i’ve been having issues w/ /dev/dsp not being available lately and it’s because nxesd keeps hanging around on my system.

$ sudo lsof | grep dsp
nxesd 11945 flipp 4w CHR 14,3 10785 /dev/dsp

yup. nxclient/nxserver use esd (the enlightenment sound daemon) to manage pushing sound w/ the remote display. i’m not sure why it’s grabbing /dev/dsp for a session where i disabled multimedia support but killing off the nxesd process fixed sound. to fix it permanently, just change your sound playback device to esd in system>preferences>sound.

i was a little bummed to find out that you couldn’t just update between the mythbuntu alphas… i finally got around to tossing the 8.04 beta on my mythtv frontend and firewire input/capture WORKS! i also moved the pvr500 into the t105 and got that working. the only issue i’m having right now is figuring out how to get the primary backend and secondary backend to play nicely.

i also figured out how to get nxclient to work in mythbuntu. i never did figure out how to get xfce to start properly (it wouldn’t start in a window and it would render xfce over my current window manager) so i cheated and just installed ‘ubuntu-desktop’. not gnome, or gnome-desktop…. heh, yeah i’m slow.

update (05/05/08)
i guess a lot of people are looking for mythbuntu + nxserver because this post is getting tons of search traffic. one thing that bugged me forever about mythbuntu + nxserver/nxclient was trying to get xfce or even kde4 to start. to make your life easier if you can spare the space, install ubuntu-desktop (#) in mythbuntu to use nxclient like you normally would on a ubuntu desktop.

i’ve really gotten used to using nxclient to connect to my linux server vs vnc. it’s about as simple to setup nxclient as it is to setup passworded X11 vnc, but nxserver uses encryption (ssh) out of the box. vnc doesn’t. you can also disconnect from a nx session and reconnect later, almost like screen but for X11 and not just a console.

how to install nxserver on (mythb)ubuntu 8.10

1. download the nxclient, nxnode, and nxserver debs from nomachine. [here]
2. install the packages w/ `sudo dpkg -i nx*.deb`
3. ssh to your server from your client
   to make sure your keys are setup properly. ssh w/ authorized_keys is optional, nxclient will remember your password if you want.
4. connect to your server using an nxclient for your client machine. [here]

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