HQPlayer Linux Desktop and HQplayer embedded

[asdf1000]

Hi @Miska

 

Are you planning to add a Merging Ravenna version of HQPe  for Ubuntu Focal?

 

A version which pulls all the necessary files automatically (related to Merging's Ravenna ALSA driver etc) on install?

 

Or is it only the below that is required and the current HQPe will work?

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, asdf1000 said:

Or is it only the below that is required and the current HQPe will work?

 

 

That should sorta work. I've been having some challenges with 5.4 kernels and the driver, so I have not been testing this on Focal. 4.19 kernel worked better with the driver.

 

[hifi25nl]

The merging driver needs a number of patches to work on kernel >= 5.4.x

[asdf1000]

11 minutes ago, Miska said:

That should sorta work. I've been having some challenges with 5.4 kernels and the driver, so I have not been testing this on Focal. 4.19 kernel worked better with the driver.

 

 

7 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

The merging driver needs a number of patches to work on kernel >= 5.4.x

 

Thanks guys !

 

I assume Merging is aware already and working on it? Or no word from them @hifi25nl ?

 

From what I read, they seem very stressed with their Windows Driver, Anubis firmware, Big Sur Intel and then Big Sur M1 support.

 

I imagine Linux is bottom of their list of priorities right now :-(

 

 

[hifi25nl]

In Archlinux there are these updated packages with the patches:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ravenna-alsa-lkm-dkms/

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ravenna-alsa-daemon

 

You need both the kernel module and the daemon

There is also another "AES67 linux deamon" available only on Audiolinux.

 

Feedback and help from Merging has been very poor. No answers on the Merging forum, no patches for latest kernels...

 

All is not fully tested and configuration is not easy, but module can be loaded and display Ravenna  typing aplay -l

[Miska]

9 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

From what I read, they seem very stressed with their Windows Driver, Anubis firmware, Big Sur Intel and then Big Sur M1 support.

 

You can probably guess why I'm not fond of starting to develop input drivers for HQPlayer... ;) :D

 

[Miska]

HQPlayer OS RAVENNA version contains everything needed, but when actually using it YMMV...

 

[asdf1000]

1 minute ago, Miska said:

HQPlayer OS RAVENNA version contains everything needed, but when actually using it YMMV...

 

 

This version can obviously play to normal NAA's also right?

 

It's not only for RAVENNA devices?

 

[Miska]

2 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

This version can obviously play to normal NAA's also right?

 

Yes, but why on earth would you want to use it that way?

 

2 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

It's not only for RAVENNA devices?

 

It practically is. For example I didn't bother building version with NAA fixes because it is not supposed to used that way.

 

[asdf1000]

2 minutes ago, Miska said:

Yes, but why on earth would you want to use it that way?

 

When Anubis arrives home network will have a RAVENNA device and 4 NAA's.

 

i.e. a mixture !

 

So 1 x HQP OS machine would be nice to cover all NAA's , no ?

 

Or are you hinting at a different solution ?

[Miska]

1 minute ago, asdf1000 said:

When Anubis arrives home network will have a RAVENNA device and 4 NAA's.

 

i.e. a mixture !

 

So 1 x HQP OS machine would be nice to cover all NAA's , no ?

 

I wouldn't mix those much. You may anyway need to put the Anubis behind Windows or macOS NAA.

 

[Rovo]

Due to the problems I had earlier I opted to do a fresh installation (turned out to be two fresh installations), first Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS followed by (up to and including the installation of hqplayerd after which I got the error below): 

 

 

After installing hqplayerd and the command "sudo apt install -f" to pull in the dependencies, I got at the end of a long page:

 

Up to this point I did not get any warnings or errors. Could you advice what to do with post installation script subprocess. This most likely will set some user rights, which did cause the earlier problems.

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Rovo said:

Due to the problems I had earlier I opted to do a fresh installation (turned out to be two fresh installations), first Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS followed by (up to and including the installation of hqplayerd after which I got the error below): 

 

 

After installing hqplayerd and the command "sudo apt install -f" to pull in the dependencies, I got at the end of a long page:

 

Up to this point I did not get any warnings or errors. Could you advice what to do with post installation script subprocess. This most likely will set some user rights, which did cause the earlier problems.

 

Problem is that you have created a user called "hqplayer" during installation process?

 

Since you are logged in as one, and the one created by hqplayerd package doesn't allow logins...

 

Instead create for example user called "admin" or something like that during the installation process.

 

Also when installing, please make sure you at most select "SSH Server" and "Standard Utilities" as package selections to install. And with 20.04 you may want to do "sudo apt remove --purge lxd snapd" after installation to remove some unnecessary new junk. In addition when calling "sudo apt autoremove" you may want to do it with argument "--purge" to clean up some left-over things.

 

[Rovo]

Thank you for your assistance. That did the trick.

 

Below I have summarized the steps I have taken to install Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS plus HQPlayerEmbedded. Perhaps useful for people relatively inexperienced with Linux as me.

 

First install Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS with only the "Standard Utilities" (in principle no selections for additional packages) and optionally with "SSH Server" package (if you want to remotely control your server, which normally you want because it is very practical). During the installation for the username pick your choice, only not "hqplayer" (because this will conflict with the installation of HQPlayerEmbedded). Then do the following:

 

sudo apt -y remove --purge lxd snapd
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
(--> repeat above two lines until all ok!!!)
sudo apt -y autoremove --purge

 

sudo wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/focal/linux-headers-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb
sudo wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/focal/linux-image-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-image-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb

 

sudo apt-get install alsa-utils
sudo wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/focal/libgmpris_2.2.1-8_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libgmpris_2.2.1-8_amd64.deb

 

sudo reboot

 

wget -q -O - https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/rocm.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/apt/debian/ xenial main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rocm.list
sudo apt update

 

sudo reboot

 

wget https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/hqplayerd/focal/hqplayerd_4.21.1-60_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i hqplayerd_4.21.1-60_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -f

 

sudo reboot

 

sudo hqplayerd -s hqplayer hqplayer
sudo systemctl enable hqplayerd
sudo systemctl restart hqplayerd
sudo systemctl status hqplayerd

 

You most likely want to setup a static IP-address for your server. Easiest way to do this is via your router. See your router manual for the appropriate instructions.

 

When you have setup your static IP-address you can access your server via "ssh", your username (as set in the installation of Ubuntu Server) and your static IP-address. For maintenance etc..

 

To access the configuration page of HQPlayerEmbedded, start a web browser on another computer and enter:

<static IP-address>:8088/config

(username "hqplayer" and password "hqplayer" as set in the command "hqplayerd -s hqplayer hqplayer)

 

[maya]

On 27/01/2021 at 4:31 PM, Miska said:

 

Ubuntu build has CUDA and ROCm support for GPU offload. You can likely install the Debian Buster package also on Ubuntu Focal and it has neither so quite a bit smaller.

 

For size constrained devices, you should really use HQPlayer OS. The entire OS is just 1.8 GB with about 50% of free disk space included (so it is really just about 900 MB of which most is just mostly unused firmware binaries).

 

Hi Jussi,

 

I have successfully upgrade my Debian HQPe to the latest 4.21 version after install all the dependencies and rocm library for which more than 13.2 G space has been used! 

The HQPe 4.21 under Debian OS now is 9.5 G instead of 2.6G before.

 

Can I remove some packages which are not used by HQPe 4.21 according to its build info ?

 

 It seems cuda offload  also working with CPU GPU as the CPU usage percentage has been decreased by more than 20 % !

 

Thanks 

 

[maya]

1 hour ago, maya said:

Hi Jussi,

 

I have successfully upgrade my Debian HQPe to the latest 4.21 version after install all the dependencies and rocm library for which more than 13.2 G space has been used! 

The HQPe 4.21 under Debian OS now is 9.5 G instead of 2.6G before.

 

Can I remove some packages which are not used by HQPe 4.21 according to its build info ?

 

 It seems cuda offload  also working with CPU GPU as the CPU usage percentage has been decreased by more than 20 % !

 

Thanks 

 

 

[Holzohr]

I have installed the HQPlayer embedded image on my Optane ssd with help of an Ubuntu live stick on Friday (and deleted a Windows installation with Jplay, Diretta) and feel a kind of relief. 😀 No more hassle with updates, tunings, driver installations. I must say I fell in love with HQPlayer again. Thumbs up for HQPlayer OS.

[luisma]

Hello everyone, today I connected to my HQPe PC running under Ubuntu Focal 20.04 which is always ON and I installed back in Nov 2020. HQPe shows as Trial not licensed and I noticed the fingerprint changed without me altering hardware, including CPU, RAM, board, SSD, etc. I decided to go back from 4.21.1-60 to 4.20.3-58 still the same "wrong" fingerprint. I wonder if an earlier 4.20 will show another fingerprint but currently unable to download former versions from https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/hqplayerd/focal/

Anyone has experienced anything like this with the fingerprint changing without changing the hardware? I remember about a year ago someone reported the fingerprint changing but I think (don't have confirmation) it might have happened switching OS's from Ubuntu to Audiolinux or something very specific.

I am puzzled by this, asked @Miska for a former version (circa Nov 2020) of HQPe to test, waiting on him to supply it, I guess after all the buzz with 4.20 been better sounding than 4.21 the older versions are blocked from downloading?

403 Forbidden

---

OpenBSD httpd

 

For the record last night I downloaded 4.20 to see if the fingerprint changed and installed it, sounded the same as 4.21

 

Another possibility which I asked Miska about was including the rocm repository, this should not of course change the fingerprint of HQPe but it is one the changes my system suffered over the last 2 months.

 

[mtcs]

4 minutes ago, luisma said:

Hello everyone, today I connected to my HQPe PC running under Ubuntu Focal 20.04 which is always ON and I installed back in Nov 2020. HQPe shows as Trial not licensed and I noticed the fingerprint changed without me altering hardware, including CPU, RAM, board, SSD, etc. I decided to go back from 4.21.1-60 to 4.20.3-58 still the same "wrong" fingerprint. I wonder if an earlier 4.20 will show another fingerprint but currently unable to download former versions from https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/hqplayerd/focal/

Anyone has experienced anything like this with the fingerprint changing without changing the hardware? I remember about a year ago someone reported the fingerprint changing but I think (don't have confirmation) it might have happened switching OS's from Ubuntu to Audiolinux or something very specific.

I am puzzled by this, asked @Miska for a former version (circa Nov 2020) of HQPe to test, waiting on him to supply it, I guess after all the buzz with 4.20 been better sounding than 4.21 the older versions are blocked from downloading?

403 Forbidden

---

OpenBSD httpd

 

For the record last night I downloaded 4.20 to see if the fingerprint changed and installed it, sounded the same as 4.21

 

Another possibility which I asked Miska about was including the rocm repository, this should not of course change the fingerprint of HQPe but it is one the changes my system suffered over the last 2 months.

 

Hi luisma.

 

I have had a similar situation on a sonicTransperter which I update through the sonicorbiter website. Last spring, when I updated the key disappeared and went to "trial" status. The solution was simply to upland the key again, just like on the initial purchase. Unfortunately, this happened again when I updated to 4.21 and the I can't get the key to upload. I'm still working on a solution and will let you know if I solve it.

[luisma]

35 minutes ago, mtcs said:

have had a similar situation on a sonicTransperter which I update through the sonicorbiter website. Last spring, when I updated the key disappeared and went to "trial" status. The solution was simply to upland the key again, just like on the initial purchase. Unfortunately, this happened again when I updated to 4.21 and the I can't get the key to upload. I'm still working on a solution and will let you know if I solve it.

Thank you, my problem is I upload the key again and it doesn't work because the "fingerprint changed", I know the fingerprint is based on motherboard and CPU (among other things), CPU and board are the same no changes, and also memory is the same, SSD is the same, no changes whatsoever. Now the fingerprint is generated by HQPe and I suspect Miska is using of course in my case a Linux library or package. If this library that generates this hash changes or is it updated (which it shouldn't) the fingerprint will change, this is very very weird. I will expect Miska to provide an update. I don't think he changed the way he generates the fingerprint as he would have a potential nightmare supporting this but the library might have change and I have a feeling this depends deeply on the rocm repository used now as a dependency.

 

thank you again for taking the time to post, appreciate it

 

[luisma]

Miska just replied, there is a possibility I was using a fingerprint from Audiolinux which is different than Ubuntu's

I'm going to confirm and provide feedback on the forum

[hifi25nl]

Audiolinux don't change hardware... :)

[luisma]

16 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

Audiolinux don't change hardware... :)

I know Piero, but the way the fingerprint is generated could have an OS (or package) dependency Archlinux and Ubuntu are indeed different in a few ways. I will install AL and see what it is reported.

 

I wasn't trying to imply there is anything wrong with AL.

[maya]

On 2/4/2021 at 4:55 PM, Rovo said:

Thank you for your assistance. That did the trick.

 

Below I have summarized the steps I have taken to install Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS plus HQPlayerEmbedded. Perhaps useful for people relatively inexperienced with Linux as me.

 

First install Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS with only the "Standard Utilities" (in principle no selections for additional packages) and optionally with "SSH Server" package (if you want to remotely control your server, which normally you want because it is very practical). During the installation for the username pick your choice, only not "hqplayer" (because this will conflict with the installation of HQPlayerEmbedded). Then do the following:

 

sudo apt -y remove --purge lxd snapd
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
(--> repeat above two lines until all ok!!!)
sudo apt -y autoremove --purge

 

sudo wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/focal/linux-headers-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb
sudo wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/focal/linux-image-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-image-5.4.85-jl+_5.4.85-jl+-4_amd64.deb

 

sudo apt-get install alsa-utils
sudo wget https://www.sonarnerd.net/src/focal/libgmpris_2.2.1-8_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libgmpris_2.2.1-8_amd64.deb

 

sudo reboot

 

wget -q -O - https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/rocm.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/apt/debian/ xenial main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rocm.list
sudo apt update

 

sudo reboot

 

wget https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/hqplayerd/focal/hqplayerd_4.21.1-60_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i hqplayerd_4.21.1-60_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -f

 

sudo reboot

 

sudo hqplayerd -s hqplayer hqplayer
sudo systemctl enable hqplayerd
sudo systemctl restart hqplayerd
sudo systemctl status hqplayerd

 

You most likely want to setup a static IP-address for your server. Easiest way to do this is via your router. See your router manual for the appropriate instructions.

 

When you have setup your static IP-address you can access your server via "ssh", your username (as set in the installation of Ubuntu Server) and your static IP-address. For maintenance etc..

 

To access the configuration page of HQPlayerEmbedded, start a web browser on another computer and enter:

<static IP-address>:8088/config

(username "hqplayer" and password "hqplayer" as set in the command "hqplayerd -s hqplayer hqplayer)

 

May I ask how large is your Ubuntu OS installed HQPe focal 4.21.1.60?

[Miska]

On 2/7/2021 at 7:41 PM, luisma said:

I wonder if an earlier 4.20 will show another fingerprint but currently unable to download former versions from

 

No it won't...

 

On 2/7/2021 at 7:41 PM, luisma said:

Anyone has experienced anything like this with the fingerprint changing without changing the hardware?

 

Maybe you got some OS update that triggered such change? I have not seen it on my systems though. But sometimes WiFi adapters or some other network adapters for example can cause headache. I've gone through several Ubuntu upgrades for some of my servers from 16.04 to 18.04 and to 20.04 and all without a single fingerprint change. Also my Fedora test system has been sticking to the same fingerprint.

Some unsupported third party OS may have tendency for such too...