HOWTO: PS3 Media Server on Ubuntu 9.10 karmic koala

[industrai]

right! Added JRE stuff to original post.

[undead1512]

First of all, let me thank you industrai for this installation guide. The instructions are very clear and easy to follow.

Then the story begins..
I installed Ubuntu 9.10 64bit and updated ubuntu. I did NOTHING else.
Then I started following the steps in the guide.

Step 1 completed with no problems.

In Step 2, the first problem came with this :
sudo checkinstall -D --install=yes --fstrans=no --pakdir "$HOME/Desktop" \
I had to install 'checkinstall' before I could complete that part.

Step 3 went through just fine and I was able to launch PMS.sh and share a folder with media.

The problem came when I tried to play .mkv and divx/vxid videos. MKV 1080p video played out only after going to the #Transcode# folder with the PS3 and selecting tsmuxer.
Divx/xvid videos didn't play at all.

I am not expecting anyone to come up with a simple solution for my problem but I'd like to know.. Has anyone installed the PS3 Media Server with the exact steps mentioned in the original post (to a fresh Ubuntu 9.10 installation) and got the mediaserver working correctly ? Should these steps be everything that I need or is there some preliminary stuff that I need to do before going through the steps that indutrai has kindly provided us ?
Sorry for being such a beginner with this linux stuff but I've finally had it with MS and desperately want to get rid of Winblows once and for all.

[industrai]

In Step 2, the first problem came with this :
sudo checkinstall -D --install=yes --fstrans=no --pakdir "$HOME/Desktop" \
I had to install 'checkinstall' before I could complete that part.

I'll add that to the original post, thanks!

The problem came when I tried to play .mkv and divx/vxid videos. MKV 1080p video played out only after going to the #Transcode# folder with the PS3 and selecting tsmuxer.
Divx/xvid videos didn't play at all.

Funny, this happened to me over the weekend when I was using PS3 Media Server with an XBOX 360. I haven't seen it with a PS3 though.

Though I don't know why this is happening for you, I can tell you that when I ran PMS.sh by clicking on it instead of running it through a terminal, nothing seemed to work. After I did that a couple of times, I could see that things weren't right, by going to the README tab and seeing that it was blank. I think what happens is that the environment variables arent sourced correctly, so it doesn't see the linux directory or something like that.

-I'd try running it from the terminal to see if it works there, and check the status tab when you run the movie to see if you get any errors. Maybe it's a permissions thing? Also, try running

Code: Select all

 mplayer filename.avi

to see if it can run the file you are trying to play.

Hopefully you can figure it out. If you do, post it here so others can benefit from the solution.

[industrai]

also.. make sure you install ubuntu-restricted-extras. I added that to the post today

[homeofpoe]

I spent forever yesterday trying to troubleshoot why my PS3 wasn't playing any of the files properly. As industria suggests, running it from the terminal helped -- but the key part was not to use the full path (./home/<name>/Sources/pms/PMS.sh), but to first cd into the directory, then running it from there.

I imagine this could probably be fixed manually by putting the 'cd /path/to/dir' in the PMS.sh file yourself? I'll have to try that at some point.

[undead1512]

also.. make sure you install ubuntu-restricted-extras. I added that to the post today

Thanks ! I'll see if that helps.
I always launch PMS.sh from the terminal (from the PMS directory with command ./PMS.sh) so that's not what's causing my problem.

Just out of curiosity, I will make yet another fresh Ubuntu install just to see if I get the same problem every time...

[industrai]

I spent forever yesterday trying to troubleshoot why my PS3 wasn't playing any of the files properly. As industria suggests, running it from the terminal helped -- but the key part was not to use the full path (./home/<name>/Sources/pms/PMS.sh), but to first cd into the directory, then running it from there.

I imagine this could probably be fixed manually by putting the 'cd /path/to/dir' in the PMS.sh file yourself? I'll have to try that at some point.

Yeah i was having this problem with my startup script.. and I did exactly that, first cd into the directory then do a ./PMS.sh

All that has been added to the original post. Hope it helps.

[undead1512]

also.. make sure you install ubuntu-restricted-extras. I added that to the post today

After reinstalling Ubuntu 9.10 and applying the updates, I installed the checkinstall and the ubuntu-restricted-extras. (a quick reboot after this phase).

Then started following the instructions..
The first problem seems to come after this:

$ sudo apt-get install subversion
$ cd $HOME
$ svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
$ cd $HOME/mplayer
$ CFLAGS="-O2 -fomit-frame-pointer" ./configure --confdir=/etc/mplayer
$ make

When running 'make', it takes awhile to finish but when it does I see this:
.
.
.sub.c:(.text+0x1ea8): undefined reference to `force_load_font'
sub.c:(.text+0x1eb4): undefined reference to `osd_font_scale_factor'
sub.c:(.text+0x1ecc): undefined reference to `osd_font_scale_factor'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [mplayer] Error 1
janne@janlnx:~/mplayer$

Also after running --> sudo checkinstall -D --install=yes --fstrans=no --pakdir "$HOME/Desktop" --pkgname mplayer --backup=no --deldoc=yes --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --default --pkgversion "3:1.0~svn-`grep "#define VERSION" version.h | cut -d"-" -f2`"

I see this:

sub.c:(.text+0x1ea8): undefined reference to `force_load_font'
sub.c:(.text+0x1eb4): undefined reference to `osd_font_scale_factor'
sub.c:(.text+0x1ecc): undefined reference to `osd_font_scale_factor'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [mencoder] Error 1

**** Installation failed. Aborting package creation.

Cleaning up...OK

Bye.


Any ideas why that happens ? I am assuming that theres no point in continuing with the instructions before this is solved ? Any suggestions / hint / advice would be greatly appreciated

[industrai]

When running 'make', it takes awhile to finish but when it does I see this:
.
.
.sub.c:(.text+0x1ea8): undefined reference to `force_load_font'
sub.c:(.text+0x1eb4): undefined reference to `osd_font_scale_factor'
sub.c:(.text+0x1ecc): undefined reference to `osd_font_scale_factor'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [mplayer] Error 1

Any ideas why that happens ? I am assuming that theres no point in continuing with the instructions before this is solved ? Any suggestions / hint / advice would be greatly appreciated

You are right in your assumption. If make fails, there is no point going any further. This means it fails to compile, and running checkinstall will either fail or install an uncompiled mplayer.

I googled those errors and it seems others have had the same problem compiling mplayer too, but I didn't see anyone resolve it. One person suggested in a forum to install mplayer-fonts package, but that didn't resolve it. That seems to make sense though, maybe the mplayer build references something in mplayer-fonts, and other mplayer packages that it needs to compile. Did you run sudo apt-get install mplayer this time around? I think when you run that, it installs a bunch of other mplayer packages, like mplayer-fonts, and maybe the svn build of mplayer doesn't build these packages when you make it.

My other stab in the dark at this is that maybe the svn version of mplayer that you downloaded was incomplete? See any errors during the DL of svn? Or maybe there is something wrong in the current mplayer code that makes it fail to compile. You could try waiting a day or two and downloading a different version...

Hope that helps, let us know how it goes.

[undead1512]

No luck, damn

I started from scratch again. Installed Ubuntu, installed all updates, installed ubuntu-restricted-extras (and checkinstall and ant).
After this I installed mplayer with sudo apt-get install mplayer, then the fonts (just in case that matters) by running sudo apt-get install mplayer-fonts.
After those mencoder and ffmpeg.

As far as my understading goes, I think all of the above were installed without any problems. (errors or warnings etc).

Installing subversion, ok.
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
This looked ok to me aswell. I didn't spot any errors.
'make' seems to run for a minute or two and then stops at the same errors that I copypasted earlier.

Is there anything else that I could try ? Should I try it without installing mplayer in the beginning ?
I'm also gonna google around but that probably wont do any help because I'm such a beginner with Linux. Well, you never know..