Setting up a development environement in a virtual machine

[muellerph]

Hello,

just to let you know, how I was setting up my development environment.

I didn't have a DVB-card left, so long time I didn't know how to set up a dev environment for VDR and VOMP for sure I didn't want to touch the running system.
Okay, others may have found the solution earlier, but for me it took months.

Just use a virtual machine and use the streamdev-plugin for your virtual development VDR.

For the virtual machine you can use your most favourate one (VMWare, Bochs, etc.), the only thing it must support is bridged networt, as your MVP need access to the VDR in the virtual machine.

Then you need the dhcpd.conf configured with the "next-server" option. Chris mentions on his Howto "Investigation needed", but it does work.

Attached is my shortened version of /etc/dhcpd.conf:

192.168.178.1 is my gateway to the internet (AVM Fritzbox, dhcp disabled)
192.168.178.10 is my normal VDR
192.168.178.11 is my development VDR
192.168.178.200 is one of my normal MVPs
192.168.178.210 is my development MVP
All PCs get ips form x.x.x.30 to x.x.x.100

Code Select Expand

option domain-name-servers 192.168.178.1;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
default-lease-time 31600;
max-lease-time 43200;

subnet 192.168.178.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    range 192.168.178.30 192.168.178.100;
    option broadcast-address 192.168.178.255;
    option routers 192.168.178.1;

    host mvp-normal {
        hardware ethernet 00:0D:FE:00:23:FE;
        fixed-address 192.168.178.200;
        filename "vomp-dongle";
    }

    group {
        next-server 192.168.178.11;
        host mvp-dev {
            hardware ethernet 00:0D:FE:00:71:DF;
            fixed-address 192.168.178.210;
            filename "mvp-kernelimage-nfsroot";
            option root-path "/diskless/nfs/mvp";
        }
    }
}


As you can see, the important thing is that you put the next-server option into a "group". Then it works. This is the setup for a NFS dev environment, using dongles is similar.

Streamdev-plugin:
The VDR in your virtual machine will not have a DVB-Card. This is not a big issue. You only need on your normal VDR the streamdev-server plug-in and on your Dev environment the streamdev-client plug-in. How to set it up is your task, but it is no magic.

The only thing is that your purer virtual VDR doesn't have an output device yet, so you should also add the dummy-plugin to your development VDR - otherwise VDR doesn't start (which makes also sense to put it onto your productive VDR in case like me that your only output device is VOMP).

There is for sure one limitation: Streamdev only provides one channel, so you cannot record 2 channels or record and watch another channel. But this doesn't hurt on a dev environment.

Again, maybe nothing new to some of you, but I didn't find any hint yet in the forum about this way of setting up a dev environment.

If you have questions, just let me know.