Mark, thank you so much for kftpd. That's going to be extremely useful for me.
I was wondering, are you going to implement some sort of id/pwd system to prevent from unauthorized access on large networks? Maybe you could add username and pwd in the config ini, with two levels of access. rw and read-only. What do you think?
Again, this is a simply great featiure, expecially as an alternative way to clone tow empegs in case the clone feature fails...

Well, currently anyone on your network can run Emplode and completely fsck your Empeg player.. no passwords.

For kftpd, I will probably just add a front-panel-only menu item to enable/disable it. but not until it gets to the point of being dangerous (upload and rexec).

Cheers

Well, currently anyone on your network can run Emplode and completely fsck your Empeg player.. no passwords.

Not strictly true -- emplode _does_ support password protection, but it's not used by the car player.

That's interesting. Will the player use pwd protection in future sw releases? That's really important in my view. I guess many of us have their player connected to their offices' lan, which is quite unsafe w/out pwd...

Thank you

Cool cool cool.

Okay, now for the next rub on the lamp.

I'm on DHCP now, both at home and at work. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I don't like looking up the IP address of the player every time I want to do something on the player.

Right now, the player doesn't identify itself on the network by name. I don't know how it's handled in a Linux system like this, but I can type PING <computername.company.com> where "computername" is the PC's Windows Network Name, and it works. Is there any way to get the player to identify itself by name in this same way, so that I don't have to look up an IP for it? Can it be done in the kernel or would that need to be integrated with the player software?

Why not just set the empeg to a static ip? Its not using any features of DHCP such as getting dns settings so you don't really need it set to it. Why not just something like 192.168.0.2?

-Greg

The only way to do what you are asking is to update your network's DNS and/or DHCP tables such that they "know" the EtherNet-ID of the Empeg and can thus map a static hostname to it (Regardless of IP address).

That's the same way it works for all of you "named" workstations and network nodes.

cheers

The only way to do what you are asking is to update your network's DNS and/or DHCP tables such that they "know" the EtherNet-ID of the Empeg and can thus map a static hostname to it (Regardless of IP address). That's the same way it works for all of you "named" workstations and network nodes.

Okay, I see what you're saying, but let me be more specific.

I format a computer's hard disk and install a fresh copy of Windows. I take the defaults for the network setup, which means it uses DHCP. During the setup, it asks me what the computer's name will be. Let's say I name it "foobar".

After that setup is done, I can walk over to another workstation and type "ping foobar.mycompany.com" and it will work.

I did not have to touch the DNS server to make this happen. In fact, the DNS server isn't even here in our building. It's not even in the same state, it's in Detroit, connected by a frame relay line. Our Cisco router forwards all name server requests and their name servers handle it back at the corporate HQ.

There is some kind of handshaking going on between the workstation and the DNS server which allows the workstation to identify itself by name. The DNS server then assigns the name the workstatation requested. It does all this automatically, without any need to modify the name server's tables of hostnames.

I don't know anything at all about this process, so I don't know how it's done. All I ever see is the end result. But surely there's some kind of a standardized way for this to happen, and it's this standard that Windows is using to get that job done?

There is some kind of handshaking going on between the workstation and the DNS server

Actually from your description, I think this is happening from some kind of Windows protocol voodoo. Like at the WINS or NETBeui level. Try pinging said fresh Windows installation from a non-Windows machine...

So you're saying that the only way to give a Linux computer a network name is to hand-modify a hostname table on the DNS server? There's no protocol for allowing a Linux computer to identify itself on the network? Is that what you're saying? Because if that's true, then what a royal pain in the ass Linux must be to administer.

No. But I know that Windows has quirky proprietary things it uses to keep track of nodes on a network. All sorts of WINS and NetBIOS stuff. If one of these was the guy responsible for you getting your name automagically, then non-Windows workstations wouldn't get it.

However ISTR that when a DHCP lease is requested, you can ask for a hostname to be assigned as well. Like "my network name is COMPUTER and I would like an IP address." Then in addition to giving you an address, the DHCP server would update your DNS entry.

My guess is that the Empeg's DHCP client isn't doing this? Or maybe requires you to put something special in /etc/hosts to make it happen?

However ISTR that when a DHCP lease is requested, you can ask for a hostname to be assigned as well. Like "my network name is COMPUTER and I would like an IP address." Then in addition to giving you an address, the DHCP server would update your DNS entry.

Right, that's all I'm talking about.

My guess is that the Empeg's DHCP client isn't doing this?

Right, that's what I'm saying.

I was wondering if that was a kernel thing, and if so, if Mark could look at it. If it's not a kernel thing, then perhaps I should be hounding the empeg guys.

Are you sure that's not the WINS (WIndows Name Server) coming into play, their proprietary protcol for workgroups? The WINS servers can also then gateway such names to DNS for non-windows boxes to see.

??

My guess is that the Empeg's DHCP client isn't doing this?

Actually, it is. I just checked my DHCP logs from the past few days, and the two new units on the LAN are passing their name off to the server, spaces replaced with dashes.

So Tonys setup is working because of the Windows voodoo magic in WINS or another protocal, and his network does not suppot DDNS (Dynamic DNS) tied into the DHCP server needed to do this on a pure TCP/IP level.

I asked this same question (albeit in a different way) a couple months ago, because our corporate network was being upgraded with a new DHCP/DNS server that would automagically (at DHCP request)update the DNS with the client's hostname. (wow, that's a long sentence)
The empeg answer was that Linux doesn't send its hostname during DHCP req. I never heard that it can't however.

I think he's on about the NetBIOS name.

nmbd from samba can provide this service so installing and running this should do it.

From nmbd man pages.

"nmbd is a server that understands and can reply to NetBIOS over IP name service requests, like those produced by SMBD/CIFS clients such as Windows 95/98, Windows NT and LanManager clients. It also participates in the browsing protocols which make up the Windows "Network Neighborhood" view."

I just installed v107, looks awesome I'm having one problem tho. Some buttons on my remote seem to not work now (i.e. visual, short click menu, and volume). Do I need to set something?

-Dan


....... N/M I should learn to read....

Hi Tony,

What you want to do is to make a reservation for your empeg. Depending on what DHCP-server software you're using you can reserve a DHCP assigned address to a client by defining either it's WINS name (MS style) og MAC address (everyone elses style). Fortunately a MS DHCP server also supports MAC address reservation (it seems)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q172408

Now you know that your empeg has the same IP address every time it on a particular network.

Now you can either configure your local DNS-server with a static entry pointing to the empeg, edit the workstations local hosts-file or just use the IP-address directly.

I hope this helps/works.

>I just installed v107, looks awesome.
>Some buttons on my remote seem to not work now
>(i.e. visual, short click menu, and volume).
>Do I need to set something?

Mmmm I have not seen that problem, except for the general beta7 issue where all of the buttons sometimes lock up.

But I did find some other bugs, most specifically one to do with AC/DC power detection: Running kftpd allowed me to browse /proc/empeg_power and there it thought it was on DC when my dock had it on AC.. Ooops. Fixed that one, and a couple other small ones.

Version v108 is now out, the best of the v100+ series thus far. I recommend that everybody upgrade to this number.

Also new in v108, the directory listings from kftpd are now much more complete than before, even to the point of showing symlink targets. But I still get some kftpd lockups (everything is fine if you don't actually connect to kftpd, though), so there's still work to be done there.

 ftp  1.2.3.4  91

(replace 1.2.3.4 with correct IP address).

Hijack v108 is available now from http://empeg-hijack.sourceforge.net

Sorry to be late , couldnt connect on BBS.

I did what ya asked :

Delete line in config ini, sync'ed, off player, restarted and tried
Still no fid display.

Joined a grad of 'serial display'

Finally, a subject about which I can speak with some authority, and I get beaten to it. Auugh!

If your config.ini is correct, then you will see lots of "serial_notify" messages on the serial port while switching between tunes on the player.

If you don't see anything like that on the serial port, then you config.ini is still not correctly set up.

-ml

It is not Wins. It is netbeui over a protocol of you choice, usually TCPIP. Windows assings hostnames also without using wins. Just think that if you setup a home lan without anything but tcpip and netbeui you get hostnames on all computers. You don0t even need DHCP.
BUT I also believed that hostname assignment can be obtained by DHCP servers as well. Was I wrong?

Okay. First, there are two name services involved. One is DNS. The other is Windows' naming service, which can either work in an election mode, or can be served by a WINS server, but is basically the same. Let's ignore Windows clients and servers for the moment. When a DHCP client requests an IP address, it can also request a specific name be assigned as well. Usually, this request is granted. If no hostname request is made, some DHCP servers will make up a hostname, but most will just not return a hostname at all. Many DHCP servers are also set up to pass new DHCP leases along to a DNS server, so that the DNS server gets dynamically updated when a new machine comes on the network. This used to be a very clean way to do this, until Windows 2000 came along. When a Windows 2000 machine gets a DHCP address from its server, it also tries to update its configured DNS server directly (with more info than just the hostname -- I think it's trying to store some Active Directory stuff there as well, but don't quote me on that). This means that the DNS server needs to trust all clients. Most admins (especially non-Windows admins) think that this is an exceptionally bad idea. In reality, most admins have their servers perform as I listed above and ignore those updates from the clients. Windows servers usually have DHCP and DNS (and AD) integrated so that you don't need to do anything to get it to work right (for certain Microsoft-defined values of `right'). Also, Windows clients usually use the Windows nameservice in addition to DNS in order to find clients. This works for even IP-specific utilites like ping.

I think that this clears up most of the questions that were posed, but if it doesn't (and I'm sure that I've left some things out), reply and I'll be happy to clear it up.

Ok, that's what I remembered. So, in theory we may have the empeg request a hostname from ant DHCP sever that supports hostname assignment, right? I think I'll ask Empeg Team whether they think this could be an interesting feature to add in future releases. Empeg's hostname could be user defined via emplode, same as now you can define IP address. It would be awsome if you coluld connect to the empeg via a hostname that does not change with the ip. Expecially now that we have an fto server and a http server in Hijack (Mark, again, you're my hero! ).

So, in theory we may have the empeg request a hostname from ant DHCP sever that supports hostname assignment, right?

Some discussion with Drakino today revealed that the empeg actually already does this. I assumed it didn't because it doesn't work on my network. The truth is that my network only assigns names to windows boxes and ignores the name assignment request from the car player.

The only other thing the car player could do is attempt to do all of that nasty Windows handshaking. Probably not going to happen, as it would be pretty silly.

Then again, maybe it wouldn't be silly if the empeg guys thought it might be important for future networked products. Who knows?

Wow, that's very interesting. Now, what name does the player ask for? It gets ignored on my network as well, fyi. I work on a quite large windows based network, and I am used to refer to machines via their hostname, and just like you I cannot do that with empeg.

The name can be set via Emplode (via the Configure Player dialog). It defaulted (on mine) to ``empegcar''. And I just did some network snoops and determined that it does request a hostname, but I'm too lazy to set my DHCP and DNS servers to do automatic updates.

>if you setup a home lan without anything but tcpip
>and netbeui you get hostnames on all computers.

Funny, I don't. Just the windows box. Everything else (Linux, Solaris, MacOS, FreeBSD, Empeg, etc.. are all excluded from that rather narrow closed protocol. No Good.

-ml

I meant all WINDOWS machines.

As I sad before, you need netbeui over tcpip (or ipx spx, or whatever) protocol, and not (necessarily) wins, which was the point of my post.