Okay, Hijack v304 is out:

-- the "exec_once=" option is replaced with ";@EXEC_ONCE "
-- the "exec=" option is replaced with ";@EXEC "
-- note the lack of an '=' sign on the new forms above!!!!

For example:

   [hijack]

   ;@EXEC_ONCE /sbin/gpsapp

-- when running on DC power, the player executable is always started with the "-s-" flag, to free up the serial port for GPSApp and friends

-- support has been added for a new I2C based fan thermostat/controller under development by another BBS member. Three new config.ini options now exist for this device, and they have no effect if the unit lacks the new hardware required: fan_control=1, fan_low=45, fan_high=50

Hopefully this all still works, but I'm sure y'all will test it and let me know!

Cheers

MARK, YOU DA MAN!!!!

Mark, after all of your work, I realize I may have been mistaken by saying that Emplode didn't like lines with the same keyname.

<- Sheepish embarrassment.

I had tried using emplode to edit the config.ini and add lines with the same keyname earlier today (trying to add exec_once twice) and it didn't take. That's what I based my earlier report on.

However, I just tried adding a line with a different keyname and it still didn't work. I think I may be looking at a bug in Emplode that's unrelated to same-keynames. What I said might still be true, or it might not, I'm not sure. I'm trying to figure out why I've got trouble editing config.ini via Emplode right now and I haven't gotten to the bottom of it.

For now, I'm using FTP to edit the file and I'll see if I can come up with more answers later tonight.

YEah, well, whatever (thanks!)

Just let me know if GPSApp still has trouble (or not) with the serial port when in the car and using the new EXEC stuff to launch it directly.

Cheers

and using the new EXEC stuff to launch it directly.

GPSapp and empacman don't appear on the Hijack menu any more.

Hijack 304, double-checked by running the breakout game, config-ini double checked with FTP, contains:

[hijack]
;@EXEC_ONCE /drive0/var/gpsapp/gpsapp
;@EXEC_ONCE /drive0/var/empacman/empacman

Formerly, with Hijack 303, I had:

[hijack]
exec_once=/drive0/var/gpsapp/gpsapp
exec=/drive0/var/empacman/empacman

and that worked.

Am I doing something wrong?

drat.. 'guess I gotta test it myself.. gimme a sec..

Yup.. goofed.. misplaced two lines of C.

v305 as soon as my notebook can build it.. (about 7 minutes, I believe)..

/me keeps pressing "Refresh" at the Hijack site....

Okay, it works now.. but I'm rebuilding again.. decided to fix the error status so that "255" becomes "-1" as it was intended to be.. so, another six minutes or so.

Then please let me know if the "-s-" flag for the player is working as intended in the car.

Cheers

Then please let me know if the "-s-" flag for the player is working as intended in the car.

Will do. I've got a short errand to run as soon as I get the software installed, and I'll test the software on that errand.

Okay, go!

Installing kernel now...

Initial check after the reboot says...

Looks good, Empacman and GPSapp show in the menu. Will test the serial port thingy once I get it out to the car.

I did reinstall an .upgrade file prior to this, so I know I've erased the hacked init and the serial port test will be valid. Talk to you in a little while.

Thanks!

Okay, cool, serial port hack worked fine. Mark, you da man. Now I can do complete software upgrades without having to re-hack GPSapp. This is The Business.

Hey, anyone got a link to a version of Emptris that binds to the Hijack menu?

http://www.trejan.com/empeg/#EMPTRIS

Mark, when playing around with this, I loaded emptris, empacman, empsoko, and GPSapp. All would show on the hijack menu, but as I ran them, they would eventually drop off the hijack menu. This is running one app, then another, etc... Emptris always stayed, but the rest disappeared. This was using the ;@EXEC_ONCE, and I also tried using just ;@EXEC on all of the program calls. Is this how it is "supposed" to function?

Installing these was much easier! Thank you for making 3rd party apps easier to run!

No, any well-behaved programs should stay on the menu indefinitely.

Maybe the ones that "drop off" are doing something silly like trying to write to stdout/stderr, which are now NULL -- the old install method probably left stdout/stderr "connected" to the serial console.

Mmm.. actually, it might not hurt for the "new' method to also leave them connected to the serial console for stdout/stderr. I'll look into it.

Cheers

Okay, v307 is now out.

-- fixed possible bug with "old style" GPSapp installs
-- EXEC'd applications now start up connected to serial console for stdin, stdout, and stderr -- so they can do printf/fprintf for errors/info etc..

If you'd like to test the new EXEC capability, try this in config.ini:

[hijack]
;@EXEC /bin/bash

The above lines cause the player startup to pause with a shell prompt on the serial console. Player init continues after you "exit" from the shell.

Cheers

wow, this is exciting!

now if someone else could just come up with standard method of installation...

That's the beauty of it. No installation needed. Just copy the files anywhere to /drive0 and put the config.ini line in place and you're done.

v309 is out, and fixes some nasty interactions from v307 and also from the brief existance of v308.

-ml

Mark, after all of your work, I realize I may have been mistaken by saying that Emplode didn't like lines with the same keyname.

I got to the bottom of the problem, and yeah, it had nothing to do with Emplode and key names.

The problem is that I was messing with the EXEC lines already, and was launching these third-pary applications even when in AC mode (I was not using the @DC macro).

Having one of these third-party applications running (not sure if GPSapp was the culprit or if it was empacman) prevents the synch from working right. I don't know exactly why, I think it has something to with the drives being busy when the synch tries to unmount and remount them. For instance, I get errors that the drive is busy when I try to unmount or remount from the shell prompt if these apps were running.

So yeah, silly me, the syntax change wasn't needed. Sorry.

Great but could you translate that into simpleton for me

as i have said before " its got no pistons it can't possibly work !"

That's the beauty of it. No installation needed. Just copy the files anywhere to /drive0 and put the config.ini line in place and you're done.

I was referring to a more powerful idiot-proof installation management system. One that does not require knowing how to copy files or what drive0 is or how to modify the config ini. One that people used to working with large hammers can handle.

Some great ideas have been thrown around in years past, and I've been playing with an idea (from a theoretical standpoint) for the last few days. More to follow in the next hour.

John

Do the apps still interfer with the sync in v309 Hijack?

Do the apps still interfer with the sync in v309 Hijack?

Interesting question. I don't know, not sure I want to try since I was having to do the FSCK thing a whole bunch as I was messing with all of this and I don't want to induce another instance of that.

What's missing, though? I guess just a utility to do the necessary bits with ftp and modify config.ini.

See, that's what I'm saying. Now that it's down to one FTP transfer, a CHMOD, and a config.ini edit, it's really simple enough now so that anyone can do it. An install tool really isn't necessary at all.

Wow, Mark.. At this rate you'll surpass my own company's rate of putting out software revisions! :> But thanks! Love it!

(My company has over 500 revision in the two years that I've been there. Scary.)

Me.

Hi Mark,
This looks very interesting, i like what you have done. I deleted my hacked preinit, and converted my programs to start with your EXEC. Now my question. Before i was using bitts? launcher to load all my extra program from your hijack menu. The way the launcher worked was, you would setup in the config.ini your programs, and menu structure. Then in the Hijack menu i would only see "Launcher" This would be the only program starting up at bootup. When i go into launcher, and start telnet, or pacman, or emptriv, or sokoban... etc... it would then load the program into player memory, and return to the hijack menu, where that program i clicked would now be in the hijack menu. So when i would click on that items hijack menu, it would start the program.

So i guess, my question would be, does your EXEC, and EXEC_ONCE load each started program into memory reducing the cache size for music? or does it only use memory when your using the program? If this is a pile of jibberish, let me know and i will retype it

Oh, i just thought of another thing. I was using the tts to speak the date and time on startup. But, with preinit, i could pause player startup while a program was running. This is needed for the tts, other wise she will stutter while the empeg is still booting up. Is there anyway you could add the abilty to pause the empeg bootup while a script is running?

Anyways, thanks again mark for the endless hijack releases

Hey! "Release early, release often!"

That's the Open Source credo for rapid development!

Cheers

Hijack already pauses the player software while doing the EXEC lines.. so no problem there.

As for the menu entries, programs which show up on the menu are ACTIVE in memory, robbing cache space. The best way at present is to use Bitt's menu thingie, except you can now start his menu thingie with an EXEC_ONCE line rather than fiddling too much with the preinit stuff, I think (I don't use any of that stuff myself..).

Eventually, we'll be reversing the whole menu thing, so that items on the menu are not actually started or in-memory until the menu item is selected..

Not there yet.

-ml

As a point of clarification, it's not my menu thingie. It's Canuck's.

I believe it's actually CanukinLA's menu thingy, which can now be started with an ;@EXEC_ONCE rather than bitt's preinit.

Hopefully the menu starting won't be too bad since you already have the excecuting code there. The config line parsing might get a little ugly though. Perhaps: ;@MENU_EXEC "Hijack Menu Title" command, or something like that.

Of course all the application writers will need to fix their app's so that they no longer daemonize or bind to the menu.

Edit: Wow, I type slowly...

Okay it might be simple for you guys but put it this way to remove a piston from a sulzer you just take the head off, undo the cross head, get the stuffing box out, take the wear ridge off then lift out the piston piece of piss. That is how to do it but ain't enough detail for you guys could do it.

So could some one please write a blow by blow account on how to do it like we have for displayserver

Thanks folk

In reply to:

---

Mark, when playing around with this, I loaded emptris, empacman, empsoko, and GPSapp. All would show on the hijack menu, but as I ran them, they would eventually drop off the hijack menu. This is running one app, then another, etc... Emptris always stayed, but the rest disappeared. This was using the ;@EXEC_ONCE, and I also tried using just ;@EXEC on all of the program calls. Is this how it is "supposed" to function?

---

I had exactly the same problem about 3 months ago using the old style init program. I was running emptris, empacman, empsoko and emptriv.

It's not a Hijack problem, it's one of those that is the problem. I removed emptris, and the rest worked fine.

I'm not saying emptris is incorrectly coded - one of the others may be wrong, instead. But removing emptris made the rest work OK.

A.

now that the dust has settled...mirror updated to v309

Hi Mark,
Thanks for the info, this is how i setup my empeg. I removed preinit, and setup the launcher script to run via exec. It works great. Only loading 1 program into memory untill i pick to run it. It will be great after you get this intergrated right into hijack. If you need any help testing anything. just let me know.
Once again, thanks mark for all your hard work!

Sorry Bitt,
I just thought all my preinit, and launcher where programmed by you. That why i put the question mark when i said it was your launcher Actually, i guess i should be saying sorry to Canuck's

to remove a piston from a sulzer you just take the head off, undo the cross head, get the stuffing box out, take the wear ridge off then lift out the piston piece of piss.

that is a great post.

there has been enough interest shown in a easy-to-use app installer built into JEmplode that it will get implemented by someone, soon enough. when that gets done we'll put a step by step process into an FAQ that will have something like

part 1) procedure to install JEmplode (already written)
part 2) procedure to install hijack (already written)
part 3) procedure to download prepackaged apps from riocar.org
part 4) procedure to to click "install third-party application" and browse to the downloaded file
part 5) procedure to answer the really simple questions that JEmplode would then pose to you that would already have default choices.

it can't get too much simpler than that

John

Was the visual + ir translate function broken in 302+ or has that function been obsoleted by something else? I didn't see anything about it so I thought I would ask. I get an ir_translate error with it in my config now.

This feature will only work with the next version of the empeg software. Its currently in alpha, i can't wait to see what that feature is just like you. It shouldn't be much longer untill they release the next version. I was wishing rob would have released it by now

Isnt that for something different? The Visual + has worked fine up until 302 or so. It's listed in the Jan 2002 Symbolic Button Names section of the Hjack web page and it's been in my config for over 9 months now with no problems until I upgraded from 301 to 303.

Oliver was referring to Visual -. I think that's what he thought you meant.

(+ has always been there, it's - that's been added in the next release)

opps i guess i shouldn't commen't i things i don't use. my fault

My apologies.. I neglected to point this out in the release note:

Visual+ has been renamed to NextVisual
Visual- has been renamed to PrevVisual

And an even better method now exists: VisualSeek

Cheers

Hi Mark,
I just thought of this. Maybe you are already planning it, but i thought i would mention it.
Could you setup a button that if we hold it down when the empeg is starting up, would ignore the exec and exec_once lines, giving us a stock hijack bootup?
I think it would be a good idea, if it’s possible. Anyone else?

Edit: yay! i'm now an enthusiast!

Or I suppose a menu (and a bit from the flash savearea) to select EXEC ON/OFF operation on the next reboot.

yes, but what if that app is causing the empeg to not boot?

Hijack's menu is active regardless.

Unless the app is broken, in which case it shouldn't be installed to begin with. But with the new savearea bit for tracking this, hijack could prevent repeated failures -- if the system locks up during the EXEC calls, then the EXEC calls simply don't happen on subsequent boots until reenabled. Nice and simple that way.

Cheers

I just got my empacman to work for the first time, after tooling around with the linux shim etc, I was never able to mangle it enough to get it to work. Now, I got it to work, and in under twenty minutes! You rock! thanks for all the hard work!

v309 is out, and fixes some nasty interactions from v307 and also from the brief existance of v308.

v309 ext3 flavo(u)r now available.

Will emptiv load with hijack? I have: ;@DC ;@EXEC_ONCE /drive0/var/games/emptriv and It wont load. Everything else works great. Much easier then the preinit setup.

-Thanks,
Greg

I bet the problem is that emptriv expects that the current working directory is the emptriv directory when it looks for fonts. and other files. You could confirm this (probably unnecessary) by looking at the serial output while emptive is starting (on boot). Last summer, I hacked the necessary code into emptriv to let it start from anywhere, but I hesitate to post it here as i'm sure it's changed in other ways since then.

One way you might be able to get around the problem until emptriv is fixed by using the line:

;@DC ;@EXEC_ONCE cd /drive0/var/games && ./emptriv

instead of what you had before and see what happens. let us know if you still can't get it to work.

John

That won't work.

But this version MIGHT work:

;@DC ;@EXEC_ONCE "cd /drive0/var/games && ./emptriv"

Or possibly this, but it is more wasteful of memory:

;@DC ;@EXEC_ONCE /bin/bash -c "cd /drive0/var/games && ./emptriv"

How about:

;@DC ;@EXEC_ONCE /bin/bash -c "cd /drive0/var/games && exec ./emptriv"

That could save on memory.

Yup, that's it. Or even incrementally better:

;@DC ;@EXEC_ONCE /bin/bash -c "cd /drive0/var/games && exec -c ./emptriv"

Argh. I feel like such a dope for making you guys hack around a stupid bug in emptriv. I will fix this soon.

I feel like such a dope for making you guys hack around a stupid bug in emptriv. I will fix this soon.

I'm anxious to see this. I've never tried emptriv and I'd like to. Let us know when you've gotten that working.

Well I'm not sure I'll get to completely automating the install... I just want to fix the bug which forces you to change the current working directory before you run it. I want to see where this empeg packaging format thing goes (johnmcd3's idea) before spending a lot of time on a flawless install procedure. Emptriv installation is tricky because it generally needs to be installed on a non-root partition (most people use the music partition) and automating that isn't "trivial."

Emptriv installation is tricky because it generally needs to be installed on a non-root partition (most people use the music partition) and automating that isn't "trivial."

I didn't realize it was something more than just FTPing the right files to the right place. What else needs to happen besides that?

Adding the exec entry to config.ini.

And you wouldn't necessarily want emptriv starting up every time you run your empeg... I'm kinda looking forward to Mark's super-duper in-kernel "launcher" replacement thing to show up in Hijack.

Adding the exec entry to config.ini.

In other words, no more complicated than installing GPSapp. Not that big of a deal.

And you wouldn't necessarily want emptriv starting up every time you run your empeg...

Does it just "run" and take over the screen immediately, or does it bind to the Hijack menu like the other apps? If the latter, no problem, I'd only run it in car-mode anyway. If the former... well... convert it to the latter, please.

It's the latter. I'm no dummy.

Does it just "run" and take over the screen immediately, or does it bind to the Hijack menu like the other apps? If the latter, no problem, I'd only run it in car-mode anyway.

I know it's somewhat arguable as to how much memory is wasted by starting your applications on every boot, even if it is "only in car-mode". However, if you have a bunch of applications installed (say GPS App, telnetd, pacman, emptriv, emptris, etc.) then the amount of memory you are stealing from the player to use for caching becomes more significant, especially if you only regularly use, say, GPSApp.

That's why I think the launcher thing is a good idea for now at least (Mark has mentioned that when he gets some free time he's going to make another easier to use version that's similar to EXEC but where it runs on a menu click, say MENU_EXEC, or something.)

(Mark has mentioned that when he gets some free time he's going to make another easier to use version that's similar to EXEC but where it runs on a menu click, say MENU_EXEC, or something.)

Cool, I'd like to see that.

That's why I think the launcher thing is a good idea for now at least (Mark has mentioned that when he gets some free time he's going to make another easier to use version that's similar to EXEC but where it runs on a menu click, say MENU_EXEC, or something.)


Also known as "The Holy Grail."

I thought he just *did* the Holy Grail.

"The Ark of the Covenant"

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

Heh, I had to look that one up in IMDB to get which movie that came from (Last Crusade):

[Encountering a painting of the Ark of the Covenant.]
Elsa: What's this?
Indiana Jones: Ark of the Covenant.
Elsa: Are you sure?
Indiana Jones: Pretty sure.

Heh.

Can't wait until they put those on DVD. Anyone know when that's going to happen?