Topics

1

Users / ESPN3

« on: April 10, 2010, 01:12:15 am »

Has anyone who has access tried running the new ESPN3 site in Firefox on LinuxMCE?  Evidently, it runs off of flash, so it should be compatible.  However, I'm running the 64-bit version of 7.10 and I can't seem to get it to work.  Of course, I seem to have trouble with other flash sites, so maybe I just need to reinstall flash.

Thoughts?

2

Users / LinuxMCE Boot Fail

« on: March 23, 2010, 05:49:46 am »

Background:  MCE7.10, Kernel 2.6.27.3, AMD64, 2 HDs.  First HD is partitioned into 2 unequal parts, one of which contains MCE, other contains media files.  Other HD is not partioned, contains only media.  I've been using MCE for about a year now.  It works well enough except for a few issues. 

One of the issues has been the continuing discovery and addition of new storage devices (e.g. it keeps finding my HDs and telling me it has added them in a little status update window in the upper left corner of the screen).  It was a nuisance at worst so I didn't think anything of it.

About a week ago, the system froze as it sometimes does.  I had some problems rebooting the system but eventually it started MCE after a full unplug of the system.  A new screen popped up indicating it found a new HD, namely the partition with MCE on it.  This happened several times as I tried to reboot to make it go away.  So I added it, because I had to or the screen wouldn't go away.  Everything worked fine.  The new storage device pop ups also seemed to go away.

Tonight, I discovered that half of my media files were missing, as though one of the HDs wasn't being seen.  This may have happened immediately after the incident a week ago and I simply failed to notice OR it could be new tonight.  I decided to reboot.  I cannot recall if this is my first reboot of the system since the HD thing a week ago.  However, I ran into the following problem during the boot of my Hybrid/Core:

RAMDISK::  Incomplete write(-28 != 32760) 67100864
crc error
Kernel panic - not syncing:  VFS:  Unable to mount root fz on unknown-block(0,0)

So now it doesn't load at all.  Nor does the 2.6.27.3 recovery console (same error).  I can load into 2.6.22-14 (recovery console only as this version doesn't recognize my tv as a monitor).

This becomes a bigger problem as now I cannot record Lost on Tuesday night and I will miss the show because I have another engagement at that time.

Anger Level Rising.

SO.  I'm no Linux expert by any stretch of the imagination.  Once MCE started working, I stopped fiddling with it and just loaded my media on for convenience.  Thus, at this point, I'm lucky I can remember the commands to navigate through the directories.  I'm assuming that something needs to be adjusted in a boot file or config file, but have no idea what or where that file is.

Any help you can give would be appreciated.

Thanks.

3

Users / Skip to a DVD Chapter Directly

« on: December 11, 2008, 05:53:03 am »

Several days ago, I started watching a dvd.  It loaded normally, I had gone past the menu, watched part of the dvd, and then stopped it.  Going back to it later, I could play the dvd normally using the "continue media from where you left off" option.

Later on, I chose "no" for the above option, assuming the dvd would start from the beginning and load the menu.  However, the menu didn't load and the player crashed.  Now, this dvd will not play.

Is it possible to force a dvd to start at a specific point, other than the menu?  In other words, can I manually add a bookmark or edit a file to say, "Resume this media from this point"? 

Ideas and thoughts are appreciated.

4

Users / DVD Playback with Custom Resolution

« on: November 25, 2008, 07:09:21 am »

I had been running LinuxMCE at 480p resolution, with my HTPC hooked up via a VGA to RGBHV cable to an older, 16:9 rear projection HDTV that can handle 480i/p and 1080i.  LinuxMCE was fine, but overscan issues meant that I was missing quite a bit of information on the KDE desktop.  I started modifying xorg.conf to shrink and center the screen and got something that worked reasonable well.  LinuxMCE seemed happy with it.
Then I decided to try to get 1080i resolution.  I tried the method outlined in the wiki, but that didn't seem to work very well for me, so I went back to modifying xorg.conf.  Again, I found a modeline that worked and I have a nice 1080i picture, everything is centered and looks good in both LinuxMCE and the KDE desktop.
However, I went to playback a dvd and found that the aspect ratios are wrong.  Moreover, they are inconsistently wrong.  Some 2.35:1 dvds play fine with black bars on the top and bottom of the screen.  Others completely fill the screen.  Some other dvds with different aspect ratios have bars on all sides of the image.  Zooming and changing the aspect ratio of the disc don't solve the problem. 
This was not an issue with the modified 480p xorg file.  I can't really figure out a root cause.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of information in this forum on this problem.  Since I modified the xorg.conf file by hand and did not run the AVWizard to get the resolution, do I need to run anything else to solve the problem?

Thanks in advance.

5

Installation issues / New Installation Issues on an Asus M3N78 Pro Motherboard

« on: October 16, 2008, 04:46:12 am »

Hi everyone,

I've built a LinuxMCE box with an Asus M3N78 Pro motherboard, 2x 1TB SATA WD HDDs, and an Asus DVD+-RW drive.  Although there is an onboard NIC, I also have a PCI ethernet card installed.  Additionally, there is a PCHDTV 3000 card installed.  I'm a bit of a N00B with Linux, but this forum has helped.

A few notes on the Kubuntu 7.10 installation for this setup. 

1.  The OS only seems to install in Safe Graphics mode.  The vesa driver seems to work initially, but the nvidia driver does not.
2.  The onboard NIC and audio chip are not recognized by the kernel on the 7.10 iso.
3.  LinuxMCE installs with a few issues, but the graphics and audio DO work, you can go through the av and setup wizards, etc. 

After the standard LinuxMCE installation, I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.27 per the wiki page on upgrading the kernel.  I also updated to the latest NVIDIA driver (177.80), which allows the nvidia driver to work, the onboard NIC to be recognized (not sure it works, but it's recognized), and the onboard audio to be setup with alsaconf.

I thought things were going well, but there seem to be a few issues that I can't resolve.

1.  The internal HDDs work but they aren't recognized by LinuxMCE.  They aren't listed as devices and I can't RAID them in LinuxMCE.  They are formatted (ext3) and partioned, show up in system settings, and can be mounted manually.  I can manually add them as a device and they'll be seen by LinuxMCE.  Oddly, after I did this, the drive without the OS was detected and automatically setup by LinuxMCE.  Shouldn't both of these drives be seen automatically by LinuxMCE?  Does it matter that the LinuxMCE installation was done with both HDDs plugged into the motherboard?

2.  MythTV really doesn't like to work.  The MythBackEnd does NOT automatically load, so I need to start it from a terminal in the Desktop before the Frontend works.  I can scan cable with the PCHDTV card and create a list of channels, but there seem to be issues tuning some channels when watching live TV.  Some of that may be due to user error.  Does it matter that the card was already plugged in when I started the LinuxMCE installation?  Is there a way to force the backend to load when LinuxMCE starts up?

Thanks in advance for any help.