XBMC Live / Ubuntu 10.x - External HDD Problems

squire23

Not sure if anyone here is using XBMC Live but just throwing this out there in the hope someone can help me. I've installed XBMC Live backed with Ubuntu 10 on my Acer Revo (from this tutorial). Everything installed fine & I have 720p HD video working no problem. But I have 2 main problems that I can't solve no matter how much googling I've done. Also, I know absolutely f-all about Ubuntu so please bear that in mind.

1. Mounting External HDD
I have all my media on an 1.5TB External HDD at the moment (will be moving to a low-end server soon). At first I couldn't get XBMC Live to even recognise the ExHDD but now I have using the following code...

mkdir myfiles
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 myfiles

Everthing works fine from there but when I reboot I have to do this again. Obviously there's something I'm missing here to enable the ExHDD to be permamently mounted. I have read in a few places about editing the grub - & this may sound stupid but I don't even know where to begin to do that.

2. Wireless Connection
Have absolutely no idea how to enable a wireless connection for this - any ideas?

Any help appreciated
squire

pug_

First one is easy, you just need to edit the file /etc/fstab and add in the mount point.

Easiest way to do this is as follows. To edit the file from a console prompt type 'sudo nano /etc/fstab' (assuming the nano editor is installed, but if it's not there are a number of other text editors you can use). It will ask for your password so enter that and you can edit the file.

Assuming the myfiles directory is in / then add the following line to that file. If it's not in / put in the full path to myfiles...

/dev/sdb1    /myfiles    ntfs-3g    defaults    0    2

Hit Ctrl+o to save the file, and Ctrl+x to exit nano.

Reload and it should work.

Can't help with the wireless I'm afraid, but if it's not automatically supported it's probably worth having a look at the manufacturers website to see if they have linux drivers available. Rivo's are often sold with linux as an os so there should be drivers available somewhere.

squire23

Worked! Thanks man. the location of files was home/xbmc/myfiles but it seems to have worked alright. Thanks very much lad. What exactly did I just do there. I get the 1st part but what's default 0 2 about

edit: Another question - is it possible to copy files to my Acer by using the console. I don't have the wireless connection figured out yet but I want to copy a folder with skins into the home/xbmc/addons folder directly. What are the commands for this?

digitaldr

I got wifi working with the previous version of XBMC on my Revo 36100. I recently tried out 10.0 on my old Dell D620 laptop and got the wifi working with these instructions. proving that it works on non-ion motherboards too. You'll need a wired internet connection to your Revo to download the updates so make sure you have this configured before you start (I ended up reinstalling XBMC with my Revo wired to my router first).

Incidentally I used nano to begin with but you're much better off using something like putty (you'll need to have your revo connected to he net though). Allows easy copy and pasting so you can just copy and paste your psk (WPA hex key) into the files mentioned in the tutorial. You'll find your PSK in your router config page.

If for some reason you can't connect your revo (wired) to your router there's a way of installing everything you need from USB stick - can't find the link so you'll have to google it.

Filezilla is worth a look too.

Would be interested to hear how you get on.

squire23

Have read through that post - looks good. I'll try it tonight. I've actually just reinstalled XBMC Live using the XBMCFreak Live 10.0 Maverick v2 iso. The reason was that it had the most current ION Driver (260.19.29) and a fairly recent version of the kernel (Kernel 2.6.35-24). Plus I had also read a number of comments on the XBMC Forums recommending it.

I then did as digitaldr suggested and ran the installation with my Ethernet cable plugged in - worked great. Was able to download add-ons, skins etc no problem with it once it was all installed.

I wasn't able to remount the ExHDD with the original code I was using - (something kept coming up about it being already assigned to another process) but I've remounted my ExHDD in fstab with the code as provided by pug_ with 1 additioanl change to the myfiles directory as follows

sudo nano /etc/fstab

[I]>go to last line in fstab & add the following[/I]
/dev/sdb1 home/xbmc/myfiles ntfs-3g defaults 0 2

[I]>Hit Ctrl+O
>Hit Ctrl+X[/I]

...will try to get WiFi going tonight. Thanks for the help.

squire

digitaldr

Forgot to mention before - be sure to keep a good record of any changes/tweaks you made - handy when it comes to upgrading. Wish I had:(