AlienBBC and Mac installation instructions revised .

[Andy Palmer]

Daniel,

I've followed your instructions without success - any ideas what is
wrong?

In my home Library I have a SlimDevices folder with a Plugins sub
folder which is where I placed the Alien folder. I modified Plugin.pm
within that to point to the path of transcoder_proxy.pl my $proxy_path
=
"/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/
server/transcoder_proxy.pl"; (obviously replacing username with my
username).

The two lines below that read:
my $proxy_host = 'localhost';
my $proxy_port = 5123;
- are they correct?

SlimServer preference pane was installed just for me so I have a
/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/ folder. I have modified
transcoder_proxy.pl so that it reads:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
-I/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/
server/CPAN

The config block reads as:
my $use_alienstream = 0;
my $use_lame = 1;
my $proxy_addr = '127.0.0.1';
my $proxy_port = 5123;
my $alienstream = "/usr/local/slimserver/alienstream";
my $mplayer = "/usr/local/bin/mplayer";

my @encoder_search_paths = ("/usr/local/bin/mplayer", "/sw/bin/lame");

Is there anything wrong with the above?

The files were edited with pico in the terminal.

I installed lame and madplay via Fink using the Terminal. There was no
HTML::Parser listed but html-parser-pm560 and html-parser-pm581. I had
Fink install them both?

I downloaded ffmpegXbinaries1115.zip and placed mplayer in
/usr/local/bin.

http://forms.helixcommunity.org/heli...?filename=DR5/
client-1.1.5-DevRel_macos-gcc3-pb_all_clients.tar.gz is no longer
accessible. I ended up downloading
all_clients-helix-20050107-macos-gcc3-pb.tar.gz and placing cook.bundle
within that in /Library/Support/ffmpegX/reallib. Is this a problem?

I started the SlimServer from Terminal with
Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/
slimserver.pl --daemon

Is that the correct command? It seemed to work ok.

On my Squeezebox AlienBBC appears within Internet Radio and all the
options are available but it I try to play one it says
Connecting....... for around 10 seconds and then reverts back to the
previous screen.

Is there anything in my installation that I have done wrong? Am I
starting the server properly from Terminal? Is there anything that
needs to be done regarding the Mac OS installation of Perl?

How do I go about debugging my installation to try and find the cause
of the problem?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Andy.

[Adrian Merwood]

Andy Palmer wrote:

> Daniel,
>
> I've followed your instructions without success - any ideas what is
> wrong?
>
> In my home Library I have a SlimDevices folder with a Plugins sub
> folder which is where I placed the Alien folder. I modified Plugin.pm
> within that to point to the path of transcoder_proxy.pl my $proxy_path
> =
> "/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/transcoder_proxy.pl";
> (obviously replacing username with my username).
>
> The two lines below that read:
> my $proxy_host = 'localhost';
> my $proxy_port = 5123;
> - are they correct?
>
> SlimServer preference pane was installed just for me so I have a
> /Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/ folder. I have modified
> transcoder_proxy.pl so that it reads:
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> -I/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/CPAN
>
>
> The config block reads as:
> my $use_alienstream = 0;
> my $use_lame = 1;
> my $proxy_addr = '127.0.0.1';
> my $proxy_port = 5123;
> my $alienstream = "/usr/local/slimserver/alienstream";
> my $mplayer = "/usr/local/bin/mplayer";
>
> my @encoder_search_paths = ("/usr/local/bin/mplayer", "/sw/bin/lame");
>
> Is there anything wrong with the above?
>
> The files were edited with pico in the terminal.
>
> I installed lame and madplay via Fink using the Terminal. There was no
> HTML::Parser listed but html-parser-pm560 and html-parser-pm581. I had
> Fink install them both?
>
> I downloaded ffmpegXbinaries1115.zip and placed mplayer in
> /usr/local/bin.
>
> http://forms.helixcommunity.org/heli...clients.tar.gz
> is no longer accessible. I ended up downloading
> all_clients-helix-20050107-macos-gcc3-pb.tar.gz and placing
> cook.bundle within that in /Library/Support/ffmpegX/reallib. Is this a
> problem?
>
> I started the SlimServer from Terminal with
> Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/slimserver.pl
> --daemon
>
> Is that the correct command? It seemed to work ok.
>
> On my Squeezebox AlienBBC appears within Internet Radio and all the
> options are available but it I try to play one it says
> Connecting....... for around 10 seconds and then reverts back to the
> previous screen.
>
> Is there anything in my installation that I have done wrong? Am I
> starting the server properly from Terminal? Is there anything that
> needs to be done regarding the Mac OS installation of Perl?
>
> How do I go about debugging my installation to try and find the cause
> of the problem?
>
> Any help would be much appreciated.
>
> Thanks
> Andy.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>

[Jules Taplin]

Hi Andy.

Sounds to me like the problem is transcoder related. If you point a web
broswer to:

http://<ip address of your server>:5123/Status/

What does it say? If it doesn't say anything, then try running just the
transcoder from the terminal. It'll either spit an error message (your
next clue), or sit there. Leave it, and try to play a stream. Lots of
diagnostics will come out of the terminal that's running the transcoder,
and that should tell us what's up.


-- Jules


Andy Palmer wrote:

> Daniel,
>
> I've followed your instructions without success - any ideas what is
> wrong?
>
> In my home Library I have a SlimDevices folder with a Plugins sub
> folder which is where I placed the Alien folder. I modified Plugin.pm
> within that to point to the path of transcoder_proxy.pl my $proxy_path
> =
> "/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/transcoder_proxy.pl";
> (obviously replacing username with my username).
>
> The two lines below that read:
> my $proxy_host = 'localhost';
> my $proxy_port = 5123;
> - are they correct?
>
> SlimServer preference pane was installed just for me so I have a
> /Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/ folder. I have modified
> transcoder_proxy.pl so that it reads:
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> -I/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/CPAN
>
>
> The config block reads as:
> my $use_alienstream = 0;
> my $use_lame = 1;
> my $proxy_addr = '127.0.0.1';
> my $proxy_port = 5123;
> my $alienstream = "/usr/local/slimserver/alienstream";
> my $mplayer = "/usr/local/bin/mplayer";
>
> my @encoder_search_paths = ("/usr/local/bin/mplayer", "/sw/bin/lame");
>
> Is there anything wrong with the above?
>
> The files were edited with pico in the terminal.
>
> I installed lame and madplay via Fink using the Terminal. There was no
> HTML::Parser listed but html-parser-pm560 and html-parser-pm581. I had
> Fink install them both?
>
> I downloaded ffmpegXbinaries1115.zip and placed mplayer in
> /usr/local/bin.
>
> http://forms.helixcommunity.org/heli...clients.tar.gz
> is no longer accessible. I ended up downloading
> all_clients-helix-20050107-macos-gcc3-pb.tar.gz and placing
> cook.bundle within that in /Library/Support/ffmpegX/reallib. Is this a
> problem?
>
> I started the SlimServer from Terminal with
> Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/slimserver.pl
> --daemon
>
> Is that the correct command? It seemed to work ok.
>
> On my Squeezebox AlienBBC appears within Internet Radio and all the
> options are available but it I try to play one it says
> Connecting....... for around 10 seconds and then reverts back to the
> previous screen.
>
> Is there anything in my installation that I have done wrong? Am I
> starting the server properly from Terminal? Is there anything that
> needs to be done regarding the Mac OS installation of Perl?
>
> How do I go about debugging my installation to try and find the cause
> of the problem?
>
> Any help would be much appreciated.
>
> Thanks
> Andy.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>

[Daniel Cohen]

On 9/1/05 at 10:20 am +0000, Andy Palmer wrote
>Daniel,
>
>I've followed your instructions without success - any ideas what is wrong?
>
>In my home Library I have a SlimDevices folder with a Plugins sub
>folder which is where I placed the Alien folder. I modified
>Plugin.pm within that to point to the path of transcoder_proxy.pl my
>$proxy_path =
>"/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/transcoder_proxy.pl";
>(obviously replacing username with my username).
>
>The two lines below that read:
>my $proxy_host = 'localhost';
>my $proxy_port = 5123;
>- are they correct?


That should be fine.

>
>SlimServer preference pane was installed just for me so I have a
>/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/ folder. I have modified
>transcoder_proxy.pl so that it reads:
>#!/usr/bin/perl -w
>-I/Users/username/Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/CPAN
>
>The config block reads as:
>my $use_alienstream = 0;
>my $use_lame = 1;
>my $proxy_addr = '127.0.0.1';
>my $proxy_port = 5123;
>my $alienstream = "/usr/local/slimserver/alienstream";
>my $mplayer = "/usr/local/bin/mplayer";


So far, this agrees with my working system.

>
>my @encoder_search_paths = ("/usr/local/bin/mplayer", "/sw/bin/lame");

Here I have


my @encoder_search_paths = ("/usr/local/bin/lame", "/usr/bin/lame");

I think my instructions were wrong here. The location of mplayer is
needed in the line beginning my $mplayer =

and not where you have it.

>
>Is there anything wrong with the above?


Is lame actually where you have pointed it to in that line?

>
>The files were edited with pico in the terminal.

That's ok.

>
>I installed lame and madplay via Fink using the Terminal. There was
>no HTML::Parser listed but html-parser-pm560 and html-parser-pm581.
>I had Fink install them both?

I don't think there should be a problem here. What files do you actually see?

I used Fink Commander, rather than Fink itself, and I think I must
have downloaded html-parser-pm:3.35-10, as that is described as the
current version. There shouldn't be a problem here, except that my
instructions weren't clear enough.

>
>I downloaded ffmpegXbinaries1115.zip and placed mplayer in /usr/local/bin.


Still ok.

>
>http://forms.helixcommunity.org/heli...clients.tar.gz
>is no longer accessible.



Thanks, I'll change things here in my instructions.

>I ended up downloading
>all_clients-helix-20050107-macos-gcc3-pb.tar.gz and placing
>cook.bundle within that in /Library/Support/ffmpegX/reallib. Is this
>a problem?


That's where I have it. I'll double-check if a reference to this is
needed anywhere.

>
>I started the SlimServer from Terminal with
>Library/PreferencePanes/SlimServer.prefPane/Contents/server/slimserver.pl
>--daemon
>
>Is that the correct command? It seemed to work ok.


When I was dealing with it, I didn't use the --daemon switch, but
that should not be a problem.

>
>On my Squeezebox AlienBBC appears within Internet Radio and all the
>options are available but it I try to play one it says
>Connecting....... for around 10 seconds and then reverts back to the
>previous screen.
>
>Is there anything in my installation that I have done wrong?


As noted, I can think of one possible place (location of lame) where
you might not have entered the right information, and one place where
I may have forgotten that a mention is needed (location of
cook.bundle)

>Am I starting the server properly from Terminal?


Yes, as far as I know.

>Is there anything that needs to be done regarding the Mac OS
>installation of Perl?


Not as far as I know.

>
>How do I go about debugging my installation to try and find the
>cause of the problem?


Try running transcoder_proxy.pl from the command line. It should find
lame and then just sit there, this will check if you have pointed to
the correct location for lame.

Also try running /sw/bin/mplayer
rtsp://rmlivev8.bbc.net.uk/farm/\*/ev7/live24/radio1/live/r1_dsat_g2.ra
(if that's where mplayer is).

This should play Radio 1 (you could also try replacing radio1/live/r1
by radio2/live/r2 as on at least one occasion I found that radio 1
refused to play but Radio 2 played ok, I suspect just an Internet
glitch). There will be a bunch of messages complaining that certain
things can't be found and that defaults are being used, etc. The main
lines to look for are at the end.

Let me know (offlist if you prefer) where you get to.

If you can get it working ok from the command line, I now know how to
make it work from the preference pane, thanks to neil's suggestion.

--
Daniel Cohen