I though I started a new thread, because the other was getting quite large.
I've added a backup-client for win32 to the ds2b2.zip file.
It's quite simple : give a destination directory and the empeg URL before pressing the start-button
It will make a complete backup of all *0 and *1 in the /drive0/fids and /drive1/fids
You can only backup at the moment. Displayserver can handle restores, I just have to code some stuff to put the stuff back to it.

ds2b2 can be found here

Frank van Gestel

Ok, I have finally installed the latest beta 2, and when I connect to the empeg on its IP address and port 80 I see the old displayserver page, with no different option, look, or function. Did I do something wrong?
During installation I set port 80 so that I could only use version 2.
Thank you in advance for your help

Taym
_________________________
MK II BLUE/RED 12GB #923

Ok, I reinstalled on port 81, and I see all the new stuff. For some reason on port 80 I still had Displayserver 1 . Well, I've got both now. Great job, Frank :)

Taym
_________________________
MK II BLUE/RED 12GB #923

Frank, the b2 version works great. I have tested the install utility on Win98, Win98SE and Win2000, later tonight I'll test it on Windows XP and give you results (if your interested).

Thanks again for your work, John Karwoski

Riocar 40Gig S/N 010101929 - STOLEN
Riocar 30Gig S/N 010101622 - Replacement

One more question, with all the anticipation over the 2.0 release of the empeg code, is there ANY chance the Displaysever2.0 will work with the updated release.

I know I shouldn't even be asking, because I'll find out myself first thing Monday :)
Thanks, John K


Riocar 40Gig S/N 010101929 - STOLEN
Riocar 30Gig S/N 010101622 - Replacement

I couldn’t stand the green display so I started by changing the colors… a couple hours later I redid the look of all the html files and made a new fascia.jpg.

If anyone would like to take a look, I’ve attached the modified files. You can use the “File Upload” link from the index to upload the new files. For the files in the “empegApplet” directory you can upload by using “empegApplet/filename.ext” for the destfile.

Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

Tom

Edited by charcoalgray99 on 08/10/01 05:31 AM.

Very nice tip, I have already made many customizations to my pages also. Only a small clarification, updates into directories should follow the “empegApplet/filename.ext” syntax (note slash direction)

Thanks again, John K

Riocar 40Gig S/N 010101929 - STOLEN
Riocar 30Gig S/N 010101622 - Replacement

Oops! Don't know how I missed that. I just edited my post to reflect that..

Thanks,
Tom

is there ANY chance the Displaysever2.0 will work with the updated release
Yes it does, just don't install the 1.03 kernel...

Frank van Gestel

I don't know if this is a common thing or just something happening to me. I'm now using the backup utility for the first time, trying to backup my 12+ GB worth of fids. It's working fine, though I'm noticing it's getting considerably slower and slower as time goes on. I'm wondering if anyone has any intelligent guesses as to why that might be. What started at 500+ kbytes/second (according to EmpegBackup) is now slowed to 15 kbytes/second. My ETC (based on avg rate so far) is at 9.4 hrs, and getting longer and longer. My shift isn't quite that long, and I'm sure I'll want to go home at some point.

Secondly, what would happen if I aborted and then started it again later? Does it start over from the beginning, overwriting the fids already on my PC? Does it return an error because it can't overwrite the files? Could I be lucky enough that it would skip the files it already copied and resume with the fids I don't have copied? I suppose I could have just tried it, but I'm on such a roll (albiet a roll that's getting slower and slower) that I don't want to interrupt it.

--Chris Willenbrock
MK2 | 12GB | Queue Registration # 2 (really!)

Well, I answered my second question. It seems to start over and overwrites the files you already copied. That's too bad.

Frank..is it possible to add some sort of resume funtionality to the backup software, so we don't have to backup the entire player all at once? It's quite a bit of data to move in one sitting.


--Chris Willenbrock
MK2 | 12GB | Queue Registration # 2 (really!)

is it possible to add some sort of resume funtionality to the backup software, so we don't have to backup the entire player all at once?
that was on of the things I was planning on adding, together with a restore function...
I just put a new one on the website which checks if the file already exists before downloading...


Frank van Gestel

I would guess an incremental backup option would be easier than a resume option... the problem with a resume function would be knowing what has already been done especially if the download failed and ended the tar halfway through a file... this problem is exacerbated (sp?) by the possibility that data on the empeg may have changed between the initial backup starting and the resume happening... though I suppose you could ignore this possibility if you know the empeg hasn't mounted its disks rw in the mean time (check ext2fs mount count...?) and then assumed that the same tar command would tar in exactly the same way and throw away the equivalent amount of bits from the start of a new tar before piping the rest across to the desktop machine...

Just guessing at some of the problems...

Kim

the current backup-solution in displayserver doesn't use a tar-file anymore; it justs copies all fid files from /drive0/fids and /drive1/fids.
The new backup-client checks which files already have been downloaded before starting the backup...

Frank van Gestel

Thank you sir...that should help quite a bit.

Keep up the great work!

- Chris
32GB MK2 090000664 Smoke
Queue # 2 (who the heck was 1?)

Okay...now that I have a full backup of my fids, I'm trying to write something that functions like displayserver's file index does using my psuedo-programming skills. Specifically, I'm trying to write something that allows me to draw from a database the track name, album name, position number and band so I can assemble a downloadable file name, and then point to a FID so it'll download with that file name.

Frank does this with
http://server/ds-bin/getfid?output=raw&savefile=band-album-pos-track_name.mp3&fid=9f8

I'm trying to do something just like that, but there are a couple of catches. 1) I'm not much of a programmer, and the only languages I can do anything in is PHP and CFML. 2) It has to run on my webserver (Windows 2000, IIS 5.0 w/ Cold Fusion, PHP installed and a MySQL database)

So..is this something that I can do in PHP, and could somebody (Frank?) give me a hint on how to "push" a mp3 download while specifying the name of the file?

- Chris
32GB MK2 090000664 Smoke
Queue # 2 (who the heck was 1?)

Ahh cool... :)

I will get around to downloading and trying it one day... just haven't had the need to yet... :)

Kim

Frank does this with
http://server/ds-bin/getfid?output=raw&savefile=band-album-pos-track_name.mp3&fid=9f8


getfid is a generic function used for :
- getting playlist info in javascript
- getting mp3 info in javascript
- streaming an m3u-file from the empeg
- streaming an mp3-file from the empeg
- download mp3's with custom names

Backup needs both fid-file (*0 *1), so I wrote another function just for backup. It just takes one parameter, the fid filename :

http://server/ds-bin/backupfid?fid=9f80

there's also a function which returns all fids available :

http://server/ds-bin/getallfids

If you want to generate a full listing of all meta info on the empeg, the simplest way to go is use the CSV-dump in emplode, but if you want to go the hard way and do it yourself ( which is much more fun ), you could do it this way :
- call getallfids to get a list of fid files
- strip off the last zero or one from the fid-filenames
- use the new fid-filenames as parameter for getfid :

http://server/ds-bin/getfid?output=js&fid=9f8

this will generate a javascript array which you could parse to get all relevant info

If you just want to change the filename that is downloaded from the default displayserver pages, you can edit test1.html to do this.
adjust the following line to change the saved filename :

filename=""+i+"-"+fidinfo[7]+"-"+fidinfo[4]+"-"+fidinfo[3]+".mp3";

Frank van Gestel

Thanks you...that was very...informative. Though, I'm not quite sure what to do with all of that. I'm not really trying to change any of the behavior of displayserver on the empeg, but instead trying to write something that has some of the same funtions that can run on my webserver. It would be great if I could copy over your getfid function to my webserver and use that, but I'm not quite sure how to do that.

Specifically, I want...
1) To change the default behavior of mp3 downloads to prompt with save file dialog, instead of just starting to play using a browser plugin.
2) Be able to specify the "save as" name in that dialog.

*sigh* Perhaps I'm in over my head.

- Chris
32GB MK2 090000664 Smoke
Queue # 2 (who the heck was 1?)

I see your goal now...
I can show you the C-code of playfid, but I dont think it's easy to port it to php. I think it's easier to rewrite from scratch in php.
You can generate the main page ( root playlist ) by reading fid 100. The format of a playlist-file is documented at smu's site if I remember correctly.
You can read the metainfo by reading fid 101, which is an ascii list of all attributes.
one hint : to force the downloaded file to be named with a different filename in php :

header ("Content-Type: application/octet-stream");

header ("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=myfilename.mp3");

Frank van Gestel

Thank you so much...that's just the hint I was looking for! I figured the answer would have something to do with the headers I sent...I just didn't know what header values to use to get this to work. You answered my question exactly.

The rest I can figure out for myself. I'll be using a MySQL backend (using data imported from the Emplod exported CSV) to drive my app.

Anyhoo...thanks for your help.

- Chris
32GB MK2 090000664 Smoke
Queue # 2 (who the heck was 1?)

1.Is there a way to make backup save files with names that would include other info than the fid such as artist - album - title- (maybe even the track#/ordering in the playlist) and with an mp3 extension?
2. Is there a way to make backup preserve the directory structure of the empeg?

1.Is there a way to make backup save files with names that would include other info than the fid such as artist - album - title- (maybe even the track#/ordering in the playlist) and with an mp3 extension?
2. Is there a way to make backup preserve the directory structure of the empeg?


Displayserver 1 does the first.

There is a perl script out there (two versions, one Windows, one Unix) that will download and preserve the filestructure.

Search for Perl and backup...

Hmm... how do you upload the ds2b2.mp3 using 2.00beta3? When I try it gives me:

Unsupported/invalid MP3 format.

Guess that's one of the problems with 2.0's new MP3 checking... your executable pretending to be an MP3 is rejected :-(

Heh, I was meaning to talk to Frank about that. One way to fake out Emplode is to append a tiny MP3 file at the beginning of a file you want to upload. I like the "fingertips" tracks from They Might Be Giants' "Apollo 18".

Dunno if that would work with Frank's file, but it's how I sneak .ZIPs onto the empeg for taxi purposes.

And yes, the Empeg guys are aware that it's an issue for us.

___________
Tony Fabris

I'm really suprised Frank didn't go the route of just having an installer with ZModem capabilities take care of getting the file on the empeg and running it. I was playing with the scripting in Telix to see if that route would be feasable to use.

Personally, I'd like to see someone come up with a universal installer for the empeg. Install the installer once via serial, then at any time later, new programs can be added via serial, usb, or ethernet. And comply to the earlier proposed locations and startup routine.

I'm probably going to be looking at something to do in a real programming language soon to get myself out of this rut. I think my project is going to be something out of the above.

Well, if you're going to be writing installer software, you might as well just use the Emptool sources as your starting point. No need to do scripting with zmodem transfers when you can use the empeg's own file transfer routines as your starting point.

___________
Tony Fabris

Well if JEmplode works with 2.0 you could use that ...

(list 6284, Mk1 S/N 00299 4GB blue [for sale]. Mk2 S/N 080000094 26GB blue)

Is there a way I could get a copy of the original mp3list.html template because that seems to be what those PERL scripts need to create a backup with the EMPEG's full directory structure.

Also can't seem to get the perl script to work in win2000. When I double click it an msdos window pops up and then momentarily disappears. Perhaps I didn't install the useragent module correctly. This whole perl thing scares me. A windows version would be great!

BAG
36gb MKII #256

The plan is to add specific file taxi functionality into a future 2.x release.

Rob