We recently upgraded our old Xibo install to the latest version. I can’t remember what version we upgraded from. ts been about 4 years since we upgraded. We installed the new Android Players on our oDroid M1S devices and registered them with our self-hosted cms.
A lot of our previously working layouts don’t show at all on the player. We did update the dataset widgets to use the newer dataset html widget. Most of these used static photos with text overlay. It appears that the Rich Text widget work but not the HTML dataset widget. The font used on the display is a default font and not the font we uploaded and used on the CMS.
We are trying to use video, full screen with text overlay. Some videos will play but no text is shown and others just refuse to play. We tried to change resolutions etc in case that was what was effecting things but no luck.
All the layout show fine in the browser. I had a look at the “Status” page on the player and it doesn’t show any errors. On the “Manage” dashboard for the display we get this error under faults:
“5001 No Data” “Widget Id: 1311” etc.
Under the display setting log levels are: “Emergency, Alert,Critical, Error, None”. Not sure how to get debug output? From what I can gather the fonts, which are in the media library aren’t being downloaded and this may affect the html dataset widget. Thats our best guess. Any pointers?
Rebuild your layout, go to CMS > Layout > row menu > Design > then ‘Publish’ it.
run the ‘Daily Maintenance’ task and ‘Widget Sync’ task by going to your CMS > Task in the main CMS menu.
clear your player cache by going to CMS > Displays > row menu > Edit > put a check on ‘Clear Cached Data’ tick box and then save it.
Edit your schedule in CMS > Schedule. Make sure that the ‘Dayparting’ is set to ‘Always’ then save it.
Wait to see in your Xibo Player if the layout shows as well as your dataset.
If the issue still persist, could you please share the needed information below for further investigation?
Check what fonts are being used in the layout and see if your CMS > Fonts section has those fonts available.
What version of CMS was it before it got upgraded?
What version of CMS was it upgrdaded to?
What is the type of instalaltion you have for your CMS (Docker on Linux or Webserver)?
Could you please upload your layout to here and provide me the link? Please make sure that when you export the layout, tick the ‘Include DataSet data?’ opton.
Could you please upload as well a screenshot of ‘Player Status Logs’ entire page as the issue is happening?
Thanks for the response. I have carried out the steps set out above and I am still having trouble with some of the layouts. I have verified that the font is available. I have even changed to a default font to see if it would change anything.
I am currently on version Version 4.1.2 of the CMS. The version we upgraded from was 2.1.0 according to its docker-compose file.
We are running docker on ubuntu. I will upload the requested files.
Thank you for the layout and screenshots. I’ll try test it on my end. May I please ask what type of Xibo Player and Version your are seeing the issue on your end? (Android, Tizen, webOS or Windows player?).
Here is what I’ve found. Seems on the layout with dataset, there is only columns but for some reason there is no raw data on that Dataset called ‘Java Training’ as shown in the screenshot below. Please enter data for this Dataset. Here is some reference for DataSet.
For the 2 layouts with Fonts issue not showing. Here is my findings. On my XfW V4 R404 the layout displays correctly with fonts in it (the fonts you uploaded to CMS). The issue is, when I tried to schedule the same layouts to my XfA V4 R406 it only shows the ‘Bean’ logo then the videos at the background, but the fonts are not showing. In CMS Editor, I checked all the elements, images, fonts and videos and noticed something wrong on the ‘Layers’. The video is in Layer 0 for some reason so I had to correct the layering of all elements on the layout. The Video should be on layer higher than 0 then arranged the other layers like fonts and images to be higher than the video and there you go, now all elements including fonts displayed properly on both XfW V4 R404 and XfA V4 R406. You can download the Exported Layouts which I have modified and arranged the layers.
My Theory:
When the CMS got upgraded to higher version, the layout structure might have been affected especially if those layouts just migrated from the older CMS to the new one. To further understand this issue and confirm this theory. Could you please share the additional info needed so I can relay this to our devs?
Follow-up inquiry:
When you upgraded your CMS, did you do an incremental upgrade, like from V2 to V3 then V3 to V4? How did you upgrade your CMS?
Could you please confirm that the issue only happens in XfA player? but not in your XfW players?
What particular type of Xibo Player and its version you are noticing this issue on your end (to check if we are using the same type and version of the player while noticing this issue).
Could you please confirm when you go to CMS > Datasets > row menu of the data > Edit > View Data > does your dataset have raw data?
Please, can you import the layouts I edited from this response and see if it fixes the issue with the fonts?
Hope to hear from you and eager to see the results as well as thosed needed information if I may request it.
When layers were correted here are how it shows on my players:
XfW V4 R404 View:
Thanks for the help. Making sure that the layers start from 1 and not 0 has fixed the issue with the video layouts. I still have a problem with the dataset layouts. I do have items in the datasets on our CMS.
If I look in the exported zip file I can even see the dataSet.json file that contains the data. Not sure what is happening here.
Also the CMS design editor assigned 0 to the first layer and I have to manually adjust it. Is this a bug in the editor and not just data corruption? It happens for new layouts too?
*When you upgraded your CMS, did you do an incremental upgrade, like from V2 to V3 then V3 to V4? How did you upgrade your CMS?
I updated the docker-compose.yml file and got a copy of the layouts from our backup and place the images and layouts in the folder locations. I can’t remember exactly. I don’t recall doing any database restore. Sorry it was before the holidays and my recollection might not be 100%. I doubt I would have done a database restore as I am aware that data structure changes may have occurred.
Could you please confirm that the issue only happens in XfA player? but not in your XfW players?
Will find a windows machine to test. We currently only use Android and LInux
What particular type of Xibo Player and its version you are noticing this issue on your end (to check if we are using the same type and version of the player while noticing this issue).
We are using version 4 “406 - 756d62bb (2025-01-07 11:17:53”.
Could you please confirm when you go to CMS > Datasets > row menu of the data > Edit > View Data > does your dataset have raw data?
Yes it does. See the screenshot in the reply above.
I’ve checked the issue with the dataset which was originally created in your V2 CMS with our devs and I was advised that since there is a big gap between V2 and V4, unfortunately the importing of the layout might not work well since there totally big difference from V2 to V4. Furthermore, V2 CMS are no longer supported, so further bug fixes and updates are no longer being made for that version, see reference here.
I viewed the dataset.json and entered the raw data in to your dataset named ‘Java Training’ and then scheduled it on my XfA V4 R406 with CMS V4.1.2 and that worked for me.
I’m afraid you’d need to make necessary adjustments for your layouts originally created in your V2 CMS. For font not showing issue (element layers need to be re-arranged). For the dataset issue, you might need to recreate the dataset in your V4 CMS then, make sure you configure the dataset in your layout and make sure that the newly created dataset is selected in the layout editor then make necessary configurations in the layout editor on how you’d like the data to show on your layout.
I imported the layout but still have the same issue. I have even gone as far as to wipe out the shared folder and restart the docker-compose services to create everything from scratch in case it was an issue with the upgrade but I still get the same results. Any layout with a dataset doesn’t display. I have check the firewall rules all allowed all access to the CMS in case it was a port issue thing.
Any other things to try? Thanks for you assistance. Its been a great help.
If you delete your dataset, then import the layout I have modified for you, does it still not show the data? After importing the layout, could you run the task ‘Daily Maintenance’ as well as the ‘Widget Sync’ and check if the issue persist?
Could you try to completely create a new dataset in your V4 CMS then use that in a layout. Finally schedule it on your display and see if the issue still happens?
I delete the dataset imported the layout and even tried creating a layout and dataset from scratch. I still have the same issue. I get “No data found” errors on the player. Everything plays fine in the CMS. I am at a bit of a loss. The dataset is included in the layout if I export it.
This is strange on your end as I have tested this with a Windows docker installed CMS on my end and the data worked like a charm when I basically just re-added the raw data I see in your dataset.json that came with the exported layout.
Could you please check that the ports below are not blocked in your server?
Players connect to the CMS on TCP/80 or TCP/443 (depending on whether you have SSL enabled on your CMS or not), and from 1.8.0 onwards, TCP/9505.
You need to allow those inbound to the CMS. There’s no connections from the CMS to the Players so in most cases there’s no need to make firewall rule changes Player side. Reference here.
Also if you are using a proxy server, content filtering or network shaping system that those ports are whitelisted?
Also, just to further isolate, could you try to create a trial CMS. Try to recreate your layout and dataset to confirm if they work and its just in your environment for some reason that the layouts does not seem to fetch the data from the CMS to the player?
I can reach port 9505,80.443 from the lan the display devices are on. I will try a trial CMS and report back.I have also noticed that pptx files don’t play on the display devices as well. They play fine on the CMS. Will start the trial and report back.
I have created a trial account for the CMS and added our display. I quickly created two layouts. One using a pptx file and the other a photo with a dataset. Neither of them display on the client and they also don’t preview on the cms. (We can get it to preview on the cms locally).
The error message on the display was different though. It said “invalid size is 2”. I changed the layout from 1080p to 720p and then the dataset layout worked! The pptx layout just doesn’t display.
Let me test locally. Maybe I need to update the CMS version we are using? We are using the docker compose installation method.
For the dataset issue, when the canvas size is set to 1080p and you are getting an error, please make sure that the display dimensions has nothing set on them by putting 0 for the height and width field. This will ensure that the 1080p layout will span accross the entire physical display. Please make sure that the widget sync is running under CMS > Task > widget Sync > click the row menu> Run on your local CMS and check if the issue still persists. I will check with the development team if there are other task needed to be sure running for Datasets to make sure it will work.
In your CMS, go to Displays page, click the row menu of the display, click Edit, and finally on the Settings tab, scroll down to find the height and width dimensions and set them to 0.
Powerpoint for Xibo for Windows
For the Powerpoint not displaying issue, you will need to enable the Powerpoint option. To do so, in CMS go to Displays > row menu, Settings tab, then scroll to the option ‘Enable Powerpoint?’ and set it to ‘True’. Please note that you will need to have Powerpoint installed on PC where you’re running the XfW player. Also, if you go this route, you will need to enable the ‘Enable Mouse’ mouse option found under the ‘Settings’ tab. This will allow you to click on the screen to view your Powerpoint slides. Currently, Xibo Players does not have the capability to autostart and show the slides next to each other automatically.
Powerpoing for Xibo for Android
We highly recommend that the Powerpoint file be exported as .mp4 format and upload it to your CMS, so when you schedule and play the powerpoint video, it will then be able to show you the slides next to each other depending on the duration you set for each slide in Powerpoint.
In Powerpoint, go to File > Export > Create a Video > set the ‘Seconds spent on each slide’ to your preferred duration in seconds as to when the slide will switch to the next one.
For the Dataset issue on your local CMS, could you please download the fonts from your CMS > Fonts, and store it anywhere in your PC. Delete the fonts in your CMS > Fonts after you’ve downloaded them all. Once downloaded in your PC, check the file names of those fonts and remove any spaces in between the names. Make sure all the names of the fonts have no spaces in them and finally, re-upload them back to your local CMS > Fonts page.
