[Bram77]

Cool, thanks!

I've added the ATI underscan option. When asked; choosing "Y" will disable underscan and choosing "n" will enable it, after killing the active X session. So you can do this while XBMC is running although it will stop running after you've made your choice.

I'm unable to test this because I have no machine with an ATI card. Please provide me with feedback if possible, whoever is willing to try!

[Bram77]

Auto mounting of USB drives is enabled now.

@wsnipex: Your excellent guide has been added to the second post. Thanks for being helpful

[platinum8317]

I'm back and trying this from the beginning again for you. Looks like Bram77 made a bit of improvements on the ATI side.

[platinum8317]

@Bram77
So far everything is running great. I had to change verticle blank sync to always enable to get rid of horizontal lines i had in high movement video playback. Thanks so much for your guide. And thank you to everyone else who has helped him put this together.

Now the question I have is will u be updating this with new nightlies as they come out?

Also I'm having issues with my ir remote so i'm going to look into that some more.

Another question is. Why does the install take so long at the install and configure IR remote support? I'm doing another fresh install. For some reason this time I was getting bootstrap errors while installing minimal. So i wiped exiting partitions on my ssd and remade the boot usb. Then it worked fine. guess I got a corrupt file. Anyway, My install of xbmc has be sitting at the install and configure ir for the past 15 mins. Not sure why. It did happen before when I started testing this but not this long. Although this time i don't have my dongle plugged into the usb. Is the install searching for an installed dongle or ir receiver?

So install just finished, 30mins sitting through ir install and configure. But when it got to...

Installing XBMC boot screen...
WARNING: Couldn't find symtab and strtab in module /tmp/mkinitramfs_e4pBWv/lib/modules/3.5.0-16-generic/kernel/fs/xfs/xfs.ko
* XBMC boot screen successfully installed

This is a first. So I think I'm going to start from the beginning again and see if it does it again.

So went through the install from the beginning again. This time my remote dongle was plugged in. The install got to install and configure ir remote and sat for 35 mins until i started randomly pressing space and return and letters. then it continued and went to the next step. not sure what its doing. just sits there. Also this time didn't get the error with the boot screen. so Not sure.

Hope some of this helps.

Thanks.

Ok new issue....
When I watch mkv movies the audio seems to be boosted and very creakily at loud times in movie. Was never like this with other xbmc with same movies. I do know durring Your install of xbmc it asked you to make sure things aren't muted and takes you to alsamixer. Under that what pops up is the generic hdmi and only the s/pdif with no control. Although I can select sound card to the HDA ATI SB and gives me full control of everything. I've gone through and changed everything in that and turned it all on and turned things up and down. But in XBMC it defaults to generic hdmi. If i change it to the DA ATI SB i get no sound what so ever. So my question is how do i fix the bad sound? or switch it to HDA ATI SB and get sound

Thanks.

[Bram77]

Thanks for the excellent feedback . It sure helps.

Wsnipx explains some more about the best configuration for ATI hardware in his howto -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=116996
Some stuff I can't do from the script. One of those things is enabling v-sync.

XBMC won't be automatically updated. New builds are available regularly though. You can install them by logging into your system via SSH and run the following:

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

..this will update every available package on your system, not only XBMC. That's a good thing. The script itself updates and dist-upgrades for you. So if you've run the script there is no use in updating any time soon.
Running an update every week will keep you synced with the latest version. I do it almost daily, but that's overkill.

I have no idea why the lirc installation is bugging you. This should be done in 15 seconds top. I've stopped the script from hiding the system output while installing lirc.
Maybe you can download and run the script again. You can do this over your current installation/configuration without losing data. This will hopefully give some more insight in why lirc is causing troubles. I can't reproduce your problem on either of the two machines I've tested the script on.

[platinum8317]

Ok i'll try a fresh install since thats the only time lirc takes so long. When i reinstall ontop of an existing it goes through everything very quick.

I'm just really bugged by this audio issue though. I can't watch movies cause the sound gets really bad.

thanks.

[Bram77]

If it's taking so long again... please provide me with the output shown regarding to lirc. I'll see what I can do. It shouldn't make a difference if it's a fresh installation or a re-run of the script.
Having your IR receiver plugged in or not should not make a difference either.

The sound issue is specifically for your machine. All I do in the script is make sure that XBMC can access the soundcards and potentially install the audio drivers (I believe the nvidia video drivers also contain the audio drivers, but I don't know about the Ati drivers). There is probably something you can do about it, but I don't think there is anything I can change in the script to fix your issue.

I don't know what version of XBMC you were using before, but there have been major changes to the sound section of XBMC since the latest stable version. They've developed something they call 'AudoEngine'. It simplifies the configuration of soundcards in XBMC and add support for several new audio formats in XBMC. Maybe the new engine is why your soundcards are behaving differently. The output volume seems to be to loud, have you tried disabling all options except what's really required in the XBMC sound settings. For debugging purposes?

[wsnipex]

sound problems on ATI are most often caused by wrong speaker setup and or wrong passthrough settings. Also note that fglrx does not support HD audio(DTS-MA/TrueHD), so you always must keep it disabled, even if your AVR supports it.

[platinum8317]

I'm still in the process of trying to install minimal... I keep getting bootstrap errors and config amd lirc6 i think. so i just remake the usb stick and then it works. finiky computers. But i'll let you know how it works in just a bit.

Sound I'm not sure whats going on, I am trying to read other post on the net and just play with it.

now just having problems installing minimal.. maybe its a heat issue.

---

@wsnipex
Thats was i was figureing, and going to try and play with it when i get xbmc installed again. I'm just trying to use 2 channels on hdmi since it's just playing through my tv. i don't think i'm trying to enable that but i'll check. thanks.

[platinum8317]

Got through the minimal install by using system rescue cd to delete previous partitions. and remaking the usb install stick. so not sure why it works once then gived me bootstrap errors. oh well not worried.
Durring xbmc install it got to lirc and went through it quick but now it popped up a screen and made me select a remote to configure and also an ir receiver. after i either slected one or none the install moved on quick and easy. here is a copy of my ssh for that.


Do you want to install and configure IR remote support (Y/n)? y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libftdi1 liblircclient0 libportaudio2 setserial
Suggested packages:
lirc-x
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libftdi1 liblircclient0 libportaudio2 lirc setserial
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 771 kB of archives.
After this operation, 3,043 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/main libftdi1 amd64 0.20-1 [17.2 kB]
Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/main libportaudio2 amd64 19+svn20111121-1 [74.0 kB]
Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/main liblircclient0 amd64 0.9.0-0ubuntu3 [16.2 kB]
Get:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/main setserial amd64 2.17-47 [40.8 kB]
Get:5 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/universe lirc amd64 0.9.0-0ubuntu3 [623 kB]
Fetched 771 kB in 0s (1,483 kB/s)
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously unselected package libftdi1:amd64.
(Reading database ... 53465 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libftdi1:amd64 (from .../libftdi1_0.20-1_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package libportaudio2:amd64.
Unpacking libportaudio2:amd64 (from .../libportaudio2_19+svn20111121-1_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package liblircclient0.
Unpacking liblircclient0 (from .../liblircclient0_0.9.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package setserial.
Unpacking setserial (from .../setserial_2.17-47_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package lirc.
Unpacking lirc (from .../lirc_0.9.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up libftdi1:amd64 (0.20-1) ...
Setting up libportaudio2:amd64 (19+svn20111121-1) ...
Setting up liblircclient0 (0.9.0-0ubuntu3) ...
Setting up setserial (2.17-47) ...
removing the old setserial entry in the rcn.d directories
Update complete.
update-rc.d: warning: etc-setserial stop runlevel arguments (0 6) do not match LSB Default-Stop values (0 1 6)
update-rc.d: warning: setserial stop runlevel arguments (0 6) do not match LSB Default-Stop values (0 1 6)
update-rc.d: warning: etc-setserial stop runlevel arguments (0 6) do not match LSB Default-Stop values (0 1 6)
update-rc.d: warning: setserial stop runlevel arguments (0 6) do not match LSB Default-Stop values (0 1 6)
Saving state of known serial devices... backing up /var/lib/setserial/autoserial.conf done.
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
Setting up lirc (0.9.0-0ubuntu3) ...
* Loading LIRC modules [ OK ]
find: `/sys/class/rc/*/': No such file or directory
* Starting remote control daemon(s) : LIRC [ OK ]
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
* Lirc successfully installed


Would those two selectable options make it hang?

---

well now after reboot it won't boot into xbmc. just a blank screen. so gona try again. oh so much fun

[platinum8317]

Not sure why but selecting the "boost volume level on downmix" fixed my crakeling sound issue.

Also the remote is now working fine. I just need to follow the xbmc wiki to fix the play/pause button on it. After that I think I'm golden.

I can't thank you guys enough with helping me through this.

[Bram77]

No prob man. We're helping eachoter . So was the last installation process without problems?

Regarding the lirc installation... I suppress all system messages and I did the same for the lirc installation. Obviously that was causing the lirc configuration not to show. I didn't expect that altough I could have known that. I'm sorry that issue wasted your time. I'm going to figure out a way suppress the messages and still show the configuration screen, if at all possible.

Thanks for helping me debug!

[Sevennl]

Bram77 & wsipex, you guys rock

I use the previous script and i am now installing the updated version on a fresh install.
Just a quick question, what is that XBMC dirty- region-rendering thing?

Installing it on :

• MSI Ms-7529 v1.6 with Core 2 Duo 1.9Ghz and 2GB DDR2 RAM
  
• Asus GL610 fanless Nvidia card video+audio through HDMI
  
• Skystar HD 2 PCI DVB-S2 card
  
• 80GB laptop disc for linux (soon to become a SSD)
  
• 2TB 540RPM disc NTFS for Media storage
  
• Conrad Cardreader with build-in IR
  
• DVD-ROM ( will be swapped by an Blueray player )
  
• USB Behringer U-Controll UCA-222 for Optical SPDIF output to a DTS capable AMP )
  
• Case: Silverstone LC-03 with VFD
  
• Logitech one & Technistar TTS35AI remotes
  

[platinum8317]

@Bram77
I'm very happy with the last install. Everything went smooth and installed quick. Your script is very easy to follow and install. This boots up so much faster than Openelec and xbmcbuntu so i am very happy about that. I will be using it on both of my htpc's. So thank you.

There is just two things i now want to work through and figure out. One is getting the sound to pass through my actually sound card drivers and not the generic hdmi ones. Second is getting my remote to somehow not turn on my xbox360 when i go to power on or off my htpc. I know both of those are beyond your script. Its going to be a challenge but it should be fun to figure out.

I've tried rather hard to figure out how in the to give you guys reputation points but i can't seem to figure out how. It seems like it should be something simple. I'll keep looking tho.

Thanks a million.

[Bram77]

Bram77 & wsipex, you guys rock

I use the previous script and i am now installing the updated version on a fresh install.
Just a quick question, what is that XBMC dirty- region-rendering thing?

What do you mean by the 'previous script'?

Thanks

Dirty region rendering accomplishes that only the pixels on the screen that actually change are rendered at a screen refresh. By default XBMC rerenders every pixel in the screen, even the pixels that haven't changed. This can effect performance drastically in a positive way. You could see it as some kind of compression. Especially on the less capable machines it unloads the CPU. I've got it enabled. On my machine everything runs as smooth as without it and the CPU time required seems to be about 5% less. I don't really see any downsides to it.

---

@Bram77
I'm very happy with the last install. Everything went smooth and installed quick. Your script is very easy to follow and install. This boots up so much faster than Openelec and xbmcbuntu so i am very happy about that. I will be using it on both of my htpc's. So thank you.

There is just two things i now want to work through and figure out. One is getting the sound to pass through my actually sound card drivers and not the generic hdmi ones. Second is getting my remote to somehow not turn on my xbox360 when i go to power on or off my htpc. I know both of those are beyond your script. Its going to be a challenge but it should be fun to figure out.

I've tried rather hard to figure out how in the to give you guys reputation points but i can't seem to figure out how. It seems like it should be something simple. I'll keep looking tho.

Thanks a million.

I'm happy you're happy! Nice to know people are actually using the script and see it as a viable option next to the excellent other options available.

You can add to my reputation by clicking the reputation link under every post of mine. It's the button with "+/-" in it. It's a bit unclear, I agree to that. Maybe it should say something else. Adding to my reputation is very much appreciated