Hi guys,

I'm planning to build a presentation system with the following requirements:
- light on resources since it's for an outdated system
- presenting images with gqview (suggested by user catkin)
- being able to start system with WOL (know how to do this on windows & the machine is WOL capable, but not on linux)
- autologon and start the presentation without user intervention
- schedule shutdown
- samba to drop images into the presentation folder over the network from a windows pc (I think I will manage to install this from source)

The videocard (onboard) has an Intel 82845G chipset and there seems to be a linux driver available.
The screen is a 24" 16:10 and in windows it's capable to display 1440x900 which is more then sufficient for the job.

I guess that compiling myself would give the best results but even though I have done that once years ago because I could not use a sata pci card, in this case I would prefer to use something 'out of the box'.

I'm just a linux noob so please go easy on me.

Any input is highly appreciated!

Peter

Is is possible to use some linux variant to automatically start a presentation of images from a network share folder. I do think you will be lucky to find something that will do it right out of the box.
There are planty of lightweight distros about. Have a look at
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ca...ld%20computers

Also look for anything with LXDE desktop - nice and light.
Gqview only needs gtk2 as a dependency so should be easily installed on any base light distro, especially gnome or xfce based ones. Gqview is also my preferred image viewer.
This is not a distro specific feature - you just need to install/configure the right tools. Try here for starters.
http://xlife.zuavra.net/index.php/60/
GDM (Gnome desktop manager) and KDM (KDE Desktop Manager) are two common desktop managers which can be configured to allow automatic login. Unfortunately they usually come with the full desktop environment which is not want you want for a lightweight setup.

I read somewhere that some tweaking of configuration files will enable direct login without a desktop manager. If you like I will try to dig up that info.

Starting an application automatically depends on what desktop environment/window manager you use. It is a matter of placing a copy of (or creating) a desktop file in the required folder, or editing the right configuration file. Decide on your desktop environment you will be using, then look about for how to autostart.

All distros should have 'cron' installed by default. Learn how to use cron for automatic scheduling. For example, if you type the following command as root (or prefixed with sudo)
This will open the cron configuration file in the 'vi' editor. If you press 'i' (without the 'quotes') to get into 'insert' mode then add the following line
Then press <Esc> ':' 'w' and 'q' (without the 'quotes') in that order to save and quit, you will have configured the computer to automatically shut down at 6pm.
You want the samba client, not the samba server. No need to compile from source if your chosen distro has a package manger. Most distros have a samba client of some type - or look into using fstab to having a specified shared folder mounted where you need it at boot.

Recommendations:
Absolute linux is a nice light distro which has gqview installed by default. No automatic login the last time I looked, but I am sure you could tweak it.

TinyMe provides a base that can be easily customised to run what you need.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi Greenfuse, thank you for your detailed explanation!

Good tip that link to distrowatch! ;-)
At the moment, I'm testing it with debian and it's acceptable but I might have a try with another distro, even just to see what the difference might be performance/speed wise.

As for gqview: I thought it was 'the' solution but I could not get it working like this:
- autostart
- fullscreen
- loop
You can configure it from the 'toolbox' to do so but not from commandline.
An alternative is to use VLC and convert slides into a movie - for which I found some freeware. Another problem was to be able to add/remove slides easily themselves but I think I've solved that - have to test it - by making multiple movies per 'subject/item' and start a playlist where I link to those movies. That way they don't need me every time something has to change to the presentation.

WOL: I was not sure about any configuration settings since in windows, you have to configure the adapter as well to accept wol requests.
Apparently not needed in linux since it's working fine.

Thank you for that link to that very detailed WOL page. I have found some info about it in the past but never that clear.

I found the autologon settings, but of course that is in GDM.

Thank you for the crontab tip, it works fine.

Regarding Samba: by using the client, I guess that's the way to go when handling from the linux box.
In this situation, the pc will not be reachable in an easy way since the screen is gonna be wall mounted close to the ceiling and the pc will be put in a space between a false ceiling.

Thanks again for your input, I will dig further into the information you've provided, even if it's just to pick up something.

Thanks for the follow up post, glad you found it useful.

Loop and fullscreen:

gqview -f -s /path/to/picture/directory

Enter your preferred settings from the GQview GUI first: Edit->Preferences->General before running the command.

Autostart
The method used varies depending on your desktop environment. Look into it. Are you using Gnome, KDE or a simple window manager (advisable for a lightweight setup)? For Gnome or KDE you might need to create a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ .

Here is a modification of /usr/share/applications/gqview.desktop which you could use as /usr/share/applications/gqslides.desktop (change to your /path/to/picture/directory/ as required)

With some window managers, such as icewm (a favourite of mine) you do not need the .desktop file, you just need to include the command (along with any other autostart instructions) in a startup file.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you very much Greenfuse, your input had gotten me a lot further.
I guess I made a mistake with gqview that I was logged on as a normal user and tried to start it from the root terminal right after installing gqview. Therefore the settings made in the GUI did not apply..

This is what I have now:
- a WOL script in the startup from another pc which is always used, and switched on immediately when shop is open.
- gqview at startup (configured through the GUI startup) with the folder as location to start from
- found unclutter to hide mouse cursor (was also a reason to go with VLC)
- shutdown scheduled with crontab

So far, so good and I'm quite happy with this.
Now I'm trying to push it a little further by a script on the windows machine. The goal is to be able to stop and start gqview, shutdown and restart the pc.
The reason for this is that, since the pc is on all the time and if they want to make changes to the presentation, by just adding/removing files to the samba share while the presentation is running, it stops and you need remote access to start it again.
I could use VNC for this but thought of making it easier/idiot proof with a batch file; there are a few issues though...

I'm using plink to control remotely, which works fine for shutting down/restart - even from a batch file.

Stopping gqview with kill:
I don't know if this is the right/best way and you first have to get the PID -> how to script this so you can always shutdown gqview from command line.

Starting gqview with plink:
I'm stuck because when I do this with the credentials for the right user, I get an 'Access denied' error even though I succeed in accessing with putty.

I don't know if I'm approaching this the right/best way so your comments are appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance!
Peter

Great to hear of the progress you are making with your project.

instead of having to track down the process ID for a kill command, try:


Acess Denied
I am not experienced with putty so I cannot say for sure what you need to do here. Do other commands work? I run a headless home server with ssh and have not seen the problem you describe. Perhaps you need to put a shell script on the linux box and start it remotely via plink.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks once again for your killall tip - works like charm!

I had already thought about creating a script on the linux box and calling it but that doesn't work either (also learning to script on linux now! )
The problem seems that it tries to open gqview in the terminal - I guess; I get a 'Gtk warning, trying to open display' warning.

I have opened a new thread for this in the hope that someone can help me with this script.

Thanks a lot and I will surely give you credit in mentioning that I had a lot of help! ;-)

Peter