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Thread: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
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    West Yorkshire, UK
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    Distro
    Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

    HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    This mini howto deals with getting your Topfield PVR working with Ubuntu.

    If you want to ask general questions or discuss things, please use the Topfield For Ubuntu/Unix forum.

    Currently, there are a few hard working people developing some pretty good software for the Topfield and *nix; primarily Puppy (a command line tool that started its life as/is an application to turn a Netgear Slug running the SLUG OS into a network access point for the Topfield) and Guppy - a GUI for Puppy. If you know of other *nix apps or other aspects of using Ubuntu and your Topfield, please post and I'll include them. Also, if you've had success on other systems/kernels/versions etc, let me know and I'll include the info. If anyone wants to help in maintaining this, please do! There will probably always be items in the Todo list for this guide. This howto was developed after discussions on another Ubuntu forum thread and because there is no concise info out there (at the time of writing) for getting your Topfield to play nice with Ubuntu.

    This howto is not meant to hold your hand. I am assuming that you know a few things about Ubuntu and your Topfield before you start. BUT! I am expecting this to grow over time. Please feel free to ask questions, and if the answers clear up anything, I will expand the howto to include them. The only thing I ask is that you read all of the following before asking questions and you ensure that all of the listed dependencies are installed.


    Assumptions
    The following assumes that you:
    • know how to get to a command line and (generally) use it
    • know your way around your Topfield's menus, configuration etc
    • can install applications/packages either on the command line or through Synaptic

    Tested on
    The following has been tested/created using:
    • Ubuntu Edgy Eft ( 2.6.17-10-generic SMP i686)
    • Gnome v2.16.1
    • Puppy v1.11
    • Guppy v1.0.1RC1
    • Topfield TF5800PVR (UK version)

    Dependencies
    The following requires that these packages are installed (additional to a standard Ubuntu install - I have probably missed some):
    • usbutils
    • gdebi (not required, but handy)
    • Python 2.2 (gdebi should take care of this for you)
    • PyGtk 2.6 (gdebi should take care of this for you)


    General help
    From, 15/12/2007, all testing, detail and logs behind this howto are hosted at http://www.deepnerd.com/ - this is to provide detail for those who want it without clogging this howto for those who just want to get things working. If you run into trouble, want more info etc, try these:
    • toppy.org.uk: The place for help, applications, news, TAPs, firmware, and anything else related with the Topfield (UK based, but covers other models as well).
    • Converted RPM's debs and hacks: Packages created from the official Fedora RPMs and work arounds by forum contributor x-na during this discussion. If you run into trouble, these might be worth a try.
    • Topfield Live CD: If all else fails, and you just want to get it working, this Live CD gives you ftp access to your topfield out of the box. Download the image, burn it and boot from it without needing to touch your installed OS.


    Todo...
    • Getting ftpd_Topfield working. This is an FTP server that hooks onto the USB port the Topfield is attached to allowing you to copy files using a normal FTP client. Does not work out of the box on the latest Edgy Eft.
    Credits
    Most of this has come from my experience, but has also been built through info submitted by the Ubuntu community, correspondence with Tony Tsui (the author of Guppy) and from the Puppy & Guppy home pages.




    Howto setup file transfer to/from your Topfield PVR
    If you want to be able to transfer files to/from your Topfield with a nice GUI....
    1. Preparation: Make sure your Topfield is turned on and connected to your PC using a USB cable. It might be best during the initial setup to make sure you have no TAPs running; just to make sure nothing is interacting strangely. To do this, hold down the "0" key on your Topfield remote while it boots until you see it switching between screen ratios (this just stops any TAP from loading during boot).
    2. Topfield connection: On the command line, run
      Code:
      lsusb | grep -i Topfield
      You should get something like
      Code:
      Bus 005 Device 002: ID 11db:1000 Topfield Co., Ltd. PVR
      If not, you could try
      Code:
      lsusb
      to see all the USB devices connected to your system - your Topfield may be announcing itself strangely. If you can't see your Topfield connected, there isn't much need to continue. Try the standard things first (disconnect/reconnect the USB cable, reboot the toppy etc), then start digging further into your USB subsystem.
    3. Puppy install: Download the latest version of the Puppy Deb from here and install it.
      note - Ubuntu >= 7.10 users (Gutsy Gibbon): please see this post below for info on getting USB into a normal state for use with Puppy.
    4. Puppy testing: With your Topfield turned on/plugged in and visible to your system, run
      Code:
      sudo puppy -c dir
      If all went well, you should see the top level directory of your Topfield's hard drive, something like:
      Code:
      d                    0 Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 2003 DataFiles
      d                    0 Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 2003 ProgramFiles
    5. Guppy install: Download the latest version of the Guppy Deb from here and install it.
      note: Support for Edgy Eft (and newer) was added in v1.0.1RC1.
      note #2 - Ubuntu >= 7.04 users (>= Feisty Fawn): please see this post below for info on working around the new version of python.
    6. Guppy testing: Run
      Code:
      sudo guppy
      This can take a little bit to load (you may get an empty window), especially if you have a lot of files on your Topfield - Guppy builds a cache of everything on your Topfield when it boots. If you eventually get the Guppy main window with detail of space remaining and you can see the files in the root directory of your Topfield, you're all done - you can now start transferring files!
    7. Getting it working for normal users:
      Add a new file named "40-tf5000pvr.rules" to the directory "/etc/udev/rules.d". Into this file add following line:

      Code:
      SYSFS{idVendor}=="11db", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1000",      MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
      Next time you plug your Topfield you will be able to run guppy as non-root user. (taa alex_k!)
    8. Menu item: To add a menu item (in Gnome), right click your system menu and select "Edit Menus". Pick the category you want the item to appear in (I use "Sound & Video") and click "New Item" on the right. In the pop-up, enter a name and a description. Under "command" enter gksudo guppy. Download the Guppy icon used on the Guppy home page and save it somewhere. Click the "No Icon" button, find the image you just downloaded and select it. Click OK and you're done!




    Howto view .rec files transferred from your Topfield
    VideoLan plays .rec files (the Topfield's native recording format) out of the box. Make sure you have the universe and multiverse repositories enabled and install vlc. you will then have "VLC media player" available under "Sound & Video" in your main menu.



    Howto manually upgrade firmware
    Before you go any further: upgrading the firware on any piece of hardware, let alone your (expensive) Toppy has the ability to brick (i.e. render it not working forever) whatever it is you are upgrading. We are not responsible if you damage anything.
    Last edited by belgrave; December 19th, 2007 at 12:35 AM. Reason: updated for Gutsy Gibbon support and firmware upgrade

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
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    118
    Distro
    Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    Very nice article. congratulations

    I wrote this topfield 4000 article (german) here
    http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Topfield

    Do you know how to get write privilegies for TF 4000 ?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    West Yorkshire, UK
    Beans
    25
    Distro
    Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    Can't help directly on the TF4000 sorry as I don't have access to the hardware and the google translate version of your post does not do it justice (sorry, don't speak german either ), but it does give the general flow.

    When you have the FAT24 file system mounted, can you write to it as root? Try
    Code:
    sudo su -
    cd /media/topf
    touch test
    if so, then you'll need to muck around with the options (-o) part of the mount command or the permissions on the mount point.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
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    Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    kann „test“ nicht berühren: Read-only file system
    means : no write privilegies.

    yesterday i could finally reach read/write privilegies with the tool TFDISK from here

    http://www.glasstetter.net/dvbcut/

    Are you informed about plans to support fat24 system for future versions of linux kernel?

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2005
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    3

    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    Running Guppy as non-root user:

    Ubuntu does not use hotplug, so you can't use the hotplug scripts from the Guppy homepage.
    You have to use udev:

    Add a new file named "40-tf5000pvr.rules" to the directory "/etc/udev/rules.d". Into this file add following line:

    Code:
    SYSFS{idVendor}=="11db", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1000",      MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
    Next time you plug your Topfield you will be able to run guppy as non-root user.

  6. #6
    Join Date
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    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    sweeeet.. thanks alex_k... folded into the howto

    many kudos for you

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    Distro
    Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    Hi,

    I get as far as the guppy testing, and get the following error...

    sudo guppy
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/bin/guppy", line 82, in <module>
    from guppy import GuppyWindow
    ImportError: No module named guppy


    Can anyone help?

    I use Kubuntu 7.04.
    I have tried this with guppy 1.01all, RC1 & RC2.

    AW

  8. #8
    Join Date
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    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    Quote Originally Posted by walding View Post
    sudo guppy
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/bin/guppy", line 82, in <module>
    from guppy import GuppyWindow
    ImportError: No module named guppy
    hmmm.... I do remember dealing with this error a while ago, but for the life of me cannot remember how I got it fixed. I have a nagging suspicion it was related to paths. You'll be wanting to use at least RC1, but I would be using RC2 (newer is (nearly) always better).

    I haven't tested guppy under Feisty (my lounge pc is still running edgy), but have just done a clean install of puppy 1.11 & guppy 1.0.1RC2 and replicated the error you got. Puppy is working fine.

    After a bit of digging, it seems that Feisty is using Python 2.5 but the deb's of Guppy are expecting python 2.4. I tried doing something like:
    Code:
     sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/guppy/ /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/guppy
    But this just threw up a whole new world of pain with python version conflicts etc. I eventually got it working by changing the first line in
    Code:
    /usr/bin/guppy
    from:
    Code:
    #!/usr/bin/python
    to
    Code:
    #!/usr/bin/python2.4
    /usr/bin/python is a symlink to the latest python interpreter installed. by chaning the line above, you have just told the system to use the older version of the python interpreter when running Guppy.

    can you test and feedback? I don't have my Toppy connected to this PC, so I can only test so far.
    Last edited by belgrave; May 25th, 2007 at 09:10 AM.

  9. #9
    Join Date
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    Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    HI,

    Sorry for delay (hols). This works better in that the GUI loads up. However, there is no connection evident. grep command shows that the PVR is connected properly etc. It works under Windows (Altair). So there is something in 7.04 stopping it working that wasn't the case in 6.10.

    I can't test anything else at the moment as Feisty is broken completely today!

    AW

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    West Yorkshire, UK
    Beans
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    Distro
    Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

    Re: HOWTO: Topfield PVR and Ubuntu

    Are you running guppy as root? try:

    Code:
    sudo guppy
    any luck?

    is puppy working (check the main howto)? If it isn't, then the problems are lower level than the GUI; if it is, then guppy is definitely to blame

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