My 0810 Alpha 2 experiences so far...

[jondecker76]

I'm on day 2  running 0810 Alpha2 and wanted to post my results so far. I want to share this information so that A) casual browsers and normal users that look in the developers section have an idea of how things are progressing and B) just to share the information with other developers, as I don't have time to be on IRC all too often.

INSTALLING - Core
I used the new-installer-alpha-latest.tar.gz install scripts. Everything worked as it should and a few hours later I had 0810 UI2 masked running. The machine I installed on is based on an Asus M2N SLI Deluxe that ran flawlessly with no hacks or tweaks in 0710. While the install went smooth, there are a few problems:

- I can only select 640x480 resolution from the A/V wizard. Any other resolution (I was wanting 720P) would display inside of a scrollable 640x480 window.

- Sound would not work (I am going to try alsamixer tomorrow to see if I can remedy this part)

- My serial ports were not detected so I couldn't add things like my CM11A interface. I was able to fix this by manually running UpdateAvailableSerialPorts.sh, after which I was able to install my CM11A

- I put my old 0710 raid array back into my core. After waiting about a day nothing happened. I was able to get it redetected by manually running checkforRaids.sh, after which I could see my raid array in the web admin. About 6 hours later, my media was back in my datagrids. I am still messing with this to get it to go back to using LMCE's directory structure.

- Now that I had my CM11A interface device installed and plugged into a serial port, I added one light in the web admin to test it out and it worked (I'll be adding all of my other X10 devices as time permits)

- In the setup wizard there was no software in the list of software to install. To watch my DVD's, I had to manually apt-get install libdvdcss2. I also installed w32codecs manually

WebDT Orbiter Install
I booted my WebDT 366 to see what would happen. The padorbiter was already installed and worked great on 0710. Upon booting, I got a message that this did not appear to be a valid orbiter because there were no database entries for it. There was also a button on the screen that I pressed that said something to the effect of "This is a new orbiter". After pressing that button and waiting a few while it added the orbiter to 0810 and generated the interface, it came right up and worked without a hitch.

WinXP Orbiter Install
I booted one of my Datalux iPix touchscreen computers that I used as an orbiter in 0710. Like the WebDT, this also went very smooth and works great under 0810. Note that I have to check the orbiter version and see if I should install a newer version, but all is well for now

Asus EeeBox Install
This was my first diskless MD setup. I plugged in an ethernet cable, set the bios to boot from Lan and enabled Wake On Lan features, then booted the unit. It started the PXE boot process, which quickly failed. Though I was excited to see that the NIC worked with no tweaks!
Next, on the core I ran /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_BuildDefaultImage.sh, then booted the Eeebox. This went smooth until it went to start the AVWizard, where I got a message that X failed to start. Looking in /usr/pluto/diskless/##, I noticed that there was no xorg.conf file. There was however an xorg.conf.pluto-avwizard, which I copied over to xorg.conf and then edited to use driver intel, and removed the line containing rgbPath. I then rebooted the EeeBox, and it went straight to the AVWizard. Here I did my settings for 720P, which worked great, and I tried to adjust the sound volume. I set the volume to 100%, but I couldn't hear anything. After the AVWizard was finished I again rebooted, but got a message saying that the UI was generating. I waited over an hour, and it never finished. So I went to the web admin and a full regen of all orbiters. After rebooting the EeeBox again, it went to the setup wizard. The LMCE chick appeared on the screen and the sound was working. I went through the wizard and after that I was in UI2. Ui2 looked great on the EeeBox, but within seconds all of the graphics started scrambling. Remembering that this was likely related to the phone screensaver, I disabled that device for this MD, and all is well. I also had to run UpdateAvailableSerialPorts.sh, and apt-get install libdvdcss2 and w32codecs. After running the UpdateAvailableSerialPorts.sh, it listed my USBUIRT that was plugged in as a PCI serial port device. Note that I haven't tried to install or use the USBUIRT yet, just that it looks like it sees it now. I also was very happy to see that powering on and off the device remotely from an orbiter works just as it should - so I permanently mounted it behind my TV with the VESA bracket

the only problems with the EeeBox MD so far are:
- photo screensaver completely garbles all graphics instantly

-movie playback aspect ratio is all wacked out. 16:9 movies play back at 4:3, and everything looks like its stretched tall and skinny. Playback is good and smooth though, and the sound is excellent.

Other things I noticed
The new unmanaged room type worked great in my tests. The home screen for that room is completely blank.
X seems way more picky in 0810 than in 0710

Things I am going to do next
-add 2 more net booting media directors (old PC's that worked as great MD's in 0710). These use NVida cards, so I expect it might work just plugging them in and booting

-add my 3 other WebDT orbiters

-add my 3 other datalux ipix orbiters (winXP based)

-Try to see if I can get my USBUIRT to work, and set up my TV device to be controlled by LMCE

-Try motionwrapper with a logitech webcam that worked great under 0710


all and all its looking pretty good. I'll report back to this thread my progress as I make any. I started the svn checkout of the 0810 branch when I left for work, so soon I can work on finding and fixing some bugs. This will now be my production environment, so me and my family will surely find many bugs while using it on a daily basis. It should also give me some motivation to get some things fixed.

[jondecker76]

One other thing I noticed earlier, and my wife just called me at work confirming it.

When a new device is found such as a file server, or some other device that incorrectly registers as another device (I have a device that registers as a DLink camera even though it is a satellite box with an ethernet port for PVR)..  You can continually select the button telling LMCE to ignore this device every time and it will keep reporting the device, like it is not being excluded from the PNP engine. I will try to look at that more tomorrow.

[cirion]

I also have camera showing up, even though I have no camera on the network... I think it's my Pioneer Receiver...

[hari]

maybe the mac range is set too broad in the device template. D-Link seems to not use an allocated space for each product series..

br, hari

[jondecker76]

Had a few hours to spare today so I got back to work getting my system up and running. I put the rest of my X10 Lighting and Security devices in, tested them and they all work. I had committed some changes to the X10 Wall outlet in 0710 to sqlcvs that didn't make it over into the 0810 sqlcvs, so I have to get this done in 0810 as well and then add my X10 climate devices.

I've noticed that a lot of things that so far haven't worked started working after a reboot. This may be due to the cleancore scripts not being finished yet.

I installed phpmyadmin today and added a new entry to the pluto_main:sizes table so that I could generate an orbiter that fit my G1 phone exactly - I was successfult in generating a proxy orbiter that exactly filled up the available space in the G1's browser window. The web orbiter works fine and will have to do until an Android port of Orbiter is made.

I tried to netboot and install another media director today. This was just a generic PC that was a great orbiter under 0710. So far, I haven't had luck in getting it to boot fully. I made it through the A/V wizard (After a lot of xorg.conf fiddling) and after rebooting I get a message that Orbiter could not initialize OpenGL. I will work on this tomorrow.

Thats about all I had time for today

[cirion]

- I can only select 640x480 resolution from the A/V wizard. Any other resolution (I was wanting 720P) would display inside of a scrollable 640x480 window.

I actually have the same mainboard in my Core... Asus M2N SLI Deluxe.
What GFX adapter do you use in it? I use a Geforce 8500GT.

I started by installing Kubuntu 8.10 and updated it. Instead of installing the 177 driver that Kubuntu reccomends, I just downloaded the 180.22 driver from Nvidia and installed it before installing LMCE. (I am hoping to use VDPAU that this driver supports).

Avwizard comes up and the best resolution I could select without having your problem was 1024x768, so when it was done i followed this guide:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Custom_Display_Resolutions and set use edid to true and add my prefered resolution 1600x1200. Reboot with Avwizard and I could use that resolution.

On the MD's I installed the same driver since they have integrated Geforce 7050pv. I also followed the same guide before booting, and I could use 720p on both of them.

[cirion]

Just did a update on the core, Now the Flicker shows are back

[bulek]

Hi,

my network r8168 died after one of upgrades - It's newer kernel xxxxx.11 that causes this, cause it works if I switch back to xxxxx.9 kernel. It's a known problem for Ubuntu, but they all say that upgrade will solve it - but when I do
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

nothing happens, but the problem still remains (I only get one suspicious message that some ubuntu repository on lmce cannot be found).

Does our update differe from stock 810 ?

Regards,

Bulek.

[Zaerc]

Hi,

my network r8168 died after one of upgrades - It's newer kernel xxxxx.11 that causes this, cause it works if I switch back to xxxxx.9 kernel. It's a known problem for Ubuntu, but they all say that upgrade will solve it - but when I do
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

nothing happens, but the problem still remains (I only get one suspicious message that some ubuntu repository on LinuxMCE cannot be found).

Does our update differe from stock 810 ?

Regards,

Bulek.

Then edit GRUBs menu.list and switch back to xxxxx.9 kernel... Problem solved!

[cirion]

Does our update differe from stock 810 ?

Are you using Alpha1 or Alpha-latest?

[bulek]

Does our update differe from stock 810 ?

Are you using Alpha1 or Alpha-latest?

Alpha1....

Regards,

Bulek.

[cirion]

Then we are not using the same version...
Update your repositories, and change alpha1 to alpha-latest.