AlienBBC and Mac instructions

[danco]

With the newer versions of mplayer and mplayer.sh, the instructions for installation on the Mac can be greatly simplified.

Here is my suggestion, for others to comment on. Once we have agreed instructions, these should replace the previous ones, which were rather complicated, due in part to several versions by different people being included.

As you will see, I am in favour of spelling things out in great detail - some people may not be aware of certain features of the Mac.

here goes:

You need various files for AlienBBC.
1) AlienBBC itself. Make sure you download the version for your SlimServer (there are versions for SlimServer 6.2 and 6.5).

You will be downloading a file whose name ends in .tar.gz, which your browser may or may not decompress into a file whose name ends in .tar. If your browser has not done this automatically, double-click on the .tar.gz file to get the .tar file. Now double-click on the .tar file, and you will get a folder whose name is something like alienbbc-linux with a version number at the end.

In either your personal Library or the main Library on your hard drive there will be a folder named SlimDevices. All the contents of the alienbbc-linux folder need to be put in this SlimDevices folder. In particular, if the SlimDevices folder does not already contain a Plugins folder, you can just move or copy the Plugins folder from alienbbc-linux to SlimDevices; if you already have a Plugins folder in SlimDevices (because you have installed other plugins), you need to move or copy the contents of the Plugins folder in alienbbc-linux into the Plugins folder of SlimDevices.

2) The second item you need is mplayer. Click on the mplayer link at the top of the AlienBBC Web page, and towards the bottom of the resulting page is a link to download mplayer for Mac. This is again a .tar.gz file, which need to be dealt with as before. The resulting folder contains mplayer and also mencoder (which isn't needed). mplayer needs to be put in a suitable place, the best place (for reasons of tidiness and for historical reasons) being in /usr/local/bin. Note that this folder is normally invisible, but can be made visible using "Go to Folder" in the Finder's Go menu (either type /usr and navigate as usual, or type /usr/local/bin).

If this is your first installation of mplayer, please ensure that you have the version given by these instructions. There are many places on the internet where you can download mplayer, and some of them give an older version of mplayer which requires further files to be downloaded and installed. If you already have a working version of mplayer, perhaps in another location, it should not be necessary to change it.

3) Finally, you need a program called LAME. The simplest way to install this is using iTunes-LAME plugin, from http://www.blacktree.com/apps/iTunes-LAME/index.php

With all these installed, AlienBBC should work without problems, but you may want to stop and restart SlimServer to make sure that everything is picked up. If not, ask in the 3rd Party Plugins forum, and we should be able to get things working.

QUESTION TO OTHER USERS

Do we want to put in some details of how to debug, e.g. testing mplayer itself from the command line, running SlimServer from the command line?

Should we mention the bug with AlienBBC playlists? I'm inclined not to, as this very minor issue will surely be cleared up in a future version (it's just a matter of some unwanted spaces on one line of one item) and won't affect that many people.

[Neil Sleightholm]

This looks much simpler. If no one comments in the next few days I'll update the web site instructions.

Neil

[Neil Sleightholm]

There weren't any comments so I put them live.

Many thanks

Neil

[danco]

Good. We might want debugging instructions, but let's wait and see if anybody has trouble.

I do reckon you should correct that little bug with the playlists menu even before there is a new version of AlienBBC. But perhaps putting up this slight change is more effort than I realise.

[Neil Sleightholm]

We have fixed the bug but not released it yet. I expect there will be a new release soon.

Neil

[crouchend]

Just tried to install Alien BBC on a mac running 10.4
First problem, 'usr/local/bin' does not exist 'usr/bin' exists so I put mplayer in there instead.
My squeezebox 3 displays alien BBC but will not play anything.

Next, installed everything on my other mac running OS 10.3.
'usr/local' exists, but there are no files or folders in it.
again I put mplayer in 'usr/bin'
Once again squeezebox plays nothing as before.

I'm sure I'm being stupid, but can you tell me what I may have done wrong?

Thanks

[kefa]

Okay the instructions didn't work for me and I didn't want to taint my intel native system. Here's what I did, although I'm not sure whether this is safe/secure etc. I'm a bit of an apple newbie:

1. Download the intel native Mac OS X preview release of MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html) and install using an admin user

2. Download and extract the native version of lame from http://www.rarewares.org/files/mp3/lame_3.97b2.dmg.zip. Stick it anywhere for the time being.

3. Now this is the bit I didn't get: users don't have permissions to write to /usr/local/bin my default and it's not on the system path. Can someone explain why all the instructions say install here? So instead, log on to Terminal as an Admin user (your default user may already have admin rights). Copy the downloaded lame file that you have extracted in to the /usr/sbin (this folder is on the system path) using: sudo cp <extract location>/lame /usr/sbin

4. Create a link to the mplayer command using: sudo ln -s /Applications/MPlayer\ OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer /usr/sbin/mplayer

5. Using Finder copy the linux AlienBBC files to the appropriate Slimserver folder. The slimserver folder can be located in <home>/Library/SlimDevices

6. Restart slimserver from the preferences panel.

[danco]

Just got back from holiday, and will reply in more detail later.

Re /usr/local/bin. The use of this folder is partly for historical reasons and partly for tidiness.

Historical: the ealier versions of mplayer in their own installation instructions recommended use of this folder, and as other files also had to be installed, I thought it was problematic to change these instructions.

Tidness: Apple puts some of its own unixy programs into /usr/bin and /usr/sbin. There does seem some point in keeping third-party programs in a separate folder, such as /usr/local/bin. I seem to have a lot of items in my /usr/local/bin, and I certainly didn't install them manually, I think they were created when I installed some other program, as supporting items.

Usually, when one doesn't have permission to write to a folder, all that is needed is to authenticate as an administrator. So this isn't a real issue, but should have some mention in the instructions.

kefa's points. 1 and 4 do work together, I am sure, but it's exactly that kind of stuff that we want to try to avoid for newcomers. Equally for 2. The original instructions were a mess, because several people produced them independently, and there was no proper reconciliation of them. It is MOST DEFINITELY better to follow my instructions about which version of mplayer to download (not necessarily about where to put them), and about using iTunes-LAME. I have no experience of Intel Macs, it is possible (though I don't see why) that the instructions need changing for them.

crouchend, I'll suggest things to try when I am more together. Have you tried running mplayer from the command line? If so, what do you get? It wouldn't surprise me if there were issues with Lame. Anyway, that's the first bit of debugging to try.

Everyone. From the point of view of mplayer.sh it doesn't matter whether mplayer is in /usr/bin. /usr/sbin, or /usr/local/bin. As remarked by others, the first two are on the system path, while the third isn't (but the recent change in mplayer.sh deals with this).

[danco]

More (but still not enough).

The major problem remains that the AlienBBC developers don't have access to a Mac.

I'm not a developer (though I have done a few bits of debugging, moving mplayer around, etc), just a satisfied user of AlienBBC, trying to share the benefit of my experience. But it seems that things don't work for others. It is quite possible that I have installed other items previously that have made things easier for me.

What we really need is someone with a new Mac who is prepared to test thoroughly. Alternatively, someone with a Mac and an empty firewire drive on which to make a new installtion of OS X, SlimServer, AlienBBC, etc. It is usually possible to boot from a firewire drive, so that could be used for testing.

Neil, is there any way (developers list, general forum, etc) of putting out an appeal for this? I'll be happy to indicate things to try.

Neil, also could you change the order of items 2 and 3 in my instructions. It can't harm, and (as my only copy of lame is in /usr/local/bin) I think it is quite possible that the folder /usr/local/bin is created during the installation of iTunes-LAME.

kefa, glad you've got AlienBBC working. It's useful to have people's experiences listed in the forum. But these instructions are too complicated for the general user. If my instructions worked properly, they would be at the right level.

crouchend, where is your copy of lame (on the two Macs)? If you can't find it easily, you can use Terminal to find it. Run Terminal as an admin user and type

find /usr -name lame

to see where it is.

I suspect an issue with mplayer not finding lame, but can't be sure at this stage.

By the way, if you actually live in Crouch End, London, I'm not too far away, and we could perhaps get together to check things.

[Neil Sleightholm]

I have updated the instructions. I think it would be better if you made the request for Mac help, if you don't mind, as I don't think I would understand the issues.

Neil