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

It all starts with a configuration before you can start the llink media server. 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.

Starting llink

Normally you launch llink by double clicking the llink.exe (Windows) or typing ./llink in shell (*nix). This would start llink with the configurations as specified in the llink.conf.

Turning to your TV/Projector screen, llink should be auto-discovered by the NMT and display as "llink-daemon" or similar in the media source list. Then you navigate to it and click Enter on the remote to launch.

If the "llink-daemon" doesn't show up, you may be able to launch llink via one of the available Web Services on the NMT.
Add <IP of your source>:<port, default 8001>, ex: 192.168.1.2:8001, and then you should be able to start via the Web Service menu.

On *nix machines with multiple ethernet interfaces (gateway/router) running llink, add a route for SSDP for the internal interface to get the "llink-daemon" to show up in the media sources.
route add -net 239.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 eth1

Replace eth1 with the interface serving the NMT, you may like to add the line to "local.start" or similiar depending on distribution.

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
  -L          : disable LinkTheater fix, don't close keep-alive for errors

Verbose output options Start with ./llink -v <Level>

	Level    Debug description
	0        this message
	1        general debug messages
	2        ssdp debug
	4        http requests and header replies
	8        unrar messages
	16       skin messages
	32       root messages
	60       medium verbose messages
	64       extnfo messages
	128      xmlscan messages
	255      very verbose
	256      query messages (replies to SSDP)
	512      libdvdread messages
	1024     visited db messages

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, you can place supported subtitle files either in the same directory as the movie, 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.srt

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.

Skins with cover art and media info

The file jukebox.conf holds the config needed to run the cover art & media info skin Jukebox. Kamishi_skies is another skin with cover art and media info.

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 correspond 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.

Yet another option is to use PiXL. Popeys's Imdb to Xml for Llink is a webservice for manual or scripted media scraping. More detailed information and scripts can be found here.

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)

Play All: (Unclear definition)
Delete: Deletes file or directory (Unclear definition)
Unrar: Unrar's a RAR archive. May take some time if used on a small resource device such as a NAS. [info]
Mount: Mounts an iso (Unclear definition)
Enter PIN: Sets a pin code PIN that enables the display of .directories until you clear the PIN, or a 15 minute timeout.
Clear PIN: Clears the pin (Unclear definition)
Quit llink: Tries to quit llink gracefully. Useful when running llink from a mounted share, for instance a USB stick.

Parental control with pincode

Put the movies you want to protect in .directories, eg directories where the name begins with a '.' (dot) such as .Horror. Then add "-a" in your ROOTs list option and define the PIN number in the conf file.

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.

Other functionalities

With some minor changes, you can watch live TV streams via llink on your NMT device. Read more here: Llink:Live_TV