Messages

16

Users / Diskless Workstation installation boot and ACPI=on or off

« on: February 25, 2017, 10:06:36 am »

Hello everyone,

acpi=off was added to the Diskless default boot, during the early days of Pluto 2.0, because of hardware that contained faulty DSDT tables, which did not properly initialize the I/O controller hardware. Since the BIOS in these early machines (circa 2004-2007) initialized the I/O controllers and embedded hardware to a point where the linux kernel could work around the bugs, it was a way to get the non-working machines to boot properly.

With the decreased use of legacy BIOS in the x86 world, and the emphasis on decreasing POST and boot times, firmware engineers moved the initialization of critical I/O subsystems to the operating system, utilizing ACPI to discover, enumerate, and provide the needed data to bring up the I/O controllers and other embedded devices. If ACPI is not turned on, these devices are typically in a non-working state, causing devices to not be discovered, to kernel panics while the kernel brings itself up.

It would be beneficial to hear from everyone, as to the effects of turning this attribute on or off while booting the diskless workstation, does it stop kernel panics? do the NICs initialize properly?

There is a ticket open for this issue:
https://git.linuxmce.org/linuxmce/linuxmce/issues/2731

Please let us know,
-Thom

17

Installation issues / Re: PnP Install Broken for Phoenix USB Solo Mic

« on: February 25, 2017, 09:36:07 am »

try it.

-Thom

18

Installation issues / Re: PnP Install Broken for Phoenix USB Solo Mic

« on: February 24, 2017, 07:45:50 pm »

Have you already tried modifying the script?

-Thom

19

Developers / Re: Fixing External Media Identifier

« on: February 16, 2017, 05:30:24 am »

I have done another build, this time incorporating a fix for issue #2723. disc ripping should now work correctly. I am looking to see if I need to explicitly add support for firing an identify when the External Media Identifier starts up (e.g. if it crashes.), but I think this should work better.

Please make sure that you can:

* Identify and rip a DVD
* Identify and rip a CD

The current CD and DVD identifiers use the Microsoft Media Services (MDR) data source, and for American DVDs, this works great... Stuff in other zones may not work as well, need to see...

If anyone still has, e.g. a copy of Windows 7, with the media player, and you happen to be in europe, Please try to play a movie, and if a cover art comes back, please talk to me, so that I can instruct you on how to get the necessary network tracing data, so that I can augment the EMI code.

-Thom

Latest build here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxBzWnEPRL2HSXZVR2JMblhTQTg

20

Developers / Re: Fixing External Media Identifier

« on: February 13, 2017, 10:55:03 pm »

Latest i386 binary for 1404 here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxBzWnEPRL2HMUpYMjZsU3NBaVk

-Thom

21

Developers / Re: Fixing External Media Identifier

« on: February 13, 2017, 10:48:09 pm »

Interestingly enough, that hasn't recurred since building my dev environments (I have tested on both a 64-bit 1604 and a 32-bit 1404 VM environment, same hardware)..

As it happens, VMWare workstation is proving to be a far more stable environment for development than VirtualBox (and even properly handles compositing)... with the latest Utils.sh, vmware is now detected and handled properly.

-Thom

22

Developers / Fixing External Media Identifier

« on: February 13, 2017, 08:16:42 pm »

Hello everyone,

I've been on hiatus for the last year and a half (actually a bit longer), as I needed to take care of other things in my life...but am back now, and squashing bugs on my list.

One of the things I had left in an unfinished state was debugging the reverse engineered External Media Identifier, which identifies CDs and DVDs inserted into the system and tags them appropriately.

Due to (what is now known as) an unusual compiler bug dealing with 64-bit pointer alignment, I had to disable the DVD identification code that I had written which replicated the behavior found in the original External Media Identifier.

This code now works, and I've been able to identify a series of both DVD and CD disks correctly, all of which have corresponding entries in the AMG database.

I need a few people who have DVD and CD collections to ping me, so I can give an External Media Identifier binary to test, and report issues, so that I can finally get this piece dealt with.

-Thom

23

Users / Re: What is compatible with LMCE?

« on: June 20, 2016, 02:45:39 pm »

I am the engineer for the Game Player, and I want to apologise for the temporary removal of the Game Player from LinuxMCE.

The Game Player, as it stood in LinuxMCE, had a few flaws:

* imprecise control of the target emulation, due to needing to synthesize X events, and all of the insane synchronization issues that arise from this.
* Huge amounts of metadata were downloaded when the plugin was installed on the core

I was in the middle of writing solutions to address these problems, when the code was accidentally prematurely pushed to the main source code repository in the master branch, which left the code in a very unusable state.

Life has since intervened (most recently, my wife was involved in a car accident), so my priorities are shifted, for the moment.

I intend to address these issues, once we've gotten the bug list for the rest of the system down to a manageable amount. The Game Player will come back, it's my baby, but it needs some serious engineering elbow grease to make it better.

-Thom

24

Users / Re: question?

« on: February 22, 2016, 06:25:59 am »

I have seen this issue, myself, which leads me to believe that the HDHR needs either some segmentation, VLAN, and/or QoS action at the switch, as it tends to be very chatty.

-Thom

25

Users / Re: Thoughts on my system design

« on: February 21, 2016, 01:39:15 am »

Welcome to LinuxMCE. The best advice that we can give, is to be patient, and if needed, talk to community members on the #linuxmce channel on irc.freenode.org.

To answer your questions:
(1) not that I know of, but if you're comfortable writing code in either C++, Ruby, or Shell scripting, a device template and resulting DCE device can be made that LinuxMCE can easily control.
(2) Again, not that I know of, we are always looking for solutions in this department, but nothing has been made widely available on any platform, save for Windows.
(3) I did write a DCE device for the Hulu Desktop player, but Hulu Labs has since discontinued it (as of 2012), and it will no longer work on current systems, so we have removed it from builds. We are looking for creative solutions for Netflix, as well.
(4) The Fiire remote was a custom remote designed by Gyration for Fiire Inc., These remotes haven't been made since 2010, and the support code for them was disrupting a wide variety of other devices in the system, so the code was removed.

-Thom

26

Users / Re: The return of CDDB and CD-Ripping

« on: February 10, 2016, 06:19:08 pm »

Fantastic! Great work!

-Thom

27

Users / Re: Game Player builds on Hiatus

« on: February 01, 2016, 04:17:40 am »

I take, from the silence, that I can take my time and fold back in Game Player functionality, when I've had chance to do things right?

-Thom

28

Users / Game Player builds on Hiatus

« on: January 13, 2016, 08:46:15 am »

Hi guys,

Sorry, for various reasons, I've had to ask phenigma to remove the game player from LinuxMCE.

This is temporary, and there are many reasons behind this, all of them my fault, and the decision was mine alone.

I am taking the opportunity to do several things:

* get rid of the 3 GIGABYTE deb packages containing metadata. Replace them with a web service that serves the relevant metadata.
* re-work how metadata is stored and related, so that it can scale much better than what we have.
* provide a way for user overrides without explicitly needing to replace the attributes in web admin.
* provide a way to control the emulators in a consistent manner. This is exceptionally difficult, and systems like Hyperspin have the benefit of a MANDATED OPERATING SYSTEM LEVEL MESSAGING SYSTEM to pass events to the emulators, without requiring patching. Being Linux, we have no such luxury, so I have to do some SERIOUS experimentation and research to determine the best way to control the emulators
* pull the build of the emulators away from the build system, leading to cutting the build time of LinuxMCE in half, at least. (Yes, my stuff was adding hours to the build process!)
* Dockerize the build system to allow for the latest versions of MAME to be built with precisely the dependencies needed, as well as providing a modular way to keep the build up to date.
* Provide a way to select which version of MAME to use. For those of us with varying collections, this is critical.
* Use hashes to identify media and media attributes.

It will all be back, I just need to do some serious re-working of it, as years of experience have shown that I implemented it wrong in the first place. That's okay, it's all a learning experience. I know better, now.

What are your thoughts?

-Thom

29

Developers / Re: Developing a Weather Plugin, videos

« on: September 13, 2015, 07:11:14 pm »

If you want to understand how the bound icons for weather are being handled, please watch my Plugin video.

-Thom

30

Developers / Re: Developing a Weather Plugin, videos

« on: September 13, 2015, 07:10:31 pm »

The code has been changed to add a couple of variables, ending in _tonight, for the tonight's forecast page, bringing the variables available, to:

Code: [Select]

      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_current", "weather");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_tonight", "weather_tonight");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day1", "weather_day1");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day2", "weather_day2");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day3", "weather_day3");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day1", "weather_day16");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day2", "weather_day26");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day3", "weather_day36");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day4", "weather_day4");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day5", "weather_day5");
      UpdateBoundIcon(sDeviceIDs, "cond_day6", "weather_day6");
 
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Description_CONST,"cond_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Temperature_CONST,"temp_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Humidity_Data_CONST,"humidity_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Pressure_Data_CONST,"pressure_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Wind_Data_CONST,"wind_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Direction_Data_CONST,"direction_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Visibility_Data_CONST,"visibility_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Current_Feels_Like_Data_CONST,"feelslike_current");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_City_Data_CONST,"location");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNowDesc_CONST),TEXT_City_Data_CONST,"location");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_City_Data_CONST,"location");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_City_Data_CONST,"location");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNowDesc_CONST),TEXT_Current_Description_CONST,"cond_tonight");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNowDesc_CONST),TEXT_Current_Temperature_CONST,"temp_tonight");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNowDesc_CONST),TEXT_Tomorrow_Weather_Forecast_CONST,"forecast_tonight");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNow_CONST),TEXT_Age_of_Data_CONST,"data_age");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherNowDesc_CONST),TEXT_Age_of_Data_CONST,"data_age");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_Age_of_Data_CONST,"data_age");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_Age_of_Data_CONST,"data_age");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_Day_1_Condition_CONST,"cond_day1");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_Day_2_Condition_CONST,"cond_day2");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_Day_3_Condition_CONST,"cond_day3");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_Hi_Data_1_CONST,"temp_hi_day1");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_Lo_Data_1_CONST,"temp_lo_day1");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_Hi_Data_2_CONST,"temp_hi_day2");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_Lo_Data_2_CONST,"temp_lo_day2");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_Hi_Data_3_CONST,"temp_hi_day3");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_Lo_Data_3_CONST,"temp_lo_day3");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_dow1_CONST,"dow_day1");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_dow2_CONST,"dow_day2");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast3_CONST),TEXT_3day_dow3_CONST,"dow_day3");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_dow1_CONST,"dow_day1");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_dow2_CONST,"dow_day2");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_dow3_CONST,"dow_day3");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_dow4_CONST,"dow_day4");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_dow5_CONST,"dow_day5");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_dow6_CONST,"dow_day6");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_Hi_Data_1_CONST,"temp_hi_day1");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_Lo_Data_1_CONST,"temp_lo_day1");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_Hi_Data_2_CONST,"temp_hi_day2");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_Lo_Data_2_CONST,"temp_lo_day2");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_Hi_Data_3_CONST,"temp_hi_day3");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_3day_Lo_Data_3_CONST,"temp_lo_day3");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_Hi_Data4_CONST,"temp_hi_day4");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_Lo_Data4_CONST,"temp_lo_day4");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_Hi_Data5_CONST,"temp_hi_day5");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_Lo_Data5_CONST,"temp_lo_day5");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_Hi_Data6_CONST,"temp_hi_day6");
      UpdateText(sDeviceIDs,TOSTRING(DESIGNOBJ_mnuWeatherForecast6_CONST),TEXT_6day_Lo_Data6_CONST,"temp_lo_day6");

If you want this before a package is built, please build the weather plugin and install it.

We can do icons a bit later, as it may need to increase the size of the alternate images text field to accomodate them (I have to literally do a field for each.)

Not to mention ,that every single skin has to have icons to match. We need to be sure about this.

Also, it seems that Hi and Lo on my system are being shown backwards.

-Thom