Raspberry Pi - $35 Linux computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter daz
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xibinim said:
But a combination of SD card, fast USB drive for artwork etc and a 2/3TB drive for content should be fine for 720/1080?
Click to expand...

If you're playing media from a connected USB hard drive then of course network issues won't matter.

To anyone running raspbmc I'd also strongly recommend backing up the home directory to a different location (like your main PC). Doesn't have to be super regularly but at least once you get it setup how you like. Just means if you need to do a clean install you can quickly get things setup back how you had them (and won't need to re-scan and import all your media again either). I've broken my install twice now by letting the auto-update run, and a few other times it's just inexplicably broken itself - I'd turn it on one day and the network connection would refuse to come up, even after multiple restarts... If the home directory is backed up a quick re-install, copy it back over and you're as good as new :D
 
Evilpaul said:
Or you could just use OpenELEC, I've not had any issues with OpenELEC bricking itself.
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Don't get me wrong, this was over quite a long period and any number of the things I've been doing to it might have caused problems (messing about with different plugins etc.) for the most part raspbmc has been perfectly fine... Still my point was even on OpenELEC I'd still recommend backing up the area where it keeps your XBMC settings, just in case
 
Update: Okay this is beginning to get annoying now, yet again last night I booted up the Pi (w/ raspbmc) expecting to watch a TV show before bed, and after it booted up it yet again failed to bring up the network. Rebooting it resulted in the same thing, no network, so I plugged in a keyboard and dropped out to the command line, and it seems the Pi has no knowledge of eth0 even existing (despite the network light on the Pi and my powerline adapters clearly flickering as if they are receiving data) :confused:

Most irritating, I had to plug the laptop into the TV and watch in VLC from my SAMBA share instead, but the question is now what to do next. A bit of googling on the matter doesn't reveal this as a very common problem, so not much help there, all I can think of anyway would be if my power supply wasn't up to scratch could that stop eth0 initialising (but only sometimes :confused: - seems unlikely)?

I could try Xbian or OpenELEC I guess, and see if the same thing happens, I probably will give this a shot when I have time to lookup the install process for them. Ultimately though I'm starting to think about putting together a proper HTPC/mini-ITX system to sit beneath the TV, since then I might be able to run XBMC as I do now but also maybe some retro game emulators and perhaps Steam in big-picture mode to really have something flexible. The Pi is good fun but there's only so many times you can have it crap out on you before it starts to be a bit of a hassle
 
Tinders said:
What PSU do you have? I had a Nokia Mobile PSU that used to give me some grief.
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Funnily enough I believe it is a Nokia type one, model is something like C10X or A10 or something like that (don't have it to hand). I bought it because I'd seen it mentioned on several sites as being a good one to use. It still seems weird that it would go wrong so sporadically though? It will literally run 100% without a hitch for several weeks and then randomly one day the network interface stops working. The only thing I have plugged into it is the USB stick which has raspbmc installed onto it (so no usb hubs or external hdds and no keyboard or mouse). I don't think I have any other suitable PSUs to try it with but I'll take a look (I think maybe the wall-charger for my sat-nav might do it), other than that do you know of a particularly reliable PSU I could get? Worth a shot :D
 
Okay so now it seems to screw up every other time I turn it on... I've had to re-image the SD card about 3 or 4 times in the last week or so, getting seriously frustrated with it refusing to work properly...

I don't have a suitable alternative charger to try either :(
 
I have a pi model bi and have been trying to get smooth video playback but i'm getting dropped frames/stuttering on many 720p files.
Things ive tried to no avail:-
Openelec and Raspbmc
USB install rather than SD
3 different speeds of SD card
Overclocking the pi to 950mhz
Every setting imaginable in video/audio settings
This happens wether streaming via SMB shares over the network or locally via USB stick - its driving me crazy!!
The same video file plays flawlessly on my old acryan hd mini and on vlc on my pc.
Any advice appreciated before I resign my pi to ebay???
Regards
 
spoony77 said:
I have a pi model bi and have been trying to get smooth video playback but i'm getting dropped frames/stuttering on many 720p files.
Things ive tried to no avail:-
Openelec and Raspbmc
USB install rather than SD
3 different speeds of SD card
Overclocking the pi to 950mhz
Every setting imaginable in video/audio settings
This happens wether streaming via SMB shares over the network or locally via USB stick - its driving me crazy!!
The same video file plays flawlessly on my old acryan hd mini and on vlc on my pc.
Any advice appreciated before I resign my pi to ebay???
Regards
Click to expand...

Also a mini-update on my situation and may be relevant to you... Check your power supply is definitely good enough, it seems like having it even slightly underpowered or not stable can cause all manner of issues.

Last night I once again re-installed raspbmc and changed to a new charger - since I discovered my phone charger (Nexus 4 if you're interested) has the right type of connecter and is rated at 5V 1.2A... compared to 1.0A of the previous charger I was using. Seems to be running better so far but time will tell.
 
Just ordered a Pi and looking to run RasPlex as I've an extensive Plex setup at home already. anyone running it or have any tips?

I'm hoping to stream via wireless rather than wired (this has worked fine on my iPad so hoping the Pi can do this as well).

Does anyone know if the Pi will play MKV files direct or does Plex need to transcode them?
 
Raspberry Pi all setup as a torrent box. I just need to setup two services on startup so I don't need to SSH into it from Putty on my main PC. The two services are tightvncserver and deluge-web. Anyone know how to do this?
 
Evilpaul said:
You need scripts in /etc/init.d to start/stop/restart the services you are adding.
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Thanks what do I type in the script? I tried this for tightvncserver but I get an error

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: tightvncserver
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: start vnc server
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

case “$1″ in
start)
su pi -c ‘vncserver :1 -geometry 1600×900 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565:’
echo “VNC Started”
;;
stop)
pkill Xtightvnc
echo “VNC Terminated”
;;
*)
echo “Usage: /etc/init.d/tightvnc {start|stop}”
exit 1
;;
esac

ERROR


/etc/init.d/tightvnc: 22: /etc/init.d/tightvnc: stop}”: not found

EDIT: Fixed it by deleting and retyping the quotation marks
 
Last edited:
I've done that, I'm following this guide:

In order to automatically start the VNC server, we need to set up an init, or initialization, file that Raspbian will use to cleanly start and shut down the server during the boot and shut down process. Let’s create the init file now. At the command line type in the following command:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/tightvnc

This will create a file in the initialization directory called “tightvnc” and open the nano editor so we can paste in our script. In the nano editor, paste the following code (make sure to change the 1600×900 resolution value to match the screen of your remote computer:

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: tightvncserver
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: start vnc server
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

case “$1″ in
start)
su pi -c ‘vncserver :1 -geometry 1600×900 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565:’
echo “VNC Started”
;;
stop)
pkill Xtightvnc
echo “VNC Terminated”
;;
*)
echo “Usage: /etc/init.d/tightvnc {start|stop}”
exit 1
;;
esac

In addition to modifying the screen resolution portion of the script, there is one other thing you can modify. In line 14 you can change the command “su pi -c” to any other user account besides “pi” if you wish to VNC to the specific desktop for that account.

Once you have pasted and modified the code, it’s time to save it. Press CTRL+X to exit and save your work in nano. Once you are back at the command line, we need to make a few quick changes to the permissions of the file:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tightvnc

Now the initialization file is executable. We can test it from the prompt:

sudo /etc/init.d/tightvnc start

sudo /etc/init.d/tightvnc stop

The last change we’re going to make is to update the rc.d file (which tracks which initilization scripts are in the /init.d/ folder):

sudo update-rc.d tightvnc defaults

After you enter that command, you’ll get a confirmation that the file was updated. Now it’s time for the real test: does the file load properly after reboot? Enter the following at the command line to reboot and be prepared with your VNC client to test the connection in a moment:

sudo reboot

Once the system has finished rebooting, log in with your VNC client. If your VNC session fails, visit the command prompt and run the tightvnc start command (from the test portion above) again to double check that the file is executable and that the password was saved properly.

At this point, we’re even further along in our mission to totally remote-control our Raspberry Pi unit. With remote command line access via SSH and remote desktop access via VNC under our belts, let’s move on to simplifying the process of transferring files between our Pi and desktop computer.
 
Left my Pi on overnight and checked it this morning, the torrent was in a red ERROR state. Where in Deluge can I go to find out what caused this? I restarted it but now I'm getting no download speed even though the port is open??
 
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