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Emulators Ahoy!
So, I’m trying to install MythGame on my main Mythfrontend. First, I have to make sure the emulators are set up and working. So, for SNES, I tried zsnes, then snes9x. I couldn’t get sound on either of them. *fume* Also, my Gravis Gamepad Pro (OOOOOld gamepad) isn’t working. Both zsnes and snes9x _thought_ sound was working; no errors, /dev/dsp working great. Turns out, the problem with zsnes was that it uses SDL for sound… and SDL didn’t use ALSA by default. The fix was to add the following to .bash_profile SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa export SDL_AUDIODRIVER The gamepad, I’m still trying to figure out. UPDATE: Turns out, I had to go into zsnes’s GUI and set the game-pad up. Under Config->Devices I clicked a button on the right that said something like “setup keys” and it asked me to … Read entire article »
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zION – Now with Sound!
I got my Mini-ITX case today. The box was somewhat beat up, but the case itself seems to have managed well enough. I tossed the Zotac into it and hooked it up … Read more »
zION – Take 2
Well, since my HDPVR isn’t working, I took a clean image of the net-boot Gentoo install I made, cloned it, and installed MythTV .21. It’s all great, but after running a few … Read more »
Replacement HD-PVR
========================= UPDATE: Post with further details ========================= I received a package from Hauppauge today. I didn’t hear back from them about any testing or that they were sending me a replacement, but I did get … Read more »
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UPnP3 frontend on My Frontends
Well, MythTV doesn’t really act as a UPnP frontend, so I had to go looking around. I was brought back to my initial MythTV install where I used XBMC on an Xbox as a small-ish frontend. Now, XBMC is available for Linux, and I installed it on my frontends by adding a keyword and a USE flag, then emerging xbmc. # echo “media-tv/xbmc ~amd64″ >> /etc/portage/package.keywords # echo “media-tv/xbmc gnutls” >> /etc/portage/package.use # emerge xvmc … Read entire article »
Headless WinXP install on Xen 3.4
Sadly, all did not go well.. A couple of files couldn’t be read out of the WindowsXP.iso. After rebooting the new installed image, I got a stop-code (BSOD). It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of those! Now I get to dig into it and see what’s caused it… Whether it was those couple of files, or if it’s a problem with my config. … Read entire article »
Setting up Windows XP headless as a Xen DomU.
Actually, this is pretty easy once I gathered all the right info. My Xen winXP.cfg : import os, re arch = os.uname()[4] if re.search(’64′, arch): arch_libdir = ‘lib64′ else: arch_libdir = ‘lib’ kernel = “/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader” builder=’hvm’ memory = 512 shadow_memory = 8 name = “WinXP” vfb = [ 'type=vnc, vnclisten=<IP of DOM0>,vncdisplay=10' ] vif = [ 'ip=192.168.7.92' ] disk = [ 'file:/xen/images/WindowsXP-Xen.img,hda,w', 'file:/xen/images/winxp.iso,hdc:cdrom,r' ] device_model = ‘/usr/’ + arch_libdir + ‘/xen/bin/qemu-dm’ # boot on floppy (a), hard disk (c) or CD-ROM (d) # default: hard disk, cd-rom, floppy boot=”dc” sdl=0 vnc=1 vncconsole=1 vncpasswd=” stdvga=0 serial=’pty’ usbdevice=’tablet’ A good deal of that was scrounged from other sources. Initially, I tried assigning an IP to the DomU and connecting my vnc viewer (on my Gentoo desktop) to that IP:port. Of course, this didn’t work. I checked netstat -nat and found out that vnc was binding to 127.0.0.1:5900 The simple … Read entire article »
Headless VNC!
My first problem: How do I get the WindowsXP install running on a system that has no graphical interface? I keep my Dom0 _lean_. Very little installed = very little to break. Also, quick system updates. Unfortunately, this means that I can’t just go to the Xenbox and fire up SDL for a quick Windows install. After tooling around for a while, I decided to bite the bullet and install X. First, I made a manifest of all the packages that were being installed so that I could un-install them after I got WinXP installed. While Xorg was installing, I figured I’d keep poking around and see whether I could get Windows to install headless. About … Read entire article »
MythTV + PlayOn = Streaming Video Goodness!
At least, that’s the goal. I have a Xen server running 24/7 with very little load. First thing’s first, I set aside some VM space on the Xen server: dd if=/dev/zero of=xenwin.img bs=1024k seek=6144 count=0 Since I don’t have a [C|DV]D-Rom drive on my Xenbox, I popped a WinXP CD into my Gentoo desktop and made a quick ISO of it. dd if=/dev/dvdrom of=winXP.iso A quick scp, and the ISO was on the Xenbox: scp winXP.iso user@xenbox:/<path-to-xen-images> I’m using this walk-through as a basis for my install. I’ll go ahead and note what I do in case this link breaks someday. … Read entire article »
Delicious!
It took a month, but it is alive…. Mar 8 08:07:32 livecd kernel: CPU2: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor stepping 02 Mar 8 08:07:39 livecd kernel: processor LNXCPU:00: registered as cooling_device0 Mar 8 08:07:39 livecd kernel: ACPI: Processor [CPU0] (supports 8 throttling states) Mar 8 08:07:39 livecd kernel: processor LNXCPU:01: registered as cooling_device1 Mar 8 08:07:39 livecd kernel: processor LNXCPU:02: registered as cooling_device2 Mar 8 08:07:39 livecd kernel: processor LNXCPU:03: registered as cooling_device3 Relevant goodies from lspic: 00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RD790 Northbridge only dual slot PCI-e_GFX and HT3 K8 part 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 8400 GS] (rev a1) 06:06.0 Multimedia video controller: … Read entire article »
Avidemux Silliness
I decided to try some video editing under Linux. After looking around for a bit, I emerged avidemux2. I’d already installed it ages ago, but didn’t get around to using it. So, I fired it up. Unfortunately, every time I opened a file, I got an error message saying: “No audio decoder found for this file Save (A+V) will generate a bad AVI. Save audio will work.” After a re-emerge and a system update (to be sure I didn’t have some dependency funkiness). To no avail. After a while searching Google, I fell back on Old Reliable… Command-line output. I tracked down the root of the problem: No plugins were being loaded. Going to Help->Plugins (inside Avidemux) confirmed this. As did … Read entire article »
New Backend Goodness
So, I’m building a new backend. My current setup is as thus: AMD Athlon X2 BE2300 (1.9GHz) 4GB DDR2-800 4 SATA Drives (2 for Samba shares, 1 Recording Drive, 1 for exported video Storage) So what’s wrong with this setup? The CPU is somewhat anemic for transcoding using nuvexport – I get somewhere around 20-25fps. Multi-pass XVID encoding needs GHz, so moving to something faster would help in this regard. I have also been doing a slew of multi-core programming for school, and more cores plus more GHz just tastes better IMHO. So, on to the new setup: CPU – AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz CPU Fan – XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 Mobo – MSI 790FX-GD70 790FX Video – MSI N8400GS-D256H (8400GS) Case … Read entire article »
I Now Know Jack!
So, another of my hobbies is building arcade-style enclosures to play games (MAME, etc). I’ve been toying with the idea of building a quiz-show console to play games like You Don’t Know Jack. (The greates quiz-show of all computer-time!) My only problem has been that I haven’t been able to get YDKJ Volume 2 to play under Linux. I’ve tried using WINE, but the game kept crashing with an Error 16 and complaining about “Looking for Art Version: P37″ found “”. Well, tonight, that changed. I eventually tracked down the problem. One of the files on the CD is in a format that’s not readable for some reason. dos2unix didn’t fix it. Turns out, what I … Read entire article »