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Full Version: [LIVE] NFS Share unstable, unstable XBMC, and Harmony mapping problem in XBMC Live?
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Hi all,

For about three weeks now, I'm trying to get a stable XBMC Live installation, but no success. Currently I have a few problems and I can't find the roots of these problems. So I hereby ask for help, as I'm starting to loose hope. I've read about every thread I could find on the subjects but I'm still unable to solve my problems.

My Hardware:

- XBMC Live 9.11 Camelot (Installed to disk on a EXT4 formatted drive. My NAS uses EXT4 so I thought it best to format the HTPC to EXT4 as well.)
- Asrock ION 330-BD
- Philips OVU4120 USB IR-Receiver
- Logitech Harmony 555
- QNAP TS-419P NAS

Problems I'm having:

1) Unstable NFS Shares
My NFS shares are unstable, or atleast XBMC often crashes when for example I update my libraries.

This results in: XBMC losing access to my NAS share.
Temporary solution: To resolve this I have to reboot my QNAP NAS and then reboot my HTPC. Rebooting the HTPC alone is not enough.

I have to reboot my NAS almost every time I use my HTPC and sometimes even twice a day.

This is how I mount the share on my HTPC:

1. mkdir /home/xbmc/nas-l
2. sudo nano /etc/hosts -> 192.168.1.5 nas-l
3. sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common
4. sudo nano /etc/fstab and add the following line: nas-l:/media /home/xbmc/nas-l nfs

This way I have a folder in my HomeFolder called nas-l which shows the content of share nas-l:/media. On my NAS I have given full NFS access to IP 192.168.1.7 which is a static IP assigned to my HTPC by my router. The NAS and HTPC are both connected to a 3COM Gigabit Switch and the switch in turn is connected to my router ofcourse.

What can possibly make this so unstable. I personally think it is my HTPC as my normal PC connects to my NAS using samba and is still able to access all files when the HTPC can't. Also all functions on the NAS still work normally, I do however see, in the control panel of my NAS, that my HTPC stays logged in on NFS even when it is shut down or in standby.

This is my biggest issue so far as it makes the HTPC pretty much unusable. Hope I can resolve this with some help from you guys.

2) Unstable XBMC
XBMC is unstable as it often hangs. Not only with the NAS share but also when changing settings in skin etc. It just freezes and I can't do anything with the interface anymore. I'm however still able to SSH the machine and reboot it, but after the reboot, problem one comes along and a reboot of my NAS and HTPC is needed.

3) Harmony Mapping Problem:
I have set my Harmony 555 up as a Microsoft MCE remote. But three buttons do not work.

Buttons that don't work: Subtitles, Audio and Menu.

I found that in lirc.xml under mceusb there is no entry for Subtitle or Audio, so I add those two in my lirc.xml.

lirc.xml (/home/xbmc/.xbmc/userdata/keymap)
<subtitle>Subtitle</subtitle>
<language>Audio</language>

remote.xml (/usr/share/xbmc/keymap)
<FullscreenVideo>
<remote>
.....
<subtitle>ShowSubtitles</subtitle>
<language>AudioNextLanguage</language>
</remote>
</FullscreenVideo>

I then placed my edited lirc.xml in /home/xbmc/.xbmc/userdata. But no luck... In remote.xml there where already entries for ShowSubtitle and AudioLanguage, so I expected this to work. But no luck...

Then there is the Menu button that should pop-up the OSD on FullScreenVideo playback. The button for menu is called DVDMenu in the Harmony software and saw that it was called Menu in the lirc.xml. As all other buttons already where named exactly the same in harmony software as in the lirc.xml by default, I thought that renaming it to DVDMenu might fix it, but no luck.

How can I map these three buttons? Atleast menu should work as I can then manually select subtitle and audio, but I prefer all buttons to work. The other buttons on my remote work out of the box and with no issues.

Any and all help on solving these three problems is greatly appreciated. These two problems are the only thing standing in my way of using XBMC the way it should be able to work.

Greetings,
Domini0n
Nobody has any clue or advice how I might tackle these problems? Sad

[edit]
If there is additional information needed to receive help, please let me know. 40 view so far and no response. Sad
I don't have a solution for your problem but as I have the same setup (Harmony + OVU4120) I do have a question:

How did you setup your activity for the Harmony ? What device did you add ? Media-Center PC ? And if so, Philips or Microsoft ? I added the philips but now XBMC only responds when i set my remote to device, in the activity none of the buttons respond.

Thnx !
I'm having nearly the same setup like you
ASRock ION 330 HT
QNAP TS 410

Even the LAN layout is the same Wink

1) Is the NAS still reachable from the HTPC? Can you ping it? Can you mount the NFS share by hand?
Had some simillar issues with smb and my Mac. It lost the connection and I couldn't reach the shares anymore. Just rebooting both (mac and nas) helped.
What I've done was to use AFP instead of SMB plus full read write access for everyone, which is ok since it's just in my small LAN.
Even XBMC (or Ubuntu?) had issues with SMB and Login and either took a lot of time to start the movie or simply stopped doing anything until I restarted the xbmc-live service.
As of this experience I would say you should play around with the right settings which may lead to this problem.
(An LDAP server for the nas would be great, that would solve those right issues I guess)

2) Yeah, XBMC 9.11 crashes every 3 (for me) skin change I make. Which is just for changing a skin (i.e. from Alaska to Aeon to Alaska to Confluence -> crash) not a setting for the skin.
strange.

in my case it was SMB which made all those problems you have.
since i'm using nfs ... no more problems.

i'm mounting those shares with my fstab, too.
the only difference i can find is, that i'm using ip-adresses and no "names".
Thanks for the input, I already gave up on help in this thread... But I'm glad you guys tried to help at least Big Grin

I made some progress in the mean time.

- Fixed the problem with my remote (button menu at least)
- Fixed NFS share so far (still needs more testing)

Remote solution:
- Setup your Harmony remote as a Microsoft Media Center remote
- Use putty (or something else) to ssh into you HTPC and type the following command: sudo irw (if your not logged in as root) or irw (when logged in as root)

Now you can point your remote at your receiver and start pressing buttons, you will now see the names of the buttons appear in your console. These names need to be the same in your Lirc.xml. The problem with my "menu" button was that in my Lirc.xml it said "DVDmenu" and irw reports that it should be DVD, changing that and putting Lirc.xml in the userdata folder fixed the menu button for me. Haven't tried mapping the Subtitles and Audio buttons yet, but that should be possible with the information irw gives.

NFS Fix:
Now running the 3.2.1 beta firmware on my NAS and it now runs well so far. It appeared that the current firmware of the QNAP 419P NAS uses an old kernel but does give the option for EXT4 file format. This was according to the QNAP forums the issue. Can't give any technical details on it as I don't have them. Wink

New problem:
Can't add Lost - 6x00 - Final Chapter.mkv to the library... No If i do update library it doesn't see the file, I think it has to do with the x00, but this is a pre episode to start the last season. Any suggestions? Oo
Final Chapter is a special. So it has to be in season 0 for the scraper. -> http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=TV_Shows_%28...w_Specials

So it has to be S00E58 -> http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=...201&lid=14
Thanks for the quick response that explains why my Battlestar specials don't show up as I have put them in a folder names Specials, I'll rename to Season 0.

Then there is a problem with playback on movies, I have set it all up and it works very well even with 24hz. The only thing is that about two or three times during the movie it starts to stutter slightly and after a few seconds stops again. I looked at the codec info but it wasn't dropping any frames, nor did it have high CPU usage or a slower download speed. It all seemed to be oke, but it still stutters every now and then for a few seconds. Huh
Domini0n Wrote:Thanks for the quick response that explains why my Battlestar specials don't show up as I have put them in a folder names Specials, I'll rename to Season 0.
The folder names like "Season X" are ignored. It is just a matter of what is tagged in the filename. Have a closer look onto the wiki article I've posted for more information.

PS: The other thingy sounds like a network issue. XBMC needs to wait for the buffer to fill up.
Aah oke, will do that! Thanks!

Any idea on the stuttering every now and then?