Topics

In a discussion "LinuxMCE and Misterhouse" on the Users forum, tschak909 tricked me into volunteering to help produce new language bindings for LMCE scripting in addition to existing Ruby support:

What is the current state of the APIs for making language bindings to LMCE? Where can I find a guide to making a new language binding (generally, not just for LMCE) that will work properly and be recognizable to developers who use them? Preferably a HowTo for binding Perl, which will be the first one I try. If the LMCE API is not in a condition to just add a new Perl language binding, who can help me upgrade it to be ready for that project?

LMCE supports lots of network Plug & Play. Does it support DLNA? Or even the actual UPNP standard, of which DLNA is a strict implementation?

DLNA support would mean that LMCE would itself become plug & play on networks with other DLNA equipment, whether DLNA clients or servers. LMCE installs could use various DLNA devices without sweating it. Is it already in there, or maybe just a little development away?

[Please update it with better and more complete info.]

I created a new article in the wiki, "Windows MCE vs LinuxMCE". It is very incomplete, and probably inaccurate, especially regarding the Windows features. Please update it with better and more complete info.

BTW, I reused the structure markup from a similar Wikipedia page, but the LMCE wiki doesn't seem to support the {wikitable} template or <ref> tags. It should - until then, the article I added looks terrible.

Anyone out there selling commercial services that will customize, install, deploy, train and support LMCE in homes onsite in NYC?

The "Ziotek Media Carousel Plus" manages 150 discs. They're also only $200 (even as little as $139), controlled by USB to select which disc to pop out. They don't have a player/recorder, but could they be combined with a single-disc player, with LMCE controlling both devices, for an automated solution? Is there some way to automate the ejected disc from the carousel to load into the player drive?

I know, the Sony XL-1B does it all for only $200 or so, but they're going to run out sometime. Could this carousel, or maybe one similar to it, ensure LMCE has automated jukebox features indefinitely?

Paul recently posted "All Developers, please read", a very strong insight into the transition the LMCE project is making from Paul's solo forking effort, with a little help, into a real community project. But a lot of the knowledge of how the code works architecturally is still locked up inside Paul. Paul is very busy with the technical work, even while opening it to a team effort, and claims he's not the right person to write docs even with a lot of free time available. But he is available to answer questions, though he wants a system to keep him from being inundated. And we've got a "community liason" in danielk, suiting Paul's needs for someone to filter the rest of the project.

We still need a way to use that structure to get the community to share Paul's expertise, so we can help with the project ourselves (and help ourselves to it). We need to be able to formulate questions so Paul can turn around answers, especially questions of how to map features to the code that supports those features. Like "which code gets called when the 'rip all' button is pressed in the Orbiter GUI, that calls the scripts that do the ripping, DB updating, etc?"

A good protocol might be simply for people to discuss in this developers forum whatever problems we're working on, until they slam up against some undocumented code in that map we'd like to have. Then someone in that discussion can offer to ask that question of the "gurus". Once the thread agrees on the actual question to ask, someone can post that question in a sticky "Ask Paul" thread. danielk can subscribe to that thread, collect questions, answer those he can do without Paul's help, and then get Paul to answer. Either through danielk replying, or Paul can of course reply directly. The person getting the answer could dump the answer into the wiki, in a "How It Works" section of a given feature's page, to make the most of the help for everyone. That would be a good "community liason". People who want to help out with documentation can cruise that "Ask Paul" thread, looking for answers to put in the wiki, and to clean up the wiki.

That whole process is informal, and anyone can cut through it if they want and can. But it would make things go a lot faster for everyone. danielk, maybe Paul, can you work with that? Can we all work with that?

Multiple Vulnerabilities In .FLAC File Format and Various Media Applications
Release Date:
November 15, 2007

Date Reported:
September 28, 2007

Patch Development Time (In Days): 48      

Severity:
High (Remote Code Execution)

Vendor:
Multiple Vendors

Systems Affected:
Applications with FLAC Support

Overview:
eEye Digital Security has discovered 14 vulnerabilities in the processing of FLAC (Free-Lossless Audio Codec) files affecting various applications. Processing a malicious FLAC file within a vulnerable application could result in the execution of arbitrary code at the privileges of the application or the current user (depending on OS).

Technical Details:
The vulnerabilities in the .FLAC format are due to improperly handling metadata values from malformed files. The file format is available here: http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html.

(Vulnerabilities 1-14)

LMCE generates its own FLAC files (eg by ripping CDs when FLAC is the specified archive format), so the risk to LMCE is minimal, unless users import FLACs generated by a malicious party. However, leaving a vulnerable executable in the system is still a known risk of unknown probability, which is an unnecessary risk.

This vulnerability report also raises the qustion of how LMCE handles the discovery of bugs like this, and how the development project responds to it. Kubuntu's APT system lets its dependency on Ubuntu automatically upgrade to security fix releases. Are we sure that all LMCE components are in that system? How do we respond to ones that are not?

Bluetooth speakers, with integrated DAC/amp/speakers, are starting to appear on the market. LMCE already has some BT integration, using a profile that lets some Symbian phones operate an Orbiter for remote control. If I want to use some BT speakers instead of, say, a Squeezebox for audio distribution, where would I start in the LMCE source code? Anyone have any experience coding to deliver audio to devices like BT speakers?

I edited the Cisco 7970 wiki entry, and discovered an identical page CISCO 7970 Orbiter. The redundant page should be deleted. Wikipedia has a deletion process that has a lot of discussion, then some privileged admin deletes a page when there's agreement. What's the process for deleting pages here in the LMCE wiki?

The Cisco 7970 support in LMCE (via the Asterisk subsystem) seems to use the 7970 in its default SCCP protocol version. But the 7970 can be upgraded to SIP protocol by upgrading its firmware (available for purchase from Cisco). And Asterisk's support for SIP is much more reliable and robust than its SCCP support. Does anyone have instructions for configuring the LMCE server as the TFTP server to perform the upgrade, and configuring the Asterisk subsystem to use it?

I want to fix bugs Bug 3495 "DVD Changer rips CD's only with OGG" which might be related to Bug 3637 "Disk ripping does not use Quality setting information set via admin page". Both bugs are failure of the ripping script in ripDiskWrapper.sh to use the settings stored for format and quality. Zaerc has reported fixing 3637. I'd also like to add a "Rip All" button to the Admin website interface.

Where are the settings stored, and which executables call the ripDiskWrapper.sh script, in both the rip all and rip (single disc) use cases?

I have ripped CDs from my VGP-XL1B CD/DVD jukebox. But the rips always produce OGG files. Where can I select the output format, like WAV?

I searched the forums and the wiki, but couldn't find where to set the format. I did see the posts discussing the bug that doesn't apply quality settings to the rips. And I see in the ripping script that it can take a paramater specifying the format. But I haven't seen where to set the format.

This forum is full of interesting feature requests. And it looks like "the end of November" is the target date for a new release. Which will reportedly upgrade Kubuntu to 7.10, MythTV to the latest version as of at earliest 10/07, and presumably all the patches made by sometime in November. Those changes alone will probably be quite a lot of good ones.

But is there an actual roadmap somewhere? Where new features are prioritized into expected upcoming milestones, with expected dates (or ranges, or offsets) assigned to them?

LMCE runs MySQL as its database server. I have an existing Postgres installation, and I'd rather not DBA two different databases. The PHP scripts seem to use ADO to connect to the DB, which might mean only the datasource has to be changed, but that's usually just wishful thinking. And there's lots more glue than in the PHP.

I see that there is a documented technique for distributing the MySQL server across the network, rather than running on the core localhost. But it seems untested, and just a hint at using a different RDBMS entirely.

Has anyone investigated or documented what it would take to port LMCE from MySQL to Postgres? Any notes on any dependencies of LMCE on MySQL specifically, either SQL syntax, or features, or some other constraint? OTOH, is anyone running LMCE on Postgres already?

When I installed LMCE, I accepted its offer to run a DHCP server, even though my LAN already has one running, and the LMCE PC has only one ethernet port, which is connected to that LAN. Now I can't ping between the LMCE host and other hosts on the LAN. Or to the router on the LAN (so, eg. (apt-get update) fails to connect).

How can I make the LMCE PC use the LAN DHCP? Is its IP# stored anywhere but in its own DHCP config (and its DHCP client's cache, which seems to be pointing at its own DHCPd)? If I just remove the DHCPd startup from the Kubuntu startup scripts, can I just expect the LMCE to start up, use its DHCP client to get an address from my existing LAN DHCPd, and count on the IP# to propagate throughout LMCE properly?

I'd prefer to use an LMCE UI to fix this, but I'll use the Kubuntu desktop (and its commandline shell) without reservation if that's the only way.

I installed LMCE (dedicated/hybrid) on a machine with a Firewire card, as UI1, single room, single user, no TV or other media features - the most minimum config I could. After installation was complete, I plugged my Sony VGP-XL1B changer into the firewire port, and LMCE reported it found a DCERouter device, offered to install it. That was repeated something like 3 or 4 times, though I expected only at most two (drive and changer), and asked me to set it up as a Windows Share. I've loaded a few CDs into the drive, and I want to rip them to harddrive, but LMCE doesn't seem to really recognize/control the jukebox.

When I go to Home... Media... More... Manage Drives... I get a "Disc drives" screen with a "Bedroom" blue bar overlaid with "Rip", "Play" and "Eject" buttons.

Clicking "Play" gives me only:

I cannot play this media. Perhaps there is not a valid device in this entertainment area capable of playing it.

and an "OK" button.
After a few minutes I get a box overlaid in the upper left corner of the screen reporting. Clicking "OK" takes me back to the "Disc drives" screen.

1889 Existing device already enabled
DCERouter
DCERouter
Done with existing fileserver

Clicking "Rip" gives me a screen with a default name to save the media, recommending [CORE #1], the words "unknown disc" above the onscreen keyboard, and offering a button "Save as public", which I just immediately click. That gives me a blue screen with:

There's a problem ripping this media. please check the logs or contact tech support.

and an "OK" button. Clicking it takes me back to the Home screen.

Going back to the "disc drives" screen, clicking "Eject" gives me a screen with:

Closing tray...

and an "OK" button. After about 10 seconds, the screen changes back to the "Disc drives" screen (without my clicking OK).

The jukebox itself doesn't seem to react at all (though the DCERouter message appears on my screen, as I mentioned). Nor does the PC's internal CD-ROM seem to react, like ejecting (in case perhaps I was pointing LMCE at a different CD/DVD device).

Maybe I installed the jukebox wrong. Is there a list of specific instructions for installing the jukebox for just that scenario, ripping its contents to harddrive? If I should reinstall, how do I uninstall the bad configs? And does LMCE even support automated ripping the full contents unattended, as I've seen mentioned in some comments on this website?

I was glad to see LMCE announce it is releasing an upgrade based on Gutsy/7.10. Playstation3 is officially supported by Ubuntu, and 7.10 (their second PS3 release) had some real improvements on the PS3 platform. Is there any specific work in the LMCE project that targets the PS3 specifically?

The PS3 has unusual HW (that has meant some bugs in its Ubuntu distro) not limited to its unique Cell CPU, but also its Blu-Ray player, builtin Bluetooth, WiFi, HDMI output, and limited RAM. Its RSX graphics chip is locked out from Linux access by the Hypervisor virtualization container (in which either GameOS or Linux runs), and very little is yet exploiting the Cell's primary resource, it's SPUs (DSPs) that are the reason it's in the PS3. So all graphics is running on the same 3.2GHz PPC as is running the rest of the OS - ie. no HW graphics except the conversion of the framebuffer memory to HDMI output. Combined with the limited RAM, that bottlenecks multimedia very slow when running code not built or highly configured to work around the PS3 limits, to exploit its balancing strengths. And conversely, the multimedia processing slows the rest of the OS. For now, anyway, while Linux and the PS3 HW still are barely fitted together.

PS3 would be perhaps the perfect multimedia hub for LMCE, in no small part because it's subsidized by Sony to sell for only about $500, and has extremely consistent (if unique) HW, like any "game console". Also because it's got HW for LMCE features built in, including Blu-Ray etc. If LMCE can work around the limited RAM, and perhaps exploit/assist the existing independent projects to port functions (like OpenGL) to the SPEs, it would have functions available only in custom high-end PCs costing $3000, probably more.

So is there any work in the LMCE project that's making LMCE run on PS3 as best it can?