May 2009 - Arch-general - lists.archlinux.org

[arch-general] The ultimate Home Theater / media center computer
by RedShift 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

Hi list Somehow I got it into my head that I want a home theater PC. I'm growing tired of having to watch television and movies on my computer's 17" LCD screen. At the shop I used to work at, once in a while we'd build a media center computer, but the concept never really took off here (Belgium). There are many reasons for that, such as: * Television is major suckage here (thanks to That Big Company and Government-Not-Governing). The entire country is split into very small regions where broadcast frequencies differ, there's no unified TV guide system, not all regions can receive all channels. Digital television is even worse: That Big Company forces you to buy one of their proprietary decoders. The only way to receive digital television without restrictions is DVB-T with a very limited number of channels (basically nothing). * At that time, the hardware sucked (noisy, too big, not stylish enough to put it along your other hi-fi components, not powerful enough, limited digital outputs, etc...). The software wasn't much better (too complicated, took a long time to start, etc...). Anyway, my goal is to build the *ULTIMATE* HTPC. As such, strong demands must be met: The hardware: * It should be stylish, a timeless look which fits with your other hi-fi components. * It must be entirely silent. Zero moving components. No exceptions. * Unrestricted fully digital outputs. * Must be able to play at least 720p MKV's using x264 encoded video. * Easy remote control. No remote controls with more buttons than there are stars in the sky and certainly no "dual function" buttons (those functions in a different color which you need to flick a switch or are context dependent). * Able to receive DVB-C. The software: * There is no room for "Digital Rights Management" fascism. All content must play flawless and in the highest quality possible. In some cases this will mean circumventing protections. That'll probably make the device illegal in some countries, but I don't care. * Easy user interface (also see hardware remote control point). * Can connect to NAS or other storage devices such as USB sticks. In total: * Must be a complete replacement for your DVD player and other media devices. The goal here is keeping the number of remote controls down. Ideally you should only have two: one for controlling your HTPC and one for your hi-fi set. * It is geared towards modern television, that means stuff like HDTV and no legacy connector stuff (like composite). With those goals set, I started looking for hardware. Here's what I've come up with: * Case: Silverstone LC19 http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_spec.php?pno=lc19&area=usa + Fanless PSU. + Casefans can be removed + Comes with PCI-e and PCI risercards + Integrated cardreader and slimline optical slot + Available in black and silver + Accommodates standard ATX I/O shield + Room for a 3.5" storage device (SSD?) + Vents right above the CPU + Slim - Fits only small motherboard sizes - Only 120 watt PSU - No infrared receiver, no remote control * Motherboard: Asus P5N7A-VM http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=8YiUFvK51IergAqY&templete=2 + Powerful on-board graphics (nVidia 9300) + Supports 16 GB of RAM + eSATA port + Optical audio output + HDMI, DVI and VGA video output + Gigabit ethernet + Solid caps - nVidia on-board graphics (requiring proprietary driver) - On-board graphics use system memory - Crappy realtek audio codec * DVB-C receiver: ? I have zero experience with DVB-C receivers for computers. I've come across the "DVBWorldDTV Cable" (http://www.worlddvb.com/product/htm/pcic.htm) which seems to provide what I'm looking for. Anyone know how good this hardware actually is and how well it's supported by linux? I have an old hauppauge PVR-350 card which works well, unfortunately hauppauge doesn't seem to have DVB-C products. * Remote control: ? I want to have something simple here. Maybe a small USB infrared receiver and a simple remote control with buttons up, down, left, right, enter? Anyone know if such hardware exists? * Processor: Intel Celeron? No idea how much processing power would be required for a decent HTPC. Preferably as low powered as possible, as the CPU will have to be passively cooled. * Processor cooling: ? I was thinking of a big block with small fins which you see a lot in 1U rackservers. Copper would be the logical choice but from what I've read, aluminum allows for better heat transfer to the environment. So a copper base with alu fins would be ideal. * Storage: ? For storing the operating system I was thinking of those IDE compact flash cards. Downside is that they are very slow. An SSD can be considered but I want to leave the option open to use the 3.5" bay for a hard drive for people that don't have the luxury of a NAS or don't want to leave a NAS running all times. Moving along. The most annoying aspect: software. Obviously we want all our software to be open source. A shortlist of open source media center software: * MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/) * XBMC (http://xbmc.org/) * Elisa (http://elisa.fluendo.com/) The point I really want to focus on is ease of use. Take this as a benchmark: you only have to explain your parents once how it works. Any suggestions, comments, thoughts, etc... are appreciated. Thanks, Best regards, Glenn

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[arch-general] syslog-ng build error
by Baho Utot 05 Jul '09

05 Jul '09

Making syslog-ng 3.0.1-6 i686 in Clean Chroot ==> Making package: syslog-ng 3.0.1-6 i686 (Wed May 27 19:31:24 UTC 2009) ==> Checking Runtime Dependencies... ==> Checking Buildtime Dependencies... ==> Installing missing dependencies... resolving dependencies... looking for inter-conflicts... if gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/eventlog -D_GNU_SOURCE -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -march=athlon -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -Wall -MT main.o -MD -MP -MF ".deps/main.Tpo" -c -o main.o main.c; \ then mv -f ".deps/main.Tpo" ".deps/main.Po"; else rm -f ".deps/main.Tpo"; exit 1; fi gcc -march=athlon -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -Wall -o syslog-ng main.o libsyslog-ng.a -lrt -lnsl -Wl,-Bstatic -lfl -lglib-2.0 -levtlog -lssl -lcrypto -lz -lz -lwrap -lcap -lpcre -Wl,-Bdynamic -ldl /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcap collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[2]: *** [syslog-ng] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/build/src/syslog-ng-3.0.1/src' make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/build/src/syslog-ng-3.0.1' make: *** [all] Error 2 ==> ERROR: Build Failed. What is -lcap ? Is it looking for a static lib cap?

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Re: [arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Assigning bugs proposal
by Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi 14 Jun '09

14 Jun '09

Tobias Powalowski wrote: > Hi guys. > quite a lot of bug assigning happened lately, could you please add: > [packagename] ... > at the beginning of each bug topic, > this way it's much easier to sort things on bugtracker. > > thanks > greetings > tpowa > Hi Yes I can do it. ;) I did the change in some task but not in others. Another thing is that I think is important in changing the "status" field if task is assigned, it's much simpler to manage and allocate the missing. Many task are currently assigned to people but this field is in "unconfirmed". There any objection if I change the "status" to all the task currently assigned, but this field does not reflect the state? Unconfirmed -> Assigned (if task have people assigned) Good Luck! -- Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi ( djgera ) http://www.djgera.com.ar KeyID: 0x1B8C330D Key fingerprint = 0CAA D5D4 CD85 4434 A219 76ED 39AB 221B 1B8C 330D

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[arch-general] Help understanding which interface OpenOffice is using?
by David C. Rankin 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

Listmates, I have installed openoffice-core on my x86 box and I am trying to understand what user interface it is using and how to change it if I can. I suspect the very block like interface and large menu and menubar fonts are the result of the GTK interface oo on arch uses by default. (I could have this backwards). The default UI looks really awkward to me. It brings back bad memories of the days when the UI was limited to what you see on xpdf. The wiki(http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openoffice) suggests an environment variable setting of OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=kde soffice, but warns that "KDE look will be removed in Openoffice3". What's the status of that? When will the QT interface go away? What is the best way to get a better looking interface on KDE3. I have tried using 'OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=kde soffice', but so far I get an error when attempting this over XDMCP. Is there something that will work in this situation as well? Thanks for any help or suggestions you can give. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

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[arch-general] speakers don't turn off when headphones inserted
by Scott Weisman 03 Jun '09

03 Jun '09

Hello, I just obtained a Fujitsu P7120 notebook (a very nice model, by the way). Overall, I am getting this working with Arch just fine (although I would definitely appreciate pointers from anyone else who has installed Arch, especially as I have been using a desktop until now and haven't had the need to configure notebook-type features). One problem I am having that I don't know how to fix is that when I plug in headphones, the speakers don't turn off. Alsamixer shows that the headphones and speakers have separate controls, something I have never seen in a notebook before. While cool, I would really love to have this automatically toggle as expected. Does anyone have a suggestion? Thanks, Scott

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Re: [arch-general] SRCDEST="/path/to/folder"
by Baho Utot 01 Jun '09

01 Jun '09

On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 23:37 +1000, Allan McRae wrote: > Allan McRae wrote: > > Baho Utot wrote: > >> I am Building in a clean chroot according to the wiki > >> > >> The Chroot sub-directory is /home/Chroot/root > >> > >> I have set SRCDEST="/sources" in the makepkg in /home/Chroot/root/etc > >> and then > >> mkdir /home/Chroot/root/sources chmod 777 /home/Chroot/root/sources > >> > >> Is this correct to get makepkg to store the sources in that > >> sub-directory? > >> > >> It presently doesn't work for me or I did something wrong. > >> > >> Can anyone help? > >> > > > > As far as makepkg goes, it should store the sources in /sources. But > > my guess is makechrootpkg is moving the source files from there to the > > directory you launched it from. Have not actually looked at this though. > > Or an even better explanation (which also could be wrong), it puts them > in the rw portion of the union filesystem and that gets cleared. > > I think the message to take from this is that this setup will probably > not work... > > Allan > > Ok I'll have to fix my build script to do it

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Re: [arch-general] [signoff] lvm2-2.02.47-1
by Eric Bélanger 31 May '09

31 May '09

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Eric Bélanger <snowmaniscool(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > lvm2-2.02.47-1 is in testing. Minor upstream updates (from 2.02.45). > Please test/signoff. > > Eric > > bump. Anyone? I believe only another dev use this so signoff from users would be good.

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[arch-general] agg 2.5-2 i686 build error
by Baho Utot 31 May '09

31 May '09

Building in a clean chroot per wiki gcc version 4.4.0 20090505 (prerelease) (GCC) ==> Making package: agg 2.5-2 i686 (Sun May 31 12:35:08 UTC 2009) libtool: compile: g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../../../include -I../../../include -I -march=athlon -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -c agg_platform_support.cpp -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/libaggplatformX11_la-agg_platform_support.o /bin/sh ../../../libtool --tag=CXX --mode=link g++ -I../../../include -I -march=athlon -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -version-info 2:4:0 -L -o libaggplatformX11.la -rpath /usr/lib libaggplatformX11_la-agg_platform_support.lo -lX11 libtool: link: require no space between `-L' and `-o' make[3]: *** [libaggplatformX11.la] Error 1

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[arch-general] SRCDEST="/path/to/folder"
by Baho Utot 31 May '09

31 May '09

I am Building in a clean chroot according to the wiki The Chroot sub-directory is /home/Chroot/root I have set SRCDEST="/sources" in the makepkg in /home/Chroot/root/etc and then mkdir /home/Chroot/root/sources chmod 777 /home/Chroot/root/sources Is this correct to get makepkg to store the sources in that sub-directory? It presently doesn't work for me or I did something wrong. Can anyone help?

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[arch-general] Fix or not fix? install scriptlets with user handling.
by Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi 30 May '09

30 May '09

Hi, Many package manage user/groups in many differents ways. (no much problem here) Many do things like: @ when installed 1) check if not user foo exists then create it 2) check if not group foo exists then create it @when removed 1) remove the user foo (without check) 2) remove the group foo (without check) Because by default the option USERGROUPS_ENAB is set to yes, when user "foo" is removed also the group "foo" is removed, so the groupdel command will fail, then pacman show the message: "error: scriptlet failed to execute correctly". The solution is trivial, check with getent before remove, just like some packages do it before create the user. My question here, is there interest in resolving this? Currently I have the choice of those who fail (both extra and comunity). Do you send a report to everyone who fail to flyspray with the patch (low priority)? Also I can unify the user creation step, some .install check with "grep" and others with "getent". I prefer the proper getent method. The only package in [core] that have this issue is dbus-core [#1] and is actually reported. [#1] http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/14810 -- Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi ( djgera ) http://www.djgera.com.ar KeyID: 0x1B8C330D Key fingerprint = 0CAA D5D4 CD85 4434 A219 76ED 39AB 221B 1B8C 330D

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