Llink:user guide

llink user guide

This is a wiki, if you think there is room for improvement and additions, please make your contribution!

Configuration

Before you start the llink media server you need to configure it. There are two files, llink.conf and jukebox.conf, located in the llink directory.
Open them with a text editor and follow the instructions to make llink work to your specifications.

If you run llink from a another directory than where the llink binary is located, you must specify this when starting:
llink -f /path/to/llink.conf -w /path/to/skin/

Read the .conf files carefully and update them correctly.

When using a normal browser on a PC to use llink it is recommended to use the Moon skin. Other skins may be difficult to navigate and click on links.

A simple guide for Windows is located here: llink windows installation
It may be useful for people using other OS too.

In *nix systems you can use symlinks to help organize your media. On Windows you can use a tool called "Junctions" for NTFS drives. There is a binary with the lundftpd binary for Windows. But with multiple ROOT command support in the config files, there should be no need for symlinks.

Command line

/llink - Media server engine.
./llink [-hd] [-f file] [...]

  options:
  -h          : display usage help (this output)
  -d          : stay in foreground, do not detach
  -v          : enable verbose debug information
  -f <file>   : set configuration file to read (default: llink.conf
  -w <path>   : Change to directory after starting
  -x          : Scan ROOTs for media to generate XML files for jukebox skin
  -X          : Same as -x, but XML files are saved in redirect path
  -s          : Syabas subtitle bug that sends filename.sub$garbage

Verbose output options

-v 512 : libdvdread info
-v 255 : full verbose, very talkative
-v 60  : less verbose, but still informative
-v 8   : unrar messages
-v 4   : requests and header replies

Browsing your media

Use the color buttons on the Popcorn Hour A-100 remote control to browse through the media directories.

• Red = Parent directory. Pressing it many times will eventually take you to the media root
  
• Green = Refresh
  
• Yellow = Previous page
  
• Blue = Next page
• Navigation buttons Up / Down = Go up and down in media list (A-100)
• Enter-button = Enter directory/Play media (central round button on the A-100)
• Play button = Play all media in the current directory.

Subtitles

As specified in the configuration files, you can place supported subtitle files either in the same directory as the movie file, or in a separate directory just for subs. In either case, the sub file must have the exact same name as the movie file, apart from the extension.
Example: myMovie.avi gives myMovie.sub

The subtitle format support follows what Syabas NMT supplies in their firmware. For the A-100 model look here: PopcornHour.com

At the time of writing this documentation, there is a bug in the NMT firmware that incorrectly replaces the extension with .SUB without string termination. (Garbage follows the filename.) You can use llink -s to enable a work around until Syabas can fix said bug.

Jukebox skin, cover art and media info

The file jukebox.conf holds the config needed to run the cover art & media info skin Jukebox.

The information is stored in xml files. There should be be compatibility to the MyMovies application (Windows only, free for personal use), which can auto-generate xml files for your collection. Another open source tool is the java based imdbit. You will find the specifications and macros that llink support here: Llink:macros.

llink features it's own imdb scraper too. To run that type: ./llink -d -X -f jukebox.conf (Skip the ./ if you work in Windows environment)

This will start a process where you can choose an imdb code that corresponds to your media files and trigger download of album art and media information. If none is suggested just search www.imdb.com and enter the value manually.

Once you are done, or if you already have your xml's and album art files in place, just type: ./llink -f jukebox.conf

Note: just like the default configuration file (llink.conf) you have to edit the jukebox.conf file before you start llink!

• Set the path(s) to your media ROOTs
• Set the path to the xml re-directs (e.g. create a directory with read/write permissions where llink can store the additional files needed)

Multiple instances

EXPERIMENTAL: If you want to run more than one instance of llink, for example one with jukebox skin and another with the Aquarius, make jukebox.conf and llink.conf (or whatever you name the conf files) to use distinct port numbers. The default for llink is 8001, and Jukebox 8002. Also make sure the NAME=llink-daemon is unique in each conf file, ie call one llink-daemon, the other llink-jukebox.

With this you can start two instances, or as many as you want. Alas, they might not both announce to show up automatically, so you might have to add one manually as a web service on the NMT.