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#1 2013-08-18 10:10:05

haagch
Member
Registered: 2013-08-17
Posts: 209

pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

My configuration. I set it up so I don't have to compile a huge bunch of dependencies.

1. wine-compholio-bin
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/wine-compholio-bin/
Compiled for ubuntu saucy, but seems to work on archlinux
Alternatively wine-silverlight from aur, but then you have to edit the config
32 bit only. So if you are on x86_64 you need a lot of multilib stuff.

2. mingw-w32-bin
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mingw-w32-bin/
Automated builds from the mingw-w64 project. Huge toolchain.

3. pipelight-git
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pipelight-git/
Installs a configuration file that works for me in /usr/share/examples/pipelight/pipelight-compholio-config
On installation and upgrade it displays a bunch of instructions what to do to get it working. Some steps could be automated with wine-browser-installer but I did not test it.
Note: pipelight-git depends on wine-silverlight so by default it will compile wine. My wine-compholio-bin provides wine-silverlight too, so if you don't want to compile wine and/or edit the configuration much, install this prior to pipelight-git.


Result:
KnwTue6l.jpg


---------------
OBSOLETE OBSOLETE OBSOLETE

So, I wanted to try this out and created some AUR packages (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pipelight-git/) but it still refuses to work.

The article at http://fds-team.de/cms/articles/2013-08 … wsers.html says:

Please note: If you specify a nonexistent Wine prefix and Pipelight is being loaded by the browser, it will automatically try to execute the Silverlight installer from the compholio package (if available). To avoid this you can remove the specific entries from the configuration file.

But it just didn't do that, instead it complained about silverlight not being "properly installed" or so.

So I created the wine prefix and installed silverlight:

WINEPREFIX="$HOME"/.wine-pipelight WINEARCH=win32 /opt/wine-compholio/bin/wineboot
wget  --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:23.0) Gecko/20131011 Firefox/23.0" 'http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/handlers/getsilverlight.ashx' -O Silverlight.exe
WINEPREFIX="$HOME"/.wine-pipelight WINEARCH=win32 /opt/wine-compholio/bin/wine Silverlight.exe

(edit: 'http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=124807' this downloads silverlight 4, put the link to silverlight 5 in it)
This installs silverlight in "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\ instead" of "c:\Program Files\Silverlight\" so I changed the ~/.config/pipelight config:

dllPath                         = c:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\5.1.20513.0\

Same config file: I'm not sure why the pluginLoaderPath wasn't set because it said it would be set by make, but I just did that:

pluginLoaderPath        = /usr/share/pipelight/pluginloader.exe

mingw recommends linking some dlls:

ln -s /opt/mingw_w32/i686-w64-mingw32/lib/*.dll ~/.wine-pipelight/drive_c/windows/system32

Now when I start firefox from a command line it says

[PIPELIGHT] Attached to process
[PIPELIGHT] Trying to load config file from /home/haagch/.config/pipelight
[PIPELIGHT] Using wine prefix directory /home/haagch/.wine-pipelight/
[PIPELIGHT] Windowless mode is off
[PIPELIGHT] Embedded mode   is on
[PIPELIGHT] Usermode Timer  is off
fixme:advapi:RegisterTraceGuidsW (0x2c1f87, 0x360118, {aa087e0e-0b35-4e28-8f3a-440c3f51eef1}, 1, 0x65f748, (null), (null), 0x360118,): stub
[PIPELIGHT] Init sucessfull!

which looks good I guess.

But about:plugins tells me to pipelight: "Something went wrong, check the terminal output"

With LD_DEBUG=libs I don't seem to see an error anymore so... Does anyone know why it doesn't work?

Last edited by haagch (2013-09-10 13:20:14)

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#2 2013-08-18 11:54:01

goll
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2007-10-29
Posts: 50

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Well, I tried your package but unfortunately it doesn't work, I couldn't even get as far as you did.

I installed the pipelight-git aur package, copied the config file to ~.config/pipelight, next I ran /opt/wine-compholio-bin/wineboot and it succesfully created my ~.wine-pipelight/ directory, and I linked the dll files.

When using your wget line to download Silverlight it installed version 4, so I went to filehippo and downloaded the latest Silverlight 5 which is mentioned in the configuration file.

I installed it using /opt/wine-compholio/bin/wine and it succesfully finished installing to this path: ~.wine-pipelight/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Silverlight/5.1.20513.0/

As you stated, the configuration file is missing the "Microsoft" in it's path so I corrected the path in .config/pipelight

So everything looks fine in the config, Silverlight is installed, all dependencies satisfied and when I run Chrome or Firefox i get the same error:

[PIPELIGHT] Attached to process
[PIPELIGHT] Trying to load config file from /home/goll/.config/pipelight
[PIPELIGHT] Using wine prefix directory /home/goll/.wine-pipelight/
[PIPELIGHT] Windowless mode is off
[PIPELIGHT] Embedded mode   is on
[PIPELIGHT] Usermode Timer  is off
[PIPELIGHT] Last error: 126
[PIPELIGHT] Could not load library
[PIPELIGHT] Failed to initialize DLL
[PIPELIGHT] Error during the initialization of the wine process - aborting

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#3 2013-08-18 12:38:03

haagch
Member
Registered: 2013-08-17
Posts: 209

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Right. Didn't notice that. This is the link for silverlight 5
wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:23.0) Gecko/20131011 Firefox/23.0" 'http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight … light.ashx' -O Silverlight.exe

Maybe the wine-compholio compiled for ubuntu doesn't quite work. I tried

WINEPREFIX="$HOME"/.wine-pipelight WINEARCH=win32 /opt/wine-compholio/bin/wine /opt/wine-compholio/lib/wine/fakedlls/explorer.exe

and it crashes with unhandled pagefault.

Any wine experts here? Do I need to compile it with and for arch?

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#4 2013-08-18 13:00:32

goll
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2007-10-29
Posts: 50

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

The plot thickens: I just ran explorer.exe using your line and it ran normally, no crashes or errors in console output hmm

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#5 2013-08-18 16:51:01

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Hi,

I'm one of the developers of Pipelight and will probably be able to help you with a few of these questions.

@haagch: If you need more information to provide a permanent fix for your AUR just come to #pipelight on IRC freenode.

The problem with the Silverlight installer: These automatic install-scripts are only provided by the latest version of wine-compholio. If you are using a older one or using a different distribution than Ubuntu you manually have to install Silverlight. As the first post suggests everything is looking good. The problem with the "check the terminal output" on firefox might be related to:

https://answers.launchpad.net/pipelight/+faq/2348

If you are using Firefox you need to remove the caching file for plugins otherwise Firefox will not reload the plugin on the next start. To do this type "about:support" in your address line and hit enter. You should now see a button which opens your profile directory. Click on it and remove the "pluginreg.dat" file. Restart your browser and check if it works.

and thus Firefox never tries to reload the plugin until the steps above have been done.

@goll: The wine-compholio package uses a different path for the Silverlight installation (to be able to use several Silverlight installations in parallel). This problem should be fixed by adjusting the configuration.

Just create a copy of the default config and modify the path to the Silverlight DLLs (dllPath)

Sebastian

Last edited by slackner (2013-08-18 16:53:12)

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#6 2013-08-18 17:28:55

haagch
Member
Registered: 2013-08-17
Posts: 209

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Awesome, after deleting pluginreg.dat it works.

S9MB8DDl.png

Lovefilm of course doesn't work. But half the time it doesn't work in windows either, so whatever. I really should cancel my subscription.

Last edited by haagch (2013-08-18 17:34:41)

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#7 2013-08-18 17:33:47

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Nice!

I assume you are using either Silverlight v4 or v5.0, right? The launchpad packages provide Silverlight 5.1, which unfortunately has the disadvantage that the page on the screenshot doesn't work anymore. Nevertheless Netflix and other streaming services seem to work with 5.1. We still have to figure out what the problem is with exactly this page. But if it works you can also provide an older version of Silverlight for your AUR.

By the way: If the embedding in the browser does not work correctly it might be due to missing patches of wine:
https://bitbucket.org/mmueller2012/pipe … port.patch

Otherwise some sites like
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/si … efault.htm
will not work properly (keyboard events not going to the correct window, wrong focus events and stuff like that).

You can also set "embed = false" in the config to get an extra window by the way.

Sebastian

Last edited by slackner (2013-08-18 17:36:47)

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#8 2013-08-18 17:45:11

goll
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2007-10-29
Posts: 50

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

@slackner: weeeeeeeeeeeeeee it works!

So I completely removed my ~.wine-pipelight directory and my ~.config/pipelight file.

I corrected the dllPath by adding Microsoft, and then ran wineboot, installed Silverlight again, and both browsers load it correctly!

I suspect I messed something up when i first installed Silverlight 4 and then 5 so it couldn't find the proper dll's. This time I checked to make sure npctrl.dll was in the path.

Firefox can play the DRM test applet nicely, but when I ran the Silverlight ball applet you linked on your site in Chrome it completely locked up my X, had to go to tty1 and kill chromium.

In any case, thank you for your work and helping out here smile

P.S. I just read your last reply and I can also confirm the DRM test page works for me on Silverlight 5.1 using Firefox 23. Would you suggest using Silverlight 5.0?

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#9 2013-08-18 17:47:04

haagch
Member
Registered: 2013-08-17
Posts: 209

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

I did an evil thing with wine, I took https://launchpad.net/~ehoover/+archive … 1_i386.deb and I just put the contents of that in /opt/wine-compholio. There doesn't seem to be a library incompatibility, so I'm lucky I guess.

This was indeed with 4.1 I had installed for testing whether it was just 5.1 that didn't work.

With 5.1 the controls demo works.

http://web.sldrm.video.msn.com/d1/sldrm.html is indeed stuck on "Opening"

But:
http://www.ezdrm.com/html/demo.asp#slight works (just extremely slow download for me)


Only issue: When I right click, the silverlight contextmenu is on the wrong screen.

On lovefilm.de still: System.Exception 6036 "an error occured" or System.ArgumentException 2024 "Service not available" (roughly translated) (and yes, I deleted mpr.hds)

Last edited by haagch (2013-08-18 17:51:13)

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#10 2013-08-18 18:03:38

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

@goll: Nice!

Concerning the Silverlight version: I would recommend using the latest one (5.1) if possible as there have been some exploits fixed in the meantime. If 5.1 works equally well on all streaming websites there isn't any good reason why not using it. ;-)

@haagch: The problem with the context menu is a known bug and due to the fact that wine doesn't know the exact position of its own window. We are already working on a fix which will be included in one of the next releases. The same problem also occurs on Ubuntu.

The problem with the control demo is not that its not working completely, but there might be some problems with wrong input focus (for example when trying to type something in the textboxes on that Silverlight page). This can only be fixed by applything the xembed-patch which adds minimal xembed-client support to wine.

As far as we've seen all problems with 5.1 (like that stuck on "Opening") don't occur when using real streaming sites, so we decided to use 5.1 although it might have some problems on the test sites. But of course you can also use a different solution if that works equally well for all users. ;-)

Some other things I forgot to mention:

* On reddit you (I think it was you) wrote something about having to create symlinks for dlls - thats not really necessary, you can add something like that to the config:
gccruntimedlls = /usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/bin

* Lovefilm is also known not to work with netflix-desktop. Silverlight contains different strengths of DRM. The one used at Lovefilm seems to check that all video drivers are signed correctly, and thus fails (at least this is what the error messages suggest). We don't know if it is possible to find a workaround for that, yet.

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#11 2013-08-18 22:08:22

haagch
Member
Registered: 2013-08-17
Posts: 209

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

So you keep saying that we need the xembed patch. Doesn't compholio's wine contain that? It's used for the ubuntu package of pipelight, isn't it?

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#12 2013-08-18 22:14:49

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Its included in the latest version of the compholio package, if you stay using that one there shouldn't be any problems. This might be important if you change your dependencies to another wine package which doesn't include xembed yet.

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#13 2013-08-19 14:16:13

phollox
Member
Registered: 2013-05-04
Posts: 61

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Sorry for my question. I'm currently using netflix-desktop and the patched wine-silverlight. I read that pipelight requires a patched wine. Is it true? Is it the same wine I already have? And what are the advantages of pipelight over netflix-desktop?


I divide by zero, multiple times per day. Also, I don't believe in tipping
Arch + i3wm (still learning)

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#14 2013-08-19 14:27:59

progandy
Member
Registered: 2012-05-17
Posts: 5,184

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

phollox wrote:

Sorry for my question. I'm currently using netflix-desktop and the patched wine-silverlight. I read that pipelight requires a patched wine. Is it true? Is it the same wine I already have? And what are the advantages of pipelight over netflix-desktop?

wine-silverlight 1.7.0-4 should contain the new xembed patch and allow you to use pipelight.
The difference between netflix-desktop and pipelight is simple: netflix-desktop runs a second browser using wine. pipelight doesn't do that. It runs silverlight in wine and connects it with your linux browser (chromium, firefox, dwb, ...)


| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' |

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#15 2013-08-19 14:52:10

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

@phollox: Unfortunately embedding like native native browser plugins is still broken when using KDE (and thus disabled in the default config of https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pipelight/ ), but we've already published a possible patch. Nevertheless the main advantage is the increased speed compared to netflix-desktop. Pipelight should provide a much smoother streaming experience as it doesn't require running a whole wine browser.

We've also updated our article to include installation instructions for Arch Linux (thanks to anish): http://fds-team.de/cms/articles/2013-08 … ection_1_2

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#16 2013-08-19 20:07:10

donniezazen
Member
From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2011-06-24
Posts: 671
Website

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

This is really great. Thanks. Is the requirement of UA change being worked out or it will remain as one of the requirements?

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#17 2013-08-19 20:21:29

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Hi,

the pipelight package itself unfortunately will always need some kind of user-agent switcher as it contains just a NPAPI browser plugin and thus cannot change the identitiy. We've decided not to include any third party plugins directly as they might not work on all platforms.
If you are still searching one that is compatible with your browser you can take a look at the FAQ, it is updated as soon we hear that some others also have been confirmed to work: https://answers.launchpad.net/pipelight/+faq/2351

Nevertheless there might be an easy solution in the near future. As you might know this project was done in cooperation with Erich E. Hoover - he already has plans to provide some kind of alternative netflix-desktop package based on pipelight, which has all this other stuff included and should work out of the box without any manual steps required.

Sebastian

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#18 2013-08-19 21:14:08

donniezazen
Member
From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2011-06-24
Posts: 671
Website

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Thanks Sebastian.

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#19 2013-08-31 18:03:32

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Hi,

I just wanted to announce some updates concerning pipelight:

Recently we have pushed out v0.1-2 which adds GPU acceleration support, so everyone who had problems with laggy video playback is welcome to test again. The following URLs contain some information about this:
Release notes for v0.1-2
Archlinux Wiki entry (when using the "pipelight" AUR)

Moreover: We have found the bugs and missing features in wine which prevented lovefilm and some other sites from working (bugreport)! The patches are already prepared, but we still need to write some additional installer scripts for required libraries. This might take a couple of hours until a few days (depening on the schedule of the other involved developers), but I can promise it will not take that long anymore until it works - just stay tuned for the next update!

Sebastian

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#20 2013-08-31 18:17:20

donniezazen
Member
From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2011-06-24
Posts: 671
Website

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Thanks Sebastian.

My system temperature gets as high as 95C while watching netflix. Could it be some problem on my side or is it just how silverlight and flash works?

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#21 2013-08-31 18:19:53

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Hi donniezazen,

this is not a problem on your side, but a problem related to how SIlverlight works - even on windows it runs at 100% cpu usage most of the time. Did you already try to enable hardware acceleration? When it uses Vsync this will probably slow down the application a bit, but unfortunately hardware acceleration doesn't work on all PCs, so you will have to try it out.

Sebastian

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#22 2013-08-31 21:02:10

donniezazen
Member
From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2011-06-24
Posts: 671
Website

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

When you say gpu acceleration are you talking about using integrated graphic card or dedicated graphic card. I did enable gpu acceleration bit in pipelight config but I think it is enabled by default in latest pipelight. Also latest upgrade has overwritten my config and I haven't made any changes, so, it looks like it should use gpu acceleration. It doesn't seem to be using dedicated graphic card (which runs through bumblebee) though.

Thanks.

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#23 2013-08-31 21:28:41

slackner
Member
Registered: 2013-08-18
Posts: 36

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Hi,

the latest version does not enable GPU acceleration (=use graphic card) automatically on all systems, but only some specific ones. The problem is that specific graphic cards drivers don't seem to work that well.

You can check if its enabled/disabled by taking a look at the terminal output, when starting your browser from there.

You should either see one of the following messages:

[PIPELIGHT] GPU driver check - Your driver is supported, hardware acceleration enabled
[PIPELIGHT] GPU driver check - Your driver is not in the whitelist, hardware acceleration disabled
[PIPELIGHT] enableGPUAcceleration set manually - skipping compability check

If you are using the default configuration you will always get output 1 or 2. When its not enabled (because your driver is not on the whitelist yet) you can change that manually as described in this FAQ entry: https://answers.launchpad.net/pipelight/+faq/2364

For example, when you want to force GPU acceleration (such that it is used on every Silverlight page), you can create a copy of the original config:

cp /usr/share/pipelight/pipelight ~/.config/pipelight

and then uncomment the following line in ~/.config/pipelight:

overwriteArg	 = enableGPUAcceleration=true

If you experience any problems with that (weird redrawing bugs, crashing applications or similar), then unfortunately your drivers aren't support yet by Wine. In this case just delete your new created created config file. If everything works with GPU acceleration enabled, and you're not on the whitelist yet, it would be very nice to send us the output of "glxinfo", such that we can add your system to that.

Sebastian

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#24 2013-09-03 00:11:30

donniezazen
Member
From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2011-06-24
Posts: 671
Website

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

Thanks Sebastian.

It doesn't look like GPU acceleration is supported by my card (Intel HD 3000 and Nvidia NVS 4200). When gpu acceleration is force enabled, netflix would play fine but if I try to revert it back to windowed mode, it would basically crash. I have filed a bug report. I hope it's helpful for development of pipelight.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/pipelight/+bug/1220014

google-chrome with default pipelight config
https://gist.github.com/donniezazen/6418334

google-chrome with gpu enabled
https://gist.github.com/donniezazen/6418348

google-chrome with netflix playing
https://gist.github.com/donniezazen/6418355

glxinfo
https://gist.github.com/donniezazen/6418362

lspci
https://gist.github.com/donniezazen/6418364

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#25 2013-09-08 08:28:19

haagch
Member
Registered: 2013-08-17
Posts: 209

Re: pipelight - the new netflix-desktop replacement

For wine-compholio 1.7-5 I see "+  * Updated patches for LOVEFiLM from Sebastian Lackner and Michael Müller."
https://launchpadlibrarian.net/14955365 … cy.diff.gz

And with latest pipelight git d7249e0ffaab62eee35e391d0638ad81d9be2789 lovefilm.de still shows System.Exception: 6036. Is it supposed to work already? There's no bug open nor closed in the pipelight launchpad site for lovefilm...

And since one of the developers is sometimes here: It's rather inconvenient that everything from the liferea browser to spotify loads the plugin. Isn't there a possibility to maybe only do the initialization when silverlight is requested on a website?

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