HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

[bekowsquap]

Excellent. All working now.

Many thanks Dougaus.

[belgrave]

thanks heaps for the feedback - I've been waiting for the servers to calm down before upgrading. Will update the howto for Gutsy as soon as I can test it out myself. Thanks to all posters for the help and problem diags (current install is happening on a 64 bit system being logged here: http://www.deepnerd.com/node/73)

Will most likely log the debug on Gutsy for the Toppy at http://www.deepnerd.com/plogs as well.

[belgrave]

it has been nearly 2 months, but the howto has been updated to get your Toppy working with the latest Ubuntu Release (7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon) - many apologies for the delay and kudos to dougaus for finding the solution.

USB probs were confirmed, logged and documented
here.

Also rolled in detail on how to upgrade firmware without windows/over the air upgrade.

Further detail and testing behind the howto (so as not to clog it up with irrelevant detail) can be found here: http://www.deepnerd.com/topics/52/Topfield

[machare]

I have Gusty Gibbon and a slug. Using Mozilla Firefox I can see the files on my TF5800.

I have found that VLC running under Gusty will play .rec files already stored on my PC much better than when running under Vista.

So I wondered whether I could use VLC to directly play files on the PVR.

Using 'Places', 'Connect to server' I can see the slug as an FTP folder. When I open this folder I see '1970 firmware', '2003 DataFiles', '2003 ProgramFiles', '2003 MP30'. I don't know where the 1970 and 2003 come from. If I try and open the Datafiles folder I get the message 'The folder contents could not be displayed.'

Why do I get these strange names?
Is there a way that I can open the folders?
Or is there any other way that I can directly play files on the PVR using VLC?

[belgrave]

Hi Machare,

gonna have to ask a few questions here as I'm flying blind; don't have a Slug to test this on, but I can make a few (un)educated guesses.

I'm assuming here that when you say:

Using 'Places', 'Connect to server' I can see the slug as an FTP folder.

This is the 'Places' menu item under Gnome....

When I get a directory listing of the Toppy, I get something like this:

d                    0 Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 2003 DataFiles
d                    0 Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 2003 ProgramFiles

I'm thinking the strange directories you are seeing ('2003 DataFiles') are because of a problem with either Gnome or the way the Slug is presenting the directory listing to Gnome - instead of showing "ProgramFiles", it's also giving the year part of the modification date.

Try this: Once connected via 'Places > Connect To Server'. instead of clicking the directory, try adding 'ProgramFiles' manually at the end of the location bar (you may need a trailing slash - if you can't see the location bar, click the button on the left that looks like a pen&paper).

With any luck, this should let you browse into directories on the Toppy. As for VLC..... what you get in Nautilus (the Gnome file browser), may not be available to other applications like VLC.

From a quick bit of research, it looks like the Slug supports NFS mounts - with this, you should be able to mount your Topfield onto a directory on your local computer. This will allow applications like VLC to use files on the Toppy as if they were local files on your PC. Have a search on Google for "NFS slug" - but the following looks promising (from the NSLU2 home page):

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Optware/Nfs-utils

let us know how you get on, I'd be interested to see if the Toppy could be mounted on the local file system (think: mythtv + toppy)

[machare]

This is the 'Places' menu item under Gnome....

When I get a directory listing of the Toppy, I get something like this:

d                    0 Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 2003 DataFiles
d                    0 Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 2003 ProgramFiles

I'm thinking the strange directories you are seeing ('2003 DataFiles') are because of a problem with either Gnome or the way the Slug is presenting the directory listing to Gnome - instead of showing "ProgramFiles", it's also giving the year part of the modification date.

You are right it was a problem with the ftpd-topfiled software that runs in the slug and makes the files in the PVR appear as if on an FTP server. I have found a later version of this software where this bug has been corrected.

Try this: Once connected via 'Places > Connect To Server'. instead of clicking the directory, try adding 'ProgramFiles' manually at the end of the location bar (you may need a trailing slash - if you can't see the location bar, click the button on the left that looks like a pen&paper).

That idea did work, unfortunately the file names were also preceded by 2007

With any luck, this should let you browse into directories on the Toppy. As for VLC..... what you get in Nautilus (the Gnome file browser), may not be available to other applications like VLC.

If I open the text editor I can drill down the directories and select a file on the PVR. VLC however does not find the ftp server icon on the desktop. i.e. it is not listed under 'File, quick open file'. Further if open the ftp server icon on the desktop, drill sound the directories to a '.rec' file and use 'open with' VLC it still does not work!

From a quick bit of research, it looks like the Slug supports NFS mounts - with this, you should be able to mount your Topfield onto a directory on your local computer. This will allow applications like VLC to use files on the Toppy as if they were local files on your PC. Have a search on Google for "NFS slug" - but the following looks promising (from the NSLU2 home page):
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Optware/Nfs-utils

let us know how you get on, I'd be interested to see if the Toppy could be mounted on the local file system (think: mythtv + toppy)

I am not sure if ftpd-topfiled would be compatible with nfs. I will try the www.toppy.org.uk forum as I can not be the first person to have encountered this problem. Thanks for your help.

[belgrave]

I am not sure if ftpd-topfiled would be compatible with nfs. I will try the www.toppy.org.uk forum as I can not be the first person to have encountered this problem. Thanks for your help.

glad to have helped, and please let us know how you get on with VLC&the slug.

Something else that may help is mounting the toppy using an ftp filesystem:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=117827

once mounted, this will present the topfild as a normal directory on your local filesystem, letting apps like VLC that don't have nautilus integration to get to it.

[belgrave]

We have decided to split this a little bit. Based on recent requests, there seems to be a need for a general forum to discuss things relating to Ubuntu and the Topfield.

As such, we have established a general Topfield Ubuntu (and linux/unix) forum at:

http://www.deepnerd.com/forum/53

Please use this if you need general help or have questions relating to the above. We will try and keep this howto focussed on getting Ubuntu and the Toppy to play nice, just so things don't get too cluttered here.

[machare]

glad to have helped, and please let us know how you get on with VLC&the slug.

I have found that I can get VLC to play files on the PVR by using the 'Open Network Stream' option, selecting FTP and entering a URL that points to a file on the PVR. It actually works quite well.

I have also found that this method works on Vista, and is better than using the Windows Explorer FTP facility to display the files on the PVR and then clicking on them so that VLC starts.

Something else that may help is mounting the toppy using an ftp filesystem:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=117827

once mounted, this will present the topfild as a normal directory on your local filesystem, letting apps like VLC that don't have nautilus integration to get to it.

Interesting, I might try that sometime.

[Fraser67]

I have been trying to complie a version of Puppy that does not use the CRC checking. Hence I can't use the packages that have been produced and need to got to basics.

I had one problem that seemed to be cured by commenting out the #include <linux/usb.h> in usb_io.h and forcing it to use #include "usb_ch9.h" instead. It appeared to make ok.

However it complains when I try and intsall. See below

root@home1:/usr/src/puppy_1.11# make
cc -std=gnu99 -Wall -W -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -pedantic -fexpensive-optimizations -fomit-frame-pointer -frename-registers -O2 -c -o puppy.o puppy.c
cc -std=gnu99 -Wall -W -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -pedantic -fexpensive-optimizations -fomit-frame-pointer -frename-registers -O2 -c -o crc16.o crc16.c
cc -std=gnu99 -Wall -W -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -pedantic -fexpensive-optimizations -fomit-frame-pointer -frename-registers -O2 -c -o mjd.o mjd.c
cc -std=gnu99 -Wall -W -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -pedantic -fexpensive-optimizations -fomit-frame-pointer -frename-registers -O2 -c -o tf_bytes.o tf_bytes.c
cc -std=gnu99 -Wall -W -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -pedantic -fexpensive-optimizations -fomit-frame-pointer -frename-registers -O2 -c -o usb_io.o usb_io.c
cc -Wl,-O2 puppy.o crc16.o mjd.o tf_bytes.o usb_io.o -o puppy

root@home1:/usr/src/puppy_1.11# make install
make: *** No rule to make target `install'. Stop.

Any ideas how to get it to install?