I somehow missed the responses to this post until tonight.  This is most likely due to having several devices marked as "keep me logged in" on these forums.  I will change that setting tonight so that each time I log in it will be more accurate when I pull up "show new posts." 

Thank you for your replies and it looks like I need to pull a lot of information for you.  It was frustrating with a majority of those issues that no other users reported similar behavior and I agree with what you are thinking that a reinstall may be best at this point.  Let me pull up my dvd install date that I used to create the DVD, pull a different date, verify download, verify burn then blow this drive away and reinstall from scratch.

Thank you for posting this, you have made it farther than I have in getting emails to work.  I will be watching this thread and hoping whatever solves your issue works on my install as well.

I am curious when you said "Wizard > basic info > Email setup is tested and working."  how you managed to get that far?  Did you confirm something was sent and arrived in an outside email box or are you saying that no errors came up when you hit test?

. When a disk is not used for more than 5 seconds, the disk is umounted.

-Thom

Thank you for this simple explanation Thom.  I am thinking now of pulling my smaller 250G drives until I fill up my 1T.  This would stop the onscreen notices for them and as the rest of the conversation goes, save a little energy.

I had a similar issue and resolved mine with changing the setting for View "watched only", "unwatched" to the "all" setting using the onscreen orbiter.

I read the wiki:

LinuxMCE 1004    Alpha :: Considered to be "bleeding edge". Give it a try if you are able to fix problems alongside the developers.

I have submitted bugs (and will continue to) where I was confident I knew that something was not operator error.


This is a general experience update about things I have found functional and working under 10.04.  I will draw some comparisons to both the last stable version of 8.10 and to my second machine which is running a fairly slim Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Worked out of the box, or only took minor adjustments:

Media ripping and playback on the hybrid
Orbiter connection with webDT
IP camera (view only)
HD HomeRun
Aeon Labs Z-Wave usb stick
SchedulesDirect sync
WebOrbiter 2.0

For a media player on a single monitor the system at this point is the best available IMO.  If nothing else below ever becomes functional I will continue to use 10.04 for a movie watching computer.

Not Working, or so limited in functionality I moved it elsewhere:

DNS - despite many attempts to correct this apache2 returns a line at startup that it cannot resolve a name.
     * If this doesn't cause issues for Dyn DNS or VOIP settings I won't consider it a problem*

MythTV - using the dcecommon fix recently posted I can watch TV for approximately 2 minutes before it crashes and says too many errors were encountered.  Something about too many frame buffer errors.  I also have to rerun the apt-get install dcecommon command each time I change a channel.

Asterisk - Under 8.10 I did not have VOIP service but I could make calls from orbiter to orbiter.  Under 10.04 when trying to call a orbiter it immediately crashes.   Without FreePBX I do not know the status of my SIP registration to determine the status of my connection.  When I lift the receiver on my phone which connects to a networked ATA device I get a buzz sound for a few seconds and then nothing.  The status under Phone Lines in the admin page simply says "reguest request" on my providers SIP line.

Motion (IP Cam) - Unworking in 10.04,  motion either doesn't start, starts and fails or runs but does not report motion detected from the feed its watching.  Under 8.10 I was able to get it working and have events fire off motion. I have since moved this IP cam to my Ubuntu machine where motion detection is functional.

Motion (usb cam) - Unworking in 10.04 or 8.10.  I do have this working on my Ubuntu machine however.

Motion (analog cam via WinTV 150) - Unworking in 10.04 or 8.10 connected either composite or coax via a RF modulator.  Currently working on my Ubuntu machine after installing ivtv-utils and VLC media player.  The commands to display input is v4l2-ctl -I, to list all inputs is v4l2-ctl -n, and to select which input you want to use is v4l2-ctl -i <input number> the output remains as /dev/video0.  These commands do not work under LinuxMCE unfortunately or I would add that to my device data.

Detection of Networked Resources - LMCE is currently giving out IP addresses to any equipment I put on its switch, they are all able to connect to lmce-admin page and are also able to connect via network sharing options and pull-put files into /home/<my user name>/desktop.  LMCE however does not "see" these devices however and has failed to prompt about using them as file servers as it did in 8.10.

Ability to check updated sqlCVS information - Each time I run the update command with categories selected I get a pop-up window that takes a few minutes and then returns status successful.  Nothing happens after this though.  In 8.10 after running this command my next apt-get update would pull in updated UI files, new templates, etc.

Ability to apply apt-get update - Not currently functional.  

Email out from events or even the test email from admin page - Not functional in 10.04.  In 8.10 when I used the test email button I got the string of information across the top of the screen but never an actual email sent.  I tried using Mailx and was not able to configure that either.

Gyration Remote - Working but unregistered in 10.04.  Getting a discovered, installing software for new device, device is ready to use announcements every 5-10 minutes.  Worked in 8.10 without adjustment though I do not recall if it registered.
  * If it's a known issue I will not list it as non-functioning.  Its just annoying so will let the roommate use it*

Ability to unplug computer monitor and plug in my TV via DVI to HDMI cable - Not working without a reboot.
  * Fixed, I copied the output of nvidia x config tool into my /etc/x11/xorg.conf after setting it for twin view with +0+0 offset for second monitor (which is my tv) *

Ability to restart router or reboot without linuxmce being the active channel on my physical KVM switch - Not working in 10.04.  Performing a quick reload router, force reload router or reboot must be done while the video channel is active on my KVM or the screen locks to 500x420 resolution and is unusable without another reboot.
  * I have learned to always make lmce video feed active during startup/reboots.  My other PC also hates booting while non-active but between its login screen and its desktop it corrects the resolution*

KDE desktop wipe - This is an interesting one but frustrating to work with.  Occasionally when I return to KDE desktop I find all my settings and favorites wiped.  For example I pull the reactivate orbiter script out of desktop and add it as a panel item for ease of getting to.  The desktop widget that displays desktop folder also reopens itself occasionally.


I will continue to work on these issues and hopefully add some of this functionality back to my lmce system.  I love the software as a media player and have never had any problems with that.  Knowing that the system is capable of doing more, owning the equipment to do more all in one place but not having it work is frustrating.  Again, none of this is a complaint.  I actually owe lmce a great debt as it has helped me learn volumes more about the linux structure and general coding than I knew 4 years ago.  That improved knowledge and troubleshooting ability has already helped me to get various devices working on my other machines.  In time I may be able to get these devices working on lmce 10.04.

  

Database file:  pluto_home ?

I have read and re-read both the wiki articles on HA Designer and QuickDesigner.  In them it says something along the lines of "It will now ask you information about your database files."  Where are these files?  In the HA Designer wiki there is a clue about what those files may be when it says "make sure to backup your pluto_home file.  I am going to guess that pluto_home.(something) is my database file?

I am looking at a few different programs that could reverse engineer the UI and give me the functionality of QuickDesigner on another machine but to use them I am going to need something to open up.  Where on my hybrid would such a file or database exist?  I understand nothing about sql but again from wiki articles it appears that there is an externally hosted "master database" and there is a version of that somewhere on my core.  I have started hunting for it folder by folder but haven't bumped into it yet.  Several of these directories have a thousand or more subdirectories so I am very much looking for a needle in a haystack when I don't know what a needle looks like.

(yes, I remembered to select "show hidden files"  )

Updated information on your radar.  It took me a while to realize that this was my culprit but I believe I verified it with a few different restore points and step retracing.

Peek-a-boo internal drives:

Beyond orbiter notification that drives were "re-"discovered and ready to use that has been a mild annoyance for a while and partially resolved with changing the onscreen orbiter notification to "important."  This issue is actually the disconnecting of internal drives routinely and quite often.  While working with files using the media sync area of the admin page, entire drives black out and become unselectable.  Leaving that area and returning finds the drive again or shows another drive black.

While on KDE desktop, all of my sata drives "flicker."  Of my 4 drives, dolphin will show 1, then blink and show 3, then blink and show 2, etc.  This "flickering" or rediscovery of drives happens I would say every 1-2 seconds.  I dont know the frequency of your radar doing its sweep but thought that timing may be important for you somehow. 

General system info:
Hybrid, 4 internal sata drives ( .16T install, .25T storage, .25T storage, 1T storage)
10.04 DVD latest install, frequent updates (typically pulling the latest from sqlCVS and update/upgrade every 2-3 days)
Last clone point where problem did not exist was the 23rd of June.  Looks like I ran your patch on the morning of the 25th.

Wanted to post an update on this as I have made some pretty drastic changes.  With the possibility of having something I create folded into future releases, available to others to use I could not continue putting energy into an iOS look alike.  As I worked on recreating Apple's interface I kept thinking to myself, "this is not an Apple."

I still have the skin mods I did to get as far as the screenshots posted if anybody wants them to continue on their own.


My focus of late has been the dramatic re-skining of the current UI.  These images will load onto any resolution as they don't alter any placement or UI instructions, they just replace the images it would load. 

Conceptually I am continually impressed each time I load a sample onto my orbiter.  It's an organic design where the buttons connect via living cells that stretch out across the screen.  This takes advantage of the way buttons populate from left to right as if they are growing from the main category buttons to the far left.  The bottom left menu button has been replaced with a cyborg face who controls the expansion of the cells and appears to control the system/house.  I am pushing up against the limitations of the orbiters ability to render fine lines and cheating pixels to stretch that limit.

Replacement for the Media buttons that populate based on adding devices such as TV, Videos, etc.
Replacement for the Light Category button that goes in the far left column and is always visable.

Keep in mind that photobucket didnt upload the transparency.  These are the actual squareb.png files and the black areas are transparent.

Input welcome. 

I currently use a "dumb" HP UPS for my core, network and cameras.  I haven't had any luck getting communication out of its serial port and from the online material I have read it may not have came installed with that comm. module.

To the point and question:  For my old UPS or for any UPS not designed to communicate when it switches to battery back-up, what other methods have people used for safe shutdown timers or last minute events/log dumps?

Z-wave, Insteon and X-10 did not seem to have any this capability as I imagine most if not all of these networks fail when power is lost.  1-wire if I understand it enough from my reading the last few days could detect 0 amp draw on a line and be configured to activate an event from that (looking at energy saving devices that watch amp draw then report).

This isn't a huge concern as I have power dropped this machine from frustration more times that I candle to admit but if I can pull a power failure message from somewhere more backup options become available to me.  Gasoline generators, pull power from the solar fueled cells (one of my other tinker projects) or at least time to remote in, check security feeds and power down.

Thanks RayBe,

BlueCrystal was really nice, and is something I miss about my old 8.10 install.  I tried to keep the files saved to a thumb drive when I reinstalled with 10.04 but misplaced them and wrote over them. After all the work I am doing on my orbiter skins I would love to find a way to get BlueCrystal back to use as my on-screen skin.

So far, no I havent used any tools at all to redo my skins as I cant seem to get that working.  I am taking each image from the <secret place they are kept> folder and editing them with Inkscape and Gimp.  I then reload the UI after each edit to make sure it went into the place I thought it was supposed to.  Lots of pen and paper notes to keep track of images that are reused multiple times.

I selected Titanium as a base because, wherever the database lives or whatever configuration file exists for that skin tells it to put the icon into the comm. icons as you explained below.  Other than that I am tinkering with rendering tricks to place icons in various places that I know a button will be.  Its horrible and it will only work on the screen I am developing it for at the resolution and offsets I use but until I get QuickDesigner, HA Designer or MySQL Workbench it's the best I can do.  

An example of this is the main background image is A x B pixels in resolution.  The B resolution is 6 times the draw resolution of a button file ( 266x266 ) or 6 buttons tall, though the user and room buttons seem larger. My TV button will always be second row down, and 3 buttons in from the left.  Starting from that dot, I can draw any button I want onto the background image and leave my button file completely transparent.  The touchscreen is looking for an input in that grid, it doesn't know I am clicking an invisible overlay button on a pretty background.  Again this works fine for my use but to share this with lmce and eventually have it be a selectable skin I will need to keep a clean "non-cheating" copy of my image files and do this the correct way using the configurations you mentioned.

Given the proper tools I will finally be able to find out what is drawing a grey square behind my user and room buttons!  I imagine it has something to do with using custom photos for rooms and users but it appears if they are uploaded or not.  Its a "middle" layer draw, meaning its on top of my background and below my button.  To keep it clean I have had to map the exact placement on my background where the grey box shows outside of my button's rounded edges, then color what would normally be transparent corners with the exact background color to mask it.  To give the button its transparent look like the rest of my buttons have, again I have to map the background image onto the highest layer button icon file and hope nobody notices the slight color difference. =/

**Edit.  I found that pesky gray square.  It pulls the area surrounding the photos as they are displayed on the "locations" and "users" page.  A gray background on that page = a gray background around the image when it displays it on the main page.  I suppose I am stuck mapping my mainbackground image and custom coloring the button away from transparent and back to colored to overlay and seem transparent.

Thanks. 

It will take me a while longer to redo these in a format that is usable outside of 800 x 600.  I employed a few 'cheats' to make things line up that would be called lazy programming at best lol.  The bottom left button for example is actually drawn onto the mainmenu.png so that it would render in-line with the category buttons on the left.  I also want to play around with and figure out some mysteries on font color and why some skins pull icon files for specific buttons while others do not.  An example of this would be Blue Crystal puts the 3 different media icons on the TV, Video and Audio buttons.  Titanium pulls a single icon for all phone buttons that uita, basic and slate do not.  These are all probably explained on those web instruction videos you did a few years ago and would require Designer working. 

Could I steal 10 minutes of your time on IRC for some assistance if I cant get Designer working?

Of all the pieces and parts I have added and played with in LMCE, nothing has been more stable and to me a sort of "token" of the system than my little tablet orbiter.  Web Orbiter 2.0 looks amazing on my PS Vita screen, if I was a Dianemo user I would surely get the Red Line skin for my iPhone, and Qorbiter is looking pretty amazing as well for android users.  The little black box that could is however looking dated I am afraid.  Today on a much needed break from breaking my install I took some time to give my favorite device a makeover.

I can't seem to get Designer working on either of my main computers so decided to edit/replace/reload until I figured out where all the various pieces went.  The results so far are linked below.  They are pretty large images in order to see the detail in the icons so I am posting links.

iOS themed skin, based on Titanium.

iOS theme again with lighter icons

The second link is the skin I am currently using and will continue to tinker with.  I need to fade the blue glare marks on the icons better so they look like reflections and not spears!  Nothing fancy or too elaborate on the drawings, I stayed away from patterns and texture effects this time around.  The 'trick' to icon spacing if that is what you are after is realizing that the placement always seems to check center lower in the cell it belongs to.  As long as the image file is the correct dimension you can have as much of it transparent as you wish.  Temped to put some non-public items on the 'more' page using 100% transparent icons...

If anyone is interested in these screens for their DT or anything else locked into 800x600 send me a message and I am sure we can work out a transfer method and a trade (I am always needing remote assistance and setup help lol).  I also would be willing to personalize a skin as I did mine, all the icons are components I currently run:

Lights Icon: Standard compact florescent
Media Icon: LG 60" TV (getting the UI placed onto that stock photo was fun!)
Climate Icon: Not part of my system but a little more modern than a thermometer
Comm. Icon: Cisco 7970 (again with the UI overlayed on a stock photo)
Security Icon: LynxTouch  (just ordered mine, will break my install a few times getting that going)
Phones Icon: my iPhone


**Edit, the security mode icons were changed as well, I noticed most skins use the default ones.  At-home-secure = a cup of coffee, Do-Not-Disturb = a Do Not Disturb sign, Armed = a more detailed house with locks and chains.  The rest of the modes I will update when I get ideas.

Text from terminal.

DetermineDeletions for table: CommMethod from psc_id: 12 batch: 27
Scanning range of psc_id: [0, 99999999] with interval_length=10000000
01      07/25/12 6:39:10.832            gethostbyname2 for 'schema.linuxmce.org', failed, Last Error Code 3, Device: 1 <0xb76f16d0>                            
05      07/25/12 6:39:10.832            void ClientSocket::Disconnect() on this socket: 0x8ff9838 (m_Socket: 5) <0xb76f16d0>                                  
05      07/25/12 6:39:10.832            ClientSocket::Connect() not successful <0xb76f16d0>
Cannot get table stats from server:0
Update threw exception: Communication error

I admit that I don't have a clue what that means but thought I would share it and see if its something that should be looked at.  I do not have any issues with the system at the moment but this error may be in a module I do not typically use?



**Edit to make the yellow text readable**

Worked fine for me this morning.  I tested it using a small 8G thumb, and a WD Passport 500G.  On the Passport it detected it as two 250G drives because I have it petitioned for use as backup image storage.

I planned on pulling that box out of the wall for maintenance later this week so will pull a few internal drives and see how it handles missing drives that were detected and mounted prior to your new radar.sh.

For finding an IP camera's image location I used firefox, much in the way you can use it to DL images from sites that go out of their way to block the "right-click and save" methods.

Example from external network would be: 192.168.1.7/image.jpg

From your browser on the camera's browser page, right click on the static image picture.  For D-Link interfaces this is the image itself when using images as the live view method.  Select view image source or view source.  This gives you a url for each of the elements that it is displaying graffically including the logos, etc.  You will find a string normally that looks like <IP address>/images.jpg/image.cgi=436478326234.  Open another tab in your browser and retype the address of your camera's browser plus the first part of the red text above.  The image in the new browser tab will be a frameless image of your camera's feed if you got it correct.

The additional (/instruction) is what the device data is looking for since you allready provided the first part of the full url when you gave it the IP address.

Things to avoid that would "not" be still images would be /image.cgi (this is useful as it constantly refreshes however)  /anything.mpg, /anything.mpeg etc.