Acer Aspire Revo

I recently bought an Acer Aspire Revo with the idea of turning it in to a media center. I decided to install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and use XBMC (Xbox Media Center) as a front end. Here’s how I did it:

First I installed Ubuntu 9.10 to a USB stick. I did this using the USB Startup Disc Creator app which is installed, by default, with Ubuntu. It’s under System > Administration. I just pointed it to the ISO of 9.10, it detected my USB stick and off it went. So, with Ubuntu on my USB I popped the USB in to the Revo and booted it up.

When the Revo is turned on, it will make a beep (the POST – Power On Self Test), as soon as you hear that, hold down F12, that’ll give you a BIOS-like boot menu where I could choose from either the Revo drive, or my USB. Obviously, I chose my USB stick.

After a short time, Ubuntu loads, first thing I did was to make sure that my wireless would work, and it did, no problems there. So, I started Ubuntu installing…

On first boot of Ubuntu it asks you if you want to install the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, without these, you can’t reach resolutions higher than 800 x 600, so you want to install them.

NOTE: The Revo can connect to an ordinary PC monitor, but I wanted to connect it to my TV. My TV didn’t have an HDMI port, but it did have a DVI port so, having bought an HDMI > DVI cable I booted Ubuntu to get a black screen. Only after much research did I find out that my TV couldn’t display anything above VGA (800 x 600). So, if you get display problems with the HDMI output of the Revo, it may well be your TV.

One other thing you may notice is the lack of sound. This is easily fixed by right clicking on the speaker icon in the top bar, in Ubuntu, and choosing ‘Sound Preferences‘. In that window choose the Hardware tab and in the drop down menu (beside ‘Profile:’, choose ‘Output Digital Stereo (HDMI)‘ and click OK. You should now have sound!

Anyway, with a new TV with HDMI, I booted Ubuntu and proceeded to install XBMC. To install XBMC, you need to add the XBMC PPA and install the xbmc package, in Karmic, this is done using:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xbmc

For Intredpid and such-like, see the information on the XBMC wiki:

http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=HOW-TO_install_XBMC_for_Linux_on_Ubuntu_with_a_minimal_installation_step-by-step

So, with XBMC installed, I loaded it up and there it was:

XBMC main screen with the new Confluence theme.

Next I used another USB stick to copy some media files to the Revo HD to see if XBMC would play xvid, mp3  etc. Or would I need to install the Ubuntu extra. Yep worked fine, no need for me to install the Ubuntu extras myself.

Next, for me, the hard bit. Would it be possible to get wireless file transfers going between my desktop PC (also with Karmic) and the Revo. I eventually managed it (with little to no SAMBA experience), here’s how:

I did this on both my desktop machine AND the Revo:

Right click on Videos folder, which is the folder I want to share on my desktop and on the Revo, this could easily be the Music folder or whatever folder you’ve created. Select Properties from the menu, then the Share tab. Tick to ‘Share This Folder‘. If SAMBA is not installed, it’ll ask if you want to install it now, which you should. You’ll need to restart your session, but don’t worry – this won’t reboot the machine.

To share a folder (with SAMBA installed):
* right click on a folder and choose ‘Sharing Options‘
* tick the box to share the folder and also, if needed, tick the box to allow creation/deletion of files
* click ‘Create Share’ button.

Do the above for each folder on your desktop/Revo that you want to share.

If you try and connect to the Revo from the desktop (or vice versa) you’ll be asked for a password. What you need to do is ON BOTH THE REVO AND DESKTOP is, in a terminal, run:

sudo smbpasswd -a USERNAME

(USERNAME being the name of a user on the computer/Rev), supply a password for SAMBA to use with that user, then:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

NOW you can connect to the Revo from the desktop and vice versa, drag and drop files between them and, much my surprise (And delight) even stream from the desktop to the Revo!

NOTE: If you drag files to the Revo/desktop and get a permissions error, you probably haven’t ticked the box (mentioned above) to allow creating files. Once you’ve ticked the box, you’ll need to run the samba restart command, above. Failing that, you need to update your SAMBA install, check your package manager for newer files.

To finish off your media center, you’ll need a remote control. I bought a cheap CyberLink remote from eBuyer.com, plugged it in, Ubuntu recognised it and I could immediately use it in XBMC! The only problem is that I don’t have a button on the remote to return to the home screen in XBMC, but everything else works – I can play, pause, ffwd, raise/lower volume and so on.

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One alternative to XBMC, that I’ve been hearing good things about, is Boxee. It’s available at: boxee.tv, but it doesn’t work so easily on 9.10, only 9.04, but – according to what I’ve read – you can install the file liblzo1 from 9.04 on 9.10 and Boxee should then work fine in Karmic (source: Popey.com). If I get bored of playing with XBMC (doubtful) and need another project, I may try installing Boxee… watch this space!Similar Posts:

• Boxee and the Acer Aspire Revo
• uShare + Xbox 360 = media streaming goodness
• Using a Cyberlink remote with the new Boxee Beta
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First, install uShare. You can get it from the Ubuntu repos. As of writing, it’s at version 1.1a

Ok, now to configure uShare using sudo, so:

sudo gedit /etc/ushare.conf

You need to find the following entries, and make sure they look like this:

USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_DIR=/path/to/your/media
ENABLE_XBOX=yes

DANGER! DANGER! You must make sure there are no spaces in those entries (before, or after, the equals) and the ‘yes’ MUST be in lower case. No, I’m not kidding. I had ENABLE_XBOX as ‘YES’ and it just would not work until I changed it to ‘yes’. Also, complex names in the USHARE_DIR seems to make it show ‘No videos found’. Rename the directory, or copy your files to another directory. It might be the use of a space that causes this, not sure.

Not sure if this is 100% necessary, but several posts in other blogs have said that the ENABLE_XBOX option is a bit sporadic, so it’s best to hardwire uShare to force an Xbox compatible startup. So we need to edit another uShare file:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/ushare

…and add this line at the beginning of the script (I put it after the comments):

USHARE_OPTIONS=-x

My PC has several eth options, I use eth1 for my original Xbox, so didn’t want to tinker with it, eth4 is for my router, so that left eth3. So to bring up eth3 (in my case):

sudo ifconfig eth3 192.168.3.1

Now we need to restart uShare using the init script:

sudo invoke-rc.d ushare restart

NOTE: do above command twice, I know it seems crazy, but the second time I run that command it gives  me a warning, but it works fine. If I run the command only once, the 360 can’t connect to my PC. Might just be a quirk on my PC.

Also do the above init to refresh your file listing. You can enable the web interface if you want to refresh files, but the init command works just as good. Remember to run it twice though!

OK you’re done.

Turn on your Xbox 360, go to My Xbox, across to the Video Library, and click. You should, in the next screen, see ‘ushare’ at the bottom of the list. Click it, and it should connect to your share directory. Voila! If you have mp3’s in your share dir, then come out of the video library and go in to the music library, they are all using the one share directory.

Playing AVI/DivX/XviD seems to be a bit of a problem. But one poster on the internet came with the simplistic solution of just renaming .AVI files to .WMV. Works like a charm!

NOTE: The above might work even if you have a PS3 as there are no changes made on the 360, only in installing uShare and configuring it in Ubuntu.Similar Posts:

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• How To Install Google SketchUp 7 with Wine in Ubuntu
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