thezfunk LinuxMCE Project build

[merkur2k]

you should not need to do anything in mythsetup other than scanning for channels. all the rest will be setup by the setup wizard when it is detected.

[thezfunk]

Next task:

I received four 1TB WD Blacks from Newegg today.  They were very poorly packed so I am doing a complete test on each one.  Full surface scan.  I don't want a drive failing two weeks from now.

I need to create a RAID 5.  Then, move the location of all the LinuxMCE media folders to the RAID from the OS drive.  Is there a wiki article that addresses this task?

Ask questions before searching the wiki and look like a dumbass:  http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Create_RAID_in_LMCE

This should accomplish my goal, yes?

Edit:  Drive four failed the Western Digital diagnostic tool, consistently.  I tried three times.  I hate UPS.  Submitted RMA.

[thezfunk]

I have another question for the community.  I run BOINC on my computers (Distributed Computing).  I plan on installing it on my Core when I get everything all working.  My motherboard has room for more GPU's.  I want to throw an extra 8800GT I have lying around in it so that BOINC can use the GPU for processing.  Anyone know what LinuxMCE does with multiple GPU cards?  Would this possibly screw things up?

Another quick question.  Do the MD's get their drivers from the Core?  If my Core drivers are up-to-date then all MD's will match?

[JaseP]

I can answer your quick question: Yes, the MD's will typically take their drivers from the Core...

I'm not sure about your second question, but I don't think that LMCE was designed to do multi-headed MDs (including the Core/Hybrid).

[thezfunk]

New update and new request for help.

I now have four working 1TB hard drives for my RAID - still not setup

I have instead moved to setting up my new 330 Zotac ION board as my MD in the Living Room (diskless).  It was a pain trying to find the spot in the BIOS to PXE boot it.  It is in the south bridge setting down at the bottom.  It booted and was found by the core but I noticed that when it tried to get some files from the internets it failed.  Found out the WAN NIC on my core had stopped working for no reason.  Long story short, I had to load BIOS defaults on the core for it to start working again.  Not sure what was going on there. 

The second try with a working Core WAN NIC went slightly better.  Wound up at a Failed to Start X error.  No problem, dove into the wiki here:  http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ZOTAC_ION.  Down at the bottom is says to set your xorg.conf to 'vesa' from 'nv'.  Much easier said than done.

Logging into the MD left me at a prompt as the sambahelper user.  That's where I am stuck.  Every time I try doing anything it says I don't have permissions and every time I try logging in as root...I don't know the password and the one I have on the core doesn't seem to work.  I even managed to get into vim and fumble around enough to change 'nv' to 'vesa' but I couldn't save.  Permissions forbade me.  Some prodding or help is politely asked for from the community.

PS...according to the wiki the default password for sambahelper is nothing or just hit enter.  Says I have the wrong password when I try that.

[phenigma]

The second try with a working Core WAN NIC went slightly better.  Wound up at a Failed to Start X error.  No problem, dove into the wiki here:  http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ZOTAC_ION.  Down at the bottom is says to set your xorg.conf to 'vesa' from 'nv'.  Much easier said than done.

Logging into the MD left me at a prompt as the sambahelper user.  That's where I am stuck.  Every time I try doing anything it says I don't have permissions and every time I try logging in as root...I don't know the password and the one I have on the core doesn't seem to work.  I even managed to get into vim and fumble around enough to change 'nv' to 'vesa' but I couldn't save.  Permissions forbade me.  Some prodding or help is politely asked for from the community.

PS...according to the wiki the default password for sambahelper is nothing or just hit enter.  Says I have the wrong password when I try that.

I had a similar issue on my Zotac 330 Ion.  I couldn't use sudo on the MD because sambahelper told me I had the wrong password.  To get around this I had to set an actual root password for the MD. 

When you log into the MD your prompt should tell you what moon# the MD is... remember the number.

On the core/hybrid you need to open a terminal in KDE or press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get tty1.  Login with your username and password.  Then to become superuser type:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo su -
and enter your password.  Change directory to /usr/pluto/diskless and chroot into the MDs structure.  Once you have done this you can change the root password for the MD with the passwd command.

Code: [Select]

# cd /usr/pluto/diskless
# chroot XX   <-- replace XX with the moon number (device number) of your MD.
# passwd
Enter new UNIX password:

Enter the root password for the MD and then exit the chroot environment and give up superuser by typing 'exit' twice.

Code: [Select]

# exit
# exit
$

Now you can login as root on the MD with the password that you just set and you will be able to edit your xorg.conf file.

J.

[thezfunk]

Thank you, phenigma.

That is exactly what I needed.  This should probably be added to the wiki.  You have enabled me to get quite a bit farther but now...another roadblock.

After I was able to get root access to the image I loaded it again on the ION.  I installed nano since vim is a pain.  I went to change 'nv' to 'vesa' in the xorg.conf file to find I didn't have a xorg.conf file.  I had a xorg.conf.pluto.avwizard however.  I opened the xorg.conf.pluto.avwizard file, made my changes in nano, and saved it as xorg.conf and presto, on reboot, the config started and I proceeded to follow the rest of the wiki about the ION:  http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ZOTAC_ION.

I proceeded to try and update the nividia drivers.  They keep failing.  I am doing it just like I did on the core where it worked just fine.  I don't have the failure from the log here right now but I will post back.

I do have another idea to try.  Now that I have run through the AV wizard and I have UI1 working do I need to change the xorg.conf back to 'nv' before updating the nvidia drivers?  Could this be a missing step?

Once this ION is up and working I plan on adding what I did to the wiki so that others can use this most perfect of boards for their MD!

[thezfunk]

I can answer your quick question: Yes, the MD's will typically take their drivers from the Core...

I'm not sure about your second question, but I don't think that LinuxMCE was designed to do multi-headed MDs (including the Core/Hybrid).

Oh, and unless I did something wrong...my MD did NOT get it's drivers from the core.  It went out on it's own and tried installing an old 180.xx.xx driver.

[thezfunk]

w00t!  My ION MD works!  It was three frustrating days thinking I was majorly screwing something up to find out it wasn't my fault.  I would like to thank:

TSCHAKeeePC
tkmedia
merkur2k

Without their help I probably wouldn't have gotten this far.

I will describe -- as best as I can remember -- the sequence of events that led me to a working ION MD.  This is what I did.  Remember that when reading it.  I ended up not using anything on the ION wiki page.  This way described below worked for me.  Read this post like a fortune cookie.  Instead of 'in bed' at the end of each sentence use something like, "for thezfunk" or "for me".  I find there are a million ways to skin a cat with Linux.  Also, I was using the HDMI port on the ION for this whole procedure

Firstly, make sure your core is up-to-date.  Do your apt-get update and your apt-get upgrade distro.  Boot up your ION and got into the bios.  Head to the southbridge section (which is where they hid the PXE boot option).  Set your gpu buffer to 512mb of your system ram and enable PXE boot.  I think you then have to save and return to the bios to see the network card as a bootable option.  Boot up the ION and if you set the boot options correctly it will boot off the network and LinuxMCE will take over.  You should get all the way to the AVwizard without any problems.  I was on a 61" TV with HDMI and the 1080p option wouldn't display right but the 720p option did.  I went through the AVwizard selecting UI1.  That is very important.  After the AVwizard completed I think I had to reboot.

The ION booted up and it gave the usual messages about loading LinuxMCE and the orbiter will be generated.  I think the orbiter generator ran for 10-15 mins.  There might have been another reboot after the generator ran and then I was in!  UI1 was working and I could get into KDE desktop.  Then some more of the fun began.  I wanted to install the nvidia drivers with a packet manager for dependency reasons.  Luckily the above mentioned guys pointed me in the right direction.  This link:  http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install-nvidia-190-25-beta-drivers-in-ubuntu-jauntyintrepidhardy.html.  I will run through the commands I used.  I installed nano with a sudo apt-get install nano.  I like nano the best out of the text editors that I have used.

Code: [Select]

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.listSince we are using 0810 we want the Intrepid instructions.
add the following line to the sources.list

Code: [Select]

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvidia-vdpau/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvidia-vdpau/ppa/ubuntu intrepid mainSave and exit file
Install GPG key using the following command

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-key adv -- keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com -- recv-keys CEC06767Update source list

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get updateNow install the drivers.  If you want the newest 185 which I think are final instead of the 190 betas just replace the 190 with 185.

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install nvidia-190-modaliases nvidia-glx-190I think I then did a

Code: [Select]

sudo nvidia-xconfigbecause on reboot I got a black screen with cursor.  You can try rebooting and if you get the black screen use the nvidia-xconfig.  It generates a new xorg.conf file.

Now it was time to rerun the AVwizard.  I rebooted and when the tones started sounding I held down SHIFT.  The screen was black (I think) because the video was being output on something other than the HDMI port.  I sat and hit the numeral keys until I got a picture.  I think it was 5 or 6 but start at 1 and work your way up.  Pause at each one and give it a second to switch.  I went through the AVwizard, set it to 1080p and UI2 with overlay.  After a reboot and orbiter regen I was in the UI at 1080p! 

Some notes:
I originally installed the nvidia 190's.  They seemed to be a little slow.  After I was back in at 1080p with the new drivers I did an update from KDE instead of the command line.  Don't do that.  It screwed up my nvidia drivers and I had to reinstall.  When I reinstalled the nvidia drivers I picked the 185's.  They seemed to run smoother.  I want to try the 190's again but right now it runs fine on the 185's. 

I still need to get the audio working via HDMI.  There seems to be mixed luck with that but I know that I need to install the new ALSA drivers.  Does anyone know of a way to do it with a package manager?

[thezfunk]

HDMI Audio does not work.  I have been all over the forums.  By 'the forums' I mean every forum ever (I swear).  Out in the wild there is working HDMI audio on Ubuntu 8.10 but not working on LinuxMCE.  I don't feel like typing out everything that I have tried (geekyhawkes has run into all of this before read his posts.  I ran into all of the exact same problems he has and I got no farther than he did) but I will explain how to upgrade your ALSA drivers.  I think it's better than what I did on my core (even though it worked with my core).

The best way I have found to upgrade ALSA is here:  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810

Thanks to tkmedia and merkur2k for providing that link.

One more quick word on HDMI audio...
This guy: http://imadethisdesign.blogspot.com/2009/08/htpc-zotac-n330-boxeexbmc-vdpau-1080p.html
He has my exact hardware.  He got HDMI audio working.  I wanted to use his settings but I was told LinuxMCE over writes the file that you need to modify each and every time it boots.  No dice.  Since, I am lucky enough to have a receiver that accepts optical and coax digital audio I can work around for now (hopefully, I still have to get that to work).

Oh!  One last thing.  Zotac has some Linux drivers for audio and lan on their website.  Could this be useful?  Linux drivers specifically for this board?
http://www.zotac.com/index.php?option=com_docman_2&task=cat_view&gid=189&Itemid=218&lang=en

[thezfunk]

I have moved on to getting VDPAU working since it is pretty essential with the ION.  I followed the wiki about using avenard's patch in mythtv.  The thing is, I can either get the 180 build by using the release repository or I get the 190 build using the testing repository.  I need the 185 build.  The nvidia 180 drivers have poor or no support for the ION and the 190's run like shit on the ION.  I see the 185's are in his testing repository but I obviously need to modify my install command.  Can some help with this?

[superslacker]

Hmm. I followed this, and changed the root pw, but this isn't reflected on the MD. Do I need to 'rebuild  image' on the admin site?

I had a similar issue on my Zotac 330 Ion.  I couldn't use sudo on the MD because sambahelper told me I had the wrong password.  To get around this I had to set an actual root password for the MD. 

When you log into the MD your prompt should tell you what moon# the MD is... remember the number.

On the core/hybrid you need to open a terminal in KDE or press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get tty1.  Login with your username and password.  Then to become superuser type:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo su -
and enter your password.  Change directory to /usr/pluto/diskless and chroot into the MDs structure.  Once you have done this you can change the root password for the MD with the passwd command.

Code: [Select]

# cd /usr/pluto/diskless
# chroot XX   <-- replace XX with the moon number (device number) of your MD.
# passwd
Enter new UNIX password:

Enter the root password for the MD and then exit the chroot environment and give up superuser by typing 'exit' twice.

Code: [Select]

# exit
# exit
$

Now you can login as root on the MD with the password that you just set and you will be able to edit your xorg.conf file.

J.

[phenigma]

Hmm. I followed this, and changed the root pw, but this isn't reflected on the MD. Do I need to 'rebuild  image' on the admin site?

If you rebuild the image from the admin site the root password on that MD will be reset and you will have to perform these steps to set the root password again.

J.