Tips / simple tool to help me play DVDs on my Fire TV stick

Now that we have an Amazon Fire TV stick, I wanted to play DVDs without having to have more equipment plugged into my TV. I created the following tool that helps back up my DVDs to a folder on my server. Check out the project here:

https://github.com/baitisj/dvd_auto_mirror

The script simply opens the DVD drive tray, and waits for you to shovel DVD after DVD into the drive.

I also wanted an easy way of sharing this directory with my Fire TV stick. I sideloaded Kodi, and discovered that HTTP shares don't work, but WebDAV does. My lighttpd.conf file:

server.port        = 80
server.username        = "http"
server.groupname    = "http"
server.document-root    = "/var/www/"
server.errorlog        = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"
server.modules += ( "mod_webdav" )
dir-listing.activate    = "enable"
index-file.names    = ( "index.html" )
mimetype.assign        = (
                ".html" => "text/html",
                ".txt" => "text/plain",
                ".css" => "text/css",
                ".js" => "application/x-javascript",
                ".jpg" => "image/jpeg",
                ".jpeg" => "image/jpeg",
                ".gif" => "image/gif",
                ".png" => "image/png",
                "" => "application/octet-stream"
            )

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/dvds($|/)" {
    webdav.activate    = "enable"
    webdav.is_readonly = "enable"
}

 I set up a symlink from /var/www/dvds to my archive directory. Done!

Fix Google Search (Missing terms?) HOWTO

A little while back, Google Search realized that most humans are stupid, and it started to think that it was pretty clever by including search results that didn't include all of the supplied search terms. Finally, they have added the "verbatim" option:



It turns out that you can change your default search engine to "Google Verbatim" to restore the "old" behavior of Google:

http://mycroftproject.com/search-engines.html?name=google+verbatim

Thanks so much for doing that in the first place, Google.
Missing: You're welcome.

pyWebDav <-> Windows 8.1: one-line file sharing, after a couple of registry tweaks

How often do you want to share a directory of files on one (*nix) system, and mount it as a network drive on a Windows host, with minimum hassle? For me, this is a common occurrence. After a couple of adjustments to my Windows 8 machine, I can do this after installing the pywebdav module, making for a one-liner that creates a temporary high-throughput network share that can be mounted as a drive in Windows.

The annoying part of this trick is that it takes a couple of registry tweaks, and this may affect other resources shared through WebClient, notably, SharePoint.

The easy part of this is installing the pyWebDav Python package, and running a one-line command to start a WebDAV server. Install this (in BSD we type pkg install py27-PyWebDAV). The -D option specifies the directory to share, and I like to know what the program is thinking (verbose with -v option):

davserver -D directory_to_share -n -H server_ip_address_here -v

davserver needs the IP address of the network resource that it will use to listen for connection requests. You can test the server using the loopback address and a webdav client installed on the same machine.

Now for the more annoying part: registry changes, with some commentary. On a Windows machine, navigate to the following subkey in regedit:

HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/WebClient/Parameters

Modify these values:

SupportLocking=0x0 (default=0x1) 

REQUIRED for interoperability with pyWebDav. 

• davserver's -J parameter appears buggy / nonfunctional with Windows 8, so we have to modify the registry.

FileSizeLimitInBytes=0xffffffff (or whatever, default is 50 000 000d)

Optional, but you should change this.

• The default value of this is only 50 megabytes, which is really useless for ISOs or whatnot. I recommend 4.2 gigabytes, which is what this value represents. A bigger value would be preferable. Fix this, Microsoft! We've moved on to use terabyte devices.

BasicAuthLevel=0x2

Optional change, useful if you add basic authentication (which pyWebDav supports)

• 0 - Basic authentication disabled
• 1 - Basic authentication enabled for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) shares only (default)
• 2 or greater - Basic authentication enabled for SSL shares and for non-SSL shares

Now that you've made these changes, you can restart the WebClient service. Launch cmd with administrator privileges and type:

net stop  WebClient
net start WebClient

 Mount the share (note that you'll need to do this in a cmd shell WITHOUT administrator privileges for your user to see the drive):

net use * http://server_ip_address:8008/

You can also map network drives using a more GUI method.

Sweet!

USB audio disconnect woes in FreeBSD with fstat: tales of a voltage-sensitive Topping TP30

I have a very nice "class T" Tripath audio amplifier: the Topping TP30 (MK I -- hopefully they fixed the MKII) with a very convenient integrated USB audio card. However, this device is VERY sensitive to line voltage. For example, when plugged into the same circuit as, say, a refrigerator, the motor spark is enough to pop the speakers and cause the device to perform a USB reset.

In the case of FreeBSD, this causes everything to come to a miserable, grinding halt. dmesg gives me repeated warnings of failure:

pcm2: unregister: mixer busy
pcm2: Waiting for sound application to exit!
pcm2: unregister: mixer busy
pcm2: Waiting for sound application to exit!
pcm2: unregister: mixer busy
pcm2: Waiting for sound application to exit!
pcm2: unregister: mixer busy
pcm2: Waiting for sound application to exit!
pcm2: unregister: channel pcm2:virtual:dsp2.vp0 busy (pid 11413)
pcm2: Waiting for sound application to exit!
pcm2: unregister: channel pcm2:virtual:dsp2.vp0 busy (pid 11413)
pcm2: Waiting for sound application to exit!
pcm2: chn_write(): pcm2:virtual:dsp2.vp0: play interrupt timeout, channel dead

Before I realized that fstat worked on character devices, I had to manually fish around for processes to kill, in order to give the USB audio subsystem the breathing room required for it to reset the audio device. Interestingly enough: if a process that was holding onto the mixer releases the corresponding /dev/mixer device, but then restarts quickly enough and grabs control of the (now defunct) mixer, the sound card still won't reset.

Below, find the one-liner script that goes out and kills every process that holds the audio devices open. I have to execute this twice in a row to kill off XFCE's mixer process until the USB audio card has time to fully reset:

fstat /dev/dsp* /dev/mixer* /dev/audio* | tail -n +2 | awk '{print $3}' | xargs sh -c 'sudo kill -9 $0 $*'