From NAS-Central Buffalo - The Linkstation Wiki

Revision as of 03:55, 9 August 2007

Linkstation HG 250

Operating System

• Freelink powerpc hdhglan 1.11
• Linux LinkStation 2.6.20.2-kuroboxHG

Kuro HG

Operating System

• Freelink powerpc hdhglan 1.11
• Linux LinkStation 2.6.20.2-kuroboxHG

What I use them for:

• Encrypted Filespace with EncFS
• To stream video and photos to My XBMC - Using Xbox Media Center with the LinkStation
• Mtdaapd/Firefly to create a Music Share. for the XBMC
• Display Linkstation status on a USB Palm OS Device as an LCD Display with the PalmOrb emulator.
• Download Podcasts with Bashpodder
• Stream MP3s to an Airport Express using RAOP-play
• Media and Shared storage for my computers over Samba
• Using Thttpd as a in house webserver to serve photos using Album - Photo gallery generator which has theme support
• Change to a 750GB Seagate PATA Drive originally a 250GB Drive

My Install

FreeLinkomatix - Convert the LinkStation into a Full-fledged Debian Linux Server

Install an Encrypted Filespace with EncFS

USB Palm OS Device as an LCD Display

S.M.A.R.T. hard drive monitoring

This little script generates a small bit of html showing a number of system stats

 tc=$(smartctl -a /dev/hda | grep 194 | colrm 1 87)
 tf=$(echo "scale=2;((9/5) * $tc) + 32" |bc)
 echo " Used   %  Share"
 echo "------ --- -----"
 df -h | grep /dev/hda | colrm 1 27 | colrm 6 11
 df -h| colrm  45 55 | grep /dev/s | grep -v tmpfs | colrm 1 27 | colrm 6 11
 echo "<table>"
 echo "<tr><td>Users:</td><td>"
 users
 echo "</td></tr>"
 echo "<tr><td>Uptime:</td><td> "
 uptime \
  | awk '{
   # chops off "up" and everything before it:
   sub(/.*up[ ]+/,"",$0)
   # chops off ", # users" and everything after it:
   sub(/,[ ]+[0-9]+ user.*/,"",$0)
   # cleans up extra spaces, i think:
   sub(/,/,"",$0)
   # obvious enough, prints the results
   print($0)
 }'
 echo "</td></tr>"
 echo "<tr><td>Load:</td><td>"
 uptime | sed 's/^.*average: / /'
 echo "</td></tr><tr><td>Temp:</td><td>"
 echo $tf " F"
 echo "</td></tr> </table>"
 echo "<hr>"
 date | colrm 20 30"
 echo "<hr>"

Album - Photo gallery generator which has theme support

MarginalHacks/Album: A HTML photo album generator that supports themes. It takes directories of images and creates all the thumbnails and HTML that you need.

apt-get install album

• Use wget to get and install this theme
• To use a theme, download the theme .tar or .zip and unpack it.

mkdir /home/httpd/Themes/
cd /home/httpd/Themes/
wget http://marginalhacks.com/Hacks/album/Themes/Dominatrix6.tar.gz
tar -xvzf Dominatrix6.tar.gz
rm Dominatrix6.tar.gz

• Full resolution images are usually too big for a web album, so we'll use medium images on the image pages:
• Then call album with the -theme option, with or without -theme_path:

album -medium 33% -theme Dominatrix6 /home/httpd/test/Photos
album -medium 33% -theme Dominatrix6 -theme_path /home/httpd/Themes/ /home/httpd/test/Photos

Small and simple console-based bandwidth monitor

Bandwidth Monitor NG (bwm-ng) is a small and simple console-based live bandwidth monitor. Short list of features:

• Supports /proc/net/dev, netstat, getifaddr, sysctl, kstat and libstatgrab
• Unlimited number of interfaces supported
• Interfaces are added or removed dynamically from list
• White-/blacklist of interfaces
• Output of KB/s, Kb/s, packets, errors, average, max and total sum
• Output in curses, plain console, CSV or HTML
• Configfile

wget http://www.gropp.org/bwm-ng/bwm-ng-0.5.tar.gz
tar bwm-ng-0.5.tar.gz
cd bwm-ng-0.5
./configure
make
make install
bwm-ng -T a -o html

Install raop-play for Airport Express

Raop-play is a music file player for the Apple Airport express, the main functionalities are as follows:

• Make AEX become your 2'nd sound card device.
• Discover Airport Express by Apple Rendezvous
• Browse music files (Supported music file format: m4a(alac or aac), wav, mp3, ogg, flac, aac, pls, raw pcm)
• Send selected files to the Airport Express
• Play mp3 stream data (filename started with "http://")

Required Packages:

• openssl library and header
• fltk1.1.4 library and header
• fluid (this comes with fltk1.1.4)
• libglib-2.0 header only
• libsamplerate library and header
• libid3tag library and header

Get any required packages to take care of dependancies:

apt-get install libssl libssl-dev libfltk1.1-dev libfltk1.1c102 fluid libglib2.0-dev libsamplerate0 libsamplerate0-dev libid3tag0 libid3tag0-dev

Then get raop_play-0.5.1.tar.gz from here, compile, make, and install it:

tar -xvzf raop_play-0.5.1.tar.gz
cd raop_play-0.5.1  
./configure
make
make install

BashPodder

BashPodder is a podcast client written in bash. It is designed to be a simple, fast, and lightweight podcast client that always works. It is designed to conform to the KISS principal ("Keep it simple, stupid"). Various GUIs also exist for BashPodder.

wget http://linc.homeunix.org:8080/scripts/bashpodder/bashpodder.shell
wget http://linc.homeunix.org:8080/scripts/bashpodder/parse_enclosure.xsl
wget http://linc.homeunix.org:8080/scripts/bashpodder/bp.conf
chmod a+x bashpodder.shell

change bp.conf to included desired feeds.

Kernel News

<feed url="http://hvkls.dyndns.org/index.rss">

</feed>

Alpha 220 LED Sign

I am using my Kuro Pro to drive an Alpha 215/220 LED Display I happened to have one of these signs lying around.

220 Full Matrix, (Case 37.7" x 3.8" x 2.9 ") Tricolor ^[1]

Install a Serial Port Interface

First you are going to have to install a serial port interface. I ended up installing mine to the serial port on the bottom, but the serial port on the front is easier and the same.

I used a board from futurelec, they are dirt cheap, but take forever to get to you

http://www.futurlec.com/Mini_RS232_TTL_3V.shtml

I used a Quick port RJ-12 jack to interface the sign to the serial port converter

Then I shoved the whole thing in a 2 port Quick port surface mount housing

Interface Sign to Serial Port Interface

I used a standard 6 wire telephone cable meant for a two line phone (a 4 wire one will not work) Plug one end into the sign. And one end into the Quick port RJ-12 Jack Wire the jack into the serial port board as such^[2]

• Pin 4 of the RJ12 to RS-232 RX.
• Pin 3 of the RJ12 to RS-232 TX
• Pin 6 of the RJ12 to RS-232 GND

Setup the serial port

You will have to adjust the serial port settings. I use a script to do this. My information came from a FAQ on using the Alpha sign with Linux^[3].

setledsign

# /usr/local/bin/setledsign
#!/bin/sh

rm /dev/alpha
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/alpha
chmod a+rw /dev/alpha
stty 9600 -opost -ocrnl -onlcr cs7 parenb -parodd < /dev/alpha
chmod a+rwx /tmp/textfile
leddisplay

Wake up the sign and display something on it

I use a script that I stole from the above site.

alphamon.pl

# alphamon.pl
#
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Script will display the contents of /tmp/textfile to the ALPHA 220C LED
# Display
#
# Usage
#
# alphamon.pl [MODE TAG] [COLORTAG]


# Get the attention of the sign
print "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0";


# Tell the sign to print the message
$message = `cat /tmp/textfile` ;

print "\001" . "Z" . "00" . "\002" . "AA" . "\x1B" . " $ARGV[0]" . "\x1C" . "$ARGV[1]" . $message . "\004";

MODE TAG and COLORTAG

The key parts of this are the MODE TAG and COLORTAG, there is full documentation available for this^[4] but here are the pertinant parts.

Stock Ticker

I do use the sign for a number of other purposes, to display RSS feeds and weather forecasts. But the most complicated script is to display a live stock ticker that gets it's data from yahoo. It then colors the prices green if they are positive/up and red if they are negative/down for the day.

First you should install perl and make

apt-get install perl make

Then install the quote package ^[5]

wget http://www.circlemud.org/pub/jelson/quote/quote-0.05.tar.gz
tar -xvzf quote-0.05.tar.gz
cd quote-0.05
./configure
./make
./make install

you may as well install curl and lynx so that you can use them to get content from the web later

apt-get install curl lynx

Lastly here is a shell script to display the ticker

leddisplay

# /usr/local/bin/leddisplay
#!/bin/sh
# Stock ticker symbols
#
stocks="  ^DJI ^IXIC ^GSPC AAPL BA T GRR IFN GLD SLV  MO KFT BRK-B TM KEP AL AA YHOO MSFT GOOG ZAAP.OB GE"

       quote $stocks | cut -d"(" -f1 |sed 's/^/\x1C9 \x7F \x1C3 /' | sed '/ -/s/:/\x1C1/g' | sed '/ +/s/:/\x1C2/g$
        $PTE/alphamon.pl t A  > /dev/alpha
   else

        $EXEC $RSSURI | grep title |\
        sed -e :a -e 's/<[^>]*>//g;/</N' |\
        sed -e 's/[ \t]*//' |\
        sed -e 's/\(.*\)/ \1/' |\
        sed -e 's/\.//' |\
        sed -e 's/\"//' |\
        sed -e 's/\"//' |\
        head -n $(($LINES + 2)) |\
        tail -n $(($LINES)) > /tmp/textfile
        $PTE/alphamon.pl t 1 > /dev/alpha

      exit

References

1. ↑ 220 brochure (Pdf)
2. ↑ Building a Data Cable for Alpha LED Scrolling Signs
3. ↑ Using the Alpha 215C with Linux
4. ↑ Alpha Sign Communications Protocol (pn 9708-8061)
5. ↑ quote -- command-line stock quote display