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HTPC
Linux ‘screen’ command
013 years
Just a quick note about an awesome tool I’ve discovered on my travels.
The ‘screen‘ command in a linux shell.
This neat little tool allows you to run a remote shell (via SSH in my case) and run a command so that it doesn’t die after you exit the SSH session.
Normally when you exit an SSH session while a command is being run you will kill any processes being run by that session. With screen, you basically tell it to leave that particular session in the background (running) and you can come back to it at any time and check on its progress.
I’ve found it particularly useful when I’m using Rsync to dump the files from one computer to another (as in my current predicament.
So basically your essential commands are:
localhost@user:$ screen
This makes a new screen so you are given a new shell in which to type any commands you need to run in the background.
localhost@user:$ screen -ls
This will give you a list of current screen sockets open. Note the socket number so you can get back to the screen you want.
localhost@user:$ screen -r [screen socket number]
This command will reattach/restore the screen you had running to the front so that you can check on it’s progress. If at this point you exit the shell the session will still remain and you can use the same command to restore it again.
Once you are finished, just type exit and it should kill the socket and drop back to the standard shell.
If for whatever reason it doesn’t drop the socket (check with screen -ls) you can either leave it (I doubt it would use much memory anyway) or use the command screen -wipe and that will destroy all sockets that have been made.
So that’s it. What a useful tool, and very easy to use.
As always with Linux, it has many more options than described here, so you can check the man pages on it (man screen) or just screen –help will give you most of what you’ll ever need.
Later.
7MC additions/mods/tools
0Just thought I’d make up a list of all the additions i’ve added to the HTPC.
First and foremost, there’s BSE, Big Screen EPG: A great app that essentially replaces the useless Over-the-Air Free View EPG and gives you fresh data straight from the source. In addition to this, you also get categorised data (by genre e.g. sports) and most importantly, the ability to add pictures to EPG data meaning you get a title picture of the show in the guide. Cool eh?. I should also mention that this will cost you $20 for 5 licences (2 year).
Next on the list there’s Media Browser, which creates a fully catalogued library of all your videos and inside you get a very pretty interface (skinable). Also it includes support for ISO mounting, which is really cool. I used to use that particular feature lots, but not so much since I converted all of my movies to MPEG4 h.264.
Thirdly, there’s Media Studio, which allows you to pull out and rearrange or rename components of the 7MC start up menu. So for instance if you wanted to remove the movies strip, you just untick it and its gone. Also you can get themes for 7MC with Media Studio which are currently in short supply, though some are pretty good. And I suppose if you’re so inclined, you could make your own.
Then there’s MyChannelLogos, which technically I don’t need as I can do it through BSE but anyways; it automatically downloads all the logos you need for each respective channel and shows it in the 7MC TV Guide.
Next there’s Shark007’s Windows 7 Codec Pack. Now I’m sure you could live without it and work all the little things out on your own, but this takes all the work out. Basically it installs the right codecs for the job, and it works out of the box, but of course you can also fiddle and make changes yourself with relative ease. This was actually an essential part of my setup because I needed to be able to set an audio delay (in the output tab if your interested) and play mkv’s and also I wanted to utilise FFMPEG’s DXVA h.264 decoder, which uses your graphics card to take the load off the CPU.
Oh damn, I nearly forgot the absolute best, useful, life/hair-saver, MCE Standby Tool (MST).
This little baby is the only way possible, unless you really, really know your way around W7’s power management system in the registry and also know the registry configuration of Media Center very well, to ensure your HTPC acts like a PVR/TV and not a PC.
In essentials, MST takes control of deciding when your PC needs to sleep and when it needs to wake up. It can open up 7MC when you resume from sleep, it can also exit 7MC when you put it to sleep, in case it buggers up (which it most certainly will).
And finally, there’s MCEWebView, which is a set of plugins for Media Center that allows you to browse Internet TV sites (such as iView, Fixplay) using the remote (the cursor keys become the mouse).
To the people/groups who made all these tools available (and most for free),
THANKYOU!
It is thanks to your skills and generosity that I have a working HTPC running Windows 7 Media Center.
🙂