Linux install problem, wrong architecture 'i386'

[davephan]

Thanks for the links Gerry. I tried them and they did not work for me. Some of them are with old SageTV version and I think old Java.

I haven't found any clear Linux SageTV installation instructions yet. I'm amazed that something so basic, such as an installation process would be so difficult to find!

Dave

[Korny]

What exactly is your question?
The *.deb package installs easily on a 32 bit debian based distro, you just need to install real java from sun, its available in the Ubuntu repos.
To install using tar is quite simple, it just doesn't account for dependencies which there aren't that many for sage anyhow
All of which has been covered in this post on what you need to install.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Korny

What exactly is your question?
The *.deb package installs easily on a 32 bit debian based distro, you just need to install real java from sun, its available in the Ubuntu repos.
To install using tar is quite simple, it just doesn't account for dependencies which there aren't that many for sage anyhow
All of which has been covered in this post on what you need to install.

I would like to know what steps are needed to install SageTV. I tried running the debian install on Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 32-bit using the GUI. The progress bar quickly went to 98% and the installation hung.

Is it possible to install SageTV with the GUI? If it is, how do I get past the hanging installation? I am never prompted for the key.

If SageTV is installed with command line, what are the commands necessary to install SageTV?

Dave

[bastafidli]

Originally Posted by davephan

Thanks for the links Gerry. I tried them and they did not work for me. Some of them are with old SageTV version and I think old Java.

I haven't found any clear Linux SageTV installation instructions yet. I'm amazed that something so basic, such as an installation process would be so difficult to find!

Dave

Have you tried this? http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29968
These are still valid even with latest Sage and CentOS.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by davephan

I would like to know what steps are needed to install SageTV. I tried running the debian install on Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 32-bit using the GUI. The progress bar quickly went to 98% and the installation hung.

Is it possible to install SageTV with the GUI? If it is, how do I get past the hanging installation? I am never prompted for the key.

If SageTV is installed with command line, what are the commands necessary to install SageTV?

Dave

I believe there was a posting in one of the links above that says the hang occurs because it is requesting the Sage license. I believe that is said the window may be hidden or that you need to use a terminal window to complete it. If you're going to run Linux you need to get comfortable with the command line and get away from the GUI. Not all GUI utilities has all the features that you may need. The coomand line is unavoidable. (At least that has been my experience.)

Gerry

[drewg]

Originally Posted by davephan

Is it possible to install SageTV with the GUI? If it is, how do I get past the hanging installation? I am never prompted for the key.

If SageTV is installed with command line, what are the commands necessary to install SageTV?

Dave

Follow the directions in this link:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...pkg#post481236

Specifically the "sudo dpkg -i ./sagetv-client_7.0.23_i386.deb"

And, I don't mean to be insulting, but if you're having this much trouble, you should probably go back to windows. SageTV for linux, while available to anyone, does require a bit of linux knowledge. I think it is a kind of chicken/egg scenario -- they don't have the manpower to dedicate to polishing the install because there aren't many customers. On the flipside, I'll bet lots of linux neophytes like you give up in disgust due to the packaging issues.

Drew

[kbyrd]

The hang problem is almost certainly what I and drewg said. If it isn't then installing from the cmdline using the 'sudo...' command that drewg gave will at least spit out some errors that you can post here and we can use to help you debug.

Distributing non-distro (and especially commericial) software on Linux is hard. It's really hard if the vendor is targeting "Linux" and not just Ubuntu 10.10. Imagine if there were slightly different versions of Windows. Each could possibly have a slightly different version of various libraries and programs that your app depends on. Now for each of those versions, some of them are very stable and don't change much, a few change fairly often updating libraries and such at least every 3-6 months. That's Linux.

If you live in Linux, you get used to this and you understand what is likely to go wrong during an install and what it typically looks like so it's sometimes difficult for us Linux heads to get out of our point-of-view and think of steps that are automatic to us.

Now, about install instructions. I've been frustrated by the lack of tar.gz instructions, but I swear I found them at some point. I can't now. You do have to satisfy the dependencies yourself (installing various programs from your distro), but IIRC, the list used to be big but now is quite small. This whole "untar, figure out what else you need on your own" method is old school, but it's pretty common for complex 3rd-party software. As for the deb packages. I'm completely disagree with the idea that the package makes you enter a license. The package should not require any user interaction. It's not a trivial problem to solve for Sage, as it's server software so there's no obvious place for a GUI to tell you the server isn't running because your license key hasn't been entered. In any case, in my not so humble opinion pulling it out of the installer, then having the log file tell you on startup "HEY! No license key!!!" would be a huge net win.

I guess this post is making a bunch of excuses for why Linux installs of commerical non-distro provided software is hard. There should be a good set of tar.gz install instructions, but I can't find them now. Even so, they would be very general, sort of like:
1) Untar into /opt/sagetv/server
2) run keygen.sh from the cmdline
3) go install the following in the way appropriate to your distro:
-- 32-bit jvm version x.y or later.
-- 32-bit libmaad version x.y or later.
-- 32-bit mplayer version x.y or later.

4) setup sage to start at boot in the way appropriate to your distro.

Notice steps 3 and 4 aren't actually helpful with real commands you should run? That's the differences between Linux distros.

[kbyrd]

Given Dave's trouble, I think we need to just put up a few install docs. Is there a wiki somewhere we can collaborate on this? I'm not volunteering because doing the doc correctly would mean starting my install from scratch and I'm not willing to do that now, but maybe we can all piece it together collectively.

I think the tar.gz docs from Sage are out of date, IIRC they don't reflect the actual current dependencies.

Volunteers? Wiki space?

[bcjenkins]

SageTV has a new wikispaces area. I am planning on doing a writeup, it will be much more involved than what I originally had intended so it will take a while.

FWIW - I ran through a dry run install via a VM this morning with the following commands on Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ maverick partner"
sudo apt-get update   
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
sudo update-alternatives --config java
java -version #To Confirm
sudo apt-get install libfaac0 #SageTV Dependency
wget http://download.sage.tv/linuxweb/sagetv-server_7.0.23_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./sagetv-server_7.0.23_i386.deb

One thing to note: The firewire library dependency is for an older version of what ships with Maverick. Since I don't have a firewire tuning device, I can't test if a symbolic link would suffice.

B

[davephan]

Originally Posted by kbyrd

Given Dave's trouble, I think we need to just put up a few install docs. Is there a wiki somewhere we can collaborate on this? I'm not volunteering because doing the doc correctly would mean starting my install from scratch and I'm not willing to do that now, but maybe we can all piece it together collectively.

I think the tar.gz docs from Sage are out of date, IIRC they don't reflect the actual current dependencies.

Volunteers? Wiki space?

I can test the documentation. My Linux server is a long way from production. I can easily switch between different distros and reverse installation attempts in a few minutes with Clonezilla imaging.

The finished documentation should probably go at the top of the Linux section, or a link could go there.

Dave

[kbyrd]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

SageTV has a new wikispaces area. I am planning on doing a writeup, it will be much more involved than what I originally had intended so it will take a while.

FWIW - I ran through a dry run install via a VM this morning with the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ maverick partner"
sudo apt-get update   
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
sudo update-alternatives --config java
java -version #To Confirm
sudo apt-get install libfaac0 #SageTV Dependency
wget http://download.sage.tv/linuxweb/sagetv-server_7.0.23_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./sagetv-server_7.0.23_i386.deb

One thing to note: The firewire library dependency is for an older version of what ships with Maverick. Since I don't have a firewire tuning device, I can't test if a symbolic link would suffice.

B

Would you edit this to list the version you were running? I can guess that it's Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit, but being explicit might help searchers.

[bastafidli]

Actually all the solutions which were mentioned in this thread are in my opinion just workarounds. I have no problem with them since I have the skills and abilities to perform them, but if Sage is serious about supporting platforms other than Windows, they should take a good look at for example Crashplan. Crashplan is Java system level application which is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux, provides easy way to download it, install it and configure it. There is no technical limitation why this couldnt be done by Sage, it is just matter or priorities and willingness.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

SageTV has a new wikispaces area. I am planning on doing a writeup, it will be much more involved than what I originally had intended so it will take a while.

FWIW - I ran through a dry run install via a VM this morning with the following commands on Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ maverick partner"
sudo apt-get update   
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
sudo update-alternatives --config java
java -version #To Confirm
sudo apt-get install libfaac0 #SageTV Dependency
wget http://download.sage.tv/linuxweb/sagetv-server_7.0.23_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./sagetv-server_7.0.23_i386.deb

One thing to note: The firewire library dependency is for an older version of what ships with Maverick. Since I don't have a firewire tuning device, I can't test if a symbolic link would suffice.

B

I took a run though your first script listed above.

I recovered the computer to a Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 32-bit with 288 patch after the base OS install, this is my 'base 2' image (the base 1 image is without the patches).

The first two lines appear to run OK.

The 3rd line:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin

Runs and ends with the following screen:

Package configuration
Coniguring sun-java6-jre

Operating System Distributor License for Java v1.1 (DLJ)

Operating System Distributor License for Java version 1.1 (DLJ)

SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. ("SUN") IS WILLING TO LICENSE THE JAVA PLATFORM
STANDARD EDITION DEVELOPER KIT ("JDK" - THE "SOFTWARE" TO YOU ONLY UPON
THE CONDITIONAL THAT YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE TERMS CONTAINED IN THIS LICENSE
AGREEMENT (THE "AGREEMENT"). PLEASE READ THE AGREEMENT CAREFULLY. BY
INSTALLING, USING, OR DISTRIBUTING THIS SOFTWARE, YOU ACCEPT ALL OF THE
TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT.

1. DEFINITIONS. "Software" means the code indentified above in binary
form, any other machine readable materials including, but not
limited to, libraries, source files, header files, and data files).

<Ok>


I cannot escape from the screen above. Hitting the <enter> or <esc> key does not remove the screen. I can close the terminal and start a new terminal. I can open a new tab. I opened a new tab and continued.

The 4th line:

sudo update-altenatives --config java

Results with the following:

There is only one alternative link group java: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java

Nothing to configure.

The 5th line:

java -version

Results with the following:

OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.9.7) (6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1)

Open JDK Sever VM (build 19.0-b09, mixed mode)

The 6th line:

sudo apt-get install libfaac0

Results with the following:

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open
(11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory
(/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?


The 7th line:

wget http://download.sage.tv/linuxweb/sag....0.23_i386.deb

Resulted with the 25.7 meg download in 9.6 seconds.


The 8th line:

sudo dpkg -i ./sagetv-server_7.0.23_i386.deb

Resulted with

SUCCESS!

Activation key was written to file: key

chmod: cannot access '/var/media/video': no such file or directory
chmod: cannot access '/var/media/pictures': no such file or directory
chmod: cannot access '/var/media/music': no such file or directory

Executing pre-scripts
Starting server mode
Processing triggers for ureadahead
unreadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot

I then rebooted the computer and was able to connect with a HD-200 to the Linux SageTV server. The HVR-2250 was not recognized, but I did not try to install drivers for that card yet. The HDHomerun was seen by the system, but I did not configured it yet. I tried playing back some on-line HD videos and it did work and look great. There was a lot of lag at times in the menu, where the lag could have been 30 seconds or maybe closer to 60 seconds at times. I don't see that type of lag in the Windows XP SageTV system, which is using identical hardware.

I did run though the install about 4 times and docuemented the responses during the installation. I could try running through the installation several more times to determine if the same responses are predictable from each installation.

I took an image of the 'functional' Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 32-bit Linux SageTV installation, so I can easily recover to that working state.

The lag in the menu system is concerning. I could test the current installation more, or try other installation scripts.

I would also like to try the CentOS installation with the detailed documentation.


Dave

[bcjenkins]

Dave

Press tab to highlight the ok button and press enter. You need Sun JRE not the openjdk.

B

[davephan]

I took another run at the install process. This time I pressed 'tab' on the screen with the "OK". There was a second place to 'tab' to a selection. There were some differences in the installation, where I was given 3 options to install JDK Java, JDK Java, or JRE Java. I chose JRE Java.

The java version command showed:
Java version "1.6.0_24"
Java (TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_24-b07)
Java HotSpot (TM) Server VM (build 19.1-b02, mixed mode)

The installation did complete, and I could connect with the HD-200. There were many times when the screen would freeze on the HD-200 when trying to step through the configuration screens. The 'freeze' would last for several minutes sometimes. I also tried to install several plug-ins. None installed. The Java heap seems to be set very low. Maybe increasing the parameters will help. When stepping through the configuration screens on the HD-200, the freezes would happen many times.

I assume that the screen freezes are very abnormal. I don't think anyone would tolerate screen freeze like that. The computer is an i-7 950 3.06 gig quad-core with 3 gigs of 1333 meg RAM, so I don't think that is causing the problems. I could try installing Ubuntu from scratch without using an image for the base install, although I suspect that the HD-200 screen freezes, which sometimes last for several minutes, is being caused by something else.

I still plan on trying CentOS and any other flavor of Linux that might be a better choice for SageTV.

The eight steps documenting the install process for Ubuntu made it possible for me to install the SageTV Linux version. Adding some information to the steps about expected responses, and that the 'tab' key is needed on two of the screens would be very helpful.

The HD-200 screen freezes make the Linux SageTV software unusable for 'production' use at this point in time until the screen freezing can be resolved. I rarely have screen freezes with the HD-200 using my Windows XP SageTV computer. When those freezes happen, there is normally a spinning wheel. The Linux SageTV version, the freezes usually don't have the spinning wheel. When the screen unfreezes, sometimes the screen will jump between several screens very fast, as if the commands were in a queue and were allowed to be processed.

Dave

[kbyrd]

To davephan:

Yes, those freezes aren't normal, especially for a box with the specs you gave. Search the forums for java heap, you should find a bunch of help. The file you want to edit is startsagecore, which is in the root of your sagetv install directory, probably, /opt/sagetv/server/

To everyone else, one concern I have about the instructions is that davephan's need to know about tabbing over to "OK" is something nearly all users familiar with Ubuntu or Debian would know. It's a standard behavior for ncurses (typically blue white screens in a terminal using text to emulate a sort of GUI) installers, which are common with deb and rpm installers before GUI package managers. It's a bit like knowing I may need to alt-tab during an install on Windows because maybe a Window got hidden that is waiting for input.

My first instinct is that we the instruction should be as explicit as possible, but the problem is that this may set the expectation that the instructions will take a user from zero to a fully working SageTV install no matter what their setup. Dave, in your case I'm expecting you'll have trouble with drivers for the HVR-2250. Getting Linux drivers working for things like this just aren't usually as simple as we would like them to be. The drivers you want often aren't available from the distro, so you have to go find them from the upstream project, and then figure out how to install them in a way appropriate to your system.

[davephan]

I isolated the problem for the Linux SageTV freezes. The problem was one of the two on-board network adapters has intermittent connectivity. I switched to the other on-board network adapters, which resolved that problem.

It would have been helpful if the "ncurses" message simply mentioned using the "tab" key in the message unless assuming everyone knows the correct keystrokes. It wouldn't take much effort to simply put that in the message.

Next, I will increase the JVM and determine if that eliminates the occasional spinning circles. I would then like to see if I can get the Linux version to work with the HVR-2250. It looks like the Linux version does not work with the Netflix / Hulu plugins, which would be a serious drawback to using the Linux SageTV version.

I timed the SageTV installation with the 8 steps, and it only took about 15 minutes. It only takes about 7 to 8 minutes to take a full image or recover from a full image with Clonezilla using a USB drive to store the images.


Dave

[drewg]

Originally Posted by davephan

It would have been helpful if the "ncurses" message simply mentioned using the "tab" key in the message unless assuming everyone knows the correct keystrokes. It wouldn't take much effort to simply put that in the message.

Its not really in SageTV's control. That's just the way that the Sun (now Oracle) java installer works on *nix.

That said, it *would* save a lot of pain and suffering if SageTV was usable with the default linux openjdk. Getting the correct version of java is probably the biggest hurdle to a successful sagetv installation.

Drew

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by davephan

I would then like to see if I can get the Linux version to work with the HVR-2250.

Dave,

This one may be a ton more complex as the drivers are tied to the kernel. You will likely need to setup a clone of the driver tree from kernellabs.com to build them. They're the ones that support this card.

The card will work for digital, analog is in question. What is your intended use?

B

[davephan]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Dave,

This one may be a ton more complex as the drivers are tied to the kernel. You will likely need to setup a clone of the driver tree from kernellabs.com to build them. They're the ones that support this card.

The card will work for digital, analog is in question. What is your intended use?

B

I only need digital. I use the HVR-2250 for over the air digital TV. I used to have one of my HVR-2250's setup for the analog channel 3 and channel 4 outputs of the Comcast DTA boxes. But the output quality of the DTA boxes are lousy.

Can you tell me how to get the HVR-2250 to work with digital on the Linux SageTV version? It sounds more complex than simply installing Windows drivers.


Dave