I've noticed that with a Gb link and using iptraf to check I was able to push not more than 20Mb/sec

Okay, let me explain again 

* I am able to install LMCE in a HVM, but that has no access to any pci(e) hardware. At least not without VT-d which is only available on a small amount of MB's and using a Intel procc. So the only way I can hook the system to the network is via virtual network interfaces and that causes congestion. Not to mention not having access to ISDN cards and so on.

* Installing in an unpriviledged domain (PV) will give you access to PCI(e) through pciback.hide but when building the domain the installer of LMCE fails. When I did overcome the latter (tearing the installer down into bits and pieces) I was able to install the lot, but the system was everything but stable...

So if there is a way to install LMCE as a PV I would certainly give it a go and if able to build would provide the VM as a appliance to everybody interested.

rgds

Han

Hari,

thanks for your thoughts, although the latter part I really have no clue how to go about. Can you give me a hint, I am very interested ;-)

Hari,

I had to use HVM as the other way, ie use PV, would not let me start the installer. Only after extracting the gz part of the installer and modifying the script in front of the gz container I was able to run the installer. But, when the system was running I got all kind of errors crashes etc. That is why I went for the core to be HVM and a mythbuntu slavebackend to do my TV recordings.

At this moment it will only be possible to build a HVM and have the access to PCI(e) directly using VT-d which is only available on the P5E VM DO mb which I do not have. Beside that its running out as well but I am still trying to find one. (http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo)

The whole XEN setup will give me the ability to be able to run my websites on the external side of the server without interfering with LCME.

I would love to have a way to set it up as a PV which takes a way the need for a new motherboard as I can pciback the necessary cards into the VM.

rgds

Han

We'll gents, all failed. The problem lies in the fact that XEN virtual network interfaces will not pass enough traffic to have the system run smooth. Maybe VT_D will help but for that I'll first have to buy a new MB.

rgds

[reboot]

Hi all,

I have had a problem with my motherboard that when I used UI2 my sound was very bad. It sounded like crackling and with a bit of an echo. Using the most simple UI I did not have the problem.

My solution:

Check your type of soundcard via lspci...

Then find your soundcard in the next file

linuxmce@dcerouter:~$ zless /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/ALSA-Configuration.txt.gz

For my specific card is says:

<cut>

 Module snd-hda-intel
  --------------------

    Module for Intel HD Audio (ICH6, ICH6M, ESB2, ICH7, ICH8),
                ATI SB450, SB600, RS600,
                VIA VT8251/VT8237A,
                SIS966, ULI M5461

    model       - force the model name
    position_fix - Fix DMA pointer (0 = auto, 1 = none, 2 = POSBUF, 3 = FIFO siz
e)
    probe_mask  - Bitmask to probe codecs (default = -1, meaning all slots)
    single_cmd  - Use single immediate commands to communicate with
                codecs (for debugging only)
    enable_msi  - Enable Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) (default = off)

    This module supports one card and autoprobe.

    Each codec may have a model table for different configurations.
    If your machine isn't listed there, the default (usually minimal)
    configuration is set up.  You can pass "model=<name>" option to
    specify a certain model in such a case.  There are different
    models depending on the codec chip.

          Model name    Description
          ----------    -----------
        ALC880
          3stack        3-jack in back and a headphone out
          3stack-digout 3-jack in back, a HP out and a SPDIF out
          5stack        5-jack in back, 2-jack in front
          5stack-digout 5-jack in back, 2-jack in front, a SPDIF out
          6stack        6-jack in back, 2-jack in front
          6stack-digout 6-jack with a SPDIF out
          w810          3-jack
          z71v          3-jack (HP shared SPDIF)
          asus          3-jack (ASUS Mobo)
          asus-w1v      ASUS W1V
          asus-dig      ASUS with SPDIF out
          asus-dig2     ASUS with SPDIF out (using GPIO2)
          uniwill       3-jack
          fujitsu       Fujitsu Laptops (Pi1536)
          F1734         2-jack

</cut>


Adding "options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1 model=3stack" at the end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base solved my problem after a reboot of the MD.

Maybe somebody is helped with this...


(original link: http://www.lucagasperini.com/blog/2007-laptop-sound-working/)

Thom,

Will do, but will take a bit of time. I'm currently on holiday, back the 8th of October. Its in my own interest to document it as well :-)

rgds

Han

Yes, yes and yes again. Got it working after almost a year of tries and more tries...

Configuration:
server hardware: ASUS M3A Mb, AMD 64*2 5000+ 4Gb memory and a couple of HD's, an extra network card and one Hauppauge PVR150
server software: Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 server with XEN 3.2 installed

xen setup according to http://docwhat.gerf.org/2008/08/xen-networking/. Make sure you name the bridges eth0, eth1 etc otherwise the setup will fail.

Dom0 has a pciback.hide statement in the kernel parameters to hide the capture card. I've installed ConVirt to make my life easy when making VM's. Dont forget to change the "file" statement into "tap:aio" otherwise starting the vm will fail. Make also sure to run the ConVirt script on the server otherwise you are not able to connect....

DomU (LinuxMCE) created as a PVM. Any other option results in the disasters I have had during the last year. Attach one virtual network card to bridge eth0 the other to bridge eth1 after setting up. When starting the install LinuxMCE will detect 2 networkcards for the normal setup.

DomU (Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon with Myth backend installed). Use ConVirt to bootstrap a Gutsy commandline system. Make sure you add the hauppauge card to the config file through the pci statement. Also do not forget to add "extra="swiotbl=force"" otherwise your Domu will crash on DMA errors. Add Mythbacked to the DomU as described in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/Feisty/Backend, make sure you do not make a master but a slave. Via the setup connect to the master. And you are up and running ;-) Make sure you do not use any version newer than Gutsy or otherwise you probably have to rebuild the core because of a corrupted Mythconverge database.

If you want to know all the info I gathered during the process just PM me and I'll send you my details for delicious.com. I am happy to answer any question or send any config file ;-)

Next topic: how to get my ISDN card into place, netbooting XEN MD ?

And that is where it all stopped. To much freakin hassle. Won't finish this, or my family life will be dead and gone for sure. But I've entered another road, so bear with me and I'll tell....

Then the next problem. As i am using X over ssh i have to do something about the display variable when starting of LinuxMCE. First of all I kill the running process for lmce*

ps -ef | grep lmce

it gives you the pid number, kill that one of.

now edit /usr/pluto/bin/lmce

Now comes the tricky part, for whatever reason you are able to mount the first iso and get the installation file of there but running it will not give you a go, at least that is you get no desktop item. So u can't kick of the installation. Furthermore running it will complain not being to unzip a compressed image.

So i did it the following way: because the installer consists out of a script and a compressed image I used vim to take the script part out and save it in a new file. I used one of the standard tools to unzip the compressed image. For my script and the other necessary files see the download link.

http://www.gigasize.com/get.php?d=msb28nkr1wb

unpack into mceinstaller dir in root, cd to the directory and execute han.sh "./han.sh"

1) Then, to make sure everything is as virgin as possible, get rid of update line in sources.list. I use vim (apt-get install vim) to edit /etc/apt/sources.list to comment out all of the update depositories.
2) Install the kubuntu desktop via apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. Btw this will take a bit of time ;-)
3) After the installation I will start a new X session on my desktop (my server is headless) with "xinit -- :1 vt12. After that switch to vt 12 and kick of a X session through ssh by "ssh -X -l root 10.0.0.11.
4) Did i tell already I exported an extra PCI network card to the DomU via PCIBack? No i didn't but that is a whole story on its self. If you have done this as well make sure that the card is inserted via the PCI statement in the xen config. Need any details, let me know.
5) So now you should have a running virgin kubuntu enviroment with 2 network cards, should be the perfect enviroment for LinuxMCE ;-)
6) using smb/nfs make sure you put the 2 linuxmce cd's and the kubuntu desktop cd on your virtual system.
7) Install cron & iptables: "apt-get install cron iptables". You will need it later on, that is LinuxMCE.

My thought:

As I have a number of website running of Xen, sharing SMB to local PC's and being fed up with Vista not coming out of hibernate I was willing to give a DomU construction a go. So let me tell you about that in this thread. First of all my xen-tools script statement:

xen-create-image --hostname=mediaserver --size=25Gb --swap=4Gb --ide \
--ip=10.0.0.11 --netmask=255.255.255.0 --gateway=10.0.0.138 --force \
--dir=/virtualmachines --memory=1024Mb --arch=amd64 --kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-xen \
--initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-xen --install-method=debootstrap --dist=gutsy \
--mirror=http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ --passwd

Pascal,

i'm still working on things. Currently trying to decide to take it further with FC8 (but still have no pci hide garantee) or Ubuntu (work for me with a network card) first have to move my server to another system (website etc) after that I can build a new one from scratch using either. So no manual yet

Also a solution but not a very green one I'll have a go anyway, but I will continue my quest