[webif] Web interface

[af123]

If you only have one IP address from your ISP, and you already port forward port 80 to your Exchange email server for webmail, you need to use a different port to enable access to the Humax from the outside world.

However, most routers will allow you to change the port on the way through, so for example you could forward external port 8080 to internal port 80 on the Humax. If you can't do that then changing the port number on which the Humax runs is a good option. You can specify multiple listen ports by the way, so you could keep it running on port 80 as well as whatever additional one you choose.

 

[Black Hole]

Oh dear, I think my head is beginning to hurt (again, just as I thought I was recovering)

 

[Black Hole]

Aha, I think the penny might have dropped:

"Ports" are sub-addresses to the IP address of the unit, so the IP address gets the data packet to the unit, and then the port number tells the unit where to deliver it internally. If none of the software activities in the unit are listening for a message with the port number that has been received, it gets ignored. Standard services have standard default port numbers so that message packets originating elsewhere get picked up by the right handlers. So, basically, the IP address gets the message to the right building, and the port number gets it to the right office in the building - so an item addressed to port 80 would get delivered to the office that handles HTTP (ie Web Services).

Is that close?

 

[af123]

Close enough : )

IP addresses represents a device (specifically an interface on a device), and typically a port number represents an application.
IANA assign standard port numbers to well known applications (e.g. 23 for telnet, 80 for web, 25 for SMTP email) and the client for that protocol uses that as default. So you can just do 'telnet humax' and not 'telnet humax 23' because 23 is the standard port for telnet and the client uses that by default.

 

[Black Hole]

But then... why allocate 80 to a mail service when presumably the mail service already has a default port number?

 

[af123]

It's a webmail service, or Microsoft Activesync which is effectively the same thing.

 

[neilleeds]

But then... why allocate 80 to a mail service when presumably the mail service already has a default port number?

80 is the standard port for web sites/apps/pages and in this case the poster is referring to the website for the mail server (ie webmail) rather than any service related to mail handling. So if you are hosting more than one site/app ie webif and Outlook Web Access then at your router you have both services using 80 by default hence you have a conflict. As af123 said there are a few ways to resolve this.

 

[Black Hole]

OK... so suppose you have two web browsers running at the same time (say Firefox and Chrome for example), both open on the desktop and accessing web pages, presumably both listening on port 80. There must be some further addressing mechanism that goes below the port number to get packets to the right destination? An if there is, what's stopping WebIF and Outlook resolving their conflicts that way??

I'm being deliberately provocative here to get to grips with it, no offence intended.

 

[af123]

The web browser won't be listening on port 80. It's the client not the server.

When a web browser makes a connection to a web server, it asks the operating system for a dynamic port number for its local end of the connection, known as an anonymous port. The connection is then forged between the web browser on the anonymous port and the web server on port 80.

The OP's problem is that with only one IP address allocated by the ISP, the inbound packets are addressed to that IP address on port 80, and the router can only forward that to one place.

 

[Black Hole]

The mist clears a bit... so what you are saying is that the ports are there as dropping off points for random incoming, but packets received in response to specific outgoing queries have a specific negotiated private channel independent of the listening ports.

 

[mihaid]

I doubt it's just you. I've had a go streaming HD via the regular DLNA client, but that results in an out of memory error on my laptop (which has 8Gb of RAM). The content has been processed by auto-unprotect. I've not tried via MediaTomb, since I'm not too bothered about it at the moment.

So far the things I've got working, and regularly use, are;

1) Series auto-filer script (essential! and the main reason I put the custom firmware on)
2) Web interface for matching program alerts via email
3) Auto unprotect, but haven't particularly tried taking off content.

Using the hdr fx t2 media server to stream SD content with a computer on my network results in a very broken stream/unwatchable using network cable and windows media player on win7.I'm currently on 1.02.20 plus webif latest plus epg keywords

 

[Tawny]

Does anyone know what might be the unique identifier for a channel in the tbl_svc table in the channel db? It would appear that the service id - usSvcId can be different depending on the transmitter, apart from the service name is there another way to guarantee you are pulling back BBC 1 for example?

 

[Black Hole]

Using the hdr fx t2 media server to stream SD content with a computer on my network results in a very broken stream/unwatchable using network cable and windows media player on win7.I'm currently on 1.02.20 plus webif latest plus epg keywords

Don't use WMP. Take a look at the threads referring to XBMC - works for me! (I'll edit in a link later)

 

[af123]

Does anyone know what might be the unique identifier for a channel in the tbl_svc table in the channel db? It would appear that the service id - usSvcId can be different depending on the transmitter, apart from the service name is there another way to guarantee you are pulling back BBC 1 for example?

The logical channel number (usLcn) should be unique but for the remote scheduling system I actually do use the channel name text (szSvcName) - in the code you can just use something like:

set service_id [get_channel_attr "BBC One" usSvcId]

hSvc and usSvcId are locally valid only - often change on a re-tune and are different from box to box.

 

[xyz321]

The mist clears a bit... so what you are saying is that the ports are there as dropping off points for random incoming, but packets received in response to specific outgoing queries have a specific negotiated private channel independent of the listening ports.

If say as an example, the client chooses a random port 40000, then the connection will be as follows:

The client sends a message from its ip address, port 40000 to the web server port 80. The reply will then come from the web server port 80 back to the client on port 40000.

Later... I should add that the above is the simple case where both source and destination have public IP addresses or they are both on an internal private network. Where it becomes more complicated is when there is network address tanslation (NAT) involved. This typically happens in a home router where a small number of public ip addresses are used by a private network. When sending a message out from the private network to a public server the source ip address is rewitten by the router to change the source address to the public ip address and a new random port may be assigned. The router remembers the details of that connection so that it can route incoming packets of data on what was its outgoing port back to the original source.

 

[Tawny]

The logical channel number (usLcn) should be unique but for the remote scheduling system I actually do use the channel name text (szSvcName) - in the code you can just use something like:

set service_id [get_channel_attr "BBC One" usSvcId]

hSvc and usSvcId are locally valid only - often change on a re-tune and are different from box to box.

ok, that works, though it appears to be case sensitive had to use "BBC ONE". Is that likely to be the case with all boxes having it stored as "BBC ONE"?

 

[af123]

ok, that works, though it appears to be case sensitive had to use "BBC ONE". Is that likely to be the case with all boxes having it stored as "BBC ONE"?

Maybe use the LCN then:

set service_id [get_channel_attr_bylcn 1 usSvcId]

In this case, you're looking for channel number 1 which should always be BBC1..

 

[Tawny]

Thanks. That works locally so I'll get a bug fix applied to the package ready for release.

 

[mihaid]

Webif epgkeywords just would not work for me in IE. Changed to Chrome and all is well.
Just one request: if anyone could point me to how to set up mediatomb. I had it installed+played well in WMP in WIN7 around apr-may this year. Just can't find those instructions again.

 

[Black Hole]

You do remember that Mediatomb won't stream non-decrypted files?