Player chooser.. kernel chooser

I was looking at the different players available for the empeg (squash, the default, etc) and thought that maybe it would be cool to be able to switch players on the fly. Like a player chooser. This may be best implemented in hijack or something.

The idea first came to me when reading about the new Alpha release for the empeg software. If there were a kernel chooser - like a multiple boot option - it may make things easier when trying out different kernels for different situations. I guess one of the main issues with multiple kernel chhoices would be the ROM size limitation.

Any ideas? Takers?

Any reason why you would want to try multiple kernels on-the-fly?

I could understand choosing different players, and that can be done with the proper "init", no kernel hacking necessary.

The alpha software has different fonts, but a chrooted environment should be possible. Hmmm. Maybe I should do that.

Remember that the layout of the data partition has changed. Being able to switch between v2 and v3 would probably result in a lot of broken databases.

Remember that the layout of the data partition has changed. Being able to switch between v2 and v3 would probably result in a lot of broken databases.

not necesarily a lot of it. they use different databases in /drive0/var (database and database3), and as far as i can tell, going to alpha3 didnt wipeout ALL of the scratch partition. all my PLAYS data is still there. now, my other settings such as bookmarks, eq, and marked files is a different question.

as far as i can tell, going to alpha3 didnt wipeout ALL of the scratch partition. all my PLAYS data is still there

OK, now go from alpha3 back to 2.0 final and see what happens...

tanstaafl.

Also, they haven't changed *everything* on the dynamic data partition. Specifically, they still have plans (Roger posted to this effect earlier today) to change the format of the FID entires in the running order/bookmark areas of the dyndata partiiton for v3 final. This would *definitely* not be backwards or forwards compatible between v2 and v3.

You could make a separate scratch partition in a chroot'd environment, unless it's checking the major and minor device number of /dev/hda3 before opening it, just make a different "device" be /dev/hda3. Like, say, /dev/hdb3's major and minor device number.

If the player checked, you'd need hijack's help.

i've gone back and forth with out losing my plays counters. but an annoying side-effect is that my playlists are losing their ignore as child flag. but i'm sure thats because of the database change.

my playlists are losing their ignore as child flag.

Odd... my ignore as child flags are (apparently) intact. More than half ot the "songs" in my player are audiobooks, and I have been playing a down-down-down full shuffle for the past couple days and not a single audiobook chapter has shown up, so I assume my ignore as child flags are working.

tanstaafl.

so I assume my ignore as child flags are working.

Mine definitely are, but I am running a later build of 3.0 (3.00-nightly20030815).

my ignore as child flags went missing when i used jemplode to rebuild the database when i went from v2final to v3alpha. i since re-applied them, and when i went back to v2final, it lost it once again after the rebuild back to the old database. strangeness. mebbe its a quirk with jemplode.

Same here, Tanstaafl. No problem at all with my audiobooks since the installation of 3.0alpha3.

was looking at the different players available for the empeg (squash, the default, etc) and thought that maybe it would be cool to be able to switch players on the fly. Like a player chooser. This may be best implemented in hijack or something.

if hijack can be modified to be able to switch hda and hdc around, can't we just install v2-final on one, and v3a3 on the other? separate scratch partitions, separate databases, but same fids?

That's a cute idea.. perfectly feasible. You might even be able to do it without changing Hijack, by using chroot to switch root partitions. But I suppose the various player scripts (rw, rwm, ro, rom, ...) might still have some troubles (or not, if they're written in a certain way).

Cheers

oooo... cool idea image.

You could always change the /dev files around. Then you don't need to fiddle with any of the scripts or the player application itself.

The primary drive would have the correct entries in /dev but the secondary drive would have the drive device files swapped around.

You could always change the /dev files around.

I already said that.

More /dev jiggery-pokery ? The Mk2/2a already have some kernel tweaks to enable the player software to treat them the same as a Mk1, ie /dev/hdc points to /dev/hdb. I can't remember the exact details, but this would need to be taken into account.

Doh. Missed that one

nyeah, i had the idea a long time ago, when i was trying to push my multi-marking wish a while back. seems more fitting now, now that there's a practical (not just for me alone, even though mr.faq got the irbutton=blink feature implemented) use. =)