Best way to install Xibo

[aidenbran2000]

Right hit a brick wall here, dont know if it was a Friday problem which now is a monday problem.

 

We have been using powerpoints for our digital signage solution but SLT have been to other schools in the area and they have got nice screens which display twitter feeds and videos..

 

Looking round the interweb and here i like the look of Xibo. On Friday i had a little look but can figure out the best way to install it. We our virtual here so dead easy to create a new server or attach it to a current one. Can someone help me before i tear my hair out. How do you guys set it up and run it?

[NB9457]

I'd install it standalone on linux on an old box, isn't massively demanding hardware wise and linux setup is much easier.

 

If not, I'd attach it to an existing server seeing as it demands so little.

[aidenbran2000]

Can it be installed on windows?

[dry]

There are fairly comprehensive Windows instructions on their website- I just used those. Which bit are you getting stuck on?

 

Xibo Documentation

 

Because it's using XAMPP you can start playing about with other web-based stuff.

 

I use Live Slide Show for example which works very well! Check out the following thread for more ideas:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/85502-xibo-accomplishments.html

 

The office administrators wanted to be able to update the 'screens' and were a bit daunted by the Xibo CMS. I created a macro in Powerpoint to export the current slide as a JPG with the correct dimensions for our template. It saves said JPG in a specific location on the Xibo server and I've set an item in the schedule to simply go to the JPG file on the Xibo server as a website (http://xiboserveraddress/exportedslide.jpg). Works very well and isn't complicated for the people in the office to do!

[NB9457]

Can it be installed on windows?

 

Yeah, relatively easy too. We have it running on Server 2008 on the main server in one of our schools

[aidenbran2000]

There are fairly comprehensive Windows instructions on their website- I just used those. Which bit are you getting stuck on?

 

Xibo Documentation

 

Because it's using XAMPP you can start playing about with other web-based stuff.

 

I use Live Slide Show for example which works very well! Check out the following thread for more ideas:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/85502-xibo-accomplishments.html

 

The office administrators wanted to be able to update the 'screens' and were a bit daunted by the Xibo CMS. I created a macro in Powerpoint to export the current slide as a JPG with the correct dimensions for our template. It saves said JPG in a specific location on the Xibo server and I've set an item in the schedule to simply go to the JPG file on the Xibo server as a website (http://xiboserveraddress/exportedslide.jpg). Works very well and isn't complicated for the people in the office to do!

 

Did you do this on windows (7 ,8 , or 10) or did you do it on Windows Server.

 

I want to be able to access the screen design via my computer and like you said the office will want to update screens as well.

[m122794]

FWIW, we run the server on a tiny stand-alone Linux VM as it uses virtually nothing CPU and memory-wise but it will use some disk as it stores the media locally (although you could use shares if you want to get complicated)

 

You can pay to buy Android boxes, but the free Windows client does all we need: we show RSS feeds, scrolling piccies, video feeds and text on the screens, using the sceduling facility and find its all dead-easy to set up and really stable at the client end. You can use pretty-much anything from an old laptop to a new i7 depending on budget: we use Gigabyte Brix Celeron units (about £100 inc RAM) hooked up on the HDMI to TVs around the building and these are brilliant with enough CPU and graphics capability to run smoothly. Software-wise we load a standard Win7 image with CCCP codec pack, VLC and Impero (so we can remotely manage them)

[aidenbran2000]

Screen are not a problem as all the displays come back to a cupboard in the school where we convert it to hdmi and is just one cable.

[dry]

Did you do this on windows (7 ,8 , or 10) or did you do it on Windows Server.

 

I want to be able to access the screen design via my computer and like you said the office will want to update screens as well.

I personally bought a cheap Dell SFF desktop from ICT Direct (as our servers were in the middle of being upgraded & virtualised) and installed it on that. It sits there 24/7 happily acting as our Xibo server. It's got Win7 Pro on it and was very easy to set up. Only pain was getting the permissions ironed out for the side projects I wanted to do on it- but it's all straight forward if you've worked with permissions before.

 

You then connect to your Xibo server via a web interface- so can do it from any client on the same network as you just navigate to http://xiboserverIP/xibo and away you go. All explained on the Xibo website.

 

The more effort you put into designing it the nicer it looks. I created a template using Publisher for our screen's resolution- 1920x1080 and have got the Newsround feed on there, scrolling messages, videos, pictures, Powerpoint exports etc all working. I'll upload a pic in a bit to show you what I've done.

[dry]

 

Main content area is the large rectangle. At time of taking pic had a 'Notices' slide (exported from PPT) on. Section below is a ticker, currently with a 'Welcome' message. Section to right is school logo. Section above that is CBBC Newsround RSS feed as ticker. Section above that is time/date.

 

Have obscured our school name.

[ITGuyNW]

We have a few TV screens around school, showing custom content depending on which area the TV is in.

 

We have micro HP PCs connected to each TV and Xibo/web server actually sits on one of them PCS. We then log in using the ipaddress/xibo and edit away.

 

I've not gone as far as making it easy enough for office staff etc to access but I just get them to send me any info at the moment for me to put on the screen. Only takes a couple of minutes through the interface.

[aidenbran2000]

Got an old pc with nothing on it so will get an install sorted on that.

[aidenbran2000]

Keep getting issues when starting apache to do with ports.

 

I have actually never hated a product this much before.

[aidenbran2000]

Any ideas?

[JordanT91]

Any ideas?

 

What does the Apache error say?

 

As a side note, I installed Xibo Server and Xibo Client on a NUC running Windows 7 which is located in a false ceiling above the screen. I can log into the administration site from anywhere on the network or I can VNC to the NUC and configure it locally. It's quite simple really. The only issue I've come across so far is that the embed website function doesn't like our school website, the formatting is all off and what is shown on screen doesn't resemble our website at all.

 

One piece of advice would be to preview your layouts on the layout builder screen but also check what it looks like on the Xibo Client as well because sometimes the layout is totally off even if the preview looks fine.

[dry]

I installed Xibo Server and Xibo Client on a NUC running Windows 7 which is located in a false ceiling above the screen. I can log into the administration site from anywhere on the network or I can VNC to the NUC and configure it locally.

 

Does your NUC play well with Wake On LAN, or is there a resume last power state option in BIOS or something? The one problem with our little MeLe PCs is they don't support WoL so we needed to keep them relatively accessible for the event of power outages etc.

[aidenbran2000]

Error message bellow

 

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.405472 2015] [ssl:warn] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH01909: www.example.com:443:0 server certificate does NOT include an ID which matches the server name

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.569137 2015] [ssl:warn] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH01909: www.example.com:443:0 server certificate does NOT include an ID which matches the server name

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.658151 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00455: Apache/2.4.16 (Win32) OpenSSL/1.0.1p PHP/5.6.12 configured -- resuming normal operations

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.658151 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00456: Apache Lounge VC11 Server built: Jul 12 2015 10:56:48

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.658151 2015] [core:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00094: Command line: 'C:\xampp\apache\bin\httpd.exe -d C:/xampp/apache'

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.664150 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00418: Parent: Created child process 2368

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:28.337365 2015] [ssl:warn] [pid 2368:tid 372] AH01909: wwwexample.com:443:0 server certificate does NOT include an ID which matches the server name

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:28.694205 2015] [ssl:warn] [pid 2368:tid 372] AH01909: wwwexample.com:443:0 server certificate does NOT include an ID which matches the server name

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:28.745208 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 2368:tid 372] AH00354: Child: Starting 150 worker threads.

[JordanT91]

Does your NUC play well with Wake On LAN, or is there a resume last power state option in BIOS or something? The one problem with our little MeLe PCs is they don't support WoL so we needed to keep them relatively accessible for the event of power outages etc.

 

To be honest I haven't looked into it. In the year we've had it I've only had to physically turn it on twice, both times after the power has been cut to the school.

[hallb15]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32612[/ATTACH]

 

Main content area is the large rectangle. At time of taking pic had a 'Notices' slide (exported from PPT) on. Section below is a ticker, currently with a 'Welcome' message. Section to right is school logo. Section above that is CBBC Newsround RSS feed as ticker. Section above that is time/date.

 

Have obscured our school name.

 

How are you achieving the ticker with the welcome message? I've sussed out most things but I just can't get the ticker to show anything - RSS or dataset, its not playing ball. I'm sure its something obvious, just not obvious to me!

[JordanT91]

How are you achieving the ticker with the welcome message? I've sussed out most things but I just can't get the ticker to show anything - RSS or dataset, its not playing ball. I'm sure its something obvious, just not obvious to me!

 

It's just a text box ticker. The text editor is a bit naff with the background and text colours but apart from that it's really easy.

[pete]

Error message bellow

 

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.405472 2015] [ssl:warn] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH01909: www.example.com:443:0 server certificate does NOT include an ID which matches the server name

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.658151 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00455: Apache/2.4.16 (Win32) OpenSSL/1.0.1p PHP/5.6.12 configured -- resuming normal operations

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.658151 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00456: Apache Lounge VC11 Server built: Jul 12 2015 10:56:48

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.658151 2015] [core:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00094: Command line: 'C:\xampp\apache\bin\httpd.exe -d C:/xampp/apache'

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:27.664150 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3476:tid 360] AH00418: Parent: Created child process 2368

[Mon Oct 12 13:54:28.745208 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 2368:tid 372] AH00354: Child: Starting 150 worker threads.

 

(duplicates snipped)

 

Line 01 is telling you that you have Apache configured for https, but you're using the default "snakeoil" (fake) certificate for Example Domain and this doesn't match the configured name for your server. Install a certificate from your inhouse certificate authority if you want to get rid of it.

Lines 02 - 05 are informational, not errors.

Line 06 also informational, telling your that Apache started successfully.

[hallb15]

It's just a text box ticker. The text editor is a bit naff with the background and text colours but apart from that it's really easy.

Got it - yes that's the simplest way to do it. I was trying to get as much of this automated as possible so was hoping to have one large ticker with a different message for each day pre-loaded.

Nevermind, my apprentice can have the job of updating it each morning until I figure something else out.

[JordanT91]

Got it - yes that's the simplest way to do it. I was trying to get as much of this automated as possible so was hoping to have one large ticker with a different message for each day pre-loaded.

Nevermind, my apprentice can have the job of updating it each morning until I figure something else out.

 

I'm sure there's an easier way but you could always have different versions of the layout for every day. Just change the ticker to say what you want for each one. Somebody will probably have a better way involving datasets or something.