Uhm.. I saw this advertisement on the blog .. DARK ORBIT … what kind of game is this ????

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It needs bandwidth …. and therefor it is slow .. I’ll check it later when I have more bandwidth available …. but it has potential ..

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After listening to users of CH3SNAS I finally present you the 1.04RC3 which will be released on the official webpage soon as 1.04-0627 version

Release notes:

In this release we have fixed a number of issues needed to be fixed for an official release:

(this release is about to be released through the official channel as wel as official supported download)

1. http://ch3snas/server.pem & http://ch3snas/etc/shadow can reveal information: fixed
2. Certain UPnP Devices (Like PlayStation 3) could only browse but not play content: fixed
3. Files > 2GB could not be played entirely: should be fixed
4. Issue with mt-daapd when using bonjour tool: Partly fix: we only support to see the status. New features needed can be proposed and if useful, we can try to add.

Please reset your device to factory defaults after upgrading to have certain scripts work properly. Without resetting to factory defaults I cannot guarantee any option to work properly.

Download the 1.04RC3 file here.

Posted in Generic, Work 17 Comments »

Announcement:

v1.09.14

• 1. Solving the artefact issue on MKV files caused some issues at the On Screen Display: fixed.
• 2. CFULLHDMA could not work with Twonky Media Server on Music Level due to usage of M3U by Twonky. CFULLHDMA used it as PlayList, Twonky has other purpose for it, so things got messed up: fixed.
• 3. Issues with playing DVD’s and subtitles. It could not switched correctly (manually) and when selected it did not start at the beginning of the video. Fixed.
• 4. IMedia entries (like NFS) could not be edited after saving it. Fixed.
• 5. In the background errors on NFS could be created. An error causes the device to crash: fixed.
• 6. Files with for instance dvsd codec type crashed the codec engine: dvsd is not supported, crash fixed.
• 7. Certain movie files could not played properly (freezing video): fixed.

only available for beta testers (Check your mail. gmail accounts: it can be in your spam mailbox, Hotmail accounts are totally unknown if they get it .. Unreliable email host.

Posted in Generic, Work 37 Comments »

Although I like the articles on MPCCLUB I do not always agree what is written.

Today I read a story about: Media Players: ‘2 cents from a stranger’.

Quote:

Another example is the network connection on many of the media players today. People would expect them to have high throughput GBIT or minimum 10/100 network connections for transferring files to a media player which has an internal hard drive. What‟s not transparent is that media chips used (mostly Sigma Designs) have limited I/O performance that deliver nowhere near what you’d expect from GBIT or 10/100 network as you experience daily on a PC. Limitation by the chipset‟s performance is about 4-5 Mbit for 10/100. Did the manufacturer lie to you in any of both cases? No. The network connection is GBIT or is 10/100, it‟s just a name; only, it does not perform as you’d expect, due to limitations of the processor but it does not change the fact the player has a GBIT or 10/100 network connection.

In this story it is stated that the I/O performance of SD 8635 is limited and it’s performance is about 4-5Mbit (10/100) and that Gigabit is no use. Without any further explanation other than ‘limitation of chipset’, This is ‘true’. But if such statement is told over and over again, you can think that Gigabit is impossible and only a marketing trick and totally cannot get better performance than 10/100.

So I think I have to correct some things… Prepare for some technical details:

Standard MediaPlayers do use the MII connection of the Sigma Designs chipset which is indeed capable of 10/100 Network PHY with throughput speeds up to 4~6, maybe 7 Mb/s. 

Normally it is common to use RMGII or PCIe and not PCI to connect to a Giga PHY since the throughput of PCI is ‘too’ slow for a real Gigabit connections. Gigabit need a lot of processor power from the CPU side. As the clock of SD8635 is only 300MHz you can imagine that 100% Gigabit speed is impossible (60 to 110Mb/s).

When I check the Conceptronic CFULLHDMA, which has Gigabit, you can wonder why they choose for Gigabit rather than 10/100 not only being it a ‘marketing trick’ when you read this article.

The reason is very simple: they did not use the MII interface but connected the Gigabit PHY to the PCI interface. This will result in a higher speed for the Gigabit PHY but not the full speed as explained before. (you should use RGMII or PCIe).

During long time testing I got a steady 11Mb/s throughput speed. 

We can discuss about the fact that certain movies will not extend the speed of 10/100 but I’ve seen that a Gigalan can and will achieve better performance using Gigabit rather than 10/100 especially when playing ’critical’ high bitrate HD content.

Yes, 11Mb/s is not a full gigabit speed but is giving just that extra boost. So writing that Gigabit is ‘impossible’ or a fake marketing trick is not correct. (as long as you implement it as described above).

Note: the part about UPnP servers not capable of supporting subtitle files is also not totally true..  The Conceptronic CH3SNAS in combination with C54WMP or CFULLHDMA can do that .. It has all to do with ‘active-request’ for the SRT file rather than being passive waiting for it, what is common for UPnP AV based Players.

note: this message is my personal opinion .. nothing else..

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I’ve written earlier a simple howto for users with a CH3SNAS to work with NFS. UNFS is a user space implementation of the NFSv3 protocol. This is working flawlessly on the CH3SNAS with various Linux PC’s I am running (CentOS, Debian, Linux Embedded device etc.. )

but for a VMware implementation I need the READDIRPLUS procedure which is not available in UNFS. So I need to run Kernel-NFS on the CH3SNAS

Fonz fun_plug is providing Kernel NFS (enabled in the CH3SNAS) and UNFS. Installation is easy and almost fool proof.

The issue is following: on all my linux boxes (CentOS, Debian etc.. ) I get following message:

mount: mount to NFS server ‘192.168.1.60′ failed: timed out (retrying).

• rcpinfo -p 192.168.1.60 gives all correct info
• showmount -e 192.168.1.60 gives all correct exports
• rpcinfo -u 192.168.1.60 gives:

program 100005 version 1 ready and waiting
program 100005 version 2 ready and waiting
program 100005 version 3 ready and waiting

• Showmount -a 192.168.1.60 gives the mount points I ‘tried’ to use:

All mount points on 192.168.1.60:
192.168.1.100:/mnt/HD_a2

and even syslogd gives on the NFS server (CH3SNAS):

Jun 12 18:33:07 DEVELOPMENT daemon.notice mountd[1868]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.100:615 for /mnt/HD_a2 (/mnt/HD_a2)

• Portmap is running at server and client!!

I am totally not understanding why I get time-outs. I do not have a firewall, I do not use iptables. Today I tried in another environment the same: always the error:

mount: mount to NFS server ‘192.168.1.60′ failed: timed out (retrying).

suddenly here at home after about 20 minutes trying to mount the NFS share, the NFS server has been mounted on my local system. But when umounting and mounting again I have again same situation. In my work environment it was totally not possible (standard Debian setup and a CentOS configuration) to have the NFS share mounted. Although it is similar setup ..

So although al tools tells me that everything is correct: I am not getting any mount :-(

Is there anyone with enough NFS knowledge who can tell me why the NFS share is not mounted?

Posted in Generic, Server-Status 8 Comments »

Vandaag mezelf de volgende opdracht gegeven: zoek een tooltje die het mogelijk maak om meerdere bestanden in meerdere folders tegelijkertijd te kunnen kopieren. Normaliter is dit een zeer geduldig werkje die erg eentonig is en tijdrovend.. Maar de mannekes van Sobolsoft snappen wat ik nodig had. En het is dan natuurlijk een ‘koud’ kunstje om binnen de korste keren het zonder noemenswaardige kosten aan de praat te krijgen ..

Heerlijk!

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Om het niet te vergeten: het vinden van CNAME’s onder een domein: tjsek op welke DNS server het domein draait en vraag daarvanaf de domein  informatie

dig NS domeinnaam

dig [@DNSserver] domeinnaam [type]

bijvoorbeeld:
dig @ns2.garnierprojects.nl geenstijl.nl AXFR

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During my summerholiday in China (1 month) I received several reactions from users around Europe writing that they have (had) the same issues with the HP C5280 Photosmart printer as I was reporting in August Due to my database removal I lost some comments.

I do not own this printer myself anymore: after 2 failing devices I got my money back. But customers do report that even revised printers from HP (Those printers should have had an QC (Quality Check) by HP but still do fail the DVD / CD Label printing. I do urge HP to solve this issue as we are still looking for a printer which is capable of doing its job correctly!

HP DVD print problem

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“Hi I am from the United States of America and I do not like our President’”

Standard sentence from US people when we introduced ourselves during our holiday trip in china 2 weeks ago .. Hilarious.

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