Oct 2, 2007

Since it has LAN port, will it act as network file server ?

The LAN port is for playback files from any system connected in the same network but can't copy files.

35 comments:

Unknown said...

What is the difference between the ME1 and the MR1 and when will the MR1 be available for purchase in the United Kingdom.
Tom

Unknown said...

Is there any way of installing our own interface on the unit?

I am interested in adding some aditional features and modify the way the menus navigate.

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

If you do a port scan on the unit you will see that there is a web server and telnet server running on the unit.

Anonymous said...

Has anyone worked out how to connect to the device over the LAN? I can see that it has been assigned IP address 192.168.50.11 by the DHCP on my router, but trying to network browse to \\192.168.50.11 gives a "path not found" error.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to give the device a Host Name, so every time I power it up it will probably get a different IP Address, which I will have to find out before I can connect to it (assuming the way to connect is via IP Address).

Any advice / previous experience of this would be gratefully received.

Anonymous said...

Lewis
You cannot connect to this device to use it as Network storage. You can browse the network from it, but it will only let you stream any files found, not actually copy them to the device.

Does anyone know how to stop it previewing the files. If you have a long list it is almost impossible to navigate.

Unknown said...

I can't see any way of editing or adding to "Shortcuts", apart from the IP address of the last server entered in MISC.

Navigating to multiple computers via WORKGROUP does work, but it's a very clumsy solution.

Would be much easier and better to be able to go to Shortcuts, and then straight to any shared folders that have been added to that menu.

Unknown said...

ME1 doesn't seem to be able to stream files that are referenced by aliases, this is a feature request, please.

Anonymous said...

The ME1 does have several ports open over the network. One is a Telnet port which as soon as you connect to it you are asked for a "Venus Login." Assuming that Emprex will be a 'little' reluctant to provide me with login details, it's probably best to find other alternatives.

Digging a little deeper into what makes it tick. The player uses 'Microsoft DS' protocols to communicate with the PC which supposedly makes the player invisible over the local network.

Unknown said...

Easy to log in to ME1 through Telnet - username root and no password!

If you want to copy from and to the box over the network you can use ftpput and ftpget - I have a linkstation with FTP set up.

Not friendly exactly, but a start...

Just looking for a tiny SMB / cifs server ;-)

Stuart

Anonymous said...

Was told this would work also as a network drive :-( tried using telnet though and did login :-) complete novice to telnet, can anyone help as to where the AV files are copied to when using the edit feature. Can access them via USB but how do I do this with telnet. Tried ls *.mpg but nothing showing.

Anonymous said...

I was hoping this would solve a number of problems in one unit. Been playing all day with ftp access and keep getting unknown host. files stored in /usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1/REC by the way. Looks like i'll be returning this to MAplin in exchange for a NAS :-( a shame really as it did show promise.

Anonymous said...

it has a linux S.O., so you can put anything you want through the path /usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1/

using telnet, putty whatever, that works well with ftpget and ftpput but you have to install a ftp server in your computer.

Regards

Anonymous said...

I've been playing with my ME1 recently - you can modify the shell script files in /usr/local/etc to do pretty well whatever you like! I installed uclibc linux to a directory on the hdd, then mount and chroot to it. This has gcc, so you can build whatever you like- I'm running pure-ftpd and smbd on box startup (so can use it as a network file server) and even have a bittorrent client running.

T'is a truly wonderful piece of kit!

Anonymous said...

That's very good usage for this device.
I'm not familiar with Linux, is it possible for you to post a step by step process ?
You are genius !

Anonymous said...

Ok... It's a little involved, but I'll make a howto and stick it somewhere on the net in the next few days...

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I'm trying and trying!

Once I mount the uclibc-fs (which I have to do into an existing directory because root is read-only) I can't access the hard drive and my samba directory. Eagerly awaiting your how-to ;-)

The possibilities are pretty exciting - maybe we could use VLS (videolan) to stream from the ME1 to a laptop?

check out http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/VideoLAN-HOWTO/index.html

Cheers,

Stuart

Jamie Ross said...

Please anonymous if you could also send me a how to that would be great jamie@jamieross.co.uk

JR

Anonymous said...

What about SSH? Does anyone know how to get an SSH server running on one of these, then you could use that for file transfer.

Francky said...

I can easily navigate on ME1 with telnet (and putty). But I can't use ftpget or ftpput. I have installed an FTP Server on my PC but ME1 is unable to connect to it. Have you an idea ?

I would like to know how change interface, do you think it's possible and where I can find sources ?

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I've been busy with work and holidays and stuff! I will write that howto properly, but here's a brief summary:

Beware! You can probably make your box inoperable by doing this! I obviously accept no responsibility for what you do, and I doubt Emperex would either! :)

(NB: All paths are from memory, I'm at work!)

- Copy the root_fs_mipsel.ext2 file to your HD. I put mine in a folder named 'Experiments'.
- Create a folder in Experiments named newrt
- To get into the distro, telnet into the box, then do:
mount -o loop /usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1/Experiments/root_fs_mipsel.ext2 /usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1/Experiments/newrt
chroot /usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1/Experiments/newrt
- You should get a [ root@Venus ] prompt. (there may not be Venus at this stage, that maybe after the ssh server's installed)
- To mount your hdd, do something like this:
mkdir /mnt/hdd
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hdd
- You can also add it to /etc/fstab...

That gives you a fully working linux distro with gcc(!). If you want to build anything though, you'll probably need more space - I did the following from the @Venus prompt to make a 2gig root fs:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/hdd/Experiments/bigger.ext2 bs=1M count=2000
mke2fs /mnt/hdd/Experiments/bigger.ext2
mkdir /mnt/temp
mount -o loop /mnt/hdd/Experiments/bigger.ext2 /mnt/temp
- then manually copy everything from the root dir, except the mnt directory into /mnt/temp

This other fs is then better for building stuff. You can use the standard linux ./configure && make && make install on most things, and they just work from source; smbd, bittorrent-console, sshd etc- although a lot of them have many dependencies (i.e. I have perl and python running on my box now, mostly due to openssh!). I haven't managed to get xfree86 compiled yet, but I'm working on it...
I suggest pureftpd (google it) to begin with, as (if I remember correctly!) it's a fairly easy build process, has no dependencies and may be enough for most people!

Ok, so now for the scary bit - doing this stuff on box startup. This should all be done from the base telnet root account, as you're chroot-locked out of this in the other environment!

The /usr/local/etc folder is user writable, and contains startup scripts. I added a directory /usr/local/etc/userScripts, and added some scripts there to do setup tasks. You can cause them to be called by changing /usr/local/etc/rcS. This is probably the most risky part of the procedure, as it can break box startup! I suggest calling various non-blocking operations prior to the player being started, (I forget the process name)

I basically just use my userScripts dir to do the chroot, and call some scripts in the other enviroment to start various servers ("pure-ftpd &" is a good first one to call!), etc. I also have a "sleep 300 && killall inetd &" to get rid of the telnet server after a few minutes of grace time (just in case I broke things irrevocably!). NB: Don't do this until you have a proved working ssh server!

Some notes for setting up samba (windows filesharing):
- Nothing special for the box, but make sure your smb.conf is set up sensibly. I'll probably stick mine online somewhere at some point...

Some notes for setting up ssh:
- You need to make sure your linux distro is set up for user login! By default, most directories can only be opened by root (and ssh by default prevents root login!) - /, /bin, /lib AT LEAST should be user executable, I actually (knowing I was the only person using it) pretty much made everything in /bin, /usr/local/bin, /lib ... read/write/executeable by all. You can strace with ssh locally to check it works, which I strongly recommend doing a lot!

Some notes on USB mass storage devices:
- The box automatically mounts any USB volumes to the base filesystem; this is a pain, because they can only be singly mounted. I wrote a script which ran in the base filesystem and occasionally polled the /tmp/usbmounts dir to find any thing, then automagically remount rw, and mount -bind to a path within the chroot'd filesystem, so I could copy to USB devices remotely. This worked, but gave occasionally file IO errors- I haven't tracked this down yet, but I suspect the box is remounting surrupticiously... :)

Other stuff:
- I have transcode running on the box, but it is horrendously slow (~0.2fps - I had to reimplement sinf() and cosf(), don't ask!), so instead I have a nice script running on my desktop which automatically transcodes any video put on the box to a ~100meg 320x equivalent for playing on a Palm, which it drops back in a directory on the box. This has proved pretty handy already!

Anonymous said...

So... if you're running a full distro, does it recognize the USB port ? And can you then connect up a keyboard and mouse ?

Anonymous said...

I was wondering that - you can mount the usbdevfs and get at any mass storage devices that are there, but I don't have any other types of USB devices to test with, bar a printer. It's not yet rendering to the telly here either, so in its present state getting mouse/keyboard to work wouldn't be much use. I was also thinking a webcam might be fun, but don't have one to hand!

Would be cool to get it doing some kind of VNC thing...

Anonymous said...

Hi Any chance of the tutorial as I am not very good with linux I have managed to telnet the box and I think get root_fs_mipsel to work but dont get the root@venus not sure what to do from there

Anonymous said...

Managed to get pure-ftpd to work on the unit after a bit of messing about i would like to put samba on there and also would like to know how to edit rcS to make things start at boot time dont understand linux too well and dont want to break the box thanks

Anonymous said...

You can edit rcS using vi, which is on the box- alternatively you can cp it onto your harddisk and edit it with an editor on your desktop, then copy it back? I actually set up an nfs share on my desktop and mounted it using mount -t nfs ipaddr:/sharename, which is handy for building things too (I built them all from there).

rcS is basically just a bash script - I made another script which I put in /usr/local/etc/userScripts which basically said 'chroot ... pure-ftpd &', did a chmod 755 on the script and added a call to it near the top of the rcS, (with an & after it to make sure it didn't prevent the box starting up.)

I will get around to writing this howto at some point; but there won't be much more in it than the post above!

Anonymous said...

I downloaded Debian 1.0
Part1: http://www.uploading.com/files/9VWJTFII/bcm47xx_debian_v1.0.part1.exe.html
Part2: http://www.uploading.com/files/DZX1G806/bcm47xx_debian_v1.0.part2.rar.html
Pwassword : orz101.com

You might found it's difficut for a non-Linux user to setup BT downloader by useing Debian, so I have made a image file to create a 4GB space, http://cid-09ea019cecf560ad.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Set%20up%20ME1%20as%20a%20BT%20dwonloader

Here are the steps :
Unzip downloaded file to ME1's FAT32 partition through USB connection. Disconnect USB connection and boot up ME1, at the command line, type "telnet 192.168.1.3" {Assume ME1's IP address is 192.168.1.3}
Venus login : root
/ # cd /usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1/
/usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1 # mkdir chroot
/usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1 # mount -o loop -w ./debin-4g.ext2 ./chroot
/usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1 # chroot ./chroot
sh-3.1# mount -t proc proc /proc
sh-3.1# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda
sh-3.1# apt-get update
sh-3.1# apt-get install mldonkey-server
sh-3.1# /etc/init.d/mldonkey-server stop
sh-3.1# vim /var/lib/mldonkey/downloads.ini
{find 'allowed_ips = ["127.0.0.1";]' and rewrite it as 'allowed_ips = ["192.168.1.0/24";]',
assume ME1 and PC IP is in range of 192.168.1.X (X=1~254)}
sh-3.1# /etc/init.d/mldonkey-server start

Anonymous said...

Been looking at getting OpenEmbedded to build packages for the ME1... can now build packages (and run helloworld :-) ), but not sure if there's an easy way round the read-only lib directory.

Note that you can use ftpget to copy files from another box rather than doing the USB copy.

Anonymous said...

can anyone make a small tuturial with some pictures if possible, how to make the me1 as close as possible as an ethernet hdd server?

don't need to explain how to install bt downloads and stuffs... just the better way to transfer files from pc to me1 and the oposite...

i think this is the most wanted feature os this device...

thanks

Anonymous said...

or if anyone knows an easy way to do that (make the box as close as an network file server.... for us to be able to send files and copy them truth lan without usb connection), please just tell me by email that i'll later provide a mini tuturial for all.
my email is: muc_arnaldo@hotmail.com (MSN MESSENGER AVAILABLE)

Fraser said...

Thanks to the instructions here I've been able to get a chroot to start samba, compile my own programs and run them on boot.

Thanks!

it is samaba that gives the ability to access the drive over the network that some people are looking for.

p.s. modoifying the /usr/local/etc/rcS script can kill the box completely if you disable the DvdPlay App!!

I would like to find a way to start/stop recording from the commandline - no luck yet.

Fraser said...

For anyone wanting to re-map the usb mount elsewhere, I have written this script.

Create the script file somewhere and make sure execute permissions are assigned (chmod ugo+x scriptname).

Add the following to /usr/local/etc/rcS to make the script start on reboot: sh pathtoscript > dev/null &

THE SCRIPT IS BELOW. MODIFY MYUSBMOUNT TO SUIT YOUR DIRECTORIES.

#----------------------------------------

#!/bin/bash

#script to constantly check the usbmount directory and remount elsewhere

ME1USBMOUNT="/tmp/usbmounts/"
MYUSBMOUNT="/usr/local/etc/hdd/volumes/HDD1/ME1SYSTEM/debin-4g/chroot/mnt/USB"

#infinite loop
while [ 1 ]
do

#--look for empty dir
if [ "$(ls -A $ME1USBMOUNT)" ]; then
echo "$ME1USBMOUNT is not Empty - Moving Mountpoint to $MYUSBMOUNT"

#find /dev/sdxx
DEVICE=`fdisk -l |grep /dev/sd | grep -v Disk | cut -c 1-9`
#find sdxx
DEV=`fdisk -l |grep /dev/sd | grep -v Disk | cut -c 6-9`
#Setup paths
ME1USBMNTDEV="/tmp/usbmounts/$DEV"

#--unmount the default mount point
echo "Current mountpoint is $ME1USBMNTDEV"
umount $ME1USBMNTDEV
rmdir $ME1USBMNTDEV
#directory should now be empty

#--mount the device somewhere else
#if the device has been inserted and removed previously a broken mount may exist - clean this
#unmount my mount if there is something already there
if [ -n "`mount | grep $MYUSBMOUNT`" ]
then
echo "Existing $MYUSBMOUNT - unmonting then remounting"
umount $MYUSBMOUNT
fi

mount $DEVICE $MYUSBMOUNT
echo "Device re-mounted at $MYUSBMOUNT"

else
echo "$ME1USBMOUNT is Empty"
fi

#delay between cheking for USB key insertion
sleep 10
done

#--------------------------------------


Enjoy.

Danny said...

Is there anyway of getting curlftpfs onto the box.

I'd like to mount some FTP shares as folders for the box to explore.

Mat said...

Hi,

I've just bought a second hand ME1. I've got it connected to my router and configured it with a static IP and set it as the DMZ.

I can connect to the HTTP server from anywhere (using DynDNS), but if I try to telnet I get a Password: prompt.

I don't know what the password is. I don't see the Venus login: as mentioned above.

Any ideas? I've tried 'password' just hitting enter, but no luck.

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Perhaps you are telneting to wrong box. Have you tried direct connect the box with PC thought router with DHCP setting ? Acesss the box in the same network instead of DynDNS ? What do you get when you connect to HTTP server through DynNDS ?

Anonymous said...

Im desperate for help!! Have an Me1, lan port connected to my BT Homehub, and laptop connected wireless to homehub. The ME1 can see the network, and i can ping the ME1 from the laptop, but the ME1 will not display files from the laptop, it wont even show the laptop under the Browser/NET of the ME1, any ideas or clues please? laptop running Windows 7.