Full Install#

initialize rendering machines#

Install Debian 12 on all machines

In the Installer select or do the following

  1. Language: English

  2. Location: Germany

  3. Locale: en_US.UTF-8

  4. Keyboard: German

  5. Select the correct network interface (you’ll have to find out)

  6. Hostname: kaoruXX for HuFo renderers (renderers)

  7. Domain: the correct domain (empty in H0104/ak.tu-berlin.de in EN325/tu-ctrl at HuFo)

  8. Root password: leave empty for automatic enabling of sudo/adding of the standard user to sudoers group

  9. User: tu-studio

  10. Full name: tu-studio

  11. User password: use a good password here friend

  12. Partitioning method: Manual (Guided partitioning manual)

  • /dev/nvme0n1

  • yes new partition table

  • 1.0 MB free space is done automatically

  • 512.0 MB EFI System Partition

    • Use as: EFI System Partition

    • Bootable flag: on

  • 850.0 GB brtfs / (root)

    • mount options: defaults

    • label: system

    • Bootable flag: off

  • 32 GB swap

    • Use as: swap area

    • Bootable flag: off

  • Finish partitioning and write changes to disk

  1. wait for install of Base system

  2. mirror country: Germany

  3. select a mirror (deb.debian.org for example)

  4. HTTP proxy: none (or the correct proxy at HuFo)

  5. Participate in package usage survey: No

  6. Software selection: SSH server, standard system utilities, ON PLAYER PC ONLY: choose a desktop environment, currently we use KDE (but that might be overkill)

  7. Reboot

perform installation using ansible#

ansible playbooks for installation are run with this command: ansible-playbook -i <your_inventory>.yml <playbook_name>.yml.

whenever a install/*.yml file is mentioned in the following, it should be executed using the command above.

  1. clone this repo

  2. create vars/vault.yml from the vars/vault.yml.template, fill it in. if regularly switching between locations create multiple vault files, and just symlink them to the currently required one: ln -sf vault_hufo.yml vars/vault.yml

  3. if you use a dante soundcard change the path in vars/vars.yml to the correct path to the driver directory

  4. add host to ansible inventory file, follow the provided inventory files for guidance

    • hosts should be grouped into the sections renderer, player, video_player and info_player

    • hosts should contain the following variables (if used):

      • ansible_host: hostname

      • ansible_user: username

      • services containing a list of services running on this machine, available services are osc-kreuz, jack-connection-manager, audio-matrix, ambisonics, gui, showcontrol and twonder

      • location: the location of this machine for use with the configs, at the moment one of HUFO, EN325 or H0104

      • audiodriver: list of strings or single string of dante or madi

      • n_twonders only necessary if services contains twonder, sets up the twonder.target with the correct number of twonders

  5. rollout your ssh key to pcs: ansible-playbook install/rollout_ssh_key.yml --ask-pass -e "key=<path/to/public/key.pub>". it might be necessary to install the sshpass package for your system.

  6. change the ssh-key in the ansible.cfg file to point to your private key.

  7. if necessary install sudo: install/install_sudo.yml

  8. setup btrfs subvolumes (don’t do this more than once!): install/setup_btrfs.yml -k. This needs the -k option to ask for the ssh connection password, because the moving around of btrfs subvolumes briefly moves the .ssh directory somewhere else…

  9. when in hufo: run hufo specific scripts:

  10. install/hufo_setup_proxy_server.yml

  11. install/hufo_first_run.yml

  12. install/hufo_avm_user.yml

  13. start main install script: install/full_install.yml

install seamless player#

The seamless player needs a bit more love. first download the x64 linux version of the SWS extension for REAPER from here. The REAPER version is specified in program_versions.yml, consequently it can be overwritten using -e for both reaper_archive_name and reaper_url

run these playbooks: 1. install/setup_player_autologin_and_desktop.yml 2. install/setup_player_reaper.yml -e "sws_archive=<path/to/your/sws-x.xx.x.x-Linux-x86_64.tar.xz>" 3. install/install_player_showcontrol.yml 4. install/install_player_seamless-plugin-suite.yml 5. only in H0104: install/setup_player_dante_bridge.yml

should you have problems with nvidia graphics cards and wayland runt the playbook setup_player_nvidia_drivers

some steps in REAPER need to be performed manually on the GUI:

setup REAPER remote control#

  • in reaper go to options->Preferences->Control/OSC/web

  • press “add” to add a new conrol surface of mode OSC

  • Device Name: Showcontrol or something like that

  • Pattern Config:

    • select (open config directory)

    • copy HufoShowControl.ReaperOSC from the Showcontrol repo there

    • select (refresh list)

    • select HufoShowControl

  • Mode: Local port [receive only]

    • local listen port: 8000

    • local ip: 0.0.0.0

setup REAPER#

  • set number of outputs to 64

setup remote desktop#

vnc with the help of krfb is installed using ansible playbook install/setup_player_autologin_and_desktop.yml, however not started automatically.

configure krfb on the desktop: System Settings > Sharing > Desktop Sharing > Configure

specify program versions#

desired versions are specified in vars/program_versions.yml, these correspond to github tags/branches/commits

to overwrite the version of a specific program pass it to the ansible-playbook call as -e "<program>_version=X"

encrypt variable#

ansible-vault encrypt_string --name "variable_name"

additional ansible scripts not run from full_install#

  • install/install_jack-silence-detector: debugging tool to discover longer silences (was used to debug reaper crashes)

  • install/reboot.yml: used to reboot everything, sometimes used by services

  • install/remove_apt_cdrom_source.yml: sometimes needed if installation of programs on fresh debian installs fails.

  • install/upgrade_system.yml: performs a system upgrade

maintenance playbooks#

  • maintain/pull_videos.yml: pulls all videos from the video players to your local machine

  • maintain/rollout_videos.yml/maintain/rollout_info_text.yml: roll out the video/info video files of the desired piece to all video/info players, has to be modified before use:

    1. add video file name to maintain/templates/playlist.txt.j2, {{ video_id }} will be replaced with the index of this video player (1-6)

    2. put the video files into the project_source directory (or change the project_source directory to your video directory, whatever makes you happy)

    3. add a block like this to the tasks in rollout_videos.yml:

    - name: "Copy <new_project> onto the server"
copy:
    src: "{{ project_source }}/<new_project>/cool_filename-0{{ video_id }}.mp4"
    dest: "{{ target_content_dir  }}"
    owner: kiosk
    group: avm
    mode: "u=rwx,g=rwx,o=rx"