I'm trying to solve an audio output problem with XBMCbuntu. (Why should I be any different from the rest of the vast numbers of people posting here for whom it has also proved challenging to get HDMI audio output working right?)
So I started reading just a few of the enormous multitudes of HDMI/audio related threads here, and I found one good suggestion... hit Cntl-Alt-F2 so that you can at least get to a shell prompt, and then maybe you'll have a prayer in hell of figuring out WTF is actually going on, and which audio devices exist and which ones you should be telling XBMC to use.
Sounds great... in theory.
In practice, when I did this with XBMCbuntu running (live) on my shiny new/used HP 8530p laptop, all that I get is a big blank black screen with nothing on it except for a rather oversized cursor blinking stupidly and imploringly at me as if I'm supposed to know what to do next.
Unfortunately, I don't. Does anybody else?
Is this a "feature"?
Yeah, that is the shell prompt.
As my great-great-grandfather once said: "welcome to linux, bitch!"
That being said, since you're using XBMCbuntu, just drop into the desktop and use a GUI setting. Just about everything that can be done in the console/shell prompt has a nice GUI front end that makes it easier to use.
Quote:Yeah, that is the shell prompt.
I think that you are not really getting me, my friend. When I say that the screen is entirely blank except for a blinking cursor I mean that
the screen is entirely blank except for a blinking cursor.
It isn't
just that I don't get even a % or # in the way of a command line prompt. I don't, but I
also am not getting even characters that I type in in response to the invisible/nonexistant ``shell prompt'' echoing out on the screen.
(I am trying to think of some more expressive analogies that might help me to express my point more clearly. How about a lump of tar dropped down a coal mine? How about nighttime on the far side of the Oort cloud? Am I making myself clear yet? Utter, complete, unfathomable, empty darkness. The opposite of where the sun
does shine. Ex-lightness. A set of pixels, all of which are consistently and entirely in the
off state.)
If this is a standard Linux shell window... no visible prompt
and no visible echo of anything typed by the user... then god help us all.
But in fact, I
have actually touched Linux before, and it don't work like this. In short, this is a bug, a serious serious bug. Period. End of story.
Quote:...since you're using XBMCbuntu, just drop into the desktop...
OK. I'll bite. How?
I really have no idea how do what you are suggesting.
I
have used Linux on occasion, but not very much, which is why I don't know what you are talking about. (No offense intended to anybody here, but in general I prefer using an OS that has had a couple more decades under its belt to work out the bugs and security issues... you know... UNIX. Fortunately, the former seems to have copied quite a lot of the latter, but certainly not everything.)
Huh, okay, that doesn't sound normal.
As for the desktop, press S on a keyboard or select the power icon while on the home screen and select "exit XBMC". That should drop you into a user log-in window for the desktop.
Quote:...also am not getting even characters that I type in in response to the invisible/nonexistant ``shell prompt'' echoing out on the screen.
I should perhaps also have mentioned that although typed in characters do not show up on the screen, interestingly, for each character typed on the keyboard, the blinking cursor... the only thing that
is actually visible on the screen...
does actually advance rightward.
Quote:...or select the power icon while on the home screen and select "exit XBMC". That should drop you into a user log-in window for the desktop.
Yes. Already been there and done that. I get to a little login thingy that wants a user name and password.
I have no idea what it wants, specifically, so I go and Google for it and I find out that the Right Answer is that the user ID is "xbmc" and the password is empty.
OK, so I try that combination. It logs me in. Swell.
That's the end of the good news.
That bad news is that apparently, the xbmc account is set up with a .profile or something so that before you get a chance to do
anything it auto-magically forces xbmc to run again.
Ahem... Now, you were going to tell me how get a shell prompt?
(2012-11-04, 05:02)ronbaby Wrote: [ -> ]That bad news is that apparently, the xbmc account is set up with a .profile or something so that before you get a chance to do anything it auto-magically forces xbmc to run again.
Ahem... Now, you were going to tell me how get a shell prompt?
On the log-in page, click the down-arrow on the third input field to open the drop-down menu and select "XBMCbuntu" instead of "XBMC". Enter your username and password ("xbmc" and blank, I assume?) and click Log-in. You should be presented with the XBMCbuntu desktop. From there, click Start menu > System tools > Xterm
Quote:On the log-in page, click the down-arrow on the third input field to open the drop-down menu and select "XBMCbuntu" instead of "XBMC". Enter your username and password ("xbmc" and blank, I assume?) and click Log-in. You should be presented with the XBMCbuntu desktop. From there, click Start menu > System tools > Xterm
OK, that works. Thanks!!
I don't know that this will get me any closer to resolving my sound problem, but it sure won't hurt.
Now that I have a shell prompt, I need to try to leverage that and use it to try to get some information about what Ubuntu thinks the existing/available sound output devices are. (And after doing this, I think need to try to entice XBMC into using the Right One to output compressed Dolby 5.1 out the HDMI port.)
I am guessing that if I just google for it, I'll find a generic Linux sound HOW-TO someplace, yes?
(Basically, for now I just want to see whether or not Linux thinks that the machine in question can or cannot send compressed Dolby Digital and/or DTS out the integrated HDMI port. After knocking my head against it for days, I found out that Windows Vista just was not going to believe that this was even physically possible to do, given the hardware that I have. Now I just want to find out if Linux agrees or disagrees with that view. If Linux agrees, then I'll give up on trying to do this at all with this hardware, and I'll move on. However if Linux thinks that the hardware is capable of doing this, then I will have what I need the way of probable cause to go and hassle the s**t out of HP for not providing Windows drivers that know how to make the machine work up to its potential.)
Ronbaby have you tried using the Realtek ATI HDMI driver for the 8530p? It works fine for me on Windows 7 x86.
I don't recall whether I tried that or not, but it is moot now, because I no longer own the machine in question.