Messages

91

Users / Re: Updating nVidia Drivers

« on: October 08, 2009, 11:05:18 pm »

yes

essentially, you need to boot into recovery console mode... that is the easiest to do the update, its a good idea to download it to your core somewhere convenient before the reboot. then run the update, the steps are fairly straight forward, but tell it not to reconfigure the xorg.conf file for you automatically... av wizard does this anyway. just make sure the xorg.conf/xorg.conf.pluto.avwizardr have nvidia not nv or vesa as the driver and the right PCI ID is set

92

Installation issues / Re: Using HDMI, Kubuntu fails at Loading kernal

« on: October 08, 2009, 11:01:29 pm »

pull out the drive if you think that is an issue. yes use i386, and plug in a vga monitor for now - that should always be the base/default output minimum (or perhaps the DVI as merk suggested)

once you have kubuntu installed, you can then follow the instructions to get the latest nVidia drivers installed - that is the primary issue you are having with it. you can then configure it to use the HDMI out.

have you considered installing from the dvd? you will still need to install the nvidia drivers, but it will likely give you a head start...

but with any hardware issue you should probably try switching to the 0810 alpha as this is a much more up to date kernel, and then you won't be in a situation where you have to be careful about what updates you install (0710 has many dependencies on particular versions of kubuntu components so updating willy nilly is highly inadvisable, whereas 0810 you can just run the normal update system to get upstream bug fixes and new modules, etc)

93

Installation issues / Re: solved ? 0810 libdvdcss/w32codec installation

« on: October 08, 2009, 10:52:43 pm »

Samsung - if these packages are not installed on your MD (but they are installed on your core) then you will not be able to playback encrypted/commerical DVDs, DVD rip images or media files that use the win32 codecs (such as WMV, WMA, and many AVI containers that contain similar codecs - you can't tell just by looking at an AVI what codec it uses) but you would be able to playback those files on your core... so you should look at that first.

Don't forget, just because you have installed these packages on your core doesn't mean they are on your MDs. You have to execute the same commands on the MDs too. You can do this, like this...

on your core:

sudo -s (hit enter, then supply your password)

ssh moon## (where ## is your MD device number)

sudo apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2

94

Users / Re: need help

« on: October 08, 2009, 10:47:43 pm »

what actually happens when you select media to play on an MD? Does it appear to try to start playing, and then just stop? Or does it give an error message?

Either way, you probably need to start reviewing your log files. Ones to start with are the DCERouter log on the core (in /var/log/pluto) try tail -f /var/log/pluto/DCERouter.log or whatever the spelling is to monitor the log realtime as you try to play media - you should see the DCE messages being passed and mediaplugin setting up the media stream. Also monitor the xine log on the MD.. this is the more important one.. you need to find out what that log is called based on the device number and it is probably easier to monitor it by sshing into the core and tail -f /usr/pluto/diskless/##/var/log/pluto/??_blahblahh.log

where ## is the device number of your MD and ?? is the device number of the xineplayer device on the MD and blahblah is the rest of the log file name! This should indicate it receiving DCE messages telling it to play a media stream... and then perhaps an error message telling you why it couldn't. Possibly as simple as it couldn't find the file/path because the media mounts and symlinks are screwed up in some way... but we need to see those log entries first before we can start troubleshooting why it can't play.

Also, care to explain what was wrong with your network to begin with? It could be useful to others.

95

Users / Re: Lost Audio 7.10

« on: October 07, 2009, 10:41:49 pm »

are you connected using digital or analogue? if digital then ensure the iec958 is still unmuted in alsamixer. also check you asound.conf is still sensibily configured...

96

Users / Re: Lost Audio 7.10

« on: October 07, 2009, 02:23:29 pm »

Re-run the AV Wizard for a start off...

97

Installation issues / Re: Screen not full

« on: October 07, 2009, 09:58:02 am »

No, you need the 2nd NIC, even if it isn't doing anything yet!

You need to update to the latest nVidia drivers to fix your screen issues.

There are several wiki articles on both subjects....

98

Users / Re: Certain MKVs not working

« on: October 07, 2009, 06:40:31 am »

Well I don't see how! The GPU isn't involved one little bit in the decoding without VDPAU - I can only assume that it is the OpenGL component when the frames are rendered to the screen after decoding... that would seem only to be relevant for one of the UI2 modes, but I suppose there could be other rendering improvements from 9000 series even in UI1.. perhaps just the way it draws to a window, clips, blits etc? Either way, it isn't related to decoding the stream and so the codec isn't really relevant, its just pure number of pixels due to screen resolution.... no?

99

Users / Re: Certain MKVs not working

« on: October 06, 2009, 10:34:43 pm »

Have you tried renaming the file to .m2ts and changing its meta data type to LMCE Bluray Disc... this will cause mplayer to play it instead... although you won't be able to pause, rewind, etc.

Nuwis - a "good video card" shouldn't make the slightest difference unless you are using VDPAU for hardware acceleration....

100

Users / Re: Error when playing previously ripped videos

« on: October 06, 2009, 09:49:35 am »

.iso and .dvd are equivalent - if one works the other will and vice versa.

another approach (Andrew is referring to a particular known issue) would be to move the media onto the local HDD of the core to eliminate external drives/networks/etc. Start with the basics. Also, just because your Ubuntu machine worked fine doesn't mean that it isn't still copy protection... don't forget LMCE 0710 is an old version and this could have implications for the version of DVDCSS it is running and what it is capable of decrypting... either way DVDCSS isn't capable of decypting all copy protections... so a valuable approach would still be to eliminate the copy protection completely on Windows first, then try again... at least that way you will have a definitive answer on whether copy protection is even involved.

Others: do we know for sure whether DVDCSS is even used when attempting to play back VIDEO_TS folders rather than a true iso/dvd image? Perhaps a VIDEO_TS folder has to be unencrypted in the first place...?

101

Developers / Re: Introduce myself... and I'd Like to get started.. Advice?

« on: October 05, 2009, 11:03:55 pm »

Assuming you are talking about the OSI Presentation layer... not sure that there is anything as formal as that documented. Although there are some basic diagrams of a DCE network on the wiki.

Sorry, forgot the comms bit - IRC go to #linuxmce-dev on freenode. Your primary points of contact will be tschak909, hari, posde, radu, zaerc, etc who are located in a mixture of DE, US, NL and UK.

102

Developers / Re: Introduce myself... and I'd Like to get started.. Advice?

« on: October 05, 2009, 10:43:20 pm »

Hi and welcome! You have a steep learning curve ahead of you, but all help is greatly appreciated! Its mostly C++, but PHP, Python and SQL will be very helpful as well. Ruby is used a bit, too.

The first thing to understand is the DCE system. This is a communications protocol (using TCP). Most of the LMCE system is modular using "DCE Devices" These are software modules that communicate with one another through the DCE protocol - it is an abstract command and data protocol for doing things like "volume up", "on/off", "turn light on", "play piece of media", etc. Each DCE Device is responsible for interpreting what that means in its context should it receive one of those commands. This way someone can add an entirely new DCE device to the system and the system does not need to understand how it does stuff, it just has to issue the appropriate abstract command and the device handles its interpretation.

Devices can be existing applications/packages/software that just have a DCE "wrapper" around them that translate the DCE commands into whatever control system the existing package has, or can be written from the ground up - using C++ LMCE provides some tools like DCEGen that give you a jump start.... this creates a skeleton/stubb piece of code with methods for all the DCE commands that you want to implement, and then you just drop the necessary code into those methods.

All DCE devices communicate through the DCE Router which sits on the LMCE core. A DCE device can be on the core, next to the DCE Router, on an MD (Media Director) over the network or anywhere else that is addressable on the network. Current DCE Devices can be viewed in the Web Admin under the Devices Tree. It is a hierarchy of devices, however not every object in that tree is a DCE device - some are just representative of functional units within a LMCE environment, and usually the "parent" device is the actual DCE device that sends/receives DCE commands on behalf of the child device.

The telecom subsystem is based on Asterisk and a DCE wrapper was written to interface it with the DCE system; whereas the media subsystem primarily uses xine-lib - the libraries that Xine also uses, and some DCE code was written to create a native DCE player from the ground up using those libraries.

I would advise you do lots of research on LMCE and DCE and how the infrastructure works. Then look into how you set up a Dev environment and collaborate with the other Devs through the CVS system.

103

Users / Re: Re-initialising/clearing the media database...

« on: October 03, 2009, 12:32:24 am »

Oh you are talking about when you use the search function. Not when you are using the normal media browser.

Yes, that does happen, your experience is normal... if a little irritating! The search finds all entries in the database that match the search criteria which naturally includes the parent folders not just the file. Indeed, try doing the analogous search on a Windows machine.... you will find it does exactly the same thing.... it will find the media file Desparate Housewives as well as its parent folder Desparate Housewives because both match the search criteria.

The confusing and annoying thing in LMCE is that 1) it isn't obvious which is a file and which a folder, and 2) if you select a folder, LMCE will attempt to "play" it rather than enter it and display its contents

104

Users / Re: Update media daemon

« on: October 03, 2009, 12:25:42 am »

cool... my first contribution! (although no way can a code a fix )

In the meantime avajon you can choose one of the files that has a duplicate inode number and move it from one filesystem to another, and then move it back again. This will force a new inode number to be allocated (hopefully unique!) Then force a resync in the web admin of the folders containing the two files that used to have the same inode number.

Now you can go into that folder in web admin with the "Show files who are missing from disk" option turned on and you should see the old version of the file which it now thinks it "missing" - delete that reference. And you should have resolved the problem.

Actually, come to think of it... it is probably better to do the deleting of the old reference between moving the file from its original location to a new filesystem/disk and returning it to its original location, so..

move file to a different disk
remove reference to missing file in web admin
move file back to original disk.

105

Users / Re: Update media daemon

« on: October 02, 2009, 11:25:46 pm »

The function "int PlutoMediaFile::HandleFileNotInDatabase(int PK_MediaType)" in PlutoMediaFile.cpp (starts at line 166 in 0810) doesn't seem to make any distinction when checking the inode numbers between files on one file system and files on another.... ie it only checks the inode number, and doesn't check which directory (and therefore filesystem) the inode comes from. It also explicitly states in the comments that it only ever expects there to be a single file with a single inode number.

My question is, under normal circumstances, are inodes supposed to be system-wide unique or only unique within a particular filesystem. It seems to me that the latter is most likely, in which case inode duplicates could be possible with more than one filesystem, and so this code looks like it would be confused by that situation in the way the OP describes....

does that seem right?