Arch-general September 2009

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136 participants
101 discussions

[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] dd and bash_completion
by Thomas Göbel 12 Oct '09

12 Oct '09

Hi all, i noticed that bash_completion and dd do not work together. Tiping dd if=/h<TAB> will not complete to if=/home. Without bash_completion everything works fine. Maybo someone knows how to fix this? Tom -- () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments

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[arch-general] VPS hosting with Arch
by Roman Kyrylych 09 Oct '09

09 Oct '09

Hi all! I am looking for hosting that support Arch. Most probably this will be a VPS hosting (because of price), so official Arch Linux support is required. So far the list include: http://www.slicehost.com/ http://vpslink.com/ (a subsidiary of http://www.spry.com/) http://www.vpsville.com/arch-vps (also .co.uk and .co.ca) http://www.linode.com/ http://lylix.net/ https://www.sevenl.net/ (they have donated a server for Arch, and provide a dedicated hosting with Arch too) If there is someone who has experience with these providers - I would be very thankful for information. Also if someone knows about other providers that could join the list - let me know. -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)

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[arch-general] Status of bluetooth in Arch, specially bluez package
by Ricardo Hernandez 07 Oct '09

07 Oct '09

Hi, i write to know the status of bluetooth packages in Arch, i mean bluez mostly. In extra repository -- Ricardo Hernández ( richerVE ) richerve(a)archlinux.com.ve

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[arch-general] [signoff] kernel26 2.6.31.1-1
by Thomas Bächler 04 Oct '09

04 Oct '09

Kernel is in testing for both architectures, please sign off (at least one for x86_64, two for i686). I think tpowa had the kernel all ready to move to core, except he was waiting for the .1 release, which is there now. The only thing bugging me is http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16149, opinions?

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[arch-general] Thunderbird
by Ondřej Kučera 01 Oct '09

01 Oct '09

Hello, I've been meaning to ask. What's going on with the thunderbird package? Version 2.0.0.23 was released more than month ago, it isn't usual with Arch for such a package to be left outdated for so long (especially since it is a security update). I know I can use ABS and rebuild it myself and I have, but still. Is there a particular reason for the delay? Shouldn't a bug report be created (when package remains out of date for this long)? Ondřej -- Cheers, Ondřej Kučera

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[arch-general] Pacman problem. "error writing to file" "bad address"
by Nigel Henry 01 Oct '09

01 Oct '09

I had problems with ocaml yesterday. After the machine locked up during the updates, I did a hard reset, and ran pacman -Su again. It continued downloading ocaml, but when all the updates were downloaded, it failed to install them, claiming that ocaml was corrupted. I removed the corrupted ocaml as requested, and as I'm on dialup and didn't want to download 38MB of ocaml again last night, I temporarily added an IgnorePkg line for it. Ran pacman -Su again, and all the updates apart from ocaml, and also gnupg2, which couldn't be found, were installed. Today I went to install the ocaml update, having removed it from the IgnorePkg line. It starts to download, but then throws an error as below. error: error writing to file '/var/cache/pacman/pkg/ocaml....' :Bad address Harddrive partition is redlining, and the partly downloaded ocaml file shows as 2GB size. Any ideas on a fix for this problem? As an aside, pacman was updated, but not before the other updates, in case that is what has caused the problem. Nigel.

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[arch-general] Grub menu.lst for USB drive
by Baho Utot 01 Oct '09

01 Oct '09

I have a base install that I have placed on a USB thumb drive. I need to get grub to boot it by uuid or label so I can boot it from any PC I can get it to boot using a kernel line like this: # (0) Arch Linux title Arch Linux (x86_64) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdd1 rootdelay=15 ro initrd /kernel26.img This don't work # (0) Arch Linux title Arch Linux (x86_64) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz26 root=UUID=6342a6b5-25cf-4d01-a318-68309d12ab5b rootdelay=15 ro initrd /kernel26.img This don't work # (0) Arch Linux title Arch Linux (x86_64) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/6342a6b5-25cf-4d01-a318-68309d12ab5b rootdelay=15 ro initrd /kernel26.img Any one know how to get this to work?

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[arch-general] Opera and Java on x86_64
by Ondřej Kučera 30 Sep '09

30 Sep '09

Hello, I've been trying to figure out why Java applets wouldn't work on my system in Opera. (I'm using jre/jdk from [community], not openjdk6 from [extra].) From what I've found out: you set up a "Java directory" in Opera preferences (this path is then written to .opera/javapath.txt) and Opera looks for libjava.so there. At the same time Opera also looks for libjvm.so there (or it is the first place where Opera looks, more on that bellow). The problem is that jre package contains libjava.so in /opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/, while libjvm.so is in "server" subdirectory (/opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/server). That causes Opera not to find it and disable Java completely. I ran strace and these are relevant lines to show where Opera tries to find libjvm.so: open("/opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/libjvm.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/opera/10.00/libjvm.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/libjvm.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/opt/java/jre/lib/amd64//native_threads/libjvm.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 107 open("/lib/libjvm.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/libjvm.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) This lead me to an idea of creating symlink to /opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/server/libjvm.so in /usr/lib/opera/10.00, which worked and now I can see applets in Opera properly. Now the question is, who's fault is it? Opera's? Jre's? And more importantly, can it be solved in a way that doesn't require users to create symlinks as root? Either opera package could create the aforementioned link, only that is ugly for those not using jre package. Or jre package could create the link into /opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/. Or maybe even move the files from the "server" subdirectory to the upper directory (there are only three of them and I have no idea why they are in such a subdirectory)? Does anyone have a better idea? Perhaps adding /opt/java/jre/lib/amd64/server/ to LD_LIBRARY_PATH inside the opera shell script? Ondřej -- Cheers, Ondřej Kučera

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[arch-general] nexuiz/nexuiz-data depency problem
by Thomas-Bahn 30 Sep '09

30 Sep '09

I have problems to install nexuiz on my system. Its a 64bit system and up to date synced to ftp://mir1.archlinuxfr.org. This mirror have synced since the last updates of nexuiz and nexuiz-data. If I install nexuiz with pacman -S nexuiz then the following messages are displayed: resolving dependencies... warning: cannot resolve "nexuiz-data", a dependency of "nexuiz" :: the following package(s) cannot be upgraded due to unresolvable dependencies: nexuiz Do you want to skip the above package(s) for this upgrade? [Y/n] Y looking for inter-conflicts... local database is up to date I have searched on the archlinux.org site for the packages and I found: any Community nexuiz-data 2.5.1-3 Orphan 2009-09-30 x86_64 Community nexuiz 2.5.1-3 xyne 2009-09-29 The package exists but pacman cant find it? Is there something wrong on the mirror or on my Arch Linux with the any-packages? Thanks for your help :) Thomas Bahn

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Arch-general September 2009