Noobie to OMV with an offer of help and questions

So the only thing really missing for me is a transcoding dlna plugin. I know there are work arounds for Plex, I can probably worm UMS (which I'm familiar with) into it etc.

However, I have some relevant skills and would be entirely willing to help develop such a plugin for 0.5 (OK I noticed easier plugin API was one of the features)
My number one priority, is that whatever I work on has to work for my PS3 - stupid I know, but it's my problem child. I also have android, Panasonic's VieraCast, and two generations of Samsung's DLNA playback for testing purposes.-

My questions:
What DLNA server should be used? I don't know miniDLNA that well, so not clear on if it's a good target for transcoding. From my own experience my preference would be UMS, but I'm not picky, since Plex is known to work, would that be a better target?
So which of the various forums/wiki's etc is the right place to discuss this kind of stuff, how can I get started?
And most importantly, what can I do to help most effectively?

I am programmer, not the best in the world, but I'm fairly good with python and java. I've also used just about ever web language out there at one point in time, perl, php, ruby... REST/SOAP, etc. I will admit I have no idea yet what is involved in plugin development. Outside of that I have handfulls of different machines, debian and ubuntu boxes for testing, beta, sandbox etc. I currently work in dev management rather than coding, so I can pretty much help anywhere along the lifecycle development. Let me know, and I'll help in whatever way is most effective.

Will go ahead and grab one and start looking. Considering I was wanting to target 0.5 - are there any out there for 0.5 or any docs on the 0.5 plugin API? I'll grab one or two from the github, but any guidance i appreciated.

OK so I grabbed the autoshutdown and the omvplugins projects just because I felt I had a pretty good idea what they were doing and what artifacts would be needed. After that quick review, it all looks pretty sane, although as of yet, I'm not sure how long it would take for me even to do a hello world plugin. Despite that I'm fairly certain I could manage just about all of the tasks for building a plugin - assuming it doesn't require super sophisticated .php. But that does sort of beg the question as to develpment standards for plugins. How much of a media server's UI do we need to cabalize into OMV's UI? Would a config page in OMV, and running the web front end on a separate port be ok? Where are these types of things discussed in the forums? Is Marcel the right person to reach out too?

My first tasks are really building out a VM environment for OMV dev, since I don't want to use my new NAS for experiments, and start throwing plex at it etc. As far as development goes, if there are any docs, how-to's or links I may be missing please let me know. Otherwise I can just start pulling things apart, but it may take a while considering my newness to OMV.

Sorry for the spam, but I've got my VM setup, installed Plex and copying some .mkv's over to my virtual NAS to see if I can make them work with my PS3 using Plex. I thought I should mention I'm entirely willing to create a plugin developers GSG, since I know almost nothing about OMV plugin development and am trying to learn.

On a related notes will equivs be good enough for OMV package creation, or should I be digging deeper into .deb? I haven't done any .deb work since sarge (yes I'm dated and need a refresher)

Tekkbebe : Thanks for following up on the thread. If there is a better place to move this I'm happy to do so. I already saw those links, and have been reading them over. I also have grabbed the oca and am reviewing it. The api guide covers the api, but a Plugin Dev GSG would go a long way. I don't mind doing a bunch of reading and then creating docs (I'm actually working on docing setting up eGit and PDT on eclipse - that's what I will use as a tool set unless I find reasons to go elsewhere) but at the moment, there is little to help a noob understand the architecture and artifact requriements, aside from grabbing plugins and reverse engineering. I'm not at the best spot to start on this as PHP is something I've worked with rarely, and deb package creation is really really stale, still there is nothing like an itch that needs scratching to brush up on skills.

br41n: I have to admit setting up miniDLNA plugin with transcoding does seem interesting. Plex isn't working yet with my PS3, and seems heavier duty than my own needs. I don't much care for singing up for myPlex either. In truth - I think i've got a learning curve to create a plug-in for OMV and as long as it meets my PS3 requirement - I'd mostly like to spend my efforts on the media server the OMV community would most like support for. If that's miniDLNA with transcoding, XBMC, Plex or UMS, I really don't care.

Not sure if you mean OMV on bare metal, or if you mean Plex is a vm on OMV. I can throw plex onto a bare metal OMV and test, although that is my "production" machine.

I mean this in the best spirited nature, but you're telling me you've got plex working except for the one feature I really want. Oddly enough, I've been pretty much been focused on the vm/cloud space for about the past 10 years professionally. If my time is better spent learning plex and helping at the vm layer to get transcoding to work, I might be in a better position to focus on that rather than plugin development. I would just appreciate guidance on how to contribute to omv most effectively. OMV is a great platform, and I'm pretty sure by the end of the week I'd have my server working for my own purposes. I'd rather spend a lot more time and develop something all of omv could use. If for no other reason than I won't have to manage my own change config in production

I don't feel pressure, and I've already got the bug. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to help. Unless I'm missing a lot of documentation that is out there, it's not exactly low hanging fruit to start plugin dev. There is an API for 0.5 documented, but the current iso's are 0.4.x. Plugin API changes are in the roadmap for 0.5. I don't see doc on how to pull/find the latest builds (although I did see the extra repos in omv-plugins) So there is a lot of work to do to be ready to do plugin dev without some assistance. If someone in the community has some time to help, I'll create a soup to nuts Plugin Getting Started Guide, that would help others who understand linux admin and basic web development to build their own plugins.

It would be great to have a helloWorld plugin - something that say runs a script to put HelloWorld in /var/log/dmesg and puts up a Hello World plugin panel for the UI, LHP menu item, and RHP "Hello World" done against the 0.5 api's. I suppose autoshutdown or more so OMV-Plugins plugin is pretty darn closed to that, so it could even be just documenting the omv-plugins with new dev's in mind.

Zitat von "tekkbebe"

Oh, we have not got the bugs out of running plex in a vm. It is running great on bare metal installs but there is a memory leak issue on vms. Will let you know if I get a fix. This only when using the plex clients and transcoding. The dlna in vm has no issues.

The problem for plex seems beyond VM's. http://forums.plexapp.com/inde…tual-machine-quick-setup/ The real problem seems to be a requirement for a sound card for transcoding to work. Now I have my setup on vm workstation so I can put a sound card in, but my actual server doesn't have one. I need to look into minidlna transcoding to see if it shares the same requirements. I can get UMS 2.1.2 to transcode in my VM - although 1) I forgot it requires Java, 2) My browsing menu's are all fsck'd and it only transcodes properly if I try and play the AAC file (Strange yes but I get proper playback and ff/rw).

I could be wrong, but I would think soundcards should not be expected in an OMV server, and transcoding is possible without one.

No i know I'd need to patch up miniDLNA. I'm trying to pick a good target dlna server, not saying it's an issue with OMV at all. What I'm saying is if a soundcard is needed for transcoding for plex, it may not be the best target DLNA server. I would not expect an OMV server to have a sound card and if something doesn't work in VM's it makes testing and dev a nightmare for me.

So I'm considering 3 targets right now... UMS/PMS, miniDLNA and Plex. They each have their plusses and minuses. Soundcard required for transcoding seems like a deal breaker to me, which leaves miniDLNA or UMS. UMS being java based doesn't really appeal especially on OMV. Although it does appear to be just fine with default-jdk package.

Yeah... I'm not liking java for OMV for many many reasons. I'm also looking into adding a virtual sound card, to see if I can just make plex work. Not good news on miniDLNA not compiling, but that's something I can work with. I am leaning towards miniDLNA myself at the moment - Lightweight, unencumbered, has existing plugin all make it attractive. Time to build a miniDLNA sandbox.