Newbie - Test installation on shared host plus Android box

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1

Hi,

I did a tiny little bit of testing a couple of years ago, but now is the time to do some more serious testing as I have a customer that needs digital signage.

I am thinking about setting up the CMS on a shared hosting at Siteground. Has anyone done that before? The only thing of the thing Xibo needs that they did not support was ZeroMQ bindings for PHP. How critial is it? What does it do for Xibo?

I guess I will be doing the php7 patch I have seen described here unless there is a beta of a newer version I could download?

I am also talking to a manufacturer of Android boxes. Here are some of the specs of the cheapest model. Do you think it will be ok? I will borrow a box to test. The specs are in a mix of Spanish and Portuguese, I think. Sorry for that :slight_smile:

Chipset de alto rendimiento AMLogic S905
ARM Quad Core Cortex-A53 CPU hasta 2.0GHz
Memoria: Flash EMMC 8GB, RAM DDR3 2GB
Procesador gráfico Mali-450 MP GPU para soportar 3D/OpenGL2.0
Sistema operativa OS Android 5.1 Lollipop
Totalmente compatible con las Aplicacions Play Store
Descompresión soportada MPEG2/MPEG4/H265
Ranura para tarjetas Micro SD
Salida HDMI digital multimedia HD 2.0 up to 4K
Compatible con vídeo Full HD hasta 1080p
Codecs de vídeo: MPEG1/2/4 ASP, DivX 3/4/5, XviD, H.264, VC-1, WMV, H.263
Codecs de audio: MPEG 1/2/2.5, Audio Layer 1/2/3, WMA / WMA Pro, PCM, Vorbis, FLAC, ALAC, APE, AAC, AC-3, DTS, Real Audio
Un puerto USB2.0 Host y otro puerto USB OTG(microUSB)
Puerto IR wxtenson de infrerojos
WiFi Integrado de estándar 802.1n hasta 150Mbps high-speed
Puerto LAN Ethernet 10/100 Mbps
Soporta varios servicios de Internet: Skype, Web-browser, YouTube, SuperIPTV, KartinaTV
Soporta aplicaciones desde Google Play Store
Soporta instalación de nuevas aplicaciones desde la tienda gratuita Spark Market
Soporta tecnologías Miracast, DLNA, Airplay, Airshow

How often is there a new version of Xibo?

2

Shared hosting really isn’t suitable for Xibo. You will hit several issues if you try to go that route.

That’s not to say it isn’t possible, but it’s not a configuration we can offer you support for.

We have a list of recommended hardware devices. If you want to purchase something different, then please do ensure you test thoroughly your requirements before you commit to a purchase for it, as the cheaper Android boxes often have poorly authored firmware which leads to issues with the Player.

3

Thank you for answering! I am not looking for support for a shared hosting solution :slight_smile:

That said - what are the problems I will experience? Shared hosting can be a lot of different things depending on what you buy. I appreciate that you recommend a separate server for this, but for many people that would like to try this out, a shared server is the only possible solution.

Regarding the Android device, I am getting it in for testing. I will report back how it goes. Do you have any procedure for testing it? Any layout etc. that you use as a standard for testing?

4

OK so long as you are clear on that. If you have issues, we won’t necessarily be able to fix them.

Most common issue with shared hosting is the lack of control over the parts of the shared server space that you make available. For a successful 1.8 CMS installation, you either need to be able to change the server webroot, or to be able to directly edit the webserver configuration to add an alias. Very few if any shared hosting plans offer that. There may of course be exceptions.

After that, you’re unlikely to have the ZeroMQ extentions, which means no XMR connectivity which means you can’t leverage the push messaging system so the Players won’t be able to know quickly that there is new content for update, nor take screenshots on demand, nor run custom commands.

Similarly, you’re unlikely to be able to run processes from a command line, so you won’t have XTR, which means your database will quickly become unmanageabley large, layouts won’t be automatically built and maintained, display up/down notifications won’t work, since the background maintenance tasks aren’t being run.

VPS hosting can be had very cheaply these days, and has none of the drawbacks of shared hosting. It is of course your choice.

5

So - I am using Siteground for my website and I was poking around the other day in the control panel. And to my surprise, I found that it was Possible to install Xibo through Softaculous.

I ran into some problems (never really liked that installation system) and contacted support. They did the installation for me. So I now have a system I can play with to learn and get a feeling for what it can do.

The first thing I found was that I am not able to find any weather widget! I am starting to wonder if I am crazy. As far as I know, I am on version 1.8.8, and I thought the widget should be there.

Am I crazy?

6

No worries - I found out it was not installed, so I got it installed.

Also installed the Twitter modules and managed to make a layout that seems to be working. I was also able to install a Windows player and get it to play. SO first hurdle has passed.