Maintenance

After my last install-fest, which required 15 restarts before I had an OS and antivirus installed I decided to build a new install disk. Using nLiteOS, RyanVM Integrator and the WMP11 Slipstreamer I have what appears to be a fully updated install disk which only required 6 updates after initial boot. This can be improved by adding the most recent updates to the nLiteOS process, but it's infinitely better than what I was using.

The process was not without problems, and it soaked up a number of days, but the upside is that I have an updated disk which also contains all the drivers needed for the lab machines, and a process which easily allows me to add new drivers to the install disk whenever required.

The process will take some time to document - read this as "this post will contain no documentation".

I have successfully installed on two different machines.

New MS Office saves stuff in XML format (.docx etc.) and OOo is unable to open the files without some help. I have successfully installed helper apps on Ubuntu to open these files (only tried a simple docx file so far); I'll explain how below.

Novell has released OOo extensions for this purpose. Here's the copy from this page:

The OpenXML Translator provides support for opening and saving Microsoft* OpenXML-formatted word processing documents (.docx) in OpenOffice.org.

The odfconverter-1.0.0-2.oxt file works only with Windows, and the odf-converter-1.0.0-5.i586.rpm file works only on SUSE® Linux Enterprise, SUSE Linux, and openSUSE. On both platforms, the OpenXML Translator works only with the latest Novell® edition of OpenOffice.org.

Using alien on Ubuntu I installed the rpm thusly:
$ sudo alien -ct odfconverter<version>.rpm
which results in a tgz bundle. Unroll it and enter the directory.
Then:

$ sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/program/OdfConverter /usr/lib/openoffice/program/

$ sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/

$ sudo cp usr/lib/ooo-2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/

**note that I stole these instructions from here.

I will try this on a lab machine for the next build. The difference is that Novell has a Windows-only package that can be installed from within OOo's package manager.

Tried connecting to Cortland to run Contribute from it, but was unable to authenticate using existing afp shortcut on my mac, using sarneil and root. Checked Cortland to ensure sarneil was an admin user, changed the password for sarneil on that machine and tried again. Still no luck. Also tried connecting using afp and the ip address - same result. Greg able to log in from his computer as gregster. Not sure what the problem is or how to resolve it. Will restart both computers tomorrow morning and try again.

Logon difficulties today in Lab C exposed a problem with the way DHCP addresses are assigned and released by the DHCP server. IP addresses are being released 24 hours after a machine is shut down, and as a result, we had about 1/3 of the machines in Lab C fail to pick up an IP. I had the DHCP service set to release 5 minutes after a machine is shut down so this should not be a problem in the future.

This issue is now resolved.

I merged the reg file and it appears to have resolved the error and the autostarting of Real Player. Both teacher stations now respond the same way.

However, the LMF instructor reports that Real Player has a slightly jittery playback in Real Player, but oddly enough it only lasts for the first half of the film. This requires a bit more investigation. I'll try setting a different media player as the default DVD player and see what happens. I suppose it could be the codec...

It looks like I'll have to buy two SATA drives for the two new lab machines. I was hoping to use two of our spare IDE drives, but the new motherboards only have a single IDE channel, which is used for the DVD drive. Due to the IDE specification, IDE cables can't be long enough to connect both DVD and HDD to the single IDE channel (see below). The case forces placement of the HDD and DVD drive such that a standard IDE cable cannot cover the distance between the two connections. A stupid reason to have to buy new drives, but there you go.

I can get an 80GB Seagate SATA drive (p/n: ST380811AS) for $61 each right now, and I've put at least two hours in to trying to make this work, so I'm cutting our losses before "fixing" it becomes more expensive than just replacing it.

For future reference, IDE cables are a maximum 18" long, with no more than 12" from blue connector (which can only go to the board) to grey connector (which always goes to the slave drive, if not using cable select) and no more than 6" from grey to black connector (which always goes to the master drive, when not using cable select).

I've done some investigating and it appears that the Teacher's console in Lab B is flaky in one way or another. It's either a hardware configuration problem or a software installation problem (as in conflicting instructions on what to do when a DVD is inserted). I've tried turning off autoplay but that doesn't help.

I installed the very same KLite Codec pack in Lab C and RealPlayer happily starts to play the DVD. The teacher stations are identical in terms of hardware and software, so I will take a look at Lab B and do the following:
Merge a reg file I created from Lab C.
If that doesn't work I'll uninstall all aftermarket media players (QuickTime, RealPlayer, VLC etc) and see if the problem persists.
If it does I'll start looking at the configuration of hardware

posting for time spent figuring out how to play a DVD in the labs

Stew and I were both thrown for a while by a teacher's request for help playing a DVD in lab B. When you first put the DVD in, you get an error message to the effect that the device is not available, or not ready. Attempts to play the DVD itself with Windows Media Player failed -- according to our experiments afterwards in Lab C, WMP is unaware of DVDs, and has no menu or toolbar items relating to DVDs, and while a DVD is in the drive, it shows No Disc In Drive. In Lab B, I tried inserting the DVD when logged on as admin, and as a regular user; there was no difference -- I still got the error message.

In Lab C, the default DVD player is RealPlayer, which doesn't have the codecs to play the DVD; it offers to download them and install them, but fails.

Eventually, we figured out that you can right-click on the DVD drive and choose Play with VLC. That works fine for the video. Then you have to start the Sanako teacher's console, choose Media File, and switch on the Speakers icon to get audio through the speakers.

I've written up some instructions for both labs to cover the time when Greg's away, then after he gets back we can figure out the RealPlayer problem in Lab C, and see if either station can be made to pop up a player that works automatically. The instructions are below; I've also passed them to the CALL guys, and put copies in the labs.

Also logging the fact that the teacher station in Lab B refused to log off; I had to restart it. This was when logged on as administrator. Finally, I should mention that when the DVD was playing in lab B, the instructor also noticed that it was a bit jittery, and it seems that way to me too. I don't know if that's because of the hardware or the VLC player.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Playing DVD Movies in the Labs

Playing DVDs is a little complicated at the moment, because of some technical issues we're working on, but it does work if you follow these steps:

1. First, power up the projector and make sure you can see the desktop of the teacher station on the projector screen.
2. Insert the DVD in the teacher station computer.
3. If you see an error message, just click OK. If RealPlayer starts up, and pops up messages, click Cancel on all the messages and close RealPlayer.
4. Double-click on the teacher station on the desktop. You should see the DVD as one of the drives on the computer.
5. Right-click on the DVD and choose "Play with VLC". The VLC media player should start up, and you should see the DVD begin to play. You won't hear any audio yet, though.
6. Start the Sanako teacher's console (from the link on the desktop or the taskbar).
7. Choose Media File as the Source in the console.
8. Click on the Speakers icon (on the toolbar, near the top left). The button should stick down, meaning that the sound is routing through the external speakers. You may need to turn up the speakers using the knob on the teacher's desk.
9. Now go back to the VLC player, which is showing the video. Choose DVD / Fullscreen, to get a fullscreen view of the video.

Had to help one of the ESL folks with video in Lab C, and discovered that the instructions on top of the VCR no longer match the setup. The system seems to have been set up so that the TV, VCR and speakers are hooked up together, with no feed to the teacher's console. This is fine -- in fact, it's nice and simple -- but the instructions assume the audio is going through the teacher station and the video will be shown on the projector. If we've given up on hosting video tape materials through the main system, we should remove those old instructions.

Lab B appears to be the same.