[Sugar-devel] Installing gstreamer media codecs on XO-1

[Kevin Mark]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 12:15:03PM +1100, David Leeming wrote:
> 
> I have tried to install media codecs on an XO-1 running 11.3.0 so that we
> can play FLV video files directly (from a flashdrive, school server or
> network location)., in either Sugar or GNOME. 
> 
> I had trouble getting it work using the instructions at
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/GStreamer#Totem_plugin - I think it is outdated. 
> 
> After some research and trial and error (lots!!) I have it working, some
> using XO-1 may find useful 
> 
> The below works on an XO-1 running 11.3.0 freshly installed. It works in
> Gnome using Totem/Movie Player and in Sugar using Jukebox Activity. It plays
> mp3 audio and FLV video OK (such as the Khan Academy collection, which we
> have loaded on the school servers in project schools)  
> 
> We also add the Flash plug in for the browser and disable "click to view".
> This allows embedded flash animations and FLV videos accessed with Browse,
> Youtube, etc to play with good performance. Note that Flash version 11 is
> much better than v10. 
> 
> So bringing it all together, I reproduced the above using the following. 
> - XO-1 running 11.3.0, fresh install
> - In Gnome view in a terminal, as su 
> - wireless Internet connection 
> 
> yum localinstall --nogpgcheck
> http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noa
> rch.rpm
> http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stab
> le.noarch.rpm
> 
> yum install -y gstreamer-plugins-ugly
> 
> yum install -y gstreamer-ffmpeg
> 
> rm /home/olpc/Activities/Browse.activity/agent-stylesheet.css 
> 
> rm /home/olpc/Activities/Browse.activity/clickToView.xml 
> 
> navigate to the flash rpm and run 
> 
> rpm -Uhv flash.rpm
> 
> where flash.rpm is the Flash verion 11 RPM for Linux 32 bit from Adobe. 
> 
> Questions
> 1. Is the above the right way to do it, if someone with more Fedora
> experience than I can verify..
> 2. In our narrowband countries it takes an hour and downloads a lot per
> laptop, this is unworkable in PNG with large numbers of XOs and where the
> bandwidth is so expensive and unreliable. Isn't there a way to do this
> offline with a download, something we can run on a flashdrive?

If you download the rpms, you can store them on a flash drive and run the rpm
to address the rpms on the flash drive.
so downloading it once and them using a flash drive N number of times is one
way.

> 3. is the update step above necessary (it requires downloading 33MB) 

I have not tried this, it may be. I dont know the complete list of rpms that it
installed other then the 2 you said.  those 2 might work with the current
packages or they might need to update a few packages and download the needed
dependencies which means the update is needed.  This sounds like it might need
a local 'proxy'/mirror server to the needed rpms. so the xo's could do the 'rpm
update' but would get the 'update' and the needed rpms from a local server.
this would need the XOs to alter their rpm repo list.  i'm not a rpm expert, so
you'd need to test a solution to ensure it works and does not alter other
support issues.

old way:
XO->Fedora server (per each XO over the global internet)
vs
new way:
local Fedora server->Fedora server (via the global internet one time)
XO->local Fedora server(per each XO over a local area network (LAN))

> 4. In doing the above am I violating a ton of licenses?
> 
The gstreamer folks have 3 packages for Codecs - good, bad, ugly.
which translates to 'free softare', some issues, lots of issues.  In this case
I recall that free software projects can not distribute these files from adobe
because you are suppose to use them for personal use and accept their license
terms. And those terms are not compatible with Free Software projects. (as
binary software with no source code and non-free license terms and not
redistributable)

Hopes this explains and any one can correct/add as needed.

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