Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

While running mythBuntu on the HTPC, I got a pop-up box asking if I wanted to upgrade to 11.10. Since I was having trouble getting the sound to output through HDMI to the TV, I gave it a shot. This hosed everything. Wouldn’t even boot. Mythbuntu (or what was left of it) was stuck in a boot loop, with the screen slowing flashing.

Rather than put back Mythbunu, I decided to reload Ubuntu 11.10. Initially, the sound was also broken–that is, sound was output from the sound card to the analog jacks but not HDMI. Under System Settings -> Sound on the Hardware tab, under Settings for the selected device, there was a profile dropdown box with 20 different options. Setting this to Digital Stereo (HDMI) nr2 Output got sound coming through the TV.

With a screen this big (HD resolution) being viewed from across a room, the fonts are too small. The system settings don’t let you change this as they did in Mythbuntu. A little Googling turned up a recommendation to install gnome-tweak-tool. Under Fonts, changing the Text Scaling factor from 1.0 to 2.0 helped a lot.

I reinstalled XMBC. Note the repository they list doesn’t have 11.10 in it. Use the one for 11.10 in the XBMC-Repository-Overview link: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:alexandr-surkov/dharma-pvr

If your German isn’t so good and you add the wrong repository the first time (like I did), you can remove it by deleting the file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d.

CCExtractor

Creates a subtitle file (.SRT) from the closed captions embedded in an mpeg or TiVo file.

I extracted captions to SRT file. When played with MPlayer, the subtitles show up. When played with XMBC, they don’t. XBMC can see the file and will load it if told to, but the subtitles don’t show up.

To pull files from a TiVo, I first tried Galleon, a Java-based program.

The installation instructions have a link to the zipped installation package. Once downloaded and unzipped, run make as root. This will install Galleon in /usr/share/galleon.

I used the default java that came with Ubuntu and I didn’t disable IPv6.

Galleon is run as a service:
# service galleon start

Follow the configuration instructions using /usr/share/galleon/gui.sh. It seems the first time the GUI is run it doesn’t connect to the server, but it’s fine after that.

To download a recording, on the Galleon GUI menu, select File/To Go. With the TiVo select in the list below, choose the Recorded tab. Put a check next to the recordings you want saved and the server will download them as .tivo files to the Recording Path you gave it in File/Properties.

pyTivo is a Python-based program for transferring videos to your TiVo. It can run on a Synology NAS.

The easiest way to get Python on the DiskStation is to use a package manager. To enable package management, you need to install a bootstrap. The DS411+II has a 64-bit Atom processor, so I used the syno-i686-bootstrap_1.2-7_i686 file listed for the Atom D410. Note, when SSHing into the DS, you need to be root, but the root password is the same as the admin password.
Next, I did:
$ ipkg update
$ ipkg upgrade
but nothing needed to be upgraded. To see the list of packages that can be installed with ipkg install, use ipkg list.

To install pyTivo, I followed instructions from the pyTivo Sourceforge forum.
Python is required for pyTivo, but not installed by default:
$ ipkg install python

There are a few forks of pyTivo. I took the mainstream wmcbrine fork. On the NAS:
$ ipkg install git
$ mkdir -p /usr/local/src/pytivo
$ cd /usr/local/src/pytivo
$ git clone git://repo.or.cz/pyTivo/wmcbrine.git
$ cd /usr/local
$ ln -s src/pytivo/wmcbrine pyTivo
$ cd pyTivo
$ cp pyTivo.conf.dist pyTivo.conf

Edit pyTivo.conf and set the path to ffmpeg, which according to the post above is /usr/syno/bin/ffmpeg.
Create the start.sh and pyTivo.sh files as listed.
Restart the NAS and, after a minute, pyTivo should have a web page at http://your_NAS:9032
Under the web configuration, in the My Movies section, I changed the path from /home/armooo/Videos to /volume1/video.
Any videos on /volume1/video on the NAS will be available to any TiVos on the network under “Now Playing”, “MyMovies”.

Read the Cyanogen Mod FAQ.
Load Titanium Backup from App Market. Run and back up apps (not system apps).
Using ROM Manager, do a Nandroid backup, which is a copy of your currently working system.
Using ROM Manager, Download Cyanogen Mod 7.1. Check “Google Apps” in the ROM Addons box. Wipe Dalvik cache, but nothing else.
Don’t have to do anything else. All the apps were still there after the reboot.
My phone is noticeably faster, but the proof will be in the usability over the next few days.

Laughing already?

I had DHCP set up for the NAS because that’s the default. This was fine until the Verizon router forgot the DNS entry for the NAS. To restore it, I rebooted the NAS, causing it to ask for an IP again. I’ve restarted the NAS before while Ubuntu had directories mounted from it and it was fine with that. This time, the IP changed and Ubuntu was very unhappy about it. I couldn’t unmount the directories either. A shut down was necessary to restore order.

Now I have the Verizon router, an Actiontec MI424-WR, set to assign it a static IP. This makes sure the IP is in the router’s DNS table without having to edit the clients’ /etc/hosts or use a naming service. To do this, log in to the router as admin and select Advanced -> IP Address Distribution -> Connection List, find the entry for the NAS and click the edit icon to the right. Make sure the NAS’s host name, IP and MAC address are correct and that Static Lease Type is checked.

The FiOS router I have has four ports. Now that there’s a NAS in the family, I’ve got five Ethernet clients. I ordered a D-Link DGS-1008G 8-Port Gigabit Switch ($38 on Amazon). Just connect an Ethernet cable from one of its ports to one of the ports on the FiOS router and you’ve got 10 ports (4 on the FiOS and 8 on the switch, less 2 for the cable connecting them). No changes at all, it just works. And the gigabit Ethernet NICs on the HTPC and the Synology DiskStation were autodetected.

[Note: Don’t start following these directions until you’ve read this whole post. The NFS stuff was a dead end.]

I set up a user for myself on the NAS. Next, I need to connect the NAS to my home folder, so I can put the Documents, Music and Videos directories on it. The first step is to enable NFS on the client. In Ubuntu, install nfs-common with Synaptic. To automount directories, install autofs, which will install autofs5.
Synology -> Control Panel-> User, Create, then User Home and Enable User Home Service.
Synology -> Control Panel -> Shared Folder, select homes, NFS Privileges, Create. Add network segment, e.g., 192.168.1.0/24 and read/write. Note mount path at bottom.
On Ubuntu:
$ sudo mount -t nfs4 nas:/volume1/homes /mnt
mount.nfs4: mounting nas:/volume1/homes failed, reason given by server:
No such file or directory
$ sudo mount -t nfs nas:/volume1/homes /mnt
or
$ sudo mount nas:/volume1/homes /mnt

work fine, but now I’m concerned with security because NFS doesn’t validate connections by user, but by host and I don’t have common user IDs across my machines.

Synology has a forum post on linking network drives that uses CIFS. I tried this:

$ mkdir ~/nas
As root, edit /etc/fstab:
//nas/home /home/me/nas cifs user,uid=me,gid=me,rw,suid,credentials=/home/me/.naspwd 0 0

Edit ~/.naspwd:
username=nas username
password=nas password
# chmod 0600 ~/.naspwd