Help needed with new HTPC autoinstaller project

[binary64]

Hi all, I have started an open project called Bluepill, which is an autoinstalling, autoupdating and autoconfiguring HTPC installer based on Windows XP.

Bluepill first helps you create a new Windows Installation Disc with Bluepill embedded. Simply boot this CD for a hands-free installation of Windows XP (any flavour). On first boot, the Bluepill Updater launches automatically to provide a seemless install end-to-end. After installed, on every boot, Bluepill Updater will check and execute any further updates we may have rolled out (eg, upgrades to software, tweaks, etc). The end result: a simple way to turn your computer into a "managed" set-top-box that is always up to date, and could never need a mouse/keyboard/vnc at all.

Once Bluepill is installed, the user sees a choice of which frontend to use (or try out). Eventually this will be a complete list: MCE, MediaPortal, xlobby, xbmc, Meedio, MeediOS, WMP11 (Plain Windows) etc. But right now, only Windows and Meedio have been worked on.

When the user selects a frontend (with the remote), the frontend needs to be highly configured so that everything is ready to go.

So the reason I am posting here, is to see if anyone wants to be in charge of the MediaPortal frontend part of this project. Anyone else is still very welcome, beta testers, users, or suggestors.

To install Bluepill now (try it in vmware if you like), read Bluepill - MeediOS Wiki

Technical users who are interested can view Bluepill's update script anytime at http://www.meedios.com/bluepill/bluepill.xml
The SVN url for all this project is at https://meedios.svn.sourceforge.net/...uepillBluepill also uses http://www.meedios.com/bluepill/codecs.xml for directshow codecs, and http://www.meedios.com/bluepill/ultimate.xml to see the Meedio updates. We need a mce2005.xml. and I have been working on Bluepill for quite some time now, it's starting to take shape.

So the overall concept of Bluepill is pooling our knowledge of HTPC installations in general, and letting everyone use the fruits from it, they feed back any problems/suggestions, we fix/update, which in turn benefit all.

[Zappza]

This looks awesome!

I can be a betatester and suggestor with no problems what so ever.
I do not think I have the required skills in programming to take charge of the MP frontend, however I can help with organizing and everything else except from programming

[binary64]

Great, thanks, try it out in vmware while we get started. Get an "untouched" XP SP2 cd (not sp3) ready.

A new problem has cropped up today... the "dvbfix" url mentioned on these forums, for latest tve3 server build, is dead....! We need a new, more reliable host for the files asap. I'm not happy hosting those files on any servers I have access to I suppose the alternative is for Bluepill to download the whole MCE rollup2, and extract those 2 small files from it

Finally, I just saw an SP3 problem on a Bluepill machine .. first of all, the machine hung whilst shutting down after applying SP3, and after reboot, no other machines could even ping it. In the end, I had to ENABLE the firewall and it started working again, then i disabled it, and it's still working. Now how to do that programatically.... I suppose having had disabled services before installing SP3 mucked something up (ipsec, firewall, ics, WMI were all 'Disabled').

[Paranoid Delusion]

A new problem has cropped up today... the "dvbfix" url mentioned on these forums, for latest tve3 server build, is dead

http://www.users.on.net/~nperin/Mediaportal/dvbfix.rar

What the above link works fine.

[tourettes]

The issue with hosting those fixes is related to that fact that MS really doesnt want their binaries to be distributed by 3rd parties (for example to limit the possibility of virus, malware etc. getting involved). So at least the MP team doesnt want to host those files.

[binary64]

Thanks, typical, it wasn't working between 9am and 12noon today GMT. If anyone spots any mirrors of that file (has to be same MD5), let me know. I think I'll implement the proper support, and get client to download rollup2. I used to do similar for minlogon before i dropped it.

[tourettes]

...who is awake between 9am and 12 noon? Ok, I'll have to admit that for workdays it might be the case for me also

[binary64]

Problem is, temporarily missing update urls cause the Bluepill machine to hang when booting (only if that url needs downloading..), since there's no such flags to specify which updates are important, and which rely on others. Eg, if WFP update fails, then dvbfix cannot be run yet.... it simply keeps trying the current update until things are fixed.

I found an extra mirror : http://des.plus-null.org/dokuwiki/li...tpc:dvbfix.rar
(the md5 does match)

Problem with that url is it breaks the microsoft xml parser when pasted as-is into an attribute. Does anyone know how to XmlAttributeEncode a string? or for now tell me how i can encode that url. right now it says '=' is not a valid token.

edit: the forum did some unencoding of it's own, here's the raw url split up a little with spaces:

ht tp : // des.plus-null.o r g/dokuwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=htpc%3Alinks&cache=cache&media=htpc:d vbfix.rar

[Zappza]

Hi, installing this right now, and my first thought is that it is taking a _lot_ of time, but I read in the forum thread on meedios that this couldn't be fixed.
However, could it be possible to allow the user to choose which installations to download? I know that I won't use any of the following; MCE, xlobby, xbmc, Meedio, MeediOS, WMP11 (Plain Windows), so if I could just choose MediaPortal that would be great, also if you wan't to test out some of the above, you can choose them before the install.

Also, I got a message to insert CD2 of XP Professional during the install, why did this come up? I just pressed cancel.

Looks nice so far I have gotten to update 136 so far

[binary64]

CD2? sounds like your "XP disc" is MCE edition? I suppose it doesn't matter, other than MCE needs a disc 2. Long term plan is to merge MCE's CD1 and CD2 during the 'Make ISO' stage. Volenteers always welcome as this is a low-priority todo.

It can take up to 5 hours to fully install, but you can reduce this to about 2 hours by pre-caching all the downloads. The pre-caching system is alpha quality, but does works. I'll write some user-instructions up for it soon.

An eventually, I can implement parallel downloading, and parallel installation threads, as some updates can be installed in parallel. Long time away for this though. Install time isn't an issue for me since it's unattended, it's not a big deal.

The biggest issue atm is the fact that booting Bluepill machine requres MeediOS | Bringing Media to Life to be online and healthy. And gracefully handling dead update urls (if the update in question is skipable).

Thanks for testing, are you on VM or real?