DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V2 - released 3rd July 2017

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ETP
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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V2 - released 3rd July 2017

#1 Post by ETP »

DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016
Server for Smart TVs & other DLNA renderers.

Please read this 1st post for background info before proceeding to:
DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V2 here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 642#959642 -released 3rd July 2017
*********************************************************

Another DLNA Pup this time based on BarryK’s Quirky Xerus64 8.0 that was released in April 2016.
The kernel is 4.4.7 with nothing removed from the base Pup but much added including in addition to the items listed below,
extra firmware and 18 utilities.

Initial install is to an 8GB USB2/3 stick if the true capacity of the stick is sufficient. If it is not, a larger stick must be used.
Subsequent transfer to a HDD/SSD is possible if required.

Full sized screen-shot here: (Press F11 to toggle into full screen then click on link)

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view ... WZwSVRTVzg

Main Additional Apps:

• Google-Chrome-Stable 64-bit (51.0.2704.106) together with latest utility to update it.
(NB Existing version must first be uninstalled using QPM before using the "Get Latest Chrome Version" utility to update)

• Firefox - 47.0.1 & Thunderbird - 45.1.1 (Both on release channels for simple updating)

• VLC 2.2.2 (Weatherwax)

• Kodi 15.2 plus various add-ons.

• Numerous themes, add-ons and extensions for both Chrome & Firefox.

DLNA: (ReadyMedia a.k.a. minidlna – Version 1.1.5_x86_64)

The primary purpose of this Pup is to act as preconfigured DLNA server. No setup of that feature is required for testing.
The idea is that having gone through the usual quicksetup & network settings DLNA should work OOTB.
Following setup, just reboot and then head off to the TV to test whether or not it works with your particular TV make & model.

In this version the first (boot) partition on the stick too small to house additional media. It does contain two test videos. (.mp4/.mov)
The intention is that having tested that it works with your TV; you then switch over to your main media repository
which may be on any accessible drive or partition including another USB stick.

At the bottom of the Utility menu is an option “Change DLNA Repository
Attachments
xerus-1.jpg
(59.41 KiB) Downloaded 2366 times
xerus-2.jpg
(51.24 KiB) Downloaded 2337 times
Last edited by ETP on Sun 21 Jan 2018, 09:22, edited 13 times in total.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

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ETP
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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#2 Post by ETP »

Tips:
5th July 2016
1. Once the image has been written to a stick dd should show the following:

Code: Select all

1908+0 records in
1908+0 records out
8002732032 bytes (8.0 GB, 7.5 GiB) copied, 1194.24 s, 6.7 MB/s
If 8002732032 bytes have been written that is sufficient proof of success.

The stick should then be booted and rigorously tested before any use of
GParted either just to inspect it or to create a third partition if using a stick larger than 8GB.
Attachments
Utilities_list.png
List of included utilities - plus FFconvert-1.4.2
(124.84 KiB) Downloaded 2052 times
Last edited by ETP on Mon 18 Jul 2016, 08:51, edited 4 times in total.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

gcmartin

#3 Post by gcmartin »

I understand this desktop distro with media serving features in an important and useful home PUP PC appliance! It is extremely useful for normal desktop services AND the background services if provides any home user throughout the house to devices and people within. Lots of forward thinking in practical home use seen in what you are presenting. :idea:

Thanks for this! :D

First
Using DLNAPUP: Downloaded, checksum is correct, extracted, and burned using the following to an SDcard.

Code: Select all

# time dd if=dlnaxerus64v1.img of=/dev/sdb
15630336+0 records in
15630336+0 records out
8002732032 bytes (8.0 GB) copied, 5024.64 s, 1.6 MB/s

real	83m44.664s
user	0m12.597s
sys	1m34.157s
A 90 minute burn episode as shown above.

Next
Review of burned disc and claiming unallocated space saw the following: (I chose to FIX it...hope that is correct. And am not sure if there is an external terminal command to FIX the problem immediately after a burn. If so, please advise.)
Image

Claim unallocated space
Image

Question
  • Any idea why there is unallocated space between the sdb1 and sdb2 partitions?
Will test and report when time permits.

gcmartin

#4 Post by gcmartin »

Update:
Using a desktop AIO PC in a hotel, I find that the SDcard boots into a read-only filesystem with desktop errors. Further, I cannot get much done as the filesystem locks many of what one would want to do (for example FirstRUN updates, etc).

Questions
  • Anyone else seeing similar behavior?
  • Could this be a bug associated with an SDcard versus using a USB stick?
  • Ideas to circumvent this behavior?
:?:

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ETP
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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#5 Post by ETP »

Hi gc,

Thanks for testing. Sorry to say you appear to have shot yourself in the foot in a number of respects.

1. The target is an 8GB or larger USB2/USB3 stick rather than an SD card. Reasons for that include the fact
that the read/write speeds of a card are typically only half that of a USB2 stick which will double the time
it takes to write the extracted image to it. In addition the read speed of an SD card may not be fast enough
to smoothly deliver 1080p video. (One of the two included test videos is 1080p)

2. You did not use the command line I gave for writing the image which ensures that anything in the buffer is written
to the device. Without that (&& sync) you may well have finished up with a corrupt image.

3. The stick once written, should logically be tested BEFORE using GParted either just to inspect it or to create a third partition
in any unallocated space. If you do not do so and then finish up with a problem, you will never know where any problem lies.

4. When using Gparted either to create a new third partition in any unallocated space or
just to inspect the layout on a stick please disregard any offer to FIX the GPT layout.
Accepting the spurious offer will ruin the build & may render the stick non-bootable or corrupt.

5. EDIT - PLEASE IGNORE THIS POINT I would recommend sticking exactly with the Linux command that I gave. The command that you used indicates that [8002732032] bytes were copied
yet the original image is only [7,998,799,872] bytes. That cannot be correct and may have caused the GParted error.

6. The 7MiB gap between sdb1 & sdb2 is to optimally allign the start of the f2fs partition.

7. On a 16GB or larger stick f2fs rather than ext4 is recommended for any 3rd partition created. It is faster and specifically
designed for flash memory. If you must use ext4 because of a need to access that partition from another non f2fs aware
Linux O/S convert it to non-journaled ext4 to maximise the life of your card or stick.
Last edited by ETP on Mon 04 Jul 2016, 16:10, edited 1 time in total.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

gcmartin

#6 Post by gcmartin »

Actually, sync was used. But, will used a USB stick.

Not sure why your write numbers would be different than mine. That's very odd. The download's checksum was verified. Done again, I get the same.

Code: Select all

# dd if=dlnaxerus64v1.img of=/dev/sdb && sync ; sync
15630336+0 records in
15630336+0 records out
8002732032 bytes (8.0 GB) copied, 5005.41 s, 1.6 MB/s
Anyone, Does your records in and out match what I show?

Hopeful that others can report to help testing.

@ETP, would you recommend a utility you trust to backup the current DLNAWereWolfPUP that I have? I will use that USB instead of the SD (i assume it would be a "dd" command with same parms you use)? On Tuesday, I will be home to test a USB stick vs the SD?

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#7 Post by smokey01 »

The image size here is the same as gcmartin, see image. The checksum of the xz tarball matches that on your site.
Attachments
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ETP
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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#8 Post by ETP »

@smokey01 & gcmartin,

@smokey,

Thanks for looking at this. I have made 2 errors here. The figure quoted in my original post and in my reply to gcmartin was
incorrect. As you have pointed out it should read 8002732032 which means that gc's write was O/K and he could have booted at that point.
(Apologies to gc)

My second mistake was in saying that writing to a USB stick would take half the time it took to write to a SD card.(90 minutes)

Using DD it will also take 90 minutes to write such a large image to a USB2 stick. It will only reduce to 45 minutes if win32diskimager is used.

I will correct the figure in my original post & add some timings.
Please accept my apologies.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

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Re: DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#9 Post by smokey01 »

ETP wrote: I will correct the figure in my original post & add some timings.
Please accept my apologies.
No need to apologise as we all make a whoops occasionally.

I'm currently dd'ing to a 16G usb3 flash drive so I will report how long it takes. I hope it's significantly less than 90 minutes. I'm currently using Fatdog64-701 on my laptop. Mmm, must upgrade that one of these days. Maybe this will be my new OS for the lappy.

I much prefer the ISO format as it's a lot less trouble and much quicker. I can usually install a new ISO in under a minute.

Looking forward to having a play. Thanks ETP.

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#10 Post by smokey01 »

It only took 17 minutes to write to the USB, not 90 as I was expecting. When I mounted the USB in Rox, nothing was displayed so I assumed it did not write properly. I did a second DD and it took about 3 seconds less but once again, no display in Rox.

Anyway I thought I would see if it would boot, it did. It was quite fast too but then I am using a USB3.0 device. I then took another peek with Rox. This time mostly displayed OK but some of the text was missing. I restarted the x-server and this seemed to fix the problem.

The two demo videos played fine in the Google-chrome player but when I added an AVI and a MKV they wouldn't play. I didn't check but I'm assuming the two demo's are MP4. MP4's usually play fine in Google-chrome without the player plugin.

I then tried Kodi and at least one of the two videos was rather jerky but I was doing it over WiFi not wired.

I tried to play the AVI and MKV with VLC and they didn't work. Something is wrong with VLC I suspect.

The package is polished and fast but it's just a little big for my liking. I'm not a fan of Kodi. I like VLC as it meets all of my needs except one, it can't stream to chromecast, yet. In version 3.0 it will so I am eagerly awaiting it's release.

It's a very good distribution and ETP has done a great job. It will please some but not all. My aim it to be able to play all (local) video formats to my TV. Google chrome can't do it. I've been told Kodi can play many formats but I haven't worked out to do it. If it's possible and someone could explain how, I might become a Kodi fan after all.

Good job ETP.

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ETP
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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#11 Post by ETP »

Hi smokey01,

Thanks for your reports. I have now changed the Linux dd command line in the original post
to address the excessive write time issue. With the new command writing the image to a USB2 stick
plugged into a USB3 port takes <20 minutes. :)
The test movies are .mp4 & .mov. Not all smart TVs will cope with the .mov and some struggle with certain mkv files.
Most handle .mp4 and the included ffconvert-1.4.2 can be used to convert to .mp4 format.
Regards ETP
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[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

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#12 Post by smokey01 »

ETP, I don't have a smart TV, I use Chromecast.

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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#13 Post by ETP »

smokey01 wrote:ETP, I don't have a smart TV, I use Chromecast.
Hi smokey01,

In this Pup Google Cast 15.1120.0.4 and Videostream for Google Chromecast are already present.
You just need to enable the Google Cast extension in Chrome.

If you would prefer a dedicated Pup for your Chromecast you may wish to try ChromeCast Pup V3 Unleashed 23rd Feb 2015:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 204#830204

Setting up V3 with mount points and proper fstab entries to access local media held on other network shares is covered in
the following "How-To".

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=97655

V3 is 32bit so you will no longer be able to update Chrome as Google have dropped it but it does
the job as it stands, so no worries.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

gcmartin

#14 Post by gcmartin »

Home, today, and issues are the same. The USB was generated with a blocksize that creates the USB faster, with the same In+Out numbers. USB boots to desktop with the root file system mounted ro.

By contrast, DLNAPUP which I run has its root filesystem as follows upon boot:

Code: Select all

# mount
/dev/root on / type f2fs (rw,relatime,background_gc=off,user_xattr,inline_data,active_logs=6)
but this PUP, upon boot, is

Code: Select all

/dev/root on / type f2fs (ro, ...
Please advise.

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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#15 Post by ETP »

@ gcmartin,
Hi gc,

Sorry, I just noticed that I had missed your following question in a previous post;
@ETP, would you recommend a utility you trust to backup the current DLNAWereWolfPUP that I have?
I will use that USB instead of the SD (i assume it would be a "dd" command with same parms you use)? On Tuesday, I will be home to test a USB stick vs the SD?
I prefer and use win32diskimager for both writing .img files to cards/sticks and for backing them
up i.e. cloning them to image files. All of my cards/sticks have on them a fat16/fat32 first partition of at least 16MB so that Windows XP/10 can see them and assign a drive letter as they
are plugged in.

Under the GUI skin of win32diskimager is the windows version of dd (windd). It is a lot safer to use than dd as only removable drives are displayed. There is a link to it in the OP.

To do it in Puppy Linux with busybox dd you would use something like:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/some_path/wolf_backup_image.img bs=1M
The device you are imaging must not be mounted.

Substitute the device name for sdX e.g. sdc

Make sure that you have enough free space for the image which will be equivalent to the size of the stick regardless of the amount of data in it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
With regard to your post earlier today the RO mount is a sure sign of the file system on the stick being corrupt.
It is therefore a question of whether it had become corrupt before being written to the stick (i.e. an issue with the extraction process)
or a problem with the stick itself.
In order to eliminate the first possibility please check the following:


md5sum
dlnaxerus64v1.img.xz
3378d7f01949841c261f4a67d1fbe73b

md5sum
dlnaxerus64v1.img (Extracted image)
e9458f64364080ce4cbce920f86c4aca

If both match you are O/K to dd the extracted image over again once you have returned the stick to its virgin state.
(Use GParted to create a new partition table and then a single fat32 partition completely filling the stick)

Then before using dd check again the true capacity of the stick with:

# fdisk -l /dev/sdx
It must not be less than 8002732032 bytes.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

gcmartin

#16 Post by gcmartin »

Both, former and secondary downloads img checksums "checkout" in ALL cases. Maybe a platform problem or an environmental problem during the boot subsystem processing. It is repeatable no matter which, 1st or 2nd IMGs I use. Upon desktop arrival, root system is "locked" in RO mode.

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ETP
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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#17 Post by ETP »

Hi gc,

In view of the problems that you have experienced I have amended the installation instructions
in the OP to reflect the advice given in my last post. This will avoid problems that can arise with
GPT partition tables when a stick larger than 8GB is targeted which has previously had a GPT layout.
In any future issues I will be reverting to an MSDOS partition system. :)
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

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ETP
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DLNA Quirky Xerus64 Pup V1 - released 2nd July 2016

#18 Post by ETP »

Please find below an alternative image of this Pup. There are no changes to the Pup itself but
the GPT two partition layout in the 8GB image has been changed in favour of a 3 partition MSDOS partition layout.
The 2 test videos are now on the 2nd partition.

Where to obtain the revised image: (dlnaxerus64v1msdos.img.xz [982 MB] & md5sums & additional screenshots)

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

If writing the image to a stick larger than 8GB, you may if you wish, use GParted to create a 4th partition in the unallocated space.

Installation:

Using an 8GB USB2/3 stick:

An 8GB stick may be used if and only if its true capacity is not a single byte less than 8002732032 bytes.
To test the true capacity of any 8GB stick that you possess use the following command substituting the drive letter for x

Code: Select all

# fdisk -l /dev/sdx

If it does not meet this requirement you must use a larger stick.
You may opt to use a larger stick at the outset if you intend to create a media repository partition in the free unallocated space.

1. Commence by returning the stick to its "as new" state before targeting it with the image.

In Linux use GParted to do that:

A. Click on “device
Last edited by ETP on Wed 12 Oct 2016, 16:45, edited 2 times in total.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

gcmartin

#19 Post by gcmartin »

I cannot seem to get sound working. It appears to turned off and nothing I do via Taskbar's Sound "Full Window" activates audio.

Ideas.
Attachments
capture18429.png
Message when trying to play a music file
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pp4mnklinux
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Wanna try it, but...

#20 Post by pp4mnklinux »

Morning:

I'm really interested about this puPPy, but I need a easier distro for newbies, so .....


PLEASE... can you try to make a really easy to install distro using an .iso to install it using the most traditional method (that is using UnetBooting)??

THANKS
Distro: xenialpup64 7.5 XXL
Desktop Panel: JWM ~ FbBox 5.0

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