Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

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Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby aerotoad » Fri Jul 30, 2010 1:33 am

Just curious what other people are doing with their Plugs. I have three Dockstars, filling various niches around my home. I won't claim the "biggest dork" award quite yet, but I wanted to share my setup.

1) Dockstar running Arch Linux ARM, in the server room. It's hard to beat these devices for quiet efficient hardworkers. I'm using this machine to run Samba, full disk rsync snapshots, disk encryption (with dmcrypt), and some sshfs/encfs tasks with fuse.

2) Dockstar running Debian Lenny as a wireless motion/webcam sensor. Here, the Dockstar joins my wireless network, and outputs images and movies of my parking spot onto another machines harddrive (via Samba). It's been up for over a week with no problems. I have a crummy 640x480 webcam that uvcvideo likes.

3) Dockstar running Debian Lenny as a lightweight terminal. Hooked up a iMo USB display (ulfdb drivers work like a charm), along with wireless mouse and keyboard. I can run lightweight apps like conky, adesklets, openbox, and xterm, but Firefox is understandably slow. However, as a rdesktop or VNC client, it's perfect. Enterprising individual could use USB over IP to setup a remote docking station to another machine (http://www.virtualinsanity.com/index.php/2008/11/20/a-slick-usb-over-ip-solution-that-i-use-every-day/).

I've played with other setups, too. I had one dockstar acting as a wireless/wired access point using my USB cell modem & dnsmasq. Also, I toyed with a streaming MPD server (for the iPod/iPhone mpod app). On the dockstar, however, the MPD server's lame and ogg encoder were too slow resulting in a jumpy stream.

What else have y'all been up to?
Attachments
terminal_smaller.png
Dockstar X server, anyone?
terminal_smaller.png (126.9 KiB) Viewed 14382 times
webcam_smaller.png
Dockstar in the window, acting as motion detector
webcam_smaller.png (54.67 KiB) Viewed 14382 times
server_room_smaller.png
Dockstar in the "server room" closet
server_room_smaller.png (84.25 KiB) Viewed 14382 times
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby DePingus » Sun Aug 01, 2010 12:37 am

I only have 1 Dockstar running Arch Linux ARM install. So I'm not the biggest dork! :lol:

Mine has rTorrent running in a screen as a daemon. I use blockcontrol (moblock) to protect it. It also has uShare to share videos to my Xbox360. And samba to manage all those files. It works great.

I tried proFTP because I have a wireless security camera that sends images via FTP. But it would choke the system.
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby Fallinstar » Sun Aug 01, 2010 2:41 am

aerotoad,

Where did you find the drivers for the iMo USB display??
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby Fallinstar » Sun Aug 01, 2010 3:48 am

aerotoad,

Ok, I answered my own question; I was searching for what you typed, "ulfdb" but obviously it's "udlfb", which I found is already installed in Arch Linux ARM install.

I plugged in my iMo monitor and got a green screen so it looks like the driver works.

So my question now is: can you provide some tips on installing xterm and getting it to work with the USB monitor?

Thanks.
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby LaTristesse » Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:07 am

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('aerotoad', '
')I've played with other setups, too. I had one dockstar acting as a wireless/wired access point using my USB cell modem & dnsmasq. Also, I toyed with a streaming MPD server (for the iPod/iPhone mpod app). On the dockstar, however, the MPD server's lame and ogg encoder were too slow resulting in a jumpy stream.


How did you installed a mpd server? I've searched for a package in the repositories but there were only client:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'pacman -Ss mpd
extra/libmpd 0.20.0-1
Signal based wrapper around libmpdclient
extra/libmpdclient 2.1-1
An asynchronous API library for interfacing MPD in the C, C++ & Objective C languages
extra/mpc 0.19-1
Minimalist command line interface to MPD
extra/ncmpc 0.16.1-1
A ncurses (command line) interface for MPD
extra/python-mpd 0.2.1-2
Python MPD client library
extra/sonata 1.6.2.1-1
Elegant GTK+ music client for MPD
community/ario 1.4.4-1
A GTK client for MPD (Music player daemon) inspired by Rhythmbox but much lighter and faster
community/gkrellmpc 0.1_beta9-5
A mpd control plugin for gkrellm2
community/qmpdclient 1.1.2-1
A Qt4 client for MPD
community/ruby-mpd 0.2.3-1
Interface to MPD (Music Player Daemon) server.')
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby aerotoad » Tue Aug 03, 2010 12:37 am

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow did you installed a mpd server? I've searched for a package in the repositories but there were only client:


I compiled mpd from an ABS setup (http://www.Arch Linux ARM.com/index.php5?title=Developers:_Building_Packages). If you like, I can upload/add the mpd package. On the Debian lenny system mpd comes precompiled (apt-get install mpd), though Debian omits mp3/lame from icecast2 because of licensing.
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby aerotoad » Tue Aug 03, 2010 12:56 am

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fallinstar', 'a')erotoad,
Ok, I answered my own question; I was searching for what you typed, "ulfdb" but obviously it's "udlfb", which I found is already installed in Arch Linux ARM install.

So my question now is: can you provide some tips on installing xterm and getting it to work with the USB monitor?
Thanks.


My bad--the kernel module is udlfb. As for getting a terminal, you have a couple options. On the Debian Lenny system, I've installed xorg, etc, and I have very simple xorg.conf (below). The other route is to use fbterm, and launch it with openvt:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'openvt -sw -- fbterm /bin/bash')

FBterm is here: http://code.google.com/p/fbterm/, and will require compiling on either Lenny or Arch Linux ARM install. fbi (image viewer) worked out of the box on Lenny, when launched with openvt as well. At this point, though you can go full-blown X, since it doesn't eat too much RAM or processor:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
DisplaySize 800 480
# DisplaySize 1024 768
EndSection

Section "Device"
#Option "ShadowFB" "true"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "fbdev"
Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb0"
# Option "Rotate" "CCW"

EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
EndSection
')

You'll need to allow X to be started from an ssh session via /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'allowed_users=anybody')

And I added a little line to the end of my /etc/rc.local so that X would get started (without ssh intervention):
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '...
/home/aerotoad/bin/startstuff 30
exit 0
')

This starts X if the /dev/fb0 is available, 30 seconds after bootup completes. The "startstuff" script is below, and you need sudo installed, as to start X as your user, instead of root:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '#! /bin/sh
echo "sleeping $1 seconds"
sleep $1
user=aerotoad

if [ -e /dev/fb0 ]; then
echo "/dev/fb0 exists, starting X..."
sudo -u $user HOME=/home/$user XAUTHORITY=/home/$user/.Xauthority startx &
echo "I've started X now..."
fi
')

Finally, I installed openbox, my WM of choice. If you have the xterm package installed, right clicking on the background should get you a menu to launch terminals. That my look like a lot, but it's pretty simple with Debian. I'd assume it works similarly with Arch Linux ARM install, though I haven't tried.
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby Fallinstar » Tue Aug 03, 2010 9:38 am

aerotoad,

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to try and get one of them working.
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby LaTristesse » Tue Aug 03, 2010 11:27 am

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('aerotoad', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')I compiled mpd from an ABS setup (http://www.Arch Linux ARM.com/index.php5?title=Developers:_Building_Packages). If you like, I can upload/add the mpd package. .


I allready tried to compile it for Arch Linux ARM install but there have been several errors, so I would be glad if you could upload it. Thanks.

I do have a Samsung Snycmaster which I would love to connect to my Dockstar but I'm not sure how to do. There are no tutorials online. I found a driver for Linux over at http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libdlo
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Re: Biggest dork (or, what are you doing with your Plug)?

Postby aerotoad » Tue Aug 03, 2010 5:00 pm

LaTristesse,

I've emailed the compiled mpd to contact@Arch Linux ARM.com--hopefully someone can add this package to the repository (or compile it and upload themselves?). The archive is mpd-0.15.10-3-arm.pkg.tar.gz, and you can get it here as well:
mpd-0.15.10-3-arm.pkg.tar.gz
mpd package for Arch Linux ARM install (built using abs)
(172.44 KiB) Downloaded 547 times


Is the Syncmaster just a monitor? If so, you can use a USB->DVI/VGA video card. I've tried a eVGA UVGA+ http://www.evga.com/uvplus/ and it works fine with a DVI and VGA monitor with my dockstar. That adapter wasn't cheap (and isn't mine!)--about $60 at the local Fry's.
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