The VideoLAN Forums

I'm using 'Xebian' Linux 1.1.4 on a Microsoft Xbox which is based on "Debian stable 'sarge'".

Before I begin I will state the obvious, I'm a Windows whore, I know crap all about Linux. So when you answer... Use small words and explain with detail please.

However running VLC off an Xbox is appealing as I can get them cheap (Even cheaper if they have broken optical drives, which are still good for Linux just bad for playing games) and they have native TV support for composite, S-video and even componant with the addition of a $10 set of cables. Low end PCs can cost more and the former corporate lease boxes you can get for $100-200 typically lack TV out.

Anyway, I have two issues. 1) Following the instructions from VLC's website to use apt-get it installed 0.8.2, I'd like to get 0.8.6a installed, if I can... I have no idea how.

2) I'm hoping doing 1 will resolve this. VLC on debian acts weird and shuts itself down under odd circumstances.

First I load VLC on the Xbox and tell it to watch a port for incomming data in UDP from the server. The server (A Windows XP box running 0.8.6a) kicks in and starts unicasting and the Xbox picks up the data over the LAN starts playing, no problem.

Now if I close VLC on the Xbox and then start it up agian, it's behaviour changes. I tell VLC to wait for data over UDP, I start up the server and then VLC crashes. It just shuts itself down. Poof. Gone. And this behaviour continues, even if I restart the Xbox.

HOWEVER. If I stop the server and use a DIFFERENT computer to server to the Xbox, it doesn't crash. Unless I close VLC on the Xbox agian and then start it, now the Xbox will crash when ever it tries to connect to a stream from the second server. However, this then allows the FIRST server to work agian. And then vice versa happens... It's confusing.

However I can alternativly take the server that now has the client dieing, just change the port I'm using for streaming and it won't crash agian untill I close VLC on the Xbox agian, same situation... This confuses me cause this behaviour only occures on the Xbox. If I use the two true PCs running windows, they communicate with each other no problem and never have an issue with streaming.

Yeah... It sounds weird, doesn't it?

However if I can get over this issue, I must say the Xbox will for a fairly affordable IP TV box, however it is somewhat large, I can even add a USB wifi device to it using it's game ports (Limited to USB1.0 12mbps, I dunno how well this'll work in practice, I'll test it later)

Newer version of VLC are available in newer debian versions. Debian etch has a pre 0.8.6 development snapshot. (sarge is testing) Debian sid has a stable (+ bugfixes) 0.8.6 VLC (sid is unstable) + nightly builds that are available on nightlies.videolan.org

If you stay with Sarge, you basically won't be able to update your VLC (since VLC's dependency list is so huge, it'd imply upgrading lots of the sarge packages to newer versions.)

Well, how can I update the version of Debian I have on the Xbox then? As far as I know, 'Xebian' is just Debian with a few tweaks and extras to cope with the minor differences between an Xbox like it's lack of a true PCI bus, the hard drives use of FATX file system and such.

Updates in debian are simple (although it may ruing your install if too much tweaking was involved).
It's a 3 step process:
1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and replace all the occurences of "stable" with "unstable" and "sarge" with "sid"
2. Run apt-get update
3. (This is where the real update happens, you can always undo the previous changes) Run apt-get dist-upgrade

If you're lucky, you'll have a working version of debian unstable (which means up to date packages)

If you have a fast internet connection to update should be pretty fast.

(Please inform us of your progress )

Okay, and how can I edit the sources.list file? Normally I'd at least try to dig threw the GUI and find a way to edit it, however in this case, the Xbox lacks a keyboard and only inputs are by the game pad which acts as a mouse and a virtual keyboard.

To control the Xbox I mostly use an SSH connection from my desktop, if you can just tell me what I have to enter into SSH connection to manipulate the sources.list file, I'll be fine.

Sorry if I'm seeming so clueless here, but the operation of Linux here is just absolutely Alien to me, especially when pointing and clicking isn't exactly accessable due to the lack of a true mouse and keyboard for the thing.

Ok, you can use:
sudo <editor> /etc/apt/sources.list
editor can be any of nano, emacs, vim (you have to know how to use them ... else you'll be lost).

As a last resort solution you could copy the file back and forth to your PC using winscp and edit it with wordpad (not notepad).

Updating Xebian apparently kills X and stuff. o.O Which the Xbox Linux guys told me after I did it. Hah.

Though I wouldn't have to upgrade VLC if I could figure out why 0.8.2 likes to crash just when trying to connect to a UDP MPEG-2 stream. :/