Solved [xbmcbuntu]Power Management, and User issue
#1
Please forgive me, but I've never been an extremely strong Linux user. I dabble here and there. Today I decided that my laptop (Late 2008 Macbook Pro) was going to be turned into an XBMC machine until I get a new battery or something dedicated.

I managed to get XBMCBuntu installed and booted in. Unfortunately I found out XBMC doesn't have power-management interfaces, nor particularly powerful monitor management. Both of those weren't a big deal until I logged into the XBMCBuntu side and found that it was a very striped down version of Ubuntu and I had no idea where to find those options! I tried switching over to the "Ubuntu" side and there was nothing but a blue screen, where I can pull nothing up. I can't log out, and everytime I boot into my linux partition I'm simply dropped back there.

I need particular help with the power management issues, I need to be able to close the lid on my labtop to use it. If no one can help me log out of that User I suppose I could always just reinstall.
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#2
The Lubuntu part of XBMCbuntu is not so much 'stripped down', it is the normal Ubuntu but comes with a simple desktop interface called LXDE.
With a few installs it could be possible to get a different desktop experience, like Gnome or KDE, but in XBMCbuntu we have not chosen this because the 'special effects' that come with these desktops can cause loads of video play issues. Also, since most people run the XBMC standalone session, most of teh time the desktop is not even running.

The fact that you see nothing is weird, you should see a background and a start menu. Did you try pressing right mouse button ?

Power management in Ubuntu is done with UPower and has been asked a few time but people never come back to say if it worked or not.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=166516
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#3
I apologize, I didn't intend to offend. It just seemed that way from my little experience with Ubuntu. Most of my experience with Linux has been with setting up an old computer to act as a NAS, using things such as SickBeard and the like.

And indeed I attempted to use the keyboard shortcut for the Terminal, nothing came up. I tried right clicking, no response. I tried to find and modify the file which had auto-login configured to on from the Live-CD, but I wasn't given permission even when trying sudo. I ended up reinstalling to fix it. I'm willing to try to reproduce the bug if you'd like.

I also noticed that after I reinstalled I was still unable to pull up a terminal using the Keyboard shortcut, it seems the default terminal (I believe it was something like LXDTerminal.) was removed and the keyboard shortcut never reconfigured. This is obviously not a large issue but assuming it is a problem across all installs I'd imagine it should be fixed.

I found a different method for "fixing" the lid power issue, but I can't currently go back and re-find it. It doesn't seem to have worked as when I shut the lid my TV goes blank, so I'll be sure to try UPower and see if that will fix it. And of course I'll actually report back unlike the others.

Currently I've managed to jerry-rig my laptop into sort of working across my screens so currently I'm in the position where my laptop screen is only displaying part of the 1080p image my TV is receiving. I can't seem to choose between which one should receive the image. From the settings menu I can only choose between "Full-Screen #1" or "Windowed." Is there a specific X Screen configuration I should be looking into to be able to separate my screens properly and pick within XBMC which screen will receive the image?
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#4
It may be you have overscan and in the xbmcbuntu session the panel is off the bottom of the screen. If so the first thing is to turn overscan off on the tv.

If you want to run a command line the easiest way is to ssh into the xbmcbuntu box. If you need help with that let us know.

There are plenty of thread s on here about dual screen issues so have a look around. I think it should be something to do with setting xorg.conf to use the correct screen . I take it you don't need the laptop screen at all.
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#5
Overscan seems to be fine, i've used this monitor with the same settings with my Desktop PC. Plus I seem to have been able to disable the lid power down with both UPower.conf, as well as a modification to dconf. I feel like either of those options should be more readily available. As UPower is just a random config file, and dconf, while accessible from the menu, has the power option hidden away three or four options folders deep.

Thankfully I also seem to have been able to disable my laptop screen, although I'm not sure if that option will persist through reboots.

I've set up SSH before, I'll probably be able to figure it out again, but the fact is, shouldn't the standard terminal shortcut work? As it is now it just brings up an error about LXTerminal not being installed. Clearly Xterm is installed, I'm not sure why it wouldn't be configured out of the box to use that.

Now however I seem to be running into a weird issue where XBMCBuntu has audio, but XBMC does not. Even if I launch XBMC within the Desktop Environment, XBMC doesn't seem to be sending audio through.VLC however has no issues playing back an FLV.
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#6
Well if you have a new audio problem, start a new thread.

SSH requires no setup, it is there by default in XBMCbuntu.

I don't know why the terminal shortcut doesn't work - what shortcut are you trying? Is it standard in openbox (which IIRC is the desktop environment in xbmcbuntu). If the system is looking for lxterminal and it isn't there, then try installing it.
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#7
Well I figured I'd simply post any new problems here, thankfully I fixed it, just a dumb configuration error I made.

I didn't realize that, wonderful.

I will attempt that next, I just don't understand why it would come broken like that? The keyboard shortcut I was trying was Control Att T if I remember correctly.
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#8
Lets just get this clear - are you trying to bring up the terminal in the xbmcbuntu session or an xbmc session? It won't work in an xbmc session.

I just fired up my virtualbox copy of xbmcbuntu and tried ctrl-alt-t and got an error message about lxterminal not being present. However lxterm is there so I am guessing this is a config issue somewhere.

The error seems to be in ~/.config/openbox/xbmcbuntu-rc.xml - change lxterminal in there to lxterm and it works (you have to log out and in when you have made the change).
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
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#9
XBMCBuntu session, and I had figured as much. Thank you for confirming the error isn't just with my install. I'll be sure to fix that in my set-up next time I log into a XBMCBuntu session.

Is there a place to submit that as a bug for the XBMC team?
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#10
There is the bugreport link at the top of the page, but it's an xbmcbuntu problem, not strictly an xbmc one. Still give it a try...
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
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#11
this should fix it https://github.com/xbmc/XBMCbuntu/commit...191af434a5
thanks for pointing this out
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#12
Thanks for fixing it so quickly! For future reference is there any specific place XBMCBuntu users should post bugs?
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#13
on trac please, just like other bugs.
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[xbmcbuntu]Power Management, and User issue0