Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

The Google applications, including GMail and the Play Store, don’t come with CyanogenMod.  If you need them or they get broken by a CyanogenMod upgrade, you can install them with the Goo-Inside.me app.  Once you install it, for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, download gapps-ics*.zip.  If you don’t want to use their OpenRecoveryScript, after you download the Zip you can use ClockworkMod Recovery to install the Zip.  The file downloads to /mnt/sdcard/goomanager/.

Use the RootzWiki instructions.

After copying each img file, create a file with the same name and append an .md5sum extention to it.  In this file, copy the MD5sum number from the web site, followed by two spaces and the img file name.  Save the file, then run md5sum -c radio.img.md5sum.

If fastboot sits at the <waiting for device> prompt forever, make sure your phone is in fastboot mode (power off, hold volume up and down and hold power until the phone vibrates–could be 20 seconds or so; in the lower left of the screen it’ll say “FASTBOOT MODE” in red). If you still get the <waiting for device> prompt while in fastboot mode, your permissions probably aren’t set up correctly.  In that case run fastboot with sudo.

1. Start ROM Manager
2. Boot into recovery
3. Select Backup and Restore, then Backup
4. Copy the backup to your computer
5. Download CyanogenMod
6. Run adb push update-cm-9-20120510-NIGHTLY-toro-signed.zip /sdcard/.
7. On the phone, select “wipe cache”
8. On the phone, select “install zip from sdcard”, “choose zip from sdcard”, select update.zip above.

• Download the appropriate ClockworkMod Touch Recovery.
• Open a terminal and cd to the folder where adb and fastboot are (e.g., android-sdk/platform-tools)
• Run ./adb reboot bootloader to enter Fastboot. You might need to run this using sudo if your permissions aren’t set up.
• Run ./fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-touch-5.8.0.2-toro.img
• After a successful flash, run ./fastboot reboot

The new TiVo has been installed for a few weeks now (since March 29th).  It’s been a huge improvement over the FiOS DVR which exasperated me daily with its poor user interface.  So what’s so great about the TiVo?  For me, it’s the response time.  When you press the controls to fast forward, rewind or pause, they act in a predictable manner.  Which is to say, they work.  Everything beyond that is gravy.  Really.

The four tuners eliminate the conflicts of multiple shows airing at the same time.  You’d think there wouldn’t be more than two things you wanted to see on at the same time, and if you were the sole user of the DVR, you’d be right.  But when there are two kids, a mommy and a daddy using the same DVR, it happens frequently.  I love to watch all four tuners recording at once.

Another benefit of the TiVo is the recording capacity.  It’s got a 2 TB drive, which TiVo says is enough for 300 hours of HD.  I haven’t checked that, but right now, there are 383 recordings, 202 of which are in HD and it’s using 8% of the drive.  Keep in mind, my TV is 720p not 1080p.

One of the things I enjoyed about my series 2 TiVo (the new one does this, too) was that it found shows I didn’t know existed.  It tracks what you like (you can vote on shows, 1-3 thumbs up or down) and, when one of its tuners isn’t busy recording something you’ve asked for, it records shows it thinks you’ll like based on your votes.  It calls this a “TiVo Suggestion” and it works really well.  For the first week we had the TiVo, I didn’t have all of our recordings set up, but the TiVo started to record our favorite shows without being asked.  Of course, you can tell it to always record your favorites, just as any DVR does–this is called a Season Pass.  To give you an idea of how useful  Suggestions are, at the moment the TiVo has 314 suggestions.  This is far more than the 42 recordings I’ve asked for.

Lastly, there was one feature I hadn’t thought about before I started looking at the Elite–it can use MoCA, which is Multimedia over Coax, your cable company’s cable.  This means you don’t need an Ethernet cable or a wireless Ethernet adapter.  The TiVo uses the Internet to get TV listings and to stream shows.  Wireless isn’t really fast enough for this, so having MoCA means you don’t have to run a network cable to the TiVo.  Streaming works between TiVos and also from Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube and my NAS.  I don’t have Hulu, so I can’t comment there.  Netflix works well, but has a quirk that it only streams from you queue.  You can’t pick shows from the TiVo.  You have to pick out what you want on your computer.  I’ve only watched a few things from my NAS.  One item refused to transfer, but I don’t know if that’s the TiVo’s fault or not.

Another improvement that could be made is in the tuner scheduling.  If we’re watching live TV, the TiVo will sometimes ask to change the channel to record a show even if there are other unused tuners.  Of course, you can tell it to do so, switch to an unused tuner and change the channel, but you shouldn’t have to.  And if you’re watching behind live (the TiVo buffers a 1/2 hour of TV so you can pause for a while and catch back up), you’ll lose the buffered part of the show.

So, to sum, it’s not perfect, but it’s close and I love it.

The HTPC project (a.k.a. get rid of cable) has been going on for almost a year now, so I thought I’d post an update.  The original intent was to see if cable TV service could be replaced with internet and broadcast TV.  My requirements for a solution were:

• Usable by the whole family
• Content obtained legally
• No loss of content
• Run on Linux machines (or at least not Windows)

So can it be done?  Not exactly.  At least I couldn’t make it work.  Here’s what I found out:

• Audio/Video retailers won’t touch this space.  They don’t know it, they don’t want to know it.  All they do know is that this stuff isn’t turnkey and they don’t want to support a computer.  And they’re right.  This means setting this up without computer skills is probably not a good idea.
• The cable TV experience has been refined over the years.  As petty as it sounds, you need a traditional remote control.  No one wants to have to sit with a keyboard and type in a URL, log in and push a “full screen” button to switch channels.
• Some networks are only available only on cable.  Sports, for instance, are not always available.  If they’re not broadcast (i.e. carried by a major network), you can’t get them without buying a subscription.  This was a problem for Phillies and Eagles games.
• Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon video don’t run natively on Linux.  To use them requires inconvenient steps.  See this discussion of Netflix on Linux.

Could I have done more to make this work?  Yeah.  I didn’t install a TV tuner in the HTPC. This would have let us fast-forward and rewind through live TV.  Once you’ve gotten used to this, it’s jarring to watch TV without it.   (Heck, sometimes I try to rewind the radio in my car.)   I didn’t try any subscriptions to replace cable content. But those subscriptions still require use of a web site, which, as I mentioned, scores low on ease of use.  I could have canceled cable to force myself to dig deeper for a replacement.  And, lastly, I did this project in the basement, which isn’t as comfortable as the family room.  If the kids were watching their shows in the family room (even ones I would never watch myself), I found I’d rather watch that in the family room than go down to the basement to watch something I enjoyed.  Insane, yes.  Lazy, yes.  But that’s what happened.

The experiment wasn’t a total loss.  The HTPC gets content automatically loaded on the NAS by Sickbeard.  I watch those shows while on the treadmill or bike trainer, which means I exercise more.  The kids use the HTPC to watch YouTube on the big screen.  I use the big screen to preview video I take with my DSLR.  The NAS has made back-ups a breeze.  There’s an extra computer in the house as a back-up.  And I was inspired to get a TiVo!

Although we’re not giving up cable, one thing that was a constant irritation about cable was the usability of the FiOS DVR.  In addition to being buggy (switching tuners unpauses a show, fast forwarding to the end of a show is tricky, recordings sometimes don’t work right), the user interface is unresponsive.  Frequently the DVR doesn’t respond to a button press.  What’s worse is there’s no user feedback when the DVR is busy.  So you can’t tell if it got your command or not.  Do I push the button again?  Wait a while?  Ugh.  After living with this for three years, I replaced it with a TiVo.  I had considered getting the TiVo Premiere because it records broadcast TV.  What the HTPC experiment taught me is that I can’t replace cable just yet.  So if I’m going to use cable, I don’t need broadcast.  The Premiere Elite has four cable tuners, but no broadcast tuner.  It’s only been in the house for a day–I’ll post more on that later.

After restoring my Galaxy Nexus, all was fine except for sending email.  I could get email, but when I tried to send one, the message would go in the Outbox with “Sending…” next to it.   Rebooting didn’t help.  Neither did wiping the cache from Recovery.  The answer was to clear data for GMail in the Application Manager under Settings.  The link says to do this for the GMail Storage app, too, but I didn’t have one of those.  Just clearing GMail was enough.

I tried updating CyanogenMod 9 on my Galaxy Nexus.  The first step is to perform a Nandroid backup.  You can do that by powering off the phone, holding volume up and down and then power until the phone vibrates.  This might take 15 seconds or so.  The Android logo will appear on the screen with a big green arrow above it that says “Start”.  Let go of the keys.  Use volume down to select Recovery Mode and press Power.  Select “backup and restore”, then “backup.”

After loading the new CyanogenMod ROM, the phone wouldn’t boot right.  It would start, but not connect to the  phone network.  After a while it’d reboot itself.  I’d had this problem once before.  I rebooted into Recovery and tried a restore, but it failed with the message “Error while restoring /data!”  Googling recommends wiping the phone to factory state and reloading CyanogenMod.

The first step is to save the last Nandroid backup.  To do this, start Recovery, then select “Mounts and Storage”, then “mount /data”.  Then connect the phone via USB to your computer and on your computer, change to the android SDK platform-tools directory and
$ adb pull /data/media/clockworkmod/backup
You might have to run this command with sudo if you don’t have UDEV rules set up correctly.  Each directory in backup is a Nandroid backup that has a TAR file of cache, data and system, a boot and recovery image and an MD5 sum.

After the backups are secure, restore the phone to a factory state.

When the phone starts in activation mode, just skip everything it asks for, then in settings, under developer options, turn on USB debugging.  This will let you download su.zip:

$ adb push su.zip /sdcard/.

As mentioned in the Root instructions.

After you have the phone rooted, create the ClockworkMod backup directory:

$ adb shell

# exit

And copy your backups to the phone:

$ adb push clockworkmod/backup /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup/.

Then on the phone (while still in recovery mode), Select “backup and restore”, then “restore” and choose your backup.  After the restore completes, reboot the phone.

Alternately, you can restore the data partition of the backups with Titanium  Backup.

Rooting instructions

These clarifications are for Linux:

Turn on USB debugging on your phone. This is under settings -> Developer options.

Power off your phone first.
On the phone, hold down Volume Up and Volume Down, then hold the Power until the phone vibrates (about four seconds). On the screen There will be a green arrow with “Start” written in it.

When they say “open terminal”, this is on your computer, not the adb shell. When running fastboot, you might need to run this with sudo. (The udev rules listed still don’t allow me to run the adb server as myself. See previous post about adb.)

Recover and Root section: Restart phone by holding volume up, volume down and then holding the power button until it vibrates. This might take up to 15 seconds.

You’ll see a screen with an open android and a green arrow at the top. On the bottom in small red letters, it’ll say FASTBOOT MODE.

1. Rip the DVDs with dvd::rip
2. Edit the .VOB files with Avidemux and save desired clips
3. Transcode for NTSC DVD with ffmpeg -i clip.vob -target ntsc-dvd dvdclip.vob
4. Create a project with DeVeDe and add each transcoded DVD clip in its own title. Select option to Create a menu with the titles

If DeVeDe fails to create the DVD structure, make sure you’ve properly transcoded the DVD clips with -target ntsc-dvd. If you haven’t, the error message misleadingly suggests you’ve run out of disk space.

Preview the ISO file with VLC and burn it to a disc with K3B (Tools -> Burn Image).