. It is the abuse that is being actioned - See Unnecessarily Abusive Posts.

Free Speech - The forum is not an extension of any putative right to free speech. Cordial behaviour is expected and the charter should be respected. Abuses will be actioned when appropriate.

Discrimination/"isms" - Using the forum to communicate negative stereotypes and concepts relating to race, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or other group-identification is not acceptable. - Comments need to be assessed in context, but if found to be inappropriate, will be removed.

General Activities:

Spiralling Forum Thread - Continual posts and reposts, not related to the original subject or any related subjects, without any new posts on the original or related subjects, that are of an adversarial/argumentative/negative nature - Lock the thread.

Unnecessarily Abusive Posts - Repeated, personal, abusive posts that add no information to the original subject or related subjects - Remove the posts, if it continues, lock the thread.

Argumentative Thread - Repeated disagreement, no attempt to find common ground, thus no assistance to other forum members, setting the wrong tone. Should be taken offline - Temporarily lock thread for cool-down.

Trolls - Repeated posts across many threads over a period of time, where the nature of the comments appear to be to be willfully contradictary and contrary irrespective of subject - Warning via PM, if continues, lock the account.

Other:

Blatant, unrelated commercial posts - Posts/threads that seek to advertise or raise sales for product or service completely unrelated to LMCE. This includes hardware that is not known or suspected of being compatible with the system, particularly from unknown/untrusted posters - Delete thread

Spam - UCE, UBE - delete, lock account.

19
Feature requests & roadmap / Xine, broadcasting to multiple MDs...
« on: March 17, 2009, 11:43:42 pm »
Can I make a suggestion? Recently I was speculating on a new way of using Xine for audio and video play back http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7367.msg47277#msg47277

I realise that this would be some major re-plumbing, but I would like at least to have this idea posted for the record in the Features forum....

In short, the idea was to move to a model were there would be 2 xine DCE devices rather than 1, in each MD. The first would be a "Xine Server" and second a "Xine Client". When the media plugin wants to start a peice of media, it would send a DCE message to the Xine Server on the MD in question to pick up the stream object from the foundry, and start playing it in server/broadcast mode. It would then send another DCE message to the Xine Client on the same MD, telling it to connect to the broadcast of the Xine Server. In this way a new piece of media would start playing, with no apparent difference from how things are done currently.

However, now, if you want to bifurcate the stream using the media map, to extend that media to play on other MDs, the media plugin simply sends a DCE message to the Xine Client on the other MDs telling them to connect to the same broadcast stream from the original MDs Xine Server. In this way, we could guarantee that any media (audio or video) is perfectly sync'd no matter how many MDs were playing it - they would all be playing a real-time stream without the need for buffering, so the sync could only be out by the latency around the internal network which would be far lower than is noticable in media. This would replace the need to use the time stamp events. These would still be needed for resuming playback but relying on them for sync'ing media streams, as we all know, doesn't work very well.

This could even be extended to use a multicast address, which would save hugely on network bandwidth in environments that have large numbers of MDs (as the "broadcast" mode isn't a real TCP/IP broadcast, rather it would be multiple unicasts, each consuming bandwidth)

Further, this could be the nucleus of separating audio and video streams so that you could play the video-only from one piece media and the audio-only from another, on the same MD. Potentially, many different audio streams mixed together, and possibly even breaking up the screen of an MD to play multiple video streams simultaneously on the same screen. We could have as many Xine Client DCE devices as we want in each MD to allow for this. For audio, they just need to play nice together allowing the audio streams to be mixed (quite possible), for the video idea of course, this is much more complex....

Does this strike any of the developers as a good idea?

20
Developers / [Testers?] Suspend/Resume MDs....
« on: March 03, 2009, 06:10:35 am »
I've been working on this code to try and make suspending and resuming MDs reliable. The basic issue, I believe, is that the MD and DCERouter expect a continuous TCP connection for DCE communication whenever an MD is running, and when an MD is suspended it is effectively still in a running state. Once the MD has been suspended long enough for the TCP connection that the DCERouter is still holding open, to be terminated due to lack of response, the MD can never resume operation because it expects that TCP session still to be open, and the DCERouter can no longer reach it to initiate a Reload. This is true of all DCE devices on the MD (each has at least 1 DCE connection).

The objective is to create Suspend and Resume scripts to place in /etc/acpi/suspend.d and /etc/acpi/resume.d that will cleanly tell the DCE devices of the local MD to shutdown, thus terminating the TCP connections correctly. Then on resume, to tell the MD to reinitiate all these connections by getting it to spawn the DCE devices again, thus reconnecting it with the DCERouter.

So far I have got the script successfully to shutdown all the DCE devices and the MD DCE device itself, and output the device list to a file ready for the resume script to use. I have determined that it is unnecessary to disable the DCE devices before shutting them down because using the SYSCOMMAND message with a value of 0 means that the spawning system does not attempt to restart the devices even if they are enabled. So I have commented out that bit. I'm finished for the day now.

I haven't written the resume script yet, but have manually started the MD's devices using /usr/pluto/bin/Start_LocalDevices.sh. The only problem with this is that it only starts the child devices, not the MD DCE Device itself. Although the MD seems to work fine, this will obviously prevent relaying of DCE messages to children. The MD DCE device itself, of course, also creates a DCE connection so it is necessary to stop that device as well.

Code: [Select]
. /usr/pluto/bin/Config_Ops.sh
. /usr/pluto/bin/SQL_Ops.sh
. /usr/pluto/bin/pluto.func

LocalIP=$(ip addr show dev eth0|grep "inet "|cut -f6 -d" "|cut -f1 -d/)

FindMDDeviceQ="SELECT PK_Device FROM Device
                WHERE IPAddress='$LocalIP';
"

DeviceID=$(RunSQL "$FindMDDeviceQ")

DeviceID=56

FindChildrenQ="SELECT Device.PK_Device
                FROM Device
                JOIN DeviceTemplate ON Device.FK_DeviceTemplate=DeviceTemplate.PK_DeviceTemplate
                LEFT JOIN Device AS Device_Parent on Device.FK_Device_ControlledVia=Device_Parent.PK_Device
                LEFT JOIN DeviceTemplate AS DeviceTemplate_Parent
                ON Device_Parent.FK_DeviceTemplate=DeviceTemplate_Parent.PK_DeviceTemplate
                WHERE (Device.FK_Device_ControlledVia=$DeviceID
                OR (Device_Parent.FK_Device_ControlledVia=$DeviceID AND DeviceTemplate_Parent.FK_DeviceCategory IN (6,7,8) ) )
                AND DeviceTemplate.FK_DeviceCategory <> 1
                AND DeviceTemplate.ImplementsDCE=1
                AND Device.Registered=1;
"

DeviceList=$(RunSQL "$FindChildrenQ")

echo "$DeviceList" > /usr/pluto/var/Suspend_DeviceList_$DeviceID.log

#for Device in $DeviceList; do

#       DisableDeviceQ="Update Device
#               Set Disabled=1
#               Where PK_Device=$Device;
#       "

#       RunSQL "$DisableDeviceQ"

#done

#DisableDeviceQ="Update Device
#               Set Disabled=1
#               Where PK_Device=$DeviceID;
#"

#RunSQL "$DisableDeviceQ"

for Device in $DeviceList; do

        /usr/pluto/bin/MessageSend "$DCERouter" 0 "$Device" 7 0 163 "start_local_devices"

done

/usr/pluto/bin/MessageSend dcerouter 0 $DeviceID  7 0 163 "start_local_devices"

21
Guys,

Given that we all constantly spend inordinate amounts of time explaning the basic network setup for LMCE, and given that those that need it explained regularly misunderstand how much impact it generally has, I have put up a simply wiki page with diagrams that we can all use as an explanation "short circuiter"!

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Network_Setup

I haven't yet linked this page into anything particular in the rest of the wiki - so can you (esp thom, andrew, hari, tk, zaerc, possy, gol, etc) all make suggestions of which pages we can place links in, strategically so that we hopefully no longer even get the questions in the first place? Also, categories that we should put this under.... [troubleshooting]?

22
Users / HDHomeRun DVB-T version....
« on: February 18, 2009, 12:55:59 am »
Given that the DVB version is now available (albeit quiet expensive!) is getting support for it just a matter of creating a device template, or will it require recoding of the driver and LMCE wrapper part? (assuming it is implemented as a DCE device... should have checked before posting, will go have a look now :) )

Edit: Oops, doesn't implement DCE... hmmm...

23
Users / Hard Key Mapping article in the wiki.... (possy/thom?)
« on: February 15, 2009, 06:19:18 am »
I was just working through this article and the database - http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Hardkey_And_Button_Mapping

The default key mappings for my onscreen orbiters are all the same and includes a first line of:

10   0 -300 1 741 159 1

From my reading of the article and the database, this seems to suggest that key 'F1' (mapping 10) sends a message of "command" type to the local Orbiter (-300), with a command number of 741 which means Goto Screen, and the screen specified (1) is Main. But when I modify this to a different screen number, regen and reload, it still does exactly the same thing. Moreover, 'F2' is mapped to "back" but also calls up Main. And F6/7/8 do specific things, but there isn't any mapping for them in this devicedata field...

What am I missing?

24
Users / Using GSD/Ruby to control display power with DPMS?
« on: February 13, 2009, 11:39:30 pm »
Can someone tell me is it possible to execute simple shell commands within the Ruby snippets of a GSD?

I have a small LCD connected to one of my MDs for the bedroom.... currently I just switch the power on and off manually to this display as I need it. But was thinking as it is connected using VGA I can use DPMS signalling to put it into power save/off mode. Rather than go to the extent of using an IR blaster, I was thinking I could create a Device using GSD, implement only the Power On and Off commands, and in the Ruby snippets execute:

xset dpms force off

and

xset dpms force on

Then just allow LMCE to control it as needed. This avoids the expense, extra equipment clutter and potential unreliability of IR blasting, is free, simple and completely reliable!

Just need to know how to execute shell commands in Ruby, the serial part becomes irrelevant :)

25
Users / WebDT366 for sale...
« on: February 05, 2009, 05:01:37 am »
Someone selling one in Canada on eBay and will post world wide in case anyone is interested!

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170299965173&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:AU:1123

26
Marketplace / WebDT 366 for sale in EU - 249 Euro or offer
« on: January 30, 2009, 04:45:11 am »
In case anyone is interested, I noticed this for sale in Germany, but will ship around EU. Also looks like they will accept offers...

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180324598279&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:AU:1123

27
Users / VDR and multiple sources (ie DVB-T and DVB-S)
« on: January 23, 2009, 05:11:39 am »
Has anybody set up LMCE with VDR using both a DVB-T and DVB-S source (and 2 tuner cards of course, one for each standard)?

Does it handle this well? How does it arrange the channel numbers and merge the EPGs?

28
Users / LMCE keeps hard locking....
« on: January 11, 2009, 01:16:20 am »
Occasionally (sometimes once per day, other times it can go for several days) my core locks up completely, keyboard LEDs flashing. Have to reset the box completely...

I have noticed in dmesg some errors which are obviously related. They tend to happen some time before the lock up and obviously the kernel eventually falls over. But I have noticed the last few all seem to be complaining about Photo Screen Saver particularly.. Can anybody shed any light on what might be causing this?

[28100.604000] Bad page state in process 'Photo_Screen_Sa'
[28100.604000] page:c15cb7e0 flags:0x40000000 mapping:00000000 mapcount:-1 count:0
[28100.604000] Trying to fix it up, but a reboot is needed
[28100.604000] Backtrace:
[28100.604000]  [<c01628d3>] bad_page+0x63/0xa0
[28100.604000]  [<c01635f3>] get_page_from_freelist+0x343/0x3a0
[28100.604000]  [<c016369f>] __alloc_pages+0x4f/0x340
[28100.604000]  [<c0122786>] try_to_wake_up+0x46/0x480
[28100.604000]  [<c0172e3d>] anon_vma_prepare+0x1d/0xe0
[28100.604000]  [<c0165d66>] __pagevec_lru_add_active+0xb6/0xd0
[28100.604000]  [<c016d457>] __handle_mm_fault+0x8c7/0xb00
[28100.604000]  [<c017b123>] add_partial+0x13/0x40
[28100.604000]  [<c01032d6>] __switch_to+0x176/0x1d0
[28100.604000]  [<c02f1f8a>] schedule+0x2ca/0x890
[28100.604000]  [<c02f5b36>] do_page_fault+0x126/0x690
[28100.604000]  [<c02f5a10>] do_page_fault+0x0/0x690
[28100.604000]  [<c02f4292>] error_code+0x72/0x80
[28100.604000]  =======================

29
Developers / Where is the pointer to coverart?
« on: January 10, 2009, 06:54:33 am »
I'm tracking through the relationships in the MySQL database trying to find a pointer to coverart. I noticed in the AttributeType table the PicPriority field which seems to define the order in which coverart will be selected. ie first Album coverart will be used, if that doesn't exist then the track coverart, and so on through performer, genre, director, etc... This got me intrigued...

For a particular Performer (Armand Van Helden) of Performer AttributeType (2), I found the PK_Attribute key of 2884 in the Attribute table, then found that as FK_Attribute in the Picture_Attribute table referencing an FK_Picture of 639. I then found the 639 as an FK in Picture_File table referencing an FK_File attribute of 8265 - but when I look in the File table this is just the media itself, not the coverart.

So then I found PK_Picture of 639 in the Picture table - seems more likely so far, but that row doesn't have anything in the URL field. The only significant field is the extension which is set to jpg. In fact practically every row has the extension field set to jpg and nothing in the URL field.... so I'm completely lost now, can't find any other obvious relationship paths to follow, and the Picture table seems the obvious place for a link to the actual coverart, but it isn't there...

Can anybody point me in the right direction?

30
Users / Auto tagging folder - just a thought
« on: January 10, 2009, 02:31:39 am »
Was just thinking this over - for those of us who acquire lots of video media, such as TV shows via, say, torrents - tagging manually all the time can be a pain (esp compared with ripping DVDs and mp3 which usually get tagged automatically)

How about if you could mark certain folders under videos as auto-tagging folders. Such that you might have a "movies" folder, that automatically tags any media placed in there as of Movie type, same for Music Videos, etc. Even subfolders that might tag Genres, perhaps Years, or Show, etc. True, it wouldn't be practical to set Titles and so on in this way. But the advantage would be that many people already have a folder structure like this, and merely by directing their BT client to download to the correct folder, you could set 3 or 4 of the general attribute types automatically.

This would assist in increasing the usage of the various other Sort modes other than Filename. I know its almost heresy here, but I have to confess that I do use Filename mode very regularly for this reason! The system could be generic so that there isn't a defined folder structure, you can simply mark the folder you want to have the autotagging feature and then list the attributes you want to set, and their values (perhaps this could be extended at some point to include some level of macro/regular exp)

This could either be integrated into UpdateMedia or be a separate function completely that accesses the database directly to stamp the attributes. The only things I can think of that would need to be addressed would be whether it overrides existing tags, or whether you would have to manually go to the admin console and tell it to override; whether it would look at existing files in a folder just configured for autotagging or only new files....

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