Messages

226

Users / Re: How to suspend/sleep/turn off a VGA LCD monitor

« on: June 08, 2008, 12:46:06 am »

Hello,

In case anyone is interested for some MDs that are not used to watch movies, the line to comment is:
/usr/bin/xset -dpms s off

in /usr/pluto/bin/LaunchOrbiter.sh

Jean

227

Users / Anyone using HP T5720 or T5725 as SD MD?

« on: June 07, 2008, 09:03:41 pm »

Hello,

is anyone using a HP T5720 or HP T5725 thin client as a diskless media director for standard definition video on a VGA monitor?
In particular, I am wondering if MythTV frontend will run smoothely for standard definition channels?

I have been experimenting with a HP T5700 (1 Ghz CPU but inferior graphic card), and although I can play some videos smoothely, TV is not watchable (in standard definition) and will generate a load of around 6 on the box. Before spending the extra $$$ to test drive the T5720 (and possibly end up with one more useless box), I was wondering if anyone has already tried this?

How about using a T5700 with expansion slot and Nvidia graphic card?

Thank you!

Jean

228

Users / How to suspend/sleep/turn off a VGA LCD monitor

« on: June 01, 2008, 06:57:23 am »

Hello,

I have several MDs using standard 19'' LCD monitors (mostly inexpensive monitors from I-Inc or Hanns).

I am not able to find how to have the monitors automatically go into sleep mode after a certain time (where the monitor would not only turn black, but turn itself off until the mouse is moved).

The "seconds before power off" seems to have no effect in the admin, nor does "Leave Monitor on for OSD" (what is that for anyway)?

I'm sure I can find out how to do this the hard way by editing some linux config files, but the point is that this should be controlled by LinuxMCE so that it does not turn off when watching any video.

I can't half half a dozen monitors display photos all day long. It uses power and the life of my LCD screens.

I read somewhere that Linuxmce will turn off TVs but not regular monitors, I find that hard to believe.

Any ideas anyone?

Thank you!

Jean

229

Users / Disabling mythbackend on MDs that don't have tuner cards

« on: May 31, 2008, 08:40:39 pm »

Hello,

I'm trying to provide some extra information regarding an older post I found:

- mythbackend runs on every MD created in the system, even MDs that don't have tuner cards. In my case, I have a tuner card controlled my the core, but many extra MDs in the house that don't have tuner cards, and running mythbackend on them wastes resource and memory (they are thin clients)

- there is apparently no way to turn this off via the admin, even when selecting that an MD has no tuner card (please correct if I'm wrong)

- an older post suggested to disable the script /usr/pluto/bin/Restart_MythtvBackend.sh on every MD where you don't want mythbackend to be running (for example by renaming the script to something else)

- for me thsi was not enough. In addition I had to run:
update-rc.d mythbackend remove
on each MD

Hopefully this helps someone. Not sure if it would have a place in the wiki since it's kind of a hack...

Jean

230

Users / Re: Diskless MD and "swap space"

« on: May 31, 2008, 08:30:20 pm »

Hello,

in case this helps someone else: when I was trying to mount a swap partition using a file I created in the NFS mounted directory structure of my diskless MDs, I was getting an error saying that swap partitions could not reside on NFS mounts. The only way I found to mount a swap partition on my diskless MDs (HP T5700 thin clients) was:

apt-get install dphys-swapfile
losetup /dev/loop0 /var/swap
swapon /dev/loop0

To load the swap partition at startup:

I created the script /etc/init.d/swap with the following content:

#!/bin/sh

set -e

case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting swap: "
#modprobe loop
losetup /dev/loop0 /var/swap
swapon /dev/loop0
echo "done"
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping swap: "
swapoff /dev/loop0
losetup -d /dev/loop0
echo "done"
;;
restart)
swapoff /dev/loop0
swapon /dev/loop0
;;
*)
echo "Usage: swap { start | stop | restart }" >&2
exit 1
;;
esac

and then:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/swap

update-rc.d swap defaults

231

Users / Re: Full screen computing application?

« on: May 28, 2008, 05:51:52 pm »

Thank you! Yes I tried this and it works fine, but it is not "wife friendly" :-). I really want to be able to launch the application from the Computing Applications list in the Orbiter screen. If you have an idea which files are involved in launching my application and setting up its display/workspace, maybe I could tweak it somehow?

232

Users / Full screen computing application?

« on: May 28, 2008, 06:32:59 am »

Hello,

is there any way to launch computing applications in full screen, without the little Linux MCE bar at the bottom that takes about 10% of the screen? The reason I'm asking is because I am using a remote desktop application, and the desktop doesn't fit in the screen because of the bar at the bottom.

Could anyone point me to possible scripts or locations in the database that are used to launch these applications, and where perhaps I could change these settings or at the very least make the bar one third of its size? Or maybe it is even possible to do it in the computing applications config section by using specific parameters?

Just to clarify, I do not need help to add my own applications, I was able to do that just fine reading the wiki. The help I'm asking for is to be able to launch these in full screen without the LinuxMce bar at the bottom.

Thank you!

Jean

233

Users / Media files attribute "viewed"/"unviewed"

« on: May 22, 2008, 08:04:11 am »

Hello,

I am a former user of XBMC + Misterhouse + Zoneminder + Asterisk, and after my third LinuxMCE install in 2 weeks (each previous time I broke something and had to reinstall) I am finally to the point where my system will become useable. I agree with a post I read somewhere that said that it takes a month to get the system fully configured and customized!
I like that Linuxmce combines all the above features in one common sense application, and I wish I had found this earlier. I have always wanted my thin clients scattered around the house to work as both media stations (videos/music/tv) and access my desktop server. I was able to install a remote desktop client into my MDs and now it does just that! Beautiful!
There is a big lack of documentation, but it can only get better with time, and I plan to contriobute a few tips to the wiki where appropriate.

Now to my question:
How does Linuxmce decide to tag a file as "viewed" Does it happen as soon as I start playback, or after 10% of the file viewed? 50%? 100%?
Also, is this setting stored per user, meaning user 1 may have "viewed" the file, while user 2 has not?
Can this be set somewhere in the web admin? I did not find it among all the attributes? (I have a directory full of viewed movies that I am bringing to LinuxMCE. Will I have to go hack the database to mark those as "viewed")

And another question: does LinuxMCE supports displaying 2 parts of a movie file as a single item? For example if I have "Bee Movie Disk 1.avi" and "Bee Movie Disk 2.avi", I would like it to be represented as one single item in the video interface, just like XBMC does. I don't think this is happening right now. Would that be a suggestion for Mantis?

Thank you in advance for your answers. More to come for sure... (Fortunately a lot of the answers are burried right in those forums, that's how I came so far in the first place)

Jean