Two ideas:
1) I'm very concerned about the backup. After reading the backup legal issues (copying files from empeg to hdd) I was wondering: what if it was possible to dump the hdd content on the hdd as a single, huge, non playable image file? Maybe with the possibility to break it into smaller parts, so that it fits into cds or small partitions or so. Would that solve the copying problem? Tha would not be copying the mp3s, the image on the hdd would no be playable, and the whole process would serve ONLY as a backup. Of course the playser should be able to import the whole thing back.
It is arguable that we immoral users may hack the image to get the mp3s out. Well, yes, but we can also hack the player to do teh same. Still no empeg people could be charged of having created an MP3 copying device.

2) Why can't we play mp3s from our player when connected to our PC (from the PC speakers, I mean)? That would be great to make sure the song is ok. Still copying issue? What about some sort of streaming technology from the empeg to the intehgrated player in emplode, redirected to the pc soundcard, of course?

Taym
______________________________
empeg mk II blue 12Gb 090000923

Hi,

The backup issue has been covered quite well on this board. I think theres an faq entry on this very subject and it links to some of the threads there. http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=faq&Number=22054&page=3&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=7&part=
Its much easier to just keep a backup of your whole collection on the computer and if theres a problem with the empeg, just drag and drop the whole thing
into emplode and your done. Frank has written a small program the uses displayserver to copy the files over to your computer. The only problem with it is the 4 gig limitation on files.

As far as the second issue check into frank's displayserver. Its an awesome little utility that turns the empeg into a mini web server. You can use it to stream songs over ethernet into winamp. You can find it at the following address: http://fvgestel.dyndns.org/empeg/displayserver1.1/ the directions on how to install it are in the readme file. There are other sets of directions on this board somewhere, just do a search and you will come across them. You will need to have some knowledge of linux to install and use these utilities.

Sean

Is something wrong with emplode's "Play on Empeg" feature? You can select a song, and play it from the empeg. If you plug the output RCA's from the empeg to the Line-In on your sound card, you can play all you want through your PC speakers (remember when playing a song through the PC speaker was a horrible idea altogether? ).
Maybe I don't understand. You wanted to play the song VIA USB or Ethernet to the emplode PC?

_~= Dearing =~_
"WAY too happy about having #99."

Yes. My line-in on SB is alreasdy taken, so I have to unbplug and plug again empeg, and I hoped to avoid that by just playing through ethernet/usb. Too lazy?

Taym
______________________________
empeg mk II blue 12Gb 090000923

My line-in on SB is alreasdy taken, so I have to unbplug and plug again empeg, and I hoped to avoid that by just playing through ethernet/usb.

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That would be cool. Especially if you could do it via wireless as well. I have a separate pair of PC speakers just for the empeg which requires extra power socket used etc ...

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Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

That would be cool. Especially if you could do it via wireless as well.

You can. With Frank Van Gestel's "displayserver", a third-party program that runs on the Empeg.

___________
Tony Fabris

You can. With Frank Van Gestel's "displayserver", a third-party program that runs on the Empeg.

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Doesn't this require having indepth Linux knowledge and actually having Linux installed on your machine?



_______________________

Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

Doesn't this require having indepth Linux knowledge and actually having Linux installed on your machine?

Linux is already installed on the machine. You just need the Developer version so that you can get to a shell prompt.

You need to know how to get to a shell prompt, how to traverse directories in Linux, how to use SZ and RZ to transfer files over the serial cable, and how to CHMOD the files to tag them as executable. That's all you need for Displayserver. Aside from that, in-depth knowledge isn't really needed.

___________
Tony Fabris

Sorry, what I mean't was having Linux on my PC. I tried a few years ago without much success. I'm going to build a second PC for just this but I don't have much room in the house for that kind of luxury at the moment . I do use Unix at work and so can do most of the simple stuff. I kinda get lost by some of the stuff I read on this BBS and just wish I knew and understood more.

_______________________

Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

No, you don't need Linux on your PC to run displayserver on the empeg. You just need to know how to use the shell prompt on the empeg.

___________
Tony Fabris

Nope, all you need is a terminal program to talk to the empeg and send files to it. Hyperterminal in Windows works well enough to get Displayserver installed.

In theory, it should be possible to put togther an automated installer for Windows. I am working with this idea with the terminal program Telix. My plans are to release an easy to install (ie double click and sit back) package that will get a distributed.ent client up and running on Mark 2 machines. Mark 1's will need additional work due to the lack of ethernet, so the automated setup probably won't be an option there. This same type of setup could easially be changed to any other package, like the displayserver. I am going to look around here soon for a different terminal program, but for now Telix is working.

I didn't realise. I had seen posts with mention of hyperterminal but it didn't really click. Duh. Do I just need the developer image and then I can connect using hyperterminal? God - I'm kicking myself now. All this time I was thinking I'd have to build a Linux box and I could've been playing with the Kernel. In fact, I'm feeling pretty stupid now

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Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

Edited by srhodes on 22/06/01 07:17 PM.

Yep, throw the developer image on, then use hyperterminal to connect. Set it to the COM port you have the serial cable on, 115k speed, no flow control, and you should be set. (The other defaults are fine)

Build a Linux box anyway. They're cheap. Use Debian -- it's easy.

Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Well, my mum is about to upgrade her 'pute and so she'll have an old PC I can play with. Was actually thinking of Mandrake as the Unix Admin guys at work use that and I'll be able to get a copy off them. May have to hide the old box somewhere and use a hot-key to share monitor, keyboard, mouse etc cuz I'm a bit pushed for space.

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Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

May have to hide the old box somewhere and use a hot-key to share monitor, keyboard, mouse etc cuz I'm a bit pushed for space.

You could also leave monitor etc connected to Win box and use X or VNC to access your Linux.


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Putting displayserver is very easy onto the empeg it passes the moron test (me) i have a section off of one of the threads as an idio guide which i might post when i can find it as it is on me other puter

Putting displayserver is very easy onto the empeg it passes the moron test (me) i have a section off of one of the threads as an idio guide which i might post when i can find it as it is on me other puter

OK, but I was refering to different ways to access other (non-empeg) Linux headless machine. (While I think somebody has reported successful use of VNC on empeg, Frank's marvelous Displayserver for 'everyday use' and good old serial terminal or telnet for hacking should be more that enough.)


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

This is going way off thread now, but I managed to get DisplayServer onto my empeg through hyperterminal. I still feel such a dunce for not having realised sooner. Got a couple more stupid questions though - I can only use it through ethernet, right, or can I use it through serial? Does it really matter what IP address I use. I think my network card is stuffed. It's been a looong time since I last used it. One last one - as part of installing DisplayServer I had to set the drive to rw. Do I have to set this back myself or is this done on next reboot?

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Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

I can only use it through ethernet, right, or can I use it through serial?

Displayserver works over TCP/IP stack. It is there by default only using Ethernet as physical layer. There was talk about hacking PPP over USB, but I don't remember whether anybody actually did that. In days of MkI people got PPP running over serial (that's its main use, after all), but I don't believe its throughput is sufficient for Displayserver.

In other words, for all practical purposes displayserver works only over Ethernet (again, unless you have PPP over USB - on both ends, of course).

Does it really matter what IP address I use

If your network is on Internet (or an organized intranet, for that matter), you must assign empeg an IP address from the range that 'belongs' to your LAN. For example, if you use some kind of (semi-)permanent Internet connection (e.g. cable), then your ISP might have given you several IP addresses to use. Your empeg must then use one of these (unless it is behind NAT firewall - another can of worms ).

On the other hand, if you are not connected to any other network (or are connected through NAT (a.k.a. masquerading) firewall), you should use any address from one of several non-unique address ranges set aside specifically for that purpose. People usually use B-class range 192.168.xxx.xxx.

Simply put, assign addresses 192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2 etc to all your devices, including empeg. Set network mask to 255.255.0.0. Switch DHCP, WINS and DNS off and manually edit hosts files. Set gateway address to empty or the address of the given unit itself. With such setup empeg should communicate with your PC(s). To make a PC gateway for empeg, so that it can be seen from the internet is somewhat more complicated.

Anyway, I am sure that a little search will reveal more informative threads on this topic than this feeble attempt.

One last one - as part of installing DisplayServer I had to set the drive to rw. Do I have to set this back myself or is this done on next reboot?

Music partitions will be mounted RO on next reboot. However, if you simply pull the plug with filesystems mounted RW, chances are that on next reboot it will be noticed and quite long-running fsck (filesystem check) will be automatically performed. In the worst case, if you pull the plug in the moment of a critical disk update, filesystem can be quite seriously corrupted (ext2fs is not a journaling filesystem - they are somehow slow in getting widespread use, although several are available for Linux).

So, do remount filesystems RO when finished updating them.

HTH. (If not - again, there is FAQ and plenty of better previous replies to similar questions )

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Yes, that does help enormously. I was looking at my old network card settings and I had that assigned to 192.168 etc. My card only seems to work in DOS and not Windows which is an old problem. Didn't used to matter when I used to hook up with a mate for network sessions of Doom but not any more .

So, looks like I'll have to get my hands on another card.

I managed to reboot the empeg through hyperterminal by just typing [exit] so I guess that put it back to RO.

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Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

I managed to reboot the empeg through hyperterminal by just typing [exit] so I guess that put it back to RO.

exit will merely exit the shell and restart the player application. I don't think this remounts the partitions RO (but, curiously enough, quiting the player and starting the shell does). Anyway, none of these reboots the player. The quickest way to do that is to recycle power.

Let's see how about rebooting from the shell... (tries several commands to no avail)

Hey, why am I getting this response to 'shutdown -r now' :
shutdown: warning: cannot open /var/run/shutdown.pid
You don't exist. Go away.

Indeed, /var/run does not exist. Who was supposed to write pid info there, and whose pid (shell's?)

OK, Steve, now we defer to Frank, guys@empeg and others more knowledgable than me

Cheers!


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Should I get this error when I connect with hyperterminal?

3b35de0d DHCP Sending DHCP discover
E !! dhcp_thread.cpp 583: Failed to send DHCP discover (errno=101)

Bonzi - hope you haven't screwed anything up there because of me

_______________________

Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

Should I get this error when I connect with hyperterminal?

3b35de0d DHCP Sending DHCP discover
E !! dhcp_thread.cpp 583: Failed to send DHCP discover (errno=101)

Hm, I never saw that. It will probably go away if you switch DHCP off and assign the empeg a permanent IP address (which is, of course, just sweeping the problem under the rug: you might want your empeg to request its IP address via DHCP).

Anyway, try shutting down the Hyperterminal (so that you can use serial connection from emplode), connecting from emplode, and switch DHCP off (File->Configure_player->Networking).

Bonzi - hope you haven't screwed anything up there because of me

You mean that shutdown thing? Naah, it was just shutdown command complaining, probably that it cannot identify me and so it doesn't know whether I have authority to request shutdown (remember, this is Linux; that beast often runs servers with hundreds of users). It could not know that I can always pull the plug

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

3b35de0d DHCP Sending DHCP discover
E !! dhcp_thread.cpp 583: Failed to send DHCP discover (errno=101)

This sounds like your ethernet connection isn't up. I would expect a message like "timeout receiving DHCP ack" if the request is sent and no response is received.
Are you using a cross-cable? Is the blue link LED at the back of the empeg lighting up?

If you installed displayserver using the install script, then it should mount the disks ro at the end. If a reboot occurs when mounted rw, you can connect using emplode and synchronize to have it checked again.

As for reboots. You can use :

# reboot -f

to force a reboot.


Frank van Gestel