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Linux HOW-TO install XBMC for Linux on Asrock ION 330 with full Ubuntu Desktop - Printable Version

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- maghus - 2009-10-12

damob Wrote:Help required here for a newby. I have followed both instructions for installing the nvidia gfx driver on my new asrock ion 300 nettop but as soon as my machine restarts, my monitor goes blank. I can ctrl+alt+f1 to get to a terminal window but going back to what would be the gnome window, the monitor goes off. The only way for me to overcome this is to go into recovery mode at boot and use xfix to repair video problems and then resume. Going into the Nvidia X Server Settings gives me a message about "you do not appear to be using the nvidia X driver, please edit x configuration using nvidia-xconfig. I do this as root, restart the PC and I am back to a blank monitor!

I am going to try a fresh install as I am going mad here!!

Has anyone found a solution for this? I have been googleing for hours and can not find a solution for the above. My computer works great with my Apple monitor via DVI but when I connect it to my Samsung UE-B407070 I get a flickering red background during startup and then the signal disappears when entering Gnome. In recovery mode I am able to get to Gnome but then without the NVIDIA driver and still flickering and red background with stripes.

I have tried all possible options on my TV.

Any help is much appreciated!


- vikjon0 - 2009-10-12

Quote:Originally Posted by damob
Help required here for a newby. I have followed both instructions for installing the nvidia gfx driver on my new asrock ion 300 nettop but as soon as my machine restarts, my monitor goes blank. I can ctrl+alt+f1 to get to a terminal window but going back to what would be the gnome window, the monitor goes off. The only way for me to overcome this is to go into recovery mode at boot and use xfix to repair video problems and then resume. Going into the Nvidia X Server Settings gives me a message about "you do not appear to be using the nvidia X driver, please edit x configuration using nvidia-xconfig. I do this as root, restart the PC and I am back to a blank monitor!

I am going to try a fresh install as I am going mad here!!

I do not know what you have done, but it does not sound to good that you have followed both instructions. You should follow one...and if you want to switch you should uninstall the previous.

have you done:
sudo nvidia-xconfig -s --no-logo --force-generate


- maghus - 2009-10-12

vikjon0 Wrote:I do not know what you have done, but it does not sound to good that you have followed both instructions. You should follow one...and if you want to switch you should uninstall the previous.

have you done:
sudo nvidia-xconfig -s --no-logo --force-generate

Sorry, no I uninstalled the first driver before reinstall.

Just tried your command now in recovery mode but with no luck..


- vikjon0 - 2009-10-12

Ok, I don't know how to troubleshoot this.
It working without problem on asrock for many people, either you are doing something wrong or it does not work with your TV for some reason.

You could try with a computer screen with VGA cable and you can also try both NVIDIA 180 & 185


- maghus - 2009-10-13

Ok, thanks anyway for a great guide. I'll reinstall and post the result


- Scott R - 2009-10-16

Based on the subject line of this thread and from reading the initial post, I'm unclear as to what the pros/cons of following this How-To versus this one:
http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=52259

The OP even referenced that other How-To in the 1st page of this thread and that How-To was first posted about a month before this thread was started, so I would assume that there are advantages to one vs the other that I'm not understanding (I'm a Linux noob, BTW). It seems like that other How-To installs things via the desktop, whereas this one does more through the terminal window or putty. I'm in the process of installing Ubuntu Desktop right now (for the 2nd time) and am trying to figure out which How-To I should try (I'm leaning towards this one which is why I'm posting this here and not in that other thread).

FWIW, I have an Acer AspireRevo w/Windows XP. I'm keeping the XP partition (for now anyway), which is why I couldn't use XBMC Live (I used it to install to a USB stick but that keeps getting corrupted).

For the purpose of the instructions given in the original post, is the Acer Revo essentially equivalent to the Asrock?

Also, I followed the instructions here when creating my partitions, but I'm just curious why it's important not to set the mount point of the storage partition during the install?

Lastly, the How-To advises to set up auto-login after the first time you boot up into Ubunutu Desktop, but the installation process gives you the option to set auto-login at that time, so I did that. If there's some significance to that, let me know. Otherwise, perhaps you might want to tweak the How-To to indicate that auto-login can be checked off during the installation wizard.


- vikjon0 - 2009-10-16

Quote:Based on the subject line of this thread and from reading the initial post, I'm unclear as to what the pros/cons of following this How-To versus this one:
http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=52259
He has screen shots and explain what he is doing. Mine is just a log of the commands to use...but it is more complete.

Quote:For the purpose of the instructions given in the original post, is the Acer Revo essentially equivalent to the Asrock?
I think so yes.
Quote:why it's important not to set the mount point of the storage partition during the install?
This is probably because I don't know that much linux. If there is a good way to mount it directly that is fine. My point is that I do not want to mount this partion as part of the OS. I want it be an empty folder in the root.

Quote:Lastly, the How-To advises to set up auto-login after the first time you boot up into Ubunutu Desktop, but the installation process gives you the option to set auto-login at that time, so I did that. If there's some significance to that, let me know. Otherwise, perhaps you might want to tweak the How-To to indicate that auto-login can be checked off during the installation wizard.
Thats fine...but do you not get a timed login if you check that? If so you still have to go to this dialog and removed the timed function.


- Scott R - 2009-10-16

vikjon0 Wrote:He has screen shots and explain what he is doing. Mine is just a log of the commands to use...but it is more complete.
OK, thanks for the quick reply. I'm a long-time XBMC on classic XBox user and have been experimenting with various installs for my Revo. I first installed XBMC Live onto a USB stick and that seemed to work really well after a couple of tweaks. A 1080p .ts file I tested with seemed to play very smooth. But the USB stick kept getting corrupted. I didn't want to lose the XP partition, so I couldn't use the XBMC Live disc to install to my hard drive.

I tried an Ubuntu Desktop install and then followed the XBMC wiki for installing XBMC thru the GUI, but that didn't work well. So then I tried following other guides which fixed some things but broke others and left me with a buggy mess.

I then installed XBMC onto Windows XP and that was easy, but of course, it isn't optimized for the NVIDIA GPU. MPC-HC plays my .ts file very well, though.

So then I reinstalled Ubuntu Desktop and followed your guide today. Everything went very, very well. You did an excellent job detailing the steps.


vikjon0 Wrote:This is probably because I don't know that much linux. If there is a good way to mount it directly that is fine. My point is that I do not want to mount this partion as part of the OS. I want it be an empty folder in the root.
The first time I did the Ubuntu Desktop install, I typed in /storage for the mount point, but I don't know enough about Linux to know if that had the desired result, and I've since reinstalled according to your guide, so I can't look at it any more.

vikjon0 Wrote:Thats fine...but do you not get a timed login if you check that? If so you still have to go to this dialog and removed the timed function.
I don't believe you get a timed login for the initial bootup. Only when I "Log off" from Gnome do I see the login screen with the timer.

Anyways, like I said, great write-up. Unfortunately, I had some problems...

When I went to play my .ts file, it was horribly choppy. It would later be discovered that the problem was that, for some reason, my Revo ended up connecting to the router at 10Mbps (previously, with XBMC Live and Windows XP it was correctly connecting at 100Mbps). Not sure of the reason for that, but before I diagnosed it, I assumed that it was a problem with this install, so I then tried upgrading to the latest svn, messing around with a bunch of settings, and wasting a lot of time Googling for answers. After figuring out the ethernet issue, I attempted to get it all working again, but I'm stuck with the following problems:

1) xbmc-standalone seems to cause me video problems. I get mostly green and lots of blockiness. It never seems to settle down. Someone replied in a thread I was following that having only 1GB (which I do) can cause green screen issues, but I've successfully played my .ts file in XBMC Live. And if I uninstall the xbmc-standalone piece, boot into Gnome, and then run XBMC from there, I can play my .ts file OK. I would have thought that using xbmc-standalone would have resulted in less resources being used up since Gnome wouldn't be loading in the background (right?). Any ideas on this?

2) The stop button on my remote is exiting XBMC (bumping me back to Gnome). I don't think it was doing this the first time I followed your guide, so I think it somehow got screwed up in the process of me uninstalling/reinstalling things, though I don't know why. I don't know if this is a problem with the remote mapping data or if its a byproduct of XBMC being taxed when playing my video files, but it happens with a DVD .iso file as well, so I don't think that's the problem. In any case, any ideas for how I could fix this?

3) While video playback (without xbmc-standalone installed) is *very good*, it's not perfect. I see some very subtle choppiness. It's very slight, such that audio is unaffected and, at a casual glance, you might not even notice it. But it's not silky smooth. And, yes, I have the "Composite" "Disable" option set. I am thinking that maybe I'm taxing my 100Mbps network (which is likely not delivering a full 100Mbps), but MPC-HC on Windows XP seems to play back my .ts file perfectly smooth. Still, I've got an 8-port gigabit switch being delivered tomorrow, so hopefully bandwidth turns out to be the issue and it gets solved once I put that in place.


- vikjon0 - 2009-10-17

Scott,
Are you using the latest svn? If so maybe your are unluckey with the current version. I havent updated for a long time now since I waiting for a new stable.
I don't recognize your problems so the svn is my best guess.

And of course, try playing the files locally not over network.

You did make sure that you have 512mb assigned to your video card? This is necessary even if you only have 1G total.


- vikjon0 - 2009-10-17

I have now upgraded BIOS to 1.60 and enabled the new "good night LED" setting.
It is not perfect, all lights are completly shutdown and you cant even see that it is powered up.
I think I will still keep the LED of. I guess they need a HW upgrade to keep the light a "little on"

Don't forget to turn the GPU memory back to 512Mb after bios flash.


- Scott R - 2009-10-17

vikjon0 Wrote:Scott,
Are you using the latest svn? If so maybe your are unluckey with the current version. I havent updated for a long time now since I waiting for a new stable.
I don't recognize your problems so the svn is my best guess.

And of course, try playing the files locally not over network.

You did make sure that you have 512mb assigned to your video card? This is necessary even if you only have 1G total.
After uninstalling and reinstalling, I believe I restored myself to the current PPA build, but I'll try to confirm that. I do have my GPU memory allocation maxed out in the BIOS, but I don't remember what that number was (I was thinking that with 1GB of RAM I could only max it to 256MB, but I'll double-check). Again, though, I don't have video issues with XBMC Live.

I just posted this in another thread, so I'm going to repost it here, since it might be useful for you to add to the bottom of your original post. It might also be useful for you to document what your current versions of XBMC, the NVIDIA drivers, and the ALSA drivers.

Anyways, here's my repost from the other thread (http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=112):

*************

I've figured out how to uninstall (remove) XBMC from the CLI/Terminal (actually, I'm using putty from my Windows laptop for most of this, which is a little more convenient). And, while I haven't tried it out yet, I just found yesterday this info for determining what version you currently have installed:

Code:
dpkg -l | grep xbmc

I also found this piece of advice on http://vikjonlinuxhowto.blogspot.com/ for installing a specific XBMC version:
Quote:udo dpkg -i xbmc-common_9.04.2+svn22278-jaunty1_i386.deb xbmc-skin-pm3-hd_9.04.2+svn22278-jaunty1_i386.deb xbmc-web-pm3_9.04.2+svn22278-jaunty1_i386.deb

or

sudo apt-get install xbmc=[svnVERSION]
(e.g. 22278)

The packages are stored in /var/cache/apt/archives

Revert to old version in svn source directory
svn up --revision 22278
(svn guide http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1167578)

So, first question...is all that info above correct? Just to clarify...are you saying that you're using the latest svn and it's working well? If so, is that the PPA release that I would get by way of updating my sources.list with this:

Code:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-svn/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

OK, so how would I go about determining the current version I have of the NVIDIA drivers? And what do I need to do to:
a) Install the latest version of them?
b) Remove what I've currently got?
c) Install a specific (non-latest) version of them?

Same questions for the ALSA drivers:
a)
b)
c)

Again, I think this sort of information would be very useful to people, like me, who are purchasing a Revo specifically for XBMC, are new to Linux, and want to get a stable system so as to not clutter up the forums with tons of support questions. Wink


- vikjon0 - 2009-10-17

Do you have VDPAU working in Live? Thats what I have read needs 512Mb.

Quote:So, first question...is all that info above correct? Just to clarify...are you saying that you're using the latest svn and it's working well? If so, is that the PPA release that I would get by way of updating my sources.list with this:

That will give you the latest svn.
I do NOT use the latest svn. I am waiting for a new stable. It is possible to get to a specific svn, but it is more complicated right now beceuasde they are doing a merge or something like that. I do not have this under control right now. I do not have time for the moment and will stay put where I am. (on r22429).

The quickest way to get i working prettty good is for you to skip the svn and install the stable PPA. That does work on at least Asrock ION 330. If it does not work for you it is most likely the missing 512mb that is the problem.

If it is possible to find a version today that works with 256mb I do not know. You could try downgrading to a svn version that is ok (search forum) or wait a few days, maybe the svn gets better for you soon.

Or get more memory.

If it does work with live try the same settings here.


- Scott R - 2009-10-17

OK, I just verified my BIOS settings. I've got it set to 256MB, which is the max it will let me set it to. But, as I said, I can play my test Blu-ray rip .ts file fine with XBMC Live (on USB stick) and with XBMC on Ubuntu Desktop. On the latter, I've noticed a very slight non-smoothness to the video playback, but I haven't had a chance to boot back up into Live and test to see if I'm seeing the same thing there. Also, as I said before, if I install xbmc-standalone, video stops working correctly (green blotches, blockiness, etc.).

And on Windows XP, with MPC-HC, I can play the video fine there as well. So, I'm fairly confident that the Revo is capable of playing back high-bitrate 1080p content with only the stock 1GB, but it's possible that extra RAM might help resolve the xbmc-standalone issue. Again, though, I was under the impression that xbmc-standalone simply causes Gnome to not run, so it makes no sense to me why things would perform worse with xbmc-standalone installed.

As for the revisions, can you comment on how to check what version of the NVIDIA and ALSA drivers I have, and the proper method for upgrading ALSA to the latest version (and, ideally, a specific version of either, if you know that). And, what version specifically you have of each of those?


- vikjon0 - 2009-10-17

You can see the alsa version when you run alsamixer.
Nvidia I am not sure but I am sure you can google it in 5sec.

If installed NVIDIA from ppa you have version 180,185,190 depending on what you installed and I think you see the extact version when you install & upgrade it. If you installed from nvidia home page you can see the version in the package file name.


- denis6902 - 2009-10-19

Hello,

I got a Zotac Mini Itx N330 ION too and i just cant install nvidia drivers on it.

I installed a fresh jaunty 32bit 2 times already, and nothing.

After running updates, i go to harware drivers, and doesnt seem that i have a graphic card as i shows nothing in there.

I tried following the tutorial over XBMC forums on setting up this, and when it gets to login screen is asks for usrname and password as usual then i get the following message:

Code:
XBMC needs hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering
install an appropriate graphics driver.

Please consult xbmc wiki for supported hardware
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title+Supported_hardware
I tried entering the commands on the post above me and it didnt install the beta 190 driver either.

How can i download this driver from (CRT+ALT+F1) because i cant get to graphical mode as it fails to log in.

And i dont want to have to re-reintall it all again.

Best Regards

Denis



edit:
here is my error:

(~/.xsession-errors file)

Code:
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginnin session setup...
Setting IM through im-switch for locale=en=US
Start IM through /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to /etc/X11/xinit/xinput/xinput.d/default.
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Error: cound't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
xlib:extention "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Segmentation fault
What did i do wrong? I tried installing the (http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/185.18.36/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run) and i still get the same error then the one above.


NOTE: Running 4GB or DDR2 / ubuntu32bit jaunty main



Please help