LinuxMCE - User contributions [en]

Automatic diskless boot of media directors

2009-12-15T21:43:26Z

Xtra: /* Answer */

[[Category: Tutorials]]
[[Category: Networking]]
[[Category: Programmer's Guide]]
{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
LinuxMCE allows [[media director]]s to be booted over the network. This means that you can boot up thin clients without hard drives, or systems with other operating systems without affecting what is already on the disk.

==How to set it up==
===Enable PXE boot===
This is also known as network boot and can be accessed in your computer's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS BIOS]. The exact procedure varies depending on your PC. Normally you press F2 or DEL right after turning the PC on to enter the BIOS settings. There is then usually an advanced option to enable this.

===Set the correct boot order===
You are also going to want to set the boot order in the BIOS so the network boot comes first, and your hard drive second. However most BIOS's will make you first enable network boot, save your changes, restart the computer, and then enter the BIOS settings a second time to set the boot order.

===Determine your network card's MAC address===

'''This step is not needed since version 7.04'''

When network boot is working you should see at bootup the PC's mac address, and a messages about trying to contact a DHCP server, or trying to find a network boot image. This will be a new message you didn't see before and it means network boot is active on the PC. It will usually try for about 10 seconds to do a network boot image, and then give up and boot off the hard drive. This is what you want. When you see the message that it is trying to do the network boot, write down the mac address.

You can also get the mac address in Windows by running IPCONFIG command prompt, or in Linux by typing ifconfig as root from a console or a terminal.

===Setup the media director in LinuxMCE===

'''This step is not needed since version 7.04 although the May 7th release of 7.10 appears to require it'''

In LinuxMCE Admin go to '''Wizard > Devices > Media Directors'''. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F

Click 'update' to save your changes, and then click 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'. Wait for the popup window to finish. If this is a new media director you just added, go to Wizard, Restart and click 'Quick Reload Router' so the Router is aware of this new device.

===Boot up from the network===
Now turn on the PC. You should see that it gets an IP address and boots into the media director software. The first time you boot it, it can take up to 30 minutes to boot because it will be installing a lot of the software on the diskless image on the core.

After some time, you will see the avwizard screen where you can choose your UI, resolution and so forth. After finishing the avwizard, the system will setup your interface and eventually you will be prompted by the setup wizard where you should choose the media center setup and then go through your typical setup for this new MD.

==How to use it==
If this media director has a hard drive in it that contains another operating system (like Windows or Linux), then from the media director's on-screen orbiter, or from any other orbiter that is currently controlling that media director, hit the 'power' button and choose 'restart as windows/linux' to boot up the computer off the hard drive and use it like a normal PC. Then choose 'restart as LinuxMCE' from the orbiter to boot it back again into LinuxMCE.

==Troubleshooting==
===PXE-Boot hangs up, looping......===

I have an Asus A7N8X-deluxe board, with two NICs onboard. When I connect one of them the MD tries to boot via PXE. Everything seems to go its way until the line: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0 comes up, for about 20 seconds and after this.
After this, the last block written:

IP-Config eth0 complete (from 192.168.1.23)
adr: 192.168.80.255 broadcast: 192.168.80.255 netmask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 192.168.80.1 dns0: 192.168.80.1 dns1: 0.0.0.0
rootserver: 192.168.80.1 rootpath: filename tftpboot/pxelinux.0

is repeated about hours in a really fast way.....

====Answer====
It is switching NICs during the PXE boot. Disable one of the on-board NICs via the BIOS.

:''Source: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3521.0''

[[LinuxMCE-0810 beta]]

Run '/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh' on the core to created the MD image.

===Diskless Setup Failed===

I have multiple MDs which all give a Diskless Setup Failed after announcing themselves to the CORE.

====Answer====
Log into the Web Interface on the CORE, change to the devices view and open up the options for the new MD. Under Device Data check to make sure that the field Architecture is correct. On mine it shows amd64 but all my MDs are actually Intel chipsets*. I manually enter i386 and hit save. Then reboot the MD and it will finish setting itself up correctly.

NOTE: The field labeled Model is not user editable. If you change the Architecture field, upon reboot the CORE will automatically update the Model field appropriately so do not worry about it being wrong.

*Note: For the core, core/hybrid install CD/DVD's, amd64 simply means 64bit- while i386 means 32bit; It does not mean amd64 is only for Amd processors and i386 is only for Intel. Amd came out with 64bit before Intel, so for a time all 64bit hardware was Amd- 64bit installs often retained the amd64 name even after Intel came out with 64bit hardware. My intel i7 core/hybrid for example is running amd64, and I've not found any issues . While researching my own (amd) net boot problem, I read a post mentioning changing the field to i386 in the panel for an Amd MD, and the machine correctly reporting Amd while net booting, I'm not 100% sure, but this seams to support the conclusion that the architecture field in the admin panel is like the install disks, and denotes the install type (32 or 64bit) rather then the actual physical architecture of the hardware (amd or intel). 32bit currently (7.10) has better hardware support 64bit, especially for NIC's- the marvel yukon for example- so a 32bit install is often recommended as a simple solution to net boot compatibility problems. Also of note, a 64bit (core) install can run 32bit MD's, but not the other way around. A 32bit core install will only configure 32bit MD's, thereby avoiding some potential problems.

==GRUB PXE network boot==
In some situations, it may be more appropriate to use GNU GRUB bootloader:

#The machine does not support PXE booting directly (no boot-ROM).
#You can use a GRUB boot menu to decide wheter you want to boot LMCE or the native OS.
#Booting is a lot faster when you boot the native OS by skipping the network step.
#GRUB allows for easy adjustments of the boot parameters at boot-time.

This is described in detail at [[GRUB PXE network boot]].

== Reduce boot time ==
When using diskless boot, all data have to be read over the network connection. This can cause boot up times longer than desirable. To avoid long boot up times, you can tune the NFS mount options of the NFS root. Specifically, the rsize and wsize options. You might do a Internet search for resources on this.
Another option is to implement suspending of the media director. Also know as standby, suspend or hibernate. This function is not integrated into LinuxMCE (yet), and requires some Linux shell hacking. See the [[Suspend]] article for more information.

==Programmer's guide==
The network boot images are contained in /usr/pluto/diskless/[deviceID]. If a network image is corrupted, just delete that directory, and re-run 'Setup Diskless Media Directors'.

When the user hits the power button to change which device is booted, the command is sent to "General Info Plugin", which updates /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/01-[mac address]. That file contains a line KERNEL or LOCALBOOT 0, depending on what the user wants to boot. If it's LOCALBOOT 0, then when the media director tries to do a network boot the Core will tell it to boot off the hard drive instead. General Info Plugin then sends the App Server running on that machine a command to reboot.

Since there is both a Linux and Windows version of App Server, if App Server is installed and running on the Windows PC, then LinuxMCE can still reboot it remotely back into the network boot even if it's running Windows. Also the Windows App Server utility gives you a tray icon to switch back to network boot.

==Other Network Cards==
If you get to the remote machine starting the boot process, but then fails with it unable to find eth0, the reason may be because the stock diskless image did not have your network card statically compiled. The linux image building process does allow for additional network modules to be loaded during the boot process. The installer that linuxmce uses builds this image from a base copy of the operating system (ubuntu) that is untar'd during the diskless setup process. It puts this into it's own directory that serves as a virtual harddrive for your diskless machine. In the /usr/pluto/diskless directory you should have a list of device numbers that correspond to your diskless machines. For example: '45' was the number for my diskless machine. Edit the file /usr/pluto/diskless/###/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add on your nic's module. In my case I edit /usr/pluto/diskless/45/etc/initramfs-tools/modules and added sky2. Then run the /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh script with the device number (directory name) of your diskless machine. In my case "/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_InstallKernel.sh 45". This script builds the initrd image and puts it in the proper place (symlinks it actually).

The driver used in my machine was the 'sky2' driver for Marvell Gigabit ethernet cards. Other drivers will be located in the /usr/pluto/diskless/xx/lib/modules/2.xxx/kernel/drivers/net/ directory.

User:Xtra

2009-04-28T08:48:28Z

Xtra: /* Attached a new remote */

I am located in Germany and dedicated to Linux since about 1996.

On this page I will give a short explanation of my running installation and provide some information about my success stories and dead ends regarding linuxmce.

=Installation=
==Core==
VM-Ware machine on a Host running slackware Linux 12.2.
Virtualization Software is vmware-server 1.0.5
The host machine has the following hardware:
* AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3200+
* 2 GB RAM
* 2x 250GB (mirroring RAID)

It runs 4 virtual machines of which one is the linuxmce core.

==Media Director connected to television==
*Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.80GHz
*1280MB RAM
*80GB HDD
*analog TV card with Philips Semiconductors SAA7134/SAA7135HL Video Broadcast Decoder (still struggling to get audio working, picture is fine though).

==Network drives==
I tried exporting the harddrives via SMB/CIFS but always the cifs stopped working and trashed my dmesg on the core with timeout problems and the like and from time to time the core was filled with stalled cifsd processes and simply stopped responding.
The messages in the dmesg looked like the following (incomplete list):
[254906.460997] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6
[256108.323955] CIFS VFS: server not responding
[256108.324002] CIFS VFS: No response for cmd 117 mid 3
[256108.455770] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -11
[256739.399902] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6

When it comes to serving CIFS to a network, samba is working fast and reliable but mounting cifs and keeping them mounted I guess the fellows at kernel.org needs some more time and therefore I decided to try NFS. I admit, it has its caveats regarding security but in my LAN I know all the hosts and my WLAN is sealed via a firewall from the rest of the lan, therefore it is worth a try.
As I already have a Samba PDC and all the userdatabase in a LDAP tree, I tried to use Microsoft Services for Unix but gave up frustrated after 2 days as I simply could not get windows to map the users right, I always ended up to be "nobody".

The other alternative was to install the cygwin NFS Service. As I always have cygwin installed on my machines, I fired it up and after some Minutes everything was set up and working.

On my linux workstations and servers NFS was running out of the box.

I then had to install the network drives manually in the web interface of linux mce but that was pretty easy.

Since I moved to NFS I had no deadlocks anymore and the whole system is rocking fast (exception of this is, when the media library decides to update itself).

==Host 1==
This is my windows workstation running Windows XP Professional.
The storage is provided via above mentioned cygwin NFS Server.

==Host 2==
The fileserver in my LAN. This one is running slackware Linux 12.2.
This is where nearly all data in my LAN ends up.
It exports the media disks via NFS for linuxmce and via SMB for my windows workstations. See above for the motivation of why I decided against using cifs in linuxmce.

=What I did so far with linuxmce=

==Success stories==

===Installed in vmWare-Server virtual machine===
As I had no spare computer with enough power, I decided to give the installation on my vmware Server a try.
I mounted the installation DVD in the virtual DVD rom and fired up the machine.
It started installing immediately.
I did not want to store media on the core as disk throughput is slower on virtual hardware and it is more difficult to reach the files stored on virtual disks. Therefore a grand total of 40GB is more than enough space for a linuxmce core. I tried with 20 GB before but that was too less for the installer and it simply stopped in the middle of copying the files (I guess one of the partitions ran out of space).
Installing on the 40GB virtual disk was done after about one hour of installing.

Running the wizard and so on went through without any problem and there it was, my core.

Booting up a small system of spare parts (Media Director) via LAN also went fine. Configuring it needed a little tweaking, as it did not detect my NVidia GeForce 440MX card and therefore I had to tweak a little (sorry, I don't know anymore what exactly I have done).

===Attached a new remote===
I was finally able to get my remote configured using lirc. I tried to write a device independant howto in [[LIRC]], so others will have less hassle to get theirs running.

==Dead ends==
===Installation in vmWare Workstation===
It seems that this is simply not possible at the moment. The kernel refuses to start up in this environment and therefore one can not run linuxmce. Maybe this will change with a newer kernel in the upcoming release.

User:Xtra

2009-04-28T08:48:05Z

Xtra: /* Success stories */

I am located in Germany and dedicated to Linux since about 1996.

On this page I will give a short explanation of my running installation and provide some information about my success stories and dead ends regarding linuxmce.

=Installation=
==Core==
VM-Ware machine on a Host running slackware Linux 12.2.
Virtualization Software is vmware-server 1.0.5
The host machine has the following hardware:
* AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3200+
* 2 GB RAM
* 2x 250GB (mirroring RAID)

It runs 4 virtual machines of which one is the linuxmce core.

==Media Director connected to television==
*Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.80GHz
*1280MB RAM
*80GB HDD
*analog TV card with Philips Semiconductors SAA7134/SAA7135HL Video Broadcast Decoder (still struggling to get audio working, picture is fine though).

==Network drives==
I tried exporting the harddrives via SMB/CIFS but always the cifs stopped working and trashed my dmesg on the core with timeout problems and the like and from time to time the core was filled with stalled cifsd processes and simply stopped responding.
The messages in the dmesg looked like the following (incomplete list):
[254906.460997] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6
[256108.323955] CIFS VFS: server not responding
[256108.324002] CIFS VFS: No response for cmd 117 mid 3
[256108.455770] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -11
[256739.399902] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6

When it comes to serving CIFS to a network, samba is working fast and reliable but mounting cifs and keeping them mounted I guess the fellows at kernel.org needs some more time and therefore I decided to try NFS. I admit, it has its caveats regarding security but in my LAN I know all the hosts and my WLAN is sealed via a firewall from the rest of the lan, therefore it is worth a try.
As I already have a Samba PDC and all the userdatabase in a LDAP tree, I tried to use Microsoft Services for Unix but gave up frustrated after 2 days as I simply could not get windows to map the users right, I always ended up to be "nobody".

The other alternative was to install the cygwin NFS Service. As I always have cygwin installed on my machines, I fired it up and after some Minutes everything was set up and working.

On my linux workstations and servers NFS was running out of the box.

I then had to install the network drives manually in the web interface of linux mce but that was pretty easy.

Since I moved to NFS I had no deadlocks anymore and the whole system is rocking fast (exception of this is, when the media library decides to update itself).

==Host 1==
This is my windows workstation running Windows XP Professional.
The storage is provided via above mentioned cygwin NFS Server.

==Host 2==
The fileserver in my LAN. This one is running slackware Linux 12.2.
This is where nearly all data in my LAN ends up.
It exports the media disks via NFS for linuxmce and via SMB for my windows workstations. See above for the motivation of why I decided against using cifs in linuxmce.

=What I did so far with linuxmce=

==Success stories==

===Installed in vmWare-Server virtual machine===
As I had no spare computer with enough power, I decided to give the installation on my vmware Server a try.
I mounted the installation DVD in the virtual DVD rom and fired up the machine.
It started installing immediately.
I did not want to store media on the core as disk throughput is slower on virtual hardware and it is more difficult to reach the files stored on virtual disks. Therefore a grand total of 40GB is more than enough space for a linuxmce core. I tried with 20 GB before but that was too less for the installer and it simply stopped in the middle of copying the files (I guess one of the partitions ran out of space).
Installing on the 40GB virtual disk was done after about one hour of installing.

Running the wizard and so on went through without any problem and there it was, my core.

Booting up a small system of spare parts (Media Director) via LAN also went fine. Configuring it needed a little tweaking, as it did not detect my NVidia GeForce 440MX card and therefore I had to tweak a little (sorry, I don't know anymore what exactly I have done).

==Attached a new remote==
I was finally able to get my remote configured using lirc. I tried to write a device independant howto in [[LIRC]], so others will have less hassle to get theirs running.

==Dead ends==
===Installation in vmWare Workstation===
It seems that this is simply not possible at the moment. The kernel refuses to start up in this environment and therefore one can not run linuxmce. Maybe this will change with a newer kernel in the upcoming release.

LIRC

2009-04-27T20:50:36Z

Xtra: First version

{| align="right"
| __TOC__
|}
[[Category:Infrared]]
[[Category: Tutorials]]

{| style="background: beige; border: 1px solid #aaa; margin: auto; padding: .2em; width: auto;"
|-
| rowspan=2 style="padding: 4px;" |
| Note this Article is a collection of all the LIRC related information scattered around this wiki. I ([[User:Xtra|Xtra]]) tried to combine it into a all in one but device independant information resource to make it more easy for beginners that want to add a new remote to their LinuxMCE installation for which no installation guide is present at this wiki.
|}

For details about lirc, please visit the official [http://www.lirc.org/index.html homepage].

=Add a lirc Remote to your MD=

If your remote is not already known to LinuxMCE (that means you can not locate a matching device template), you will have to make your own template. Refer to [[#Create your own device template| this section]] below for an explanation of how to add one.

#In [[LinuxMCE Admin Website]]-->Wizard-->Devices-->Media Directors
#Choose the Media Director you want to add the remote control to.
#Click the "Add Remote" Button on the bottom of the Media Director in that screen.
# in the popup that appears, you can either enter the number of the device template (if you know it) or you have to
## select the manufacturer and/or "LIRC Remote Controls < Remote Controls < Peripherals" for the device category.
## click "Apply filter"
## select the remote from the "Device Template" drop down list.
## Click "Pick device template"
# Go back to "[[LinuxMCE Admin Website]]-->Wizard-->Devices-->Media Directors" and to the corresponding MD, you will notice that your remote will now be listed under "Infrared remote controls you will use" but no selection in "Infrared Receivers" has been mad yet, which renders your remote to be useless. So select the appropriate driver from the drop down there (For most lirc remotes the selection "default" will work. Refer to lirc documentation if unsure).
# After you have selected the driver, scroll to the bottom and click "Update" which will make the selection permanent.
# Go to your orbiter now and do a "Quick reload router".

Now you should be all set and LinuxMCE should install the lirc packages onto your Media Director. This is known to fail under LinuxMCE 0710 as the packages are missing dependencies. Refer to the troubleshooting section below.

==Create your own device template==

As mentioned above, if LinuxMCE does not know your Remote, you will have to create a template on your own.

For this, you will have to make lirc learn all the buttons on your remote.
First I suggest you to have a look at the combined config for lirc, maybe someone already has done a lirc configuration for your remote. You can check [http://www.lirc.org/html/table.html here].

If you are really out of luck, you will have to go the real hard path of doing it all on your own.
For this, you will have to record all the commands on your own.
So go to the commandline in LinuxMCE (switch to KDE and open a terminal) and issue:
root@moon30:/# irrecord -H <drivername> /tmp/lircd.conf

For the driver name, you will have to know or guess the correct one. Issuing "lircd" without parameters will give you a list of valid drivers.

When you have started irrecord, you will have to press and release each button on your remote one time and type in a name for that button then. Make sure you enter the case-sensitive values understood by LinuxMCE which are [[#List of button names known to LinuxMCE|listed below]] or your remote will not work.

When you are done recording your buttons, open the file /tmp/lircd.conf using your favorite text editor and copy the whole content.
# Now got to the LinuxMCE Admin Website and in there select Advanced-->Device Templates.
# Choose the Manufacturer (or add it, if it is missing)
# For the category choose "LIRC Remote Controls < Remote Controls < Peripherals"
# Click "Add Template"
# In the next screen, select "No, this device doesn't require programming." (first option) and type the model name in the edit box below that selection.
# Click add.
# Now edit the device template and add a new data element of type "Configuration".
# Paste the whole content of above created lircd.conf into this element.
# Save the template and go back to above section [[#Add a lirc Remote to your MD|Add a lirc Remote to your MD]] as the template is now added.

=List of button names known to LinuxMCE=

LinuxMCE knows the following button codes for lirc remotes (name is case sensitive):
Name Description
--------------------------
Shutdown
Halt
1 key press 1
2 key press 2
3 key press 3
4 key press 4
5 key press 5
6 key press 6
7 key press 7
8 key press 8
9 key press 9
0 key press 0
enter key press <enter>
shortcut0
shortcut1
shortcut2
shortcut3
shortcut4
shortcut5
shortcut6
shortcut7
shortcut8
shortcutR
shortcutG
shortcutY
shortcutB
SkipNext Skip forward in current media/playlist
SkipPrior Skip back in current media/playlist
ChanUp Switch to next channel (MythTV only?)
ChanDown Switch to previous channel (MythTV only?)
Forward seek forward
Rewind seek backward
Pause pauses the playback of the current media
Play plays the currently selected media
Mute Mutes the sound of the currently playing media
Stop Stops the playback of the current media and returns to the default orbiter screen
Down key press <down arrow>
Up key press <up arrow>
Left key press <left arrow>
Right key press <right arrow>
ok in most occasions works like <enter>
VolDown reduces the playback volume
VolUp increases the playback volume
RecTV switch to TV recording
DVD switch to DVD playback
menu bring up the menu
tv switch to TV media
Back return to the previous screen
Clear clears playlist??
Guide brings up the EPG
Home return to main screen
Music switch to music media
Videos switch to video media
Pictures switch to picture media
Radio switch to radio media
Record start recording (AFAIK only working in MythTV but please prove me wrong)
info
green
yellow
red
blue

=Troubleshooting=

==get lirc installed in LinuxMCE 0710==
In LinuxMCE 0710, the automatic installation of the packages fails because of unsatisfied dependencies.
So I had to install them via apt-get and dpkg by hand.

Switch to a console and issue the following:
# dpkg -i /usr/pluto/deb-cache/lirc_0.8.2-0ubuntu8+lmce2_i386.deb
# dpkg -i /usr/pluto/deb-cache/lirc-x_0.8.2-0ubuntu8+lmce2_i386.deb
# dpkg -i /usr/pluto/deb-cache/liblircclient-dev_0.8.2-0ubuntu8
# apt-get install lirc lirc-pluto pluto-lirc-wrapper

This resolved the issues for me and after a "Quick reload router", LinuxMCE started the lircd and my remote started to work.

User:Xtra

2009-01-04T15:01:04Z

Xtra: New page. A lot of information

I am located in Germany and dedicated to Linux since about 1996.

On this page I will give a short explanation of my running installation and provide some information about my success stories and dead ends regarding linuxmce.

=Installation=
==Core==
VM-Ware machine on a Host running slackware Linux 12.2.
Virtualization Software is vmware-server 1.0.5
The host machine has the following hardware:
* AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3200+
* 2 GB RAM
* 2x 250GB (mirroring RAID)

It runs 4 virtual machines of which one is the linuxmce core.

==Media Director connected to television==
*Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.80GHz
*1280MB RAM
*80GB HDD
*analog TV card with Philips Semiconductors SAA7134/SAA7135HL Video Broadcast Decoder (still struggling to get audio working, picture is fine though).

==Network drives==
I tried exporting the harddrives via SMB/CIFS but always the cifs stopped working and trashed my dmesg on the core with timeout problems and the like and from time to time the core was filled with stalled cifsd processes and simply stopped responding.
The messages in the dmesg looked like the following (incomplete list):
[254906.460997] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6
[256108.323955] CIFS VFS: server not responding
[256108.324002] CIFS VFS: No response for cmd 117 mid 3
[256108.455770] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -11
[256739.399902] CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -6

When it comes to serving CIFS to a network, samba is working fast and reliable but mounting cifs and keeping them mounted I guess the fellows at kernel.org needs some more time and therefore I decided to try NFS. I admit, it has its caveats regarding security but in my LAN I know all the hosts and my WLAN is sealed via a firewall from the rest of the lan, therefore it is worth a try.
As I already have a Samba PDC and all the userdatabase in a LDAP tree, I tried to use Microsoft Services for Unix but gave up frustrated after 2 days as I simply could not get windows to map the users right, I always ended up to be "nobody".

The other alternative was to install the cygwin NFS Service. As I always have cygwin installed on my machines, I fired it up and after some Minutes everything was set up and working.

On my linux workstations and servers NFS was running out of the box.

I then had to install the network drives manually in the web interface of linux mce but that was pretty easy.

Since I moved to NFS I had no deadlocks anymore and the whole system is rocking fast (exception of this is, when the media library decides to update itself).

==Host 1==
This is my windows workstation running Windows XP Professional.
The storage is provided via above mentioned cygwin NFS Server.

==Host 2==
The fileserver in my LAN. This one is running slackware Linux 12.2.
This is where nearly all data in my LAN ends up.
It exports the media disks via NFS for linuxmce and via SMB for my windows workstations. See above for the motivation of why I decided against using cifs in linuxmce.

=What I did so far with linuxmce=

==Success stories==

===Installed in vmWare-Server virtual machine===
As I had no spare computer with enough power, I decided to give the installation on my vmware Server a try.
I mounted the installation DVD in the virtual DVD rom and fired up the machine.
It started installing immediately.
I did not want to store media on the core as disk throughput is slower on virtual hardware and it is more difficult to reach the files stored on virtual disks. Therefore a grand total of 40GB is more than enough space for a linuxmce core. I tried with 20 GB before but that was too less for the installer and it simply stopped in the middle of copying the files (I guess one of the partitions ran out of space).
Installing on the 40GB virtual disk was done after about one hour of installing.

Running the wizard and so on went through without any problem and there it was, my core.

Booting up a small system of spare parts (Media Director) via LAN also went fine. Configuring it needed a little tweaking, as it did not detect my NVidia GeForce 440MX card and therefore I had to tweak a little (sorry, I don't know anymore what exactly I have done).

==Dead ends==
===Installation in vmWare Workstation===
It seems that this is simply not possible at the moment. The kernel refuses to start up in this environment and therefore one can not run linuxmce. Maybe this will change with a newer kernel in the upcoming release.

Cover Art

2009-01-03T05:24:43Z

Xtra:

[[Category: Admin Website]]

[[Image:CoverArt.jpg|thumb|200px|Cover Art Admin Page]]

This section is designed to allow users to download from Amazon website cover arts for their audio and video files, and also for attributes.

Select the "Cover Art" drop down menu item from the "Files & Media" link in the center of the admin website (http://localhost/pluto-admin/index.php). There are links for selecting the media (files/discs/attributes) you want to sync (default is "Files with no cover art"); on upper right side there are a text box with the number of records per page and the type of your media (Music or DVD).

'''NOTE:''' selecting "All files" can return a huge number of records.

Default all records are selected, and the primary keyword used for search on Amazon are the file name without extension, disc number or attribute name.

[[Image:CoverArtSelection.jpg]]

For discs, you'll have to type the keyword (name of album or whatever). You can refine your search using the filters, who are specific for each media type (for Music there are "Artist" and "Album" and for DVD there are "Actor", "Director", "Publisher" and "Title"), all of the according to Amazon API, which is used in back-end to retrieve the cover arts.

Once your selection is done, click "Scan for cover arts" who will connect to Amazon and try to retrieve cover arts based on your keywords and extra filters. The records and the jpg files will be stored in a temporary location.
You will be redirected to a page "match cover arts" where you can assign for each item you scanned the cover art who was extracted; default is set to "no matches" to avoid setting wrong cover art by mistake.

Pick correct cover art for your items then click "Match Cover Art": the cover arts will be assigned to the media (file/disc/attribute) and the jpg files will be copied in the permanent directory (default /home/mediapics), the rest of them will be deleted from temporary location, also those with "no matches" checked.

The records from temporary tables CoverArtScan and CoverArtScanEntry will be deleted too, so if you didn't have any matches for your media, you can try again using more or less filters, or changing the spelling for the keywords.

If you want linuxmce to download cover art from another than the US server, have a look [[Search for Amazon Cover Art from a server in your country.|here]] to find out how to change the server.

==Custom Cover Art==
If you want to add custom cover art, then use [[Media Files Sync]]

Search for Amazon Cover Art from a server in your country.

2009-01-03T05:22:27Z

Xtra: Initial Version

[[Category: Tutorials]]

If english is not your mothertongue, you might want to fetch cover art from one of the other amazon servers instead of fetching them from the US server.
Currently there exist servers in the following country codes: US, UK, DE, JP, FR, CA.

To enable another server, you have to adjust the following file: /var/www/pluto-admin/coverArtExtractor.php

In there you will find at line 36:
<pre><nowiki>
$orderBy=($searchIndex=='Music')?'titlerank':'relevancerank';
// Make the request for cover arts
$request='http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
</nowiki></pre>
Those lines you should comment out but leaving them in place won't do any harm as we will overwrite those variables now with our desired server information.

I also had to change the search from "relevancerank" to "salesrank" as "relevancerank" is only supported for electronics (see: [http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/index.html?CASortValuesArticle.html])

The diff for the file looks like this:
<pre><nowiki>
--- /var/www/pluto-admin/coverArtExtractor.php.old 2008-11-18 00:54:40.000000000 +0100
+++ /var/www/pluto-admin/coverArtExtractor.php 2009-01-03 05:54:22.000000000 +0100
@@ -33,9 +33,24 @@
$searchString.=(isset($_REQUEST['Keyword2Type']))?'&'.$_REQUEST['Keyword2Type'].'='.$Keyword2Search:'';
$searchString.=(isset($_REQUEST['Keyword3Type']))?'&'.$_REQUEST['Keyword3Type'].'='.$Keyword3Search:'';

-$orderBy=($searchIndex=='Music')?'titlerank':'relevancerank';
// Make the request for cover arts
-$request='http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
+$orderBy=($searchIndex=='Music')?'titlerank':'salesrank';
+// Uncomment the desired server below.
+// US
+// $request='http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
+// UK
+// $request='http://webservices.amazon.co.uk/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
+// DE
+// $request='http://webservices.amazon.de/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
+// JP
+// $request='http://webservices.amazon.co.jp/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
+// FR
+// $request='http://webservices.amazon.fr/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
+// CA
+// $request='http://webservices.amazon.ca/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&AssociateTag='.ASSOCIATES_ID.'&Version='.AES_VERSION.'&SubscriptionId='. SUBID.'&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex='.$searchIndex.'&ResponseGroup=Medium&Sort='.$orderBy.'&'.$searchString;
+
+
echo $request;
writeFile($GLOBALS['WebExecLogFile'],date('d-m-Y H:i:s')."\t".$request."\n",'a+');

@@ -94,4 +109,4 @@

$end_time=getmicrotime();
//print 'Finished in '.round(($end_time-$start_time),3).'s, found: '.$found.' cover arts.';
-?>
\ No newline at end of file
+?>
</nowiki></pre>

I hope this is of some use to someone and maybe it will make it into the pluto configuration some time if a dev has the time to add it.