NEW: autoHijack

Attached is a script that will automatically check for upgrades of Hijack, download the latest, and then flash it to your empeg.

Basically, it's a Mark Lord tracker: a solution for those of us who have trouble keeping up with Mark's prolific coding of the excellent Hijack. (Thanks, Mark, for releasing 5 or 6 upgrades this weekend while I was coding so I could test...)

After setting it up, you can just click on the icon and you're done. If your kernel is current, nothing happens; if there's a newer one, it's installed. Error reporting is extensive, downloads are saved, and there's a facility for rolling your kernel back to the last one that successfully flashed. Flashed kernels are verified against the downloaded zImage file.

You need Python and a working Hijack kernel. Tested on WinXP, but should be portable.

First contribution; let me know how it works for you. Comments/suggestions/rants welcome.

Gary

[Edit: The latest version is attached to one of my messages below; please scroll down...]

I've been thinking of adding this to my linux script, how did you easially detect newer versions on the web site?

Nevermind, I just looked at the source code,

ahh, I tried to do the same in Perl but I had no doc on how to use IP socket in Perl to dowload kernels on Mark's Website .

Good Work !!!!

Wow, that's neat... Saves me the trouble of hacking out a perl version.

Thanks!

I get this:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "D:\Empeg\AutoHijack\autoHijack.py", line 345, in ?

    new_kernel_file = check_for_latest_file()

  File "D:\Empeg\AutoHijack\autoHijack.py", line 240, in check_for_latest_file

    if newer_kernel_on_web(zImage_filename) or GL_overwrite_downloaded_kernels:

  File "D:\Empeg\AutoHijack\autoHijack.py", line 211, in newer_kernel_on_web

    if version(zimage_on_web) > version(disk_zImages[0]):

IndexError: list index out of range

When I run it... looks like it can't handle being run for the first time..

Edit: I had to comment out lines 211,214-216 and reduce the tab of 212-213 to get it to work the first time, if anyone else has this problem.. Once you have one done successfully it'll work ok.

Roger that. The error occurs if the working directory is empty. Here's a new version with a fix. Also fixed in this version: changing your ip address will no longer upset the database that stores the last successful upload.

Thanks for your work on this program. It works!

Sean

Here's a minor tweak...

Your source mentions that you want to pause the player but can't, because sending a play/pause will UNPAUSE the player if it's already paused... But what about standby?

Replace line 300 with:
ftp.sendcmd('SITE button source.L')

and the Empeg will be placed in sleepy-mode.. On my Empeg, it doesn't seem to wake it if it's already in standby, but it will reliably put it there.