Installing LinuxMCE on server - installer issues, networking, video playback...

[KirkD]

I've been working to install LinuxMCE on a server box and have bumped up against numerous issues.

First off, here's a snapshot of my system:

Zareason Breeze Server 5880s
GigaByte mother board, model #H97N-WIFI
i7-4790 3.6-4GHz
16GB DDR3-1600
2x2TB 7200 rpm drives currently configured as software RAID
2xGigabit Ethernet
Integrated Intel HD audio with jacked outputs as well as digital spdif output
Integrated Intel HD video with DVI and HDMI output


LinuxMCE 14.04:
During the installation, I noticed that the NIC cards are not recognized.  At first, I thought this was just because of a new install, but I can never see any network card information from ifconfig.  I can get through the full install but upon reboot, I end up at a KDE desktop rather than in LinuxMCE.  I do see a script on the desktop for LinuxMCE, but when I try to run it, it simply stops without producing an error and nothing changes.

LinuxMCE 12.04:
Again, no recongnition of the NIC cards.  In this case, I do get to the LinuxMCE startup, but the video tutorial doesn't play.  I assumed this might be the Intel video drivers, but I seem to have full access to the card info from lspci.  Everything seems to behave fine in HD display mode.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:
I can indeed install 14.04 but again, I see no network card information.  And, of course, this doesn't seem to be a useful place to start.

Fedora 20:
Just to see if the network cards were broken or there were other problems I tried to install Fedora 20.  Apart from a couple of installer hangs when trying to write the bootloader, I now have a fully functional Fedora 20 box.  Not very helpful for LinuxMCE, but the network cards are both operational.

I'm not sure where to go next with this.  One thought is to install VirtualBox where I could put a LinuxMCE virtual machine operating as the core.  I did find some options of this in the wiki, but I'm not sure if it is the best use of my efforts and equipment. The more I think about it, the more I like this idea.  I would simply need a media director for each TV/audio station, which I already planned to do.  I could also then make the server a more general utility server with an obvious focus on LinuxMCE.

Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

-Kirk

[davegravy]

Obviously the NICs don't appear in ifconfig for you, but do they appear with

Code: [Select]

ifconfig -a
?

For me, this was the case. The NICs were recognized by the OS but weren't "up" because the LMCE install logic failed to configure them.

The reason for that: turns out my cable modem requires a power cycle when the MAC address connected to it changes, otherwise it clams up. If the LMCE install logic can't find a path to the internet on either NIC it leaves them both down I think. See if you can bring one of them up with ifconfig and run dhclient to verify DHCP is working and you can reach the internet.