Topic: Quick Start Guide for Installing JRiver Mediacenter 23 ARM on a Raspberry Pi (Read 39987 times)

mp48 · « **Reply #50 on:** January 30, 2018, 05:32:35 pm »

I need some help with Media Center 23. It is running on a raspberry pi 2 and installed according to this thread. The MC is running in headless mode. The MC is running well for about 2 to 3 days and then MC is stopping/crashing, although the raspberry pi is still running (I can ping it and also connect via ssh). When I try to connect to the MC via JRemote or Gizmo, I get a message "Java refused to connect". After rebooting MC is running well again for another 2 to 3 days. I already installed a crontab for the user pi and the root for a reboot every day at 1 and 3 am every day, but still MC stops.
The frequently manual rebooting is not the right solution for me, especially because the users of the MC are not pc experts. Has somebody a good idea how to solve the problem?

JimH · « **Reply #51 on:** January 30, 2018, 06:06:41 pm »

It's possible the power supply isn't adequate for the attached devices, if any. Please describe your configuration.

mp48 · « **Reply #52 on:** January 31, 2018, 05:08:50 pm »

Thank you for responding. I am pretty sure, that the power supply is not the problem. The power supply is a raspi 5.1V, 2.5 Ampere power supply. The raspi is running on LAN and the only connection is one external USB harddrive 2.5 ", 500GB for the music data. The raspi is running 24/7 days and in the beginning I found a problem with the router which had only a lease of 1 day. I changed that to a fixed ip address and then the raspi run for about 2 days. I am not sure if there are running some logs under MC23 ? Nevertheless I implemented a crontab for restart every day at 3 am. I am controlling the MC via JRemote with the iPad or EOS with the android tablet. The music is playing in three different zones, but only one zone at the time.
I am not quite sure, but the last time the MC23 run for 3 days (which was record !) and my daughter started her old android tablet with gizmo to control the music. After that the MC crashed again. Can it be that the old gizmo is not any longer compatible with MC23 on raspberry pi?

mwillems · « **Reply #53 on:** January 31, 2018, 05:48:13 pm »

Quote from: mp48 on January 31, 2018, 05:08:50 pm

Thank you for responding. I am pretty sure, that the power supply is not the problem. The power supply is a raspi 5.1V, 2.5 Ampere power supply. The raspi is running on LAN and the only connection is one external USB harddrive 2.5 ", 500GB for the music data. The raspi is running 24/7 days and in the beginning I found a problem with the router which had only a lease of 1 day. I changed that to a fixed ip address and then the raspi run for about 2 days. I am not sure if there are running some logs under MC23 ? Nevertheless I implemented a crontab for restart every day at 3 am. I am controlling the MC via JRemote with the iPad or EOS with the android tablet. The music is playing in three different zones, but only one zone at the time.
I am not quite sure, but the last time the MC23 run for 3 days (which was record !) and my daughter started her old android tablet with gizmo to control the music. After that the MC crashed again. Can it be that the old gizmo is not any longer compatible with MC23 on raspberry pi?

Did you pre-build all thumbnails and set the thumbnailing priority to low? If using gizmo triggers a crash it's almost certainly an issue with running out of memory while building thumbnails (triggered by browsing in gizmo). Did you use any of the auto-restart options in the top of the thread (i.e .the systemd services)?

JimH · « **Reply #54 on:** January 31, 2018, 05:56:19 pm »

Quote from: mp48 on January 31, 2018, 05:08:50 pm

The power supply is a raspi 5.1V, 2.5 Ampere power supply. The raspi is running on LAN and the only connection is one external USB harddrive 2.5 ", 500GB for the music data.

The drive may draw more power than the Pi can supply. Please read this:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#topPower

mp48 · « **Reply #55 on:** January 31, 2018, 07:13:50 pm »

I set up the MC with a monitor but I do not know if I put the thumbnail priority to low. Now the raspi is running headless (and actually I cannot connect a monitor). Is it possible to access the thumbnail priority via ssh?
Yes I installed MC according to your excellent introduction, which worked perfect including the auto start according to your "old" instruction.
If gizmo is the possible crashing issue, I will now test for the next days with JRemote and EOS. If it runs stable, I will deinstall all gizmos. I will now monitor the issue for the next 3 days and come back with the results. If it still crashes I will also change the harddrive to an external hub with extra power supply. The actual external housing has only power supply via USB cable.
I remember there was a possibility to increase the current for the USB devices, can you please send me the comand line?

mwillems · « **Reply #56 on:** February 02, 2018, 10:16:53 am »

Quote from: mp48 on January 31, 2018, 07:13:50 pm

I set up the MC with a monitor but I do not know if I put the thumbnail priority to low. Now the raspi is running headless (and actually I cannot connect a monitor). Is it possible to access the thumbnail priority via ssh?
Yes I installed MC according to your excellent introduction, which worked perfect including the auto start according to your "old" instruction.
If gizmo is the possible crashing issue, I will now test for the next days with JRemote and EOS. If it runs stable, I will deinstall all gizmos. I will now monitor the issue for the next 3 days and come back with the results.

You've misunderstood me; any of the android remotes will cause the problem I'm thinking of because all of them force MC to start thumbnailing like crazy which will create an out of memory condition. You can find instructions in the second post at the top for how to access a headless system remotely via VNC which will allow you to change the thumbnailing priority and pre-build thumbnails.

Zhillsguy · « **Reply #57 on:** February 02, 2018, 12:40:55 pm »

Does MC still build thumbnails if the option is unchecked under Tools/Import/Configure Auto-Import?

mwillems · « **Reply #58 on:** February 02, 2018, 01:25:39 pm »

Quote from: Zhillsguy on February 02, 2018, 12:40:55 pm

Does MC still build thumbnails if the option is unchecked under Tools/Import/Configure Auto-Import?

Yes, MC will always build thumbnails when viewing albums, it's only a question of when they get built. If the option you mention is checked, MC builds the thumbnails when importing media. If you leave that box unchecked and don't pre-build thumbnails, MC builds the thumbnails on demand (i.e. when you try to view a library view that displays cover art either in a remote or in MC). On a normal PC this works great and doesn't really create any problems other than the UI might slow down on occasion. But building thumbnails on demand sometimes creates problems for the pi. The pi has very little CPU power and very little memory, so a sudden request to build a bunch of thumbnails (which consumes quite a bit of CPU and memory because its image processing), possibly while also decoding and playing music, will create enough memory pressure to crash MC (or get it killed by the linux out of memory killer). The "best" case scenario is that things slow down and you might get some skips and dropouts in the music.

The winning solution is to (when first setting up the pi) set the thumbnailing priority to low (which will reduce the CPU contention and memory pressure), and then click the menu item to build all thumbnails. Then leave the pi alone for a few hours or overnight. When you come back all the thumbnails will have been pregenerated and you will have a much more stable and performant MC instance on your pi. You're more likely to encounter this problem the larger your library becomes, but I've managed to trigger it with comparatively small libraries. The mobile clients seem to be more likely to trigger the problem, I think because it's easy to scroll through a huge list of albums which triggers on-demand thumbnailing for all of them.

Zhillsguy · « **Reply #59 on:** February 02, 2018, 02:30:19 pm »

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I've always been curious about thumbnail generation. You are spot on about the Pi getting overwhelmed easily, it doesn't take much of a bump in the road to make it skip or buffer, but if set up correctly it's quite usable.

I've been looking at other SBC's, and ended up ordering an Odroid C2. More powerful but not as much community support. There are enough available OS images to make it palatable to use with MC.

mwillems · « **Reply #60 on:** February 02, 2018, 03:17:49 pm »

Quote from: Zhillsguy on February 02, 2018, 02:30:19 pm

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I've always been curious about thumbnail generation. You are spot on about the Pi getting overwhelmed easily, it doesn't take much of a bump in the road to make it skip or buffer, but if set up correctly it's quite usable.

I've been looking at other SBC's, and ended up ordering an Odroid C2. More powerful but not as much community support. There are enough available OS images to make it palatable to use with MC.

Do you have it working well with the C2? I tried running MC on an older ODROID C1 and an ODROID U3, and there were basic roadblocks because their video outputs didn't support adequate color space so MC just appeared as a solid black or white square; attempts to set the video output to a higher color space either didn't work or broke X11 (because the firmware didn't support it). There were also dozens of other issues with the two SoC's (certain USB DACs that worked in mainline didn't work with odroid, no video hardware acceleration for most programs, etc.) that were never resolved before ODROID EOLed those boards, which led me to shelve ODROID indefinitely. But if everything works great on the C2 that would be good news and I might give them another chance.

Zhillsguy · « **Reply #61 on:** February 02, 2018, 03:35:17 pm »

The C2 won't be here until next week, I will advise after tinkering.

mp48 · « **Reply #62 on:** February 05, 2018, 07:06:20 pm »

thank you mwillems for the detailed explanations. It makes it clearer for me. Actually I have several crashes of MC per day always with the message "java.net connect exception: connection refused". I will now get an adapter to get the monitor connected to the raspi in order to change the thumbnail issue. I hope that will solve the problem.

JohnWalker · « **Reply #63 on:** February 12, 2018, 08:20:24 am »

My previously registered and working copy of mediacenter23 on Raspbian no longer saves my registration details - it accepts the registration code at program start-up, but then forgets the registration details when it is re-started. I have a Master licence which I purchased in Nov 2017 as an upgrade from MC22. The drive that all software is installed on is accepting writes OK (it's not the fault where Raspberry Pi drives go permanently read-only). Mediacenter23 is installed in /usr/bin, which I assume is correct. I've used up 6 of my 20 annual restores so far trying different ways to fix this problem.

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #64 on:** February 12, 2018, 08:24:55 am »

Make sure you're using the latest 23.0.100 build.

JohnWalker · « **Reply #65 on:** February 12, 2018, 08:59:19 am »

I eventually got that to work, but it took a long time, and I've used up about 8 of my year's worth of restores.

JimH · « **Reply #66 on:** February 12, 2018, 09:14:01 am »

I've reset your restores.

Werner · « **Reply #67 on:** July 13, 2018, 12:08:59 pm »

I need some possibilty to access MC23 remotely. I followed these instructions and trie to connect with MS Remote Desktop. No chance: »Bad request«. Something is lacking. But what? I did all exactly as described here, but...

(I need remete access because the auto import is not working and I must start the import manually when I added new files. So if this doesn’t work, MC23 is useless.)

mwillems · « **Reply #68 on:** July 13, 2018, 12:12:37 pm »

Quote from: Werner on July 13, 2018, 12:08:59 pm

I need some possibilty to access MC23 remotely. I followed these instructions and trie to connect with MS Remote Desktop. No chance: »Bad request«. Something is lacking. But what? I did all exactly as described here, but...

(I need remete access because the auto import is not working and I must start the import manually when I added new files. So if this doesn’t work, MC23 is useless.)

If you followed the instructions above, you'll need to use a VNC client, not MS Remote Desktop (RDP). There are other instructions on the forums (not in this thread) for making MS RDP work if you can't use a VNC client for some reason.

Werner · « **Reply #69 on:** July 16, 2018, 06:01:46 am »

I changed to TigerVNC and get now: »connection refused«. This is not really a progress.

I followed the instructions and all worked well except on point: When I entered »x11vnc -storepasswd your_password ~/.vnc/passwd« I got something like »no directory«. So I created dirctory .vnc, and it worked. But with TigerVNC I get just »connection refused«. What can I do?

with sudo service x11vnc status I get:
● x11vnc.service - x11vnc
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/x11vnc.service; enabled; vendor preset: e
Active: inactive (dead)

EDIT: Aha. One step further. I didn’t know that the .service files must be executable. (I don’t find this information in the text.) Now I can connect an – get »password check failed«. Is there anything to do?

mwillems · « **Reply #70 on:** July 16, 2018, 04:38:30 pm »

Have you confirmed that you're trying to connect to the correct ip address and port? Also this may be an obvious question, but did you change "your_password" to your actual password in the command you quoted?

Can you also post the output of the following commands when logged into the pi:

cat /etc/systemd/system/x11vnc.service
ps -e | grep vnc

Werner · « **Reply #71 on:** July 24, 2018, 04:20:51 am »

I managed it. It works. Now remains just one question: Can I use another VNC-server? And how. With x11vnc I have the problem that it throws me out from time to time. No connection can last more than 1 minute. After this I have to reconnect at least 3 times until I’m back. This is with Tiger-VBC as with VNC-Viewer, so I think the problem is on the side of x11vnc.

mwillems · « **Reply #72 on:** July 24, 2018, 09:39:41 pm »

Quote from: Werner on July 24, 2018, 04:20:51 am

I managed it. It works. Now remains just one question: Can I use another VNC-server? And how. With x11vnc I have the problem that it throws me out from time to time. No connection can last more than 1 minute. After this I have to reconnect at least 3 times until I’m back. This is with Tiger-VBC as with VNC-Viewer, so I think the problem is on the side of x11vnc.

You can try the Pi's built in VNC service if you like (Real VNC) and see if that works better for you. It works, but many other VNC servers (tightvncserver and tigervncserver) don't actually work well with MC due to the way MC draws windows.

Dennis in FL · « **Reply #73 on:** June 26, 2019, 04:51:20 pm »

I just ordered a Raspberry Pi 4 and will give it a try with JRiver.

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Author Topic: Quick Start Guide for Installing JRiver Mediacenter 23 ARM on a Raspberry Pi (Read 39987 times)