Messages

1

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Single NIC installation

« on: September 09, 2007, 07:39:26 pm »

No it shouldn't.  The intended way to set it up is with 2 network cards.  I see no need at all to change the installer merely because the proper setup doesn't suit a few people that are only interested in half the features.

The promotional videos all make it sound like one can easily take advantage of all sorts of extra hardware if they happen to have it, but if they don't have it LinuxMCE will fallback gracefully with as much functionality as possible given the circumstances. I don't have two NICs, nor do I have any great intention of running a second drop to the living room. (I'm running a combined front/backend, which is a recommended configuration.) My choice is either to add a wireless link to the local network (so now I'll be quite bandwidth limited as far as stream to my other machines), run an unsightly cable across the floor and around the house, or go through the hassle of running a second cable through the walls. Nice.

2

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Single NIC installation

« on: September 09, 2007, 01:25:17 pm »

OK - so you are saying that if a wireless access point is the external router (with say an internal subnet of 192.168.1.0/24) with DHCP services turned off and the LMCE server is an internal router with an external IP set manually to say 192.168.1.100 and an internal IP range of 192.168.81.0/24 and that DHCP services on LMCE is configured to give IP's in the range of (for example) 192.168.81.5-192.168.81.250 then when a wireless device connects to the network the wireless router will forward the request out to it's internal network (here I agree) and the LMCE box will respond with an IP address ?  Isn't that IP address going to be in the 192.168.81.0/24 range and hence not function correctly ?

No. I was replying to someone who stated that you couldn't use a wireless router and do a 2 nic installation of LinuxMCE. That is, you have your cable modem plugged into LinuxMCE and another NIC on linux MCE running to a LAN port on your router. This works fine provided you have DHCP turned off on the router.

If you really want to do a single NIC installation of LinuxMCE, please see the other posts I made in this thread where I describe the configuration necessary to have an external wireless router but DHCP handled by a single NIC LinuxMCE rather than the router. I completely agree this is not straight forward enough and should be supported by the installer.

The point of my comment is that wireless routers can be used quite simply with LinuxMCE, esp if you use LinuxMCE in a 2+nic configuration as your primary router. Wireless is by no means incompatible.

3

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Single NIC installation

« on: September 07, 2007, 06:15:31 am »

The problem with the 2 router method (your existing router and the core system as a router with DHCP services enabled on the internal network with effectively a DMZ in between) is that the most people have a wireless router as their existing router.  This means that wireless devices get their IP addresses assigned by your original router in the DMZ and so LMCE never sees them. 

This is entirely false. If you turn off DHCP on your wireless router, wireless clients will receive DHCP from whichever client on the network (linux MCE?) that's supplying that information. When you turn off DHCP on the wireless router, it simply routes packets between the WAN, LAN, and WLAN ports as necessary. If you plug the wireless router into your network without using the WAN side and disable DHCP then it will function essentially as an access point only. I've yet to encounter a device that does not allow this.

4

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Support other Linux distributions

« on: July 03, 2007, 03:58:46 am »

Apparently it has to do with the window manager used by KDE vs the window manager used by GNOME. If you're making the LMCE screen as the startup, then the environment really shouldn't matter, but if you want to be able to use a desktop AND run LMCE, it works nicer with KDE. The full reason is on the Wiki on the page about LMCE 1.1.

5

Installation issues / Re: Starting CORE software automatically. Beta1.1

« on: June 24, 2007, 08:40:49 pm »

you'll find all of the LinuxMCE scripts in /usr/pluto/bin. Two very interesting scripts are Start_X.sh (which I assume you already found?) and StartCoreServices.sh

My guess would be you could disable the Start_X script. This can be done from the web interface and goto Advanced: Software: Boot Sequence. Untick the box for Start_X. Then, manually launch /usr/pluto/bin/StartCoreServices.sh from some init script. I think that should do what you originally asked for, but I haven't tried it myself.

6

Installation issues / Re: Application Size and Position

« on: June 24, 2007, 02:31:54 am »

Once I could see the full onscreen menu (by doing the above) I was able to goto Advanced: Advanced: Video/Audio Setup.

I set the resolution I found to work best, then was eventually given the option to use the arrow and +/- keys to center the display as well as zoom in and out. Unfortunately, the best Zoom level left narrow black bars across the top and bottom of the screen (why can't it just let horiz and vert resize??). Also, the centering is broken in that I can't more far enough to the right for it to be centered on my screen.

These steps, however, did affect the video playback, unlike the above attempt. However, these steps would have been next to impossible without first doing the above as I couldn't see the menu buttons at all.

7

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Single NIC installation

« on: June 24, 2007, 12:43:10 am »

I got it! The host declaration also requires a fixed-address line to set a static-dhcp address. According to the manpage, this is not so, but when I added that in, it worked. So, modify for your use the attached config. Results are as follows:

Pro:
*Only 1 network is run, 192.168.1.x
*Most hosts on the network utilize the main router, 192.168.1.1

Con:
*Machines that PXE boot will use LMCE as their default gateway. This then routes the traffic back out the same nic to the main router.
*Machines using PXE boot must be listed individually
*Machines use PXE boot must have a fixed-address applied by dhcp. This is not a big deal, but requires more coordination on your part.

/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

Code: [Select]

# option definitions common to all supported networks...
#option domain-name "fugue.com";
#option domain-name-servers toccata.fugue.com;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.10;   #I'm running dnsmasq on the LMCE Core
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1;
authoritative;

option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;

# lease IPs for 1 day, maximum 1 week
default-lease-time 86400;
max-lease-time 604800;

allow booting;
allow bootp;

option space pxelinux;
option pxelinux.magic code 208 = string;
option pxelinux.configfile code 209 = text;
option pxelinux.pathprefix code 210 = text;
option pxelinux.reboottime code 211 = unsigned integer 32;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        next-server 192.168.1.10;
        option routers 192.168.1.1;

        default-lease-time 86400;
        max-lease-time 604800;
        pool {
                 allow unknown-clients;
                 range 192.168.1.151 192.168.1.254;
        }
}

# PXE booting machines
group {   
        next-server 192.168.1.10;
        option routers 192.168.1.10;
        filename "/tftpboot/pxelinux.0";
        option pxelinux.reboottime = 30;

        host vmware {
               hardware ethernet 00:0c:29:0c:66:f4;
               fixed-address 192.168.1.20;
         }
}

# regular machines
group {
}

# CORE (1) has bad mac address:
Change the IPs to match your network. Change the name "vmware" to some name for that host. Change the mac address to match your host's mac address. Change the fixed-address to something that won't cause conflicts.
To add hosts, add more host sections in that group.

8

Installation issues / Re: Starting CORE software automatically. Beta1.1

« on: June 23, 2007, 10:59:12 pm »

The method above it's functional with beta 2, and it starts only LMCE Core Service (and Orbiter if you put AutostartMedia=1).
The KDE isn't started!!! You have to start it manually if you want too!!!

Fewer !!! please . Is it possible to start the core without starting the Launcher (which is an X app)? Or does the launcher not actually launch the core, and thus could be hacked away from opening through some additional steps? This would allow caiman to start KDM as normal, yet still have the core running in the background, and other to remove X from the core machine entirely.

IMHO, it's a server. Servers don't run/install X.

Caiman -- In the meantime, I would suggest running the Launcher (which autostarts the core?) on a separate X server (ex: DISPLAY=:1) and then KDM with it's xserver on the default display.

Cj_MaN -- Upstart is 100% compatible with standard init system scripts, so one can still make init scripts the old fashioned way.

9

Installation issues / Re: Application Size and Position

« on: June 23, 2007, 04:14:34 am »

I was able to fix the GUI portion of this through the LMCE WebInterface. From the "Orbiters" wizard, I found the machine I was having problems with. On the Under the "Advanced" button I could change "Reduce size by %" and Offset. A reduction of 15% did it, and I had to shift the display to the left by 25 pixels, so "25,0" was my correct offset. To view the changes I had to go back to orbiters and do a "Quick Regen"

Unfortunately the Xine movie player still shows up improperly. I need to find where LMCE sets the Xine command line so I can modify it to fit on the screen properly. Anyone know how to do this?

10

Installation issues / Re: Anyone know how to do an uninstall??

« on: June 23, 2007, 02:20:30 am »

Andrew:
Definitely EVMS is intended more for the datacenter and the process is complicated by the fact that the (K)ubuntu installer doesn't support it. It does become pretty intuitive once one has played with it for a while. Personally, I wish snapshotting were more intuitive and didn't require a separate partition, but I think the quicker restoration/creation of a new snapshot once everything is setup is worth it.

11

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Support other Linux distributions

« on: June 23, 2007, 12:21:43 am »

Why does LinuxMCE require Kubuntu/Ubuntu/whatever?

The original system (Pluto) was built around a custom Debian kickstart CD. Since Pluto is expected to be a blackbox, the underlying system was never expected to change and development did not necessarily use techniques conducive to cross distribution usage.

Ubuntu is a Debian based distribution that's quite popular right now and has corporate backing (ie, possibility to buy support.)

This is a new project with few people working on it. Supporting multiple distributions would add undue support headaches when there's bigger issues to take care of, first. I wouldn't be surprised if, a couple of years out, Fedora at least was also supported.

12

Feature requests & roadmap / Better Media Organization / Browser

« on: June 23, 2007, 12:05:30 am »

Putting all the media from my network into 1 single list just doesn't cut it for me. For one, now I have to rename all of my media, as I already have it stored such as:
\\NAS\tv\Series Name\### - Episode Title.avi
where ### is the season/episode number

If I could tag each avi as a particular series and then sort that way, sort by sub folders, or do pretty much anything other than the current setup, it would be much better.

13

Developers / Re: KDE a little overkill?

« on: June 22, 2007, 11:53:24 pm »

The wiki doesn't make any sense to me. It says the major reason was
a) Gnome doesn't support compositing (feisty has compiz, so... um, whatever. Maybe that's not an interface they're familiar with/KDE's wm is better for some reason (C++??))

b) To get around that limitation, they ran LMCE in a separate X server, but claim X11 only allows 1 XServer to have 3d support. That's just not true. I've been using commands like "sudo X:1 -ac & DISPLAY=:1 xterm" for gaming for years. This opens a new xserver without a wm on Ctrl+Alt+F8. Xterm is open allowing one to launch other apps. Often I replace xterm with cedega, but you can also load a window manager that way. If the second display didn't have 3D support, my games would be unplayable. The only limitation is that only 1 XServer can talk to the video card at a time, which really isn't a limitation.

If someone could explain what the wiki means by "However, you cannot have two X sessions both using hardware acceleration, therefore LinuxMCE forced Ubuntu to use Vesa mode, and the integration was messy" when I've been using 2 sessions with hardware acceleration for years.

14

Installation issues / Re: Media Director Only Installation

« on: June 22, 2007, 10:51:42 pm »

What's the problem with your adapter? Which adapter is it?

15

Installation issues / Re: v1.1 b2 fonts too small after installation

« on: June 22, 2007, 10:11:44 pm »

Rebooting also kills the xserver. As does '/etc/init.d/kdm restart'. By definition, restarting the display manager requires killing the xserver. I fail to see a difference other than rebooting takes longer than the other options.