Building a Linux Digital Signage Player

Download and Create DVD/CDs

• Go to http://www.centos.org and click on the "Get Centos Linux Now" button to download the latest DVD ISO images.
• Select whether you have a i386 (32 bit) or x86_64 (64 bit) PC. All of our recommended specifications are for a 32 bit pc.
• Select the download method.
• Click download. Depending on your connection speed, this can take several hours to complete the download.
• Burn a DVD for the ISO images
  Note: ISO images are not written to DVDs the same way as files - if using Nero, select Burn Image from the file menu. If you have Windows 7 or higher, open with the Windows Disc Image Burner)
• Be sure to label the DVD after burning it.

Install The System

• Select the Installation menu.
  
• Begin the installation and select the language for the product and your keyboard layout.
  
• Select New Installation
  
• Select the time zone to GMT.
  
• If creating an on-premise server, select Other, then select Minimal Server Selection (Text Mode).
  
• If creating a signage viewing workstation, select the minimal desktop.
  
• Choose the automatic disk partitioning unless you know what you are doing. It should remove all paritions and start from scratch.
  
• Create the user svision with a password of your choosing that is secure and something you will remember. Be sure to check all checkboxes so that this is the system administrator password as well.
  
• Click on the Install button on the lower right side of the screen.
  
• The system will now build the linux platform which will take about 30 minutes.

Update the Server

• Press Ctrl-Alt-F2 and log in as root
• Refresh the repositories by typing "yum -update"

Install StrandVision Startup Code

• set your default directory to the web directory by typing "cd /home/svision"
• type "curl http://www.strandvision.com/webcache/linuxremote.tar.gz | tar xvz"
• type "chmod u+x remoteinstall.sh"
• Initialize the system by typing"./remoteinstall.sh"
• restart the server by typing "shutdown -r now"

Check Web Server

• Open up Firefox and type localhost.
• Open up a web browser from a separate computer and type the server's ip address.
• It should come up with a spot to enter the StrandVision username and password. This is where the customer starts setting up the system for their unique StrandVision Digital Signage account.
  

Configure the Sound

• Click on the speaker in the upper right corner and select "Mixer"
• Click Settings, Configure Channels
• Show the Line and Mic inputs
• Set the volume to the maximum for the Master, PCM and Line controls.
• Mute Line and Mic inputs
• Close the window.

Configure the Flash Player

• open up the flash standalone player by clicking the start icon and typing "flash" in the search bar.
• type http://localhost/flash/sign.swf into the url
• add this to the bookmark
• right click on the display and click settings
• click on the second icon and allow access to microphone and camera for localhost and set the remember checkbox
• click close to save the settings.
• Close the flash player by pressing Alt-F4
• add a desktop icon for flashplayer http://localhost/flash/sign.swf

Setup Simultaneous Analog and Digital Audio

• Select the HDMI audio output in the hardware tab
• Click on the terminal icon in the graphical area (needed to access the sound for this window)
• run "aplay -l" to get the list of audio cards
• find the analog card and device number
• edit the pulse audio config by editing /etc/pulse/default.pa
• Read the list and copy the names of the sinks (without the enclosing brackets) that you want to combine.
• before the "automatically restore the default sink/source ...", add the following lines (replace the hw:x,x with the hardware card,device numbers you identified earlier)
  • load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,0
  • load-module module-combine sink_name=combined
  • #set-sink-volume 0 65535
• reboot
• The new combined sink will show up as a selection on the output tab
• Much of this came from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Examples, http://www.deseret-tech.com/journal/pulseaudio-combine-sinks-for-simultaneous-output and http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=199&t=107653

Make Hard Drive Image (StrandVision Only)

• Using a Windows, Mac or Linux pc, download CloneZilla Live. There are several options, but it is recommended to download the Debian stable release at http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php.
• Create a bootable CD from the .iso image with your burning software.
• Locate an external USB CD / DVD drive and attach it to the StrandVision R350 Linux PC
• Put the CloneZilla bootable CD into the external Drive
• Turn on the player
• Press the delete key several times until it says "entering setup"
• Select the "Boot" menu by pressing the right arrow twice
• Select "USB Drives" with the down arrow and press enter
• Find the USB DVD drive and position on it
• If it is not the top item in the list, press the minus key on the keypad to move it to the top
• Press escape to go back
• Select "Boot Device Priority"
• Find USB DVD drive and position on it
• If it is not the top item in the list, press the minus key on the keypad to move it there
• Press F10 to exit. Save the settings if it asks
• The system will reboot using the dvd drive
• A CloneZilla screen will appear. Press enter a few times until you get to the imaging options.
• Image the boot drive to an external hard drive
• Once finished, restart the program again.
• make an ISO image from the hard drive image just created
• Upload to the production servers.
• Follow these instructions if you are a production house.

Restore a StrandVision Image

To restore a StrandVision image, follow this link.

To Add Samba File Sharing:

follow this link

Other Commands

• Create a tar file: tar -cvzf filename.tar.gz dirname/
• Find file: find dir -name filename*.*
• create disk image to a gzip: dd   if=/dev/sda   conv=noerror,sync   bs=1024   |   gzip   -c9   >   /flash/filename.img.gz
• clear unused portions with zeros: mount   -t   ext4   dev/sda1   /flash;   dd   if=/dev/zero   of=/flash/delete.me   bs=8M;   rm   /flash/delete.me;   umount   /flash