Due to the great master-license offer I picked up on a long outstanding project to look at MC on Linux. So here are my experiences and if you're not the reading type goto the "Bottom line".
I'm by no means a regular Linux user so first looked at quit a lot of the distro's and ended up with Lubuntu; cloud not find my way in it's big brother Ubuntu where the LXDE desktop that comes with Lubuntu gave me a nostalgic feeling right away. It also answers the wish to have an lightweight (virtual) machine to run MC as the main media/library “server” in the house. And knowing the answer that it does not fit in the database structure of MC and will not going to be implemented soon, I have to drop that a real MC media/library server appliance of JRiver would be very appreciated.
Thanks to the fantastic post of that Awesome Donkey it was easy peasy does it! (THANX, it works fine with the small brother Lubuntu)
From this point I ran in to some lack of experience with Linux and the Debian/Ubuntu environment in particular; no you can't mount an disk, only a partition (as example).
Burned two buy buttons before got the “RestoreFromFile” working. and why (@@88@#) is copy-paste not working , aha I need something of a clipboard manager... Now it's all in the Post of that Awesome Donkey; to be honest I can't reproduce why it didn't work for me at first. Don't be as stupid as me and try to do it in a SSH-session with putty (Yes, guilty as charged: I'm a typical copy-paste command shell operator...) it won't work. What workrd for me was closing MC, start MC from the command prompt in a (local) terminal (code: mediacenter20) and then run mediacenter20 /RestoreFromFile "Media Center20 Master-YYYYYY.mjr".
There was some serious trouble; one of the thousands media files that had to be imported in the new appliance form the local disk (mount) turned out be bad. Somehow a .wmv had the wrong file type, the video codec inside was an h.264 so it should probably been an .avi. And this gets the Linux-MC on its knees. The mediacenter20 runs for about 10 seconds end than process gets killed (sometimes with the system message that is come to an unsuspected end). It took a lot of effort to find out what was going on. (The windows version recognizes such the files as bad and does not import them)
Although having lots of WHYs?, ARGGgggs, don't forget to SUDO you stupid.. the result with Linux-MC is (as always as you get your liunx-box running) awesome: MediaCenter20 on a (virtual) Lubuntu installation with one (processor)core and 512MB memory serving two 1080p video's (with subtitle's ) and a 24 bit flac at once.
Great Work!
Actually after using the Linux version as the main Media/library server for a week found just some minor down sides; as there is no theatre mode on the Linux side, I haven't found a way to edit the item's shown in the theatre view on a windows “client” connected to the Linux driven library. After restarting the windows client it falls back to the default item setting.
On the Linux version the dialog windows get in the back on some occasions, you need the good old ATL+TAB to get them in front again. Actually this happens always if you accidentally click beside a dialog, maybe this is specific behavior of the LXDE desktop..
Offcourse there are lose ends too, how to tighten the security of the auto-logon and run mediacenter20 session after boot up. For now i just created a local user in its own group with limited rights. And till now I didn't manage to RPD/VNC into that running session. Suggestion are very welcome!
Bottom line:
At this side a happy man is listing to some great music streaming form his Linux appliance . Special thanks to all the contributors of all the forums (not just this one) needed to make this happen.
MC20 works very well on Lubuntu, with the instructions of Awesome Donkey installation is easy.
@ the development team: look in to the (error)handling of “bad” media files; wrong codecs (h.264/aac) in the container/filetype (wmv).
- Is the "going to the back of dialog-windows" specific to the LXDE desktop or do others experience the same behavior?
- Is there a way to edit the items shown in the theater view on a windows client playing form a Linux driven library?
- Suggestion on tightening security on the session where MC runs in and RDP/VNC in to that session are welcome.
MediaCenter 20.0.63, Lubuntu 14.04 on ESXi 5.5
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Topic: Works verry well on Lubuntu (Read 3195 times)