Monthly Archives: December 2009

linux

DLNA support for the Samsung LNxxB630 TV

December 27, 2009 – 3:36 pm

DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is a standard to allow entertainment devices within the home to share their content with each other across a home network. In other words, stream content from my computer to the TV across the LAN. The cool part about this, is that my TV, the LN40B630, can play HD content native, meaning that the computer’s only function is to stream (not process the content, meaning my low power computer can ‘power’ the HD content). The catch is that you have to use firmware not newer than 001012, the 001013 firmware that my TV came with removes the DLNA feature. (I assume they meant for it to only be available on more expensive models).

In my opinion, the easiest way to get DLNA to work for this TV is to use mediatomb. The reason is that this TV needs the mimetype of avi/mkv’s to be video/mpeg and (so far) I have not found any other DLNA software that is able to modify mimetypes like this. You also need to set a custom http header, as I found here.

Here is my config.xml that I am using to stream to the TV. It is not perfect but the majority of the work is done. Tested with mediatomb-0.11.0 only.

Tags , | Permalink | Comments (6)
linux

About PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS and lighttpd

December 20, 2009 – 2:00 pm

If you are running PHP on a limited-resource box, like a VPS then you may have seen your PHP pages randomly hang. I was able to trace this issue down because the PHP pages were hung up and the normal html pages were still being served. The problem was ‘solved’ when I restarted the web server. Some research later, and talking to Thilo (bangert), I found out about PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS. This is an environment variable that PHP respects, it basically tells how many requests to serve before respawning fcgi. In my case, 500 seemed like a good number after testing. Your mileage may vary, but it is worth a try if you have those symptoms.


%% cat /etc/lighttpd/mod_fastcgi.conf
server.modules += ("mod_fastcgi")
fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
    ( "localhost" =>
        (
            "socket"   => "/var/run/lighttpd/lighttpd-fastcgi-php-" + PID + ".socket",
            "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
            "max-procs" => "2", # default 4
            "bin-environment" => (
                "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "2", # default 1
                "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "500" #default 1000
            )
        )
    )
)
Tags | Permalink | Comments (2)
gentoo

Gentoo: devtmpfs and boot times (revisited)

December 10, 2009 – 9:12 am

There was alot of of talk/flames on the LKML about devtmpfs. Looks like a big push for this was for embedded devices, android, etc. Since I read that it may give a boot time speed up, I was slightly intrigued. http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/4/30/182, yes…it is an old topic but it finally was released in stable .32 kernel.

So, bootcharts:
bootchart-2.6.31.6.png 39 seconds
bootchart-2.6.32-no-devtmpfs.png 37 seconds
bootchart-2.6.32-devtmpfs.png 37 seconds
bootchart-2.6.32-openrc.png 26 seconds (devtmpfs)

So, where is the real win here? Well, as I wrote before, use openrc.

Tags | Permalink | Comments (12)
gentoo

Gentoo on Acer Aspire1, including binpkgs

December 7, 2009 – 3:05 pm

About a month ago, I installed Gentoo on the new-to-me Acer Aspire1. Installation went like anything else, it is just a normal x86 host after all. I don’t have everything on it working, because I don’t care. If you are looking for additional resources on getting the extras working, you may want to look here or here.

The exciting part, that I got working and am ready to announce publicly, is my new atom-x86 binpkg repo. What makes this repo different than the binpkgs located on tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/default-linux is that this repo has CFLAGS specific to the Intel Atom processor. I identified the compiler flags by using the following gcc command: gcc -Q --help=target -march=native and set the following -march=prescott -mtune=generic -msahf. On my linode (review) host, I have a chroot that builds all new packages in my world file once a day which comes from the aspire1. In this manor, I am able to always have binary packages available to me whenever I update my aspire1. Now, I have all the benefits of a source distro and the speed of a binary distro. :)

If you would like to use this repo, set PORTAGE_BINHOST in /etc/make.conf and add ‘getbinpkg’ to FEATURES (or use the emerge options directly). Be advised, that thought this works for me, I make no guarantees for you.

PORTAGE_BINHOST="http://tinderbox.jolexa.net/atom-x86/"
FEATURES="${FEATURES} getbinpkg"

I also have an html view of the packages available.

Tags , | Permalink | Comments (8)
gentoo

Gentoo: Genesi Efika MX unboxing and first impressions.

December 3, 2009 – 9:31 pm

In the mail today, I got the Efika MX Open Client. My first impressions are pretty good. No noise and no moving parts, it should last for a long time. It comes with Ubuntu 9.10 minimal on it out of the box.

That HDMI output makes it the best text console I have ever seen on my 40″ 1080p LCD TV! :) Seriously though, on my TODO:

  • Analyze the possibilities for a HTPC. This will be just something fun to do.
  • Gentoo Prefix on ARM. This will be the first time, that we know of, that it has been attempted. It shouldn’t be that hard because Gentoo already has ARM support which means that most apps already work.
  • Install Gentoo Linux on it and help armin76 document the installation process.
  • Assisting the Gentoo ARM team with providing binary packages and weekly stages for Gentoo Linux users.
  • And more…
Size comparision of Efika MX vs Aspire1

Size comparision of Efika MX vs Aspire1

efika-back

Back of the Efika MX. Power, HDMI, Ethernet, headphone, mic

efika-front

Front of Efika MX. USB, USB, SD Card Slot

Tags | Permalink | Comments (11)
life

FL4SH – A new seeqpod

December 1, 2009 – 5:12 pm

It has been months since seeqpod was shutdown. I have finally found fl4sh.com. I took this recommendation/review and went ahead and signed up for an account. After all, I needed a pandora replacement after they limited free listening to 40 hours per month! Now, if I only had my saved seeqpod playlists! Oh well, rock on.

Permalink | Comment (1)