Media & File Server Bundle for the Foxsat HDR - Release 4.0

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raydon

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Continued from http://www.avforums.com/forums/free...r-bundle-foxsat-hdr-release-4-0-part-3-a.html

First post from part 1 of the thread repeated here for your convenience.

O.K guys, here's what you Foxsat HDR owners have been waiting for.
To further enhance your Freesat experience, I am very pleased to announce the release of v4.0 of the Media & File Server Bundle.
v3.0c dowloads are now standing at 3,941 so I'm hoping this release will prove as popular, if not even more so.

Firstly, I would like to thank af123 (or af12345 as he is known here on AV Forums) for kindly allowing me to use his original ideas and sources from the HDR Fox T2 web interface development, as the basis for the web interface and support applications you find released here in v4.0.
And also for agreeing to host the web based repository for the application packages. Without his help none of this would have been possible.
Thank You !

New features in v4.0.x

A fully functioning web interface for the Foxsat HDR.

A package management system with web based repository for the downloading and updating of applications.
This can be accessed both from the web interface and from the command line.

A service management system to display status of custom applications, start or stop them, and disable/enable boot-time autostart.
Again, this is accessible from the web interface and the command line.

Latest release v4.1.2 is available for download from HERE or HERE.

v4.1.2 is based on Humax's latest v1.00.21 firmware released on 30/07/2012 and is a complete standalone replacement for it.
What this means is that a reflash with the standard Humax v1.00.21 firmware before flashing with v4.1.2 is not necessary.
It will upgrade any earlier version of installed firmware, either standard or modified, to v1.00.21 with custom mods.

Full instructions on how to install everything are provided in the included ReadMe.txt and I suggest you read this carefully before you start, as there are many changes compared to the earlier v3.0 releases.

For those who are already comfortable with installing and using the earlier packages here follows a quick start guide.

Flash the firmware in the usual way, then open your favourite browser and enter the IP address of the HDR into the browsers address bar. Remember to use the IP address, not the hostname, as the netbios nameserver service is not available until you have installed samba.

You will then be presented with this basic web interface.

basicv.jpg




From here you can browse your media files, and more importantly, download and install the full web interface. Click on the Download & Install button and after a short delay (depending on your internet connection speed) you will be presented with an installation status report.

statusuk.jpg




After that it is simply a matter of rebooting the HDR to initialise the full web interface. (Remember to refresh your browser, with the IP address only, in the address bar). You will then be presented with the full web interface index page.

fully.jpg




Clicking on Package Management will then display this page

packagesr.jpg




From here you can install the applications you wish to use on your HDR.
Click on the pages top bar to return you to the index page.
From there you can then select the Service Management option.

servicesk.jpg




From here you can stop and start your applications, and select which ones are auto-started at boot time.

Any additional information you might need can be found in the ReadMe.txt so please do me a favour and read it before posting any queries you might have. You may just find the answer there.

That's it then, I hope you all enjoy using this v4.0.x release

my regards to all here at AV Forums

raydon
 
Last edited:
Can I just echo a comment from a few posts back, saying a HUGE thanks to Raydon for all of this.

I rarely post here because his software is simple to install, simple to use and basically just works! And the functionality provided is for me, totally brilliant.

Raydon, thank you!
 
Help the Wife is driving me Mad!

I am experiencing a Box Freeze after upgrading to 4.1.1 but I am not using or have not added anything different.

Now I can access the box via web browser but it is running very slow! I have just re set up the record it is taking ages for them register....... I haven't installed NASMount on my box!

I have also notice every time I press the "Guide" button the box has to retrieve program information which is also very slow.

Any suggestions (apart from Shooting her!) ?
 
Help the Wife is driving me Mad!

I am experiencing a Box Freeze after upgrading to 4.1.1 but I am not using or have not added anything different.
Do you mean box freeze as in total lockup where you have to reboot to get things working again ? v4.1.1 had only a very minor change to one line in a config file compared with v4.1.0. And this only affected the way the box stopped the ethernet interface on shutdown or reboot. Nothing to do with normal operation.
Now I can access the box via web browser but it is running very slow! I have just re set up the record it is taking ages for them register....... I haven't installed NASMount on my box!
So it's not frozen then ??
I have also notice every time I press the "Guide" button the box has to retrieve program information which is also very slow.
Any suggestions (apart from Shooting her!) ?
This is normal when pressing the Guide button and it will always take around 30 seconds plus to refresh. If you dont want to wait then access the EPG using the Schedule then Red buttons.
And if you are in any doubt about whether the CFW is causing your problems you can always temporarily reflash the standard firmware and make a comparison.
 
Can I just echo a comment from a few posts back, saying a HUGE thanks to Raydon for all of this.

I rarely post here because his software is simple to install, simple to use and basically just works! And the functionality provided is for me, totally brilliant.

Raydon, thank you!
Thank you Chippy99 for your kind remarks. However, I must point out that I am not the only developer on this project and cannot take all the credit for it. Thanks must also go to adrianf36, Partridge, REPASSAC, and David500 for their work on the web interface and associated plug-ins and documentation, and to several other contributors of packages which all go to make the HDR a great PVR. Thanks guys :thumbsup:
 
Do you mean box freeze as in total lockup where you have to reboot to get things working again ? v4.1.1 had only a very minor change to one line in a config file compared with v4.1.0. And this only affected the way the box stopped the ethernet interface on shutdown or reboot. Nothing to do with normal operation.

So it's not frozen then ??

This is normal when pressing the Guide button and it will always take around 30 seconds plus to refresh. If you dont want to wait then access the EPG using the Schedule then Red buttons.
And if you are in any doubt about whether the CFW is causing your problems you can always temporarily reflash the standard firmware and make a comparison.

Raydon, thanks for your reply. Yes it has completley frozen.

At present it is stuck on BBC 2 NI and the banner is on the screen BBC 2 NI the clock in the bottom right says 11.58 23/02/2013 and the Program showing was Map Man. I just logged on to the Humax with IE and I cabn see the Front page, when I go to the remote control and try to change the chanel I can press the first button then it also freezes.

So I have now just switched off the Box with the back switch and turned back on again and it is working again....... for now.

Do you think it could be the Hard Drive that is causing the problem? I have recently had to re format due to all the recordings being lost!

How do I revert or reflash back to the standard firmware, via Menu...... Setup - Factory Reset?
 
Raydon, thanks for your reply. Yes it has completley frozen.

At present it is stuck on BBC 2 NI and the banner is on the screen BBC 2 NI the clock in the bottom right says 11.58 23/02/2013 and the Program showing was Map Man. I just logged on to the Humax with IE and I cabn see the Front page, when I go to the remote control and try to change the chanel I can press the first button then it also freezes.

So I have now just switched off the Box with the back switch and turned back on again and it is working again....... for now.

How do I revert or reflash back to the standard firmware, via Menu...... Setup - Factory Reset?
No, you need to download the standard hdf from HERE , put it on a USB stick and reflash with that.
 
No, you need to download the standard hdf from HERE , put it on a USB stick and reflash with that.

I just wonder if it has a tithing to do with the Hard Drive! I re formatted both Hard Drives recently and left the Video as big as poss and the Music as small as possible!

I am going to check box number 2 this morning to see if it has the same problem, as its display is also stuck on the custom 4.1.1 screen (it's just a pain to check this cos it's in a box room)

EDIT-----------
I have just re flashed the box with the original firmware and it is still doing exactly the same. When I reflas with the Humax Firmware are all traces of the custom firmare removed?

Anyway Box No 2 seems to be OK for now!

Any suggestions? Could it be the Hard Drive causing the Big Freeze?
 
I just wonder if it has anything to do with the Hard Drive! I re formatted both Hard Drives recently and left the Video as big as poss and the Music as small as possible!
Well, all of the applications you install after flashing with CFW reside in a folder on the Music partition so you should provide space for that. I reckon around 5GB should be more than ample if your not storing music or photos. You must have had to re-install everything after you did the partition resize anyway. Did the problems start immediately after that ?
I have just reflashed the box with the original firmware and it is still doing exactly the same. When I reflash with the Humax Firmware are all traces of the custom firmare removed?
The custom firmware is completely replaced by the standard firmware, but the software applications (things like the web server and ftp server) still remain in the folder on the Music partition. However, they can no longer be accessed and just lie dormant. If you now re-install the custom firmware all of the applications you installed previously will be active again.
Any suggestions? Could it be the Hard Drive causing the Big Freeze?
Yes, it's possible that your HDD could be failing. Try running the 'fix-disk' utility as outlined here.
 
The Foxsat-hdr will boot with the hard drive disconnected. Easy enough to disconnect the drive and see if the boot sequence completes.
 
Well, all of the applications you install after flashing with CFW reside in a folder on the Music partition so you should provide space for that. I reckon around 5GB should be more than ample if your not storing music or photos.

I'm running with a 1GB Music partition, and it seems to work fine.

cheers, Martin
 
I'm running with a 1GB Music partition, and it seems to work fine.

cheers, Martin
Seems a bit meagre but as long as it works then fine. I can't say offhand exactly what is needed as I have a lot of development stuff on my own Music partition which takes up a fair bit of space.
 
Seems a bit meagre but as long as it works then fine. I can't say offhand exactly what is needed as I have a lot of development stuff on my own Music partition which takes up a fair bit of space.

Yeah I can confirm as long as you keep a few hundred megabytes free (maybe less, I'd rather be safe though) on the Music partition the custom firmware will run as it should. My Music partition is a mere 0.6GB (I shrunk it using a Gparted Live USB when I had the Foxsat apart) and I have no problems, so... :D

Out of curiousity, why are all the custom resources on the music partition? Is it because it's the part of the HDD least likely to corrupt/be formatted/be tampered with by the original Humax parts of the firmware or something like that?
 
Out of curiousity, why are all the custom resources on the music partition? Is it because it's the part of the HDD least likely to corrupt/be formatted/be tampered with by the original Humax parts of the firmware or something like that?
Most people only use their HDR for video recordings, so the smaller and little used, (or not used at all) Music partition was the logical choice for custom apps, leaving the full Video partition for recordings.
 
I recently had a bit of finger trouble whilst deleting multiple recordings using the CF accessed with my lappy. The recordings were in a series folder. What I did was inadvertently start to delete a second recording before the first had reported as fully deleted. This left one of the files associated with the first recording, the .hmt file if I remember correctly, thus left the series folder in place with no aparent method of deleting it from the CF. I recovered the situation by accessing the hummy Video folder from a mapped drive on my lappy and deleting the errant file and the series folder from there.

The moral of this story? Wait until one deletion is complete before initiating a second.

Suggestion for Raydon pretty please. Is there a possibility of a mod to the CF to prevent the user initiating a second delete before the previous one has completed? Or better still, allow the user to input multiple deletes as quickly as they want/can, but queue them for deletion as and when the hummy has deleted the previous file set?
Or even a recursive delete on a series folder contents, so that the user only has to 'delete' the folder, and the CF deletes the files within correctly?
It would alo be useful to include a "Deleting Files" type popup whilst it was working on the deletions in any case.
 
Use the webif remote and file managers edit mode to select multiple files/folders for deletion. One push of red will delete the lot one after the other. If you try putting the box in sby whilst it's processing multiple deletes the box will shut down after all the deletes are completed.
 
I've installed Raydon's bundle and everything seems to work. Problem is getting Chrome on my Nexus 7 to use the vlc plugin.

I've verified that I can run video from the Foxsat in Chrome on various Windows laptops, but the Chrome for Android on the Nexus stubbornly refuses - saying that it does not support the plugin. Is that true?
 
Thanks for the idea GLT. I'll have a go at that so that'l fix my problem when I do deleting again. I still think that the CF should probably have some sort of trap in it to prevent what I did from happening to other impatient souls
 
raydon - I guess that Logi is about to split this thread again. Hopefully he will copy post 1 across. Thanks in advance Logi.
 
Can I just echo a comment from a few posts back, saying a HUGE thanks to Raydon for all of this.

I rarely post here because his software is simple to install, simple to use and basically just works! And the functionality provided is for me, totally brilliant.

Raydon, thank you!

+1 to all of that. I said something similar over on his MyHumax forum recently, about how he has done for the Foxsat what XBMC has done for media players and DD-WRT has done for home routers. That is, an effective and reliable solution which is as simple or extensible as you need it to be. The ability to schedule recordings remotely from a smartphone and stream TS files across both LAN and WAN is very impressive.
 
This is normal when pressing the Guide button and it will always take around 30 seconds plus to refresh. If you dont want to wait then access the EPG using the Schedule then Red buttons.

Agreed - it's best to avoid the Guide button for regular use of the Foxsat HDR since it takes so long to download the ~8MB Guide file. I use a universal remote to control about eight different devices around the house and I actually remapped the GUIDE button on it to go to Schedule, then press Red. If I want the regular Guide to pull down the new info (for example if EPG data a few days in future is missing, preventing me from setting up a new Series Link) I press MAGIC then GUIDE, because on OFA URC JP1 remotes the MAGIC key is used for both setup and like a SHIFT key on a regular keyboard.

More information on the One For All URC7960 Universal Remote I'm talking about.
 
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I've installed Raydon's bundle and everything seems to work. Problem is getting Chrome on my Nexus 7 to use the vlc plugin.

I've verified that I can run video from the Foxsat in Chrome on various Windows laptops, but the Chrome for Android on the Nexus stubbornly refuses - saying that it does not support the plugin. Is that true?

I have the same problem running Linux, the x-vlc plugin doesn't seem to exist for Firefox or Chrome.

The (less than elegant) workaround for me is to use the Playlist>Local Network>UPnP route to find Mediatomb directly from VLC.

It would be nice to be able to view files directly in a web browser though.
 
I have the same problem running Linux, the x-vlc plugin doesn't seem to exist for Firefox or Chrome.
It does work for Firefox under linux, however the name of the plugin is different. It's a little unstable sometimes for me, crashing firefox every now and again.

Couple of snippets from the vlc plug-in documentation here which should help you get going. Packages may have different names in repositories other than Ubuntu/Debian; I'm not sure:
The player has been successfully tested using the Firefox browser under Ubuntu.
Packages that needed to be installed via the Ubuntu software Centre were:

  1. vlc
  2. vlc-plugin-pulse
  3. mozilla-plugin-vlc
  4. libavcodec-extra-52
Testing has indicated that the plug-in can fail to work correctly if certain other browser plug-ins are installed concurrently.
For example, under Ubuntu the Firefox plug-in would not work correctly until the Totem plugin was uninstalled (package 'totem-mozilla').
 
+1 to all of that. I said something similar over on his MyHumax forum recently, about how he has done for the Foxsat what XBMC has done for media players and DD-WRT has done for home routers. That is, an effective and reliable solution which is as simple or extensible as you need it to be. The ability to schedule recordings remotely from a smartphone and stream TS files across both LAN and WAN is very impressive.

Indeed so. Hugely improves the appeal of the Humax device. If they offered this capability "out of the box", surely it would help it sell.

As it is, probably 99% of Foxsat owners have never heard of these mods and what is possible. Sadly.
 
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