Mini Apple TV – no its not a new product

I have just retired a Mac Mini running 0s/X 10.3.9 from a role monitoring networks using Nagios. Built from source on this machine Nagios has been a good and reliable tool but recently I decided to virtualise this monitoring and move it to Ubuntu. That went well but left me thinking what I could do with the Mac and the thought struck me that it was be a good mini media centre ala Apple TV but for stored video. So I connected up the Mac video output to a flat screen tv using a DVI-D to HDMI cable (from Maplins about £20) and a mini jack to stereo output to link to flat screen tv input. (input number two – the documentation advised for PC sound).

So far – so good. A little buzzing on itunes playback was sorted changing the tv sound profile on the tv. Connection to the network was via Devolo 200MB AV ethernet over power adapter to the Mac’s ethernet port and testing of itunes library streamed from another PC worked fine.

Then tried video. Mmmmm – thats where my knowledge of Mac’s and the whole world of Quicktime and Quicktime Pro were sorely tested. I knew that I had used applications that were multi platform for testing video so I dug out one that sprang to mind – VLC from http://www.videolan.org/ . Tested reading some video on another machine ( A pc this time) and confirmed that the windows version could read video locally and remotely across network. Fired up the latest VLC for MacOS/X – release 0.8.6f and nothing – not a sausage. Black screen – then error when it shut VLC down.

I have always tended to keep the mac and other machines up to date with patches and apps such as Itunes and Quicktime – and when I looked into it – incompatibilities between VLC and Quicktime appear to be at the root of the problem. So for now that release is off limits. Heres hoping they can get that resolved relatively soon.

Solution : From the web site’s archive http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.8.6c/macosx/ I pulled down a copy of the files for PowerPC (the mac is pre intel version) as vlc-0.8.6c-powerpc.dmg and within a few minutes was enjoying streamed video both locally and remotely. Some artifacts appearing but may be able to tame those through the configuration of VLC

What to do when a pdf file is just too big ? »« Too much bandwidth for a Draytek 2820 ?

Too much bandwidth for a Draytek 2820 ?

Some time ago I had issues with Draytek 2800 routers on adsl lines that were getting above 7 MB download speeds but that were having problems sustaining connection and found that a command had been added to the CLI which allowed setting the maximum download rate to a value that was less but more reliable. So I used that on a number of occasions and specifically found it to stabilise the connection.

Recently then when testing a 2820 – I found what looked to be a similar problem. The connection moved from a 7.5m to 8M download speed after a 2800 was removed and replaced with a 2820 – thats when the problem started. Hosts served out from behind the router started to become unavailable. Thats when I found that the rate capping command had been removed from the 2820 since its a different chipset to the 2800s.

I currently have a call open with Vigor to get to the bottom of this and I’ll write further when they respond – the suggestion is a firmware bug.

Meanwhile the 2800 with wireless issues is back in play and the 2820 is being a very expensive network access point.

Mini Apple TV – no its not a new product »« HP 6715S and Ubunbu 8.04 Linux – Grub installed – now to get wireless working ?

HP 6715S and Ubunbu 8.04 Linux – Grub installed – now to get wireless working ?

The following info was gleaned from research for using the in built card under Ubuntu 7.10 but when a recent problem trashed Grub and I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to the new 8.04 release. Well that was the plan but again its the alternate cd for 64 bit that was tried – in this case the RC (Release Candidate) version. Well – everything went swimmingly until the final stage when the install failed to install Grub – so I tried LILO and it failed too.

So when the final release came out I had to give Hardy Heron a go – and yes the Grub installation problem is fixed!!!

I also took the opportunity to clean up some test partitions and get a larger primary partition – but wireless seems to have disappeared. So back to the drawing board

Important – The information following relates to Ubuntu 7.10 – I’ll be back information regarding getting this wireless network card on 8.04

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

http://gefiiri.googlepages.com/kubuntuinstallhp6715s gives a great breakdown of the steps. Below I’m giving some additional commentary explaining what the actuals steps represent.

echo ‘blacklist bcm43xx’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist -> this returns “Blacklist Bcm43xx”

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

will request the 64BIT alternate CD (since thats what I used to install the machine)

mkdir ~/bcm43xx; cd ~/bcm43xx

creates a folder and moves into it

sudo apt-get install cabextract

installs the cabextract program

wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34152.exe

Downloads the required files from HP’s site

cabextract sp34152.exe

This extracts the contents of the file and message at end should say no errors.

The next range of steps relate to the configuration of NDISwrapper

NdisWrapper is a free software driver wrapper that enables the use of Microsoft Windows drivers for wireless network devices (cards, USB modems and routers), on Unix-like operating systems.

This is important, because many vendors of wireless cards do not release Linux supported drivers for the cards, nor information about how to write a driver. Ndiswrapper works by implementing the Windows kernel and NDIS APIs, and dynamically linking the driver to this implementation.

sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

ndiswrapper -l

sudo depmod -a

which creates dependencies for all modules listed in /etc/modules.conf.

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.orig

echo -e ‘auto lo\niface lo inet loopback\n’ | sudo tee /etc/network/interfaces

sudo ndiswrapper -mecho ‘ndiswrapper’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

echo ‘ENABLED=0′ | sudo tee -a /etc/default/wpasupplicant

Remove the Alternate CD from drive and then reboot machine.

Too much bandwidth for a Draytek 2820 ? »« Terminal Services Client V6 notes