Jukebox Issues

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Thu Dec 11, 2008 8:16 pm

Ok, so I've looked at the problems with the jukebox computer over the last few days.

Problems:
Jukebox freezes when trying to do more than one thing at once
Jukebox randomly locks up
No music from the external drive

Investigation
Jukebox machine seems to be flicking through detecting and not detecting the power supply/battery. This is driving hald (Hardware Abstraction Layer Daemon) wild, and making the CPU a bit mental. We might be able to fix this by either taking the battery out or turning off power-detection.

The CPU is running very hot and has possibly suffered some heat damage. This is probably due to being shut in a cupboard and running all day with little/no ventilation.

The jukebox machine seems to be running a lot of unnecessary processes, which isn't a problem as such, but will slow it down a bit.

The external hard drive appears to have mechanical failure. It's making lots of nice clicky noises when spinning. Techy bit: It appears to have lost all the FAT tables. I managed to mount it using my laptop but ls showed nothing (but froze the terminal up for 10 minutes). I ran fsck.vfat but it fell over with an unexpected number of sectors (Got 483328 bytes instead of 30517052 at 16384). I don't know if there's much we can do about this, as it might be related to the nasty sound the drive is making (disk head issues?). I'm told we have a warranty on this so I think the best bet is to return it for repair/replacement. Chombee?

Gaz · **Joined:** Sat Apr 09, 2005 7:24 am **Posts:** 1373

Return of the mac?

milk · **Posted:** Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:07 pm

once again! etc

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Fri Dec 12, 2008 1:54 am

Having run a few more tests/attempts on the external since the earlier post, I'm pretty sure it's completely hosed and that the data on it is non-recoverable other than via a surface scan of the physical disk.

ravanwin · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:13 pm

when you get something working let me know. Chombee has a lot of back ups and i have a lot of local stuff we can use in the house.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:03 pm

I'm waiting to get in touch with chombee about returning the faulty external.

nix · **Joined:** Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:49 am **Posts:** 1231

this is really important.

we need to play independent, unsigned music.

no more "best of Christmas shite CD's" .. I almost freaked today.

thanks.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Fri Dec 19, 2008 8:57 am

I have PMmed chombee about the external drive since he doesn't seem to have been active on the bb for a while.

As for the jukebox machine, I think I have a few optimisation tricks to help the freezing issues. I have already set up Prelinking and today I will go through and try and remove as much clutter/unused packages as possible, as well as give the filesystem a good FSCKing.

I did wonder if upgrading to 8.10 on the jukebox might be a good idea? It is running low on RAM and 8.10 cut my RAM usage by nearly 700mb. Are there any objections to this?

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Sat Dec 20, 2008 3:55 pm

Ok, it looks like the file system is fucked. I'm now proposing a format and clean reinstall to 8.10.

Any objections?

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:09 pm

The jukebox is now working!

I still haven't heard from Chombee (left a message on his voicemail before Hogmany) so we still have no external drive and thus hardly any music.

What music that is there is loaded into the music player, and the library will auto-update with anything put in the "Music" folder, which is where I've set the CD ripper to rip to.

Please note that with no external, there is only about 9GB of disk space free, so don't go overboard on the ripping!

Cheers,
M

ravanwin · **Posted:** Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:29 pm

i have a lot of stuff. will start bringing it in. Mike - can i leave it for you someplace?
r

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Mon Jan 12, 2009 10:48 pm

Sure. I'll bring a box in tomorrow and leave it in the action room, clearly marked, so that people can bring in copyleft stuff for transferral onto the jukebox.

graeme · **Joined:** Sat Oct 21, 2006 5:52 pm **Posts:** 312

There was/is a drawer under the jukebox where people can put CDs to be ripped.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:38 pm

There still is, but it's not very big and also people tend to move stuff to/from it when playing CDs through the DVD player.

Of course, there's little we can do with ripping stuff until we get a new external anyway. I managed to speak to chombee the other day and he is going to look for the receipt and give me a call, so hopefully we will have a new drive soon.

graeme · **Joined:** Sat Oct 21, 2006 5:52 pm **Posts:** 312

Good work on this, the jukebox is hugely important to the experience of being in the cafe.
Do you think there are any physical changes that can be made to the layout of the cupboard to make things tidier and easier to use?

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Tue Jan 13, 2009 3:14 pm

The whole cupboard needs rewiring because it's badly organised and there's at least one broken cable.

I'm going to try and do this during sound team time on Thursday.

ravanwin · **Posted:** Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:34 pm

once it is working i shall take on the JB as a project. It is my 2nd favorite thing.
(10 points to whoever guesses my 1st favorite!)
r

Gandhi · **Posted:** Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:11 am

porn?

ravanwin · **Posted:** Thu Jan 15, 2009 12:15 pm

2 points. not 10 though.

Gandhi · **Posted:** Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:08 pm

poetry about porn?

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:13 pm

Ok, Chombee can't find the receipt for the jukebox external drive so Ryan has asked me just to buy a new drive.

500GB?

nix · **Joined:** Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:49 am **Posts:** 1231

yes!

do it now!

500 is good!

listening to rock'n'pop o' the 50/60/70/80's is saddening my teas.

P.S.

did you organism a box to put submissions into?

thanks dude!!

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:13 pm

maybe in the mean time you could tune it into some wack internet radio show, although i did enjoy hearing 13 by big star the other day. it was so good i thought it was teenage fanclub

martin

nix · **Joined:** Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:49 am **Posts:** 1231

chombee came in today and took the old external drive, he is going to try and send it to the manufacturer.

Mike, how is it going with getting a drive?

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:36 am

I'll order one this week.

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

There's some confusion about who's going to order a new hard drive, me or Mike? Sounds like Nix has been intermittently asking each of us to do it. Mike, can we clear this up? Let me know if you're still planning to order one this week or if you want me to do it.

There's also the laptop lock. We definitely need to buy a new padlock for it so we can have more than one key. We may need to buy a new lock for it, when I looked on Saturday part of the lock seemed to be missing so I couldn't lock the laptop. That's why I put the padlock on the cupboard door instead. Unless anyone says otherwise I'm gonna buy a new lock for the laptop some time this week so we can lock it again without having to lock the entire cupboard and we can have more than one copy of the key.

I did start looking for drives also. My tactic was to look for something 250GB or bigger that has a 5-year manufacturer's warranty. This I think is as long as the warranties go. I just figure that if the manufacturer gives it a 5-year rather than a 1 or 2, that says something about how long-lasting they think their drive is. A security lock port would also be good.

I got as far as this Western Digital My Passport Elite. It has the 5-year warranty, no lock port, and it looks all fancy and stylish which makes me think it might be more expensive than it needs to be. You can probably do better. One of those ought to be good enough though.

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

P.S. if you PM me or reply to this thread I should get an email, so I ought to respond quickly now, on this topic at least.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:49 pm

Every WD drive I've ever had has failed on me. That said, they are now owned by the much more reliable Seagate, so I may have to revise my opinion.

Please go ahgead and order the drive. It seems that Nix asked you after he asked me but didn't tell me, so I'll take it that he wants you to deal with it.

Cheers,
M

Duncan · **Joined:** Sun Apr 10, 2005 7:22 pm **Posts:** 405

My current budget pick would be the Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500GB USB2.0, at about 60 quid, with 5 year warranty. The equivalent Western Digital only has a 2 year warranty.

The likes of the MyPassport are more compact ones (which we don't care about) that use slower laptop drives, and are more expensive.

Buy Me

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

Ok, sorry for the confusion. It happens!

Good pick Swith, ordered. Should arrive this week.

So who has the DVD backup of the music right now? If you can get it to me I'll copy it all onto the new hard drive before I bring it in to the forest. Also if you have any other music you'd like me to put on it, get it to me. PM me.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Mon Jan 26, 2009 6:02 pm

I've got it. It's safely stored in my flat so it doesn't get lost. I'm happy to copy it all over when the drive is back but if you want to do ti beforehand, let me know when you'll be in Forest and I'll bring it in with me.

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

If you don't mind then it seems it'll be easiest if I just bring the empty drive into the forest and then you can copy the music back.

ravanwin · **Posted:** Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:35 am

and i have mega stuff on my computer too. will make cd

nix · **Joined:** Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:49 am **Posts:** 1231

sorry for being a confuser...

mike was away when I asked chombee, and I was just panicking about being us subjected to "chart classics" indefinitely.

but it is now sorted?

there is a drive?

there is a lock?

...

I am on it trying to get the amp sorted.

...

soon we will be 100% copyleft again!

yay!

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

The drive is on the way. When I bring the drive in, probably this weekend, I'll sort out the lock also. Then I'll post to the bb and Mike and Ryan can come in to the forest and copy their music onto the new drive.

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

New hard drive arrived today. It's bricked, doesn't power on.

I will deal with it asap, probably I need to post it back to Seagate.

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

My only worry is that the hard drive says USB 2.0 and the forest laptop is probably USB 1 and that might be why it doesn't work. My laptop at home is USB 1 too, as are all the machines in my office, the only USB 2 I have is my one laptop per child, I hooked it up to that and the lights still didn't come on. It's not powered by USB, so I think it should at least light up even with USB 1, so I'm assuming it's bricked which means it has to be posted back to seagate at our expense.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Fri Jan 30, 2009 10:21 pm

USB2 is backwards compatible with USB1, it just runs slower (like 10/100mb ethernet stuff)

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

Yeah that's what I thought, but I just thought that the drive's auto on/off as your computer goes on/off feature might be some USB 2 thing. It's not though, I tried it on my friends computer that has USB 2 and it still didn't turn on.

It's on its way back to dabs now, I should get a replacement from them next week.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Sat Jan 31, 2009 3:55 pm

Awesome

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

The replacement for the replacement hard drive arrived today, and it works.

Erik who has the most recent backup of the forest's music (July 2008) got in touch with me, he is very busy but if I can bring the hard drive to him on a weekend he can put the music on it. So I will do that and then bring the hard drive into the forest and people can add further music to it.

ETA: this weekend, maybe.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:37 am

Can you bring the drive into Forest sooner than that and I will copy all the music I have onto it.

Cheers,
M

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1325

The music is back! And I've configured rhythmbox and soundjuicer as necessary.

Mike, can you pm me the admin password for the laptop? I need it. Thanks

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:56 pm

Wooo! Go Chombee.

Password is PMmed.

Sorry I couldn't help sort this out, I'm still locked in Edinburgh Uni.

http://edinburghunioccupation.wordpress.com

gareth the second · **Joined:** Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:23 pm **Posts:** 13

chaotic reality, you look like a strange big bunny boy in your photo. Change it will you. Cheers.

Forest BB

Jukebox Issues

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