LCDProc 0.5.4-dev

mikeisfly · Nov 6, 2013, 2:19 AM

Please forgive my ignorance but I would like to get a few lines added to this package. When ever I upgrade my system or reinstall which isn't all the time admittedly, but I have to manually add the port necessary to get my crystal fontz 635 to work. It's kind of a pain in the you know what and it would be cool if it was there natively. I would love to have the following lines added:

/usr/local/pkg/lcdproc.inc:


case "ttyU0":
	continue;
	break;

and


case "ttyU0":
     $realport = "/dev/ttyU0";
break;

/usr/local/pkg/lcdproc.xml:


 <option><value>ttyU0</value>
		<name>USB Com port 3 alternate (/dev/ttyU0)</name></option>

I'm thinking some kind of commit is necessary but not sure of the process. I have no knowledge of github or am I over thinking the process?

stephenw10 · Nov 6, 2013, 6:10 AM

That doesn't work with cuaU0 then? Odd.

Steve

mikeisfly · Nov 6, 2013, 10:33 AM

That doesn't work with cuaU0 then? Odd.

Steve

Nope. I just stopped the service and tried that port. But when I try to restart the service it won't restart. I remember you helped awhile ago to discover ttyU0 was the port that I needed to use. I'm not sure if my screen is special but it's not usb its serial but connects to a USB port. When I connected to Windows that's when I discovered that it had some kind of USB to Serial adapter built into it. The screen is just a CrystalFontz 635 that I bought directly from CrystalFontz. If I use the crystalfontz 633 driver I get a blank screen, I have to use the crystalfontz packet driver. It is my understanding that I can only get the LED on the left side of the screen to work if I use the crystalfontz 633 driver. Would be nice to have those working.

Just for my knowledge what is the difference between cuaU0 and ttyU0? I tried to do a little searching but I'm not getting any answers.

stephenw10 · Nov 6, 2013, 4:06 PM

As far as I know (and I'm a bit unsure on this) it's just a terminology difference. Older versions of FreeBSD used tty for serial ports, newer versions use cua but tty is kept for compatibility. In both cases the capital 'U' indicates a USB connected device.

Steve

Topper727 · Nov 6, 2013, 6:09 PM

Yes, CrystalFontz Packet driver is what you need to use. As far as those LED's on the left edge the code I put up here makes those work.

https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense-packages/pull/532

Mike, Couple messages back I explained some you might be interested in seeing those (end of page 32)

mikeisfly · Nov 6, 2013, 8:03 PM

Yes I saw those but I thought is said that you needed to use the crystalfontz 633 driver. I will take a look again. Is there anyway that my port can be added to the package? Thanks.

mikeisfly · Nov 6, 2013, 11:53 PM

Topper727 wrote:

Yes, CrystalFontz Packet driver is what you need to use. As far as those LED's on the left edge the code I put up here makes those work.

https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense-packages/pull/532

Mike, Couple messages back I explained some you might be interested in seeing those (end of page 32)

Thanks my LEDs are now working they are on. Hopefully I will have sometime this week or weekend to workone the WAN gateway issue. I am also going to sit down to figure out how I can get my port added to this package.

Thanks all for the help.

Topper727 · Nov 7, 2013, 6:52 AM

Glad to see you got it working. I hope to get my changes (fixes) put into the lcdproc package as well. I seen Michelle is one who started it. Maybe she is one going to put these changes in and submit to package system? I am not familiar with this process yet.

jasonlitka · Nov 21, 2013, 11:56 PM

I just got a pair of boxes which have LCDs in them that I'd love to get working. Can anyone tell me how I'm supposed to identify which driver I should be using?

The boxes are Lanner FW-8865. I sent an email over to them asking for more info on what LCD was installed and how it was attached, but I was hoping that with any luck someone here would be able to get me started.

http://www.lannerinc.com/products/x86-network-appliances/rackmount/fw-8865

stephenw10 · Nov 22, 2013, 2:40 AM

There was a report recently that another Lanner box worked with the sdeclcd driver. That has code in it to work with the XTM5 which is a lightly modified Lanner box. Easy test.

Steve

Edit: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,68481.msg375797.html#msg375797

jasonlitka · Nov 22, 2013, 4:10 PM

@stephenw10:

There was a report recently that another Lanner box worked with the sdeclcd driver. That has code in it to work with the XTM5 which is a lightly modified Lanner box. Easy test.

Steve

Edit: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,68481.msg375797.html#msg375797

You. Are. Awesome. It was "USB COM Port 1" and "Watchguard Firebox with SDEC".

Any idea if there's a way to get traffic statistics for multiple interfaces? I'd love to be able to show total throughput on WAN1 + WAN2.

EDIT: Interestingly enough, Lanner just got back to me and said it's hooked up via Parallel. Not sure why the setting I picked worked unless the driver portion ignored it.

stephenw10 · Nov 22, 2013, 5:15 PM

No idea on network stats though there are various code mods in this thread that add functionality you might look through.
Yeah I think the sdec driver is hardcoded to use the parallel port. It's interesting that it works at all. I had always assumed that Watchguard had insisted on backwards compatibility with their x-core boxes, which had an sdec LCD, and that was the only reason it works with much newer models. Maybe not.

Steve

jasonlitka · Nov 23, 2013, 12:00 PM

Who actually maintains this package? I'd be interested in subsidizing the development a bit if I can get an aggregated traffic option in the UI and have it part of the package.

stephenw10 · Nov 23, 2013, 4:34 PM

Michelle (mdima) forked the original lcdproc package and updated it. See the first post in this thread.

Steve

jasonlitka · Nov 23, 2013, 8:12 PM

@stephenw10:

Michelle (mdima) forked the original lcdproc package and updated it. See the first post in this thread.

Steve

Yeah, I was hoping that wasn't the case. Not online for more than 3 weeks. PM sent though and crossing my fingers.

Topper727 · Jan 5, 2014, 1:56 PM

I just got the updates to fix the LED's merged. I hope this means that it will be and update in our packages list. I think this will happen soon.

I just confirmed, if you re-install the LCDProc-dev package you will get the LED Patch now.

nobita0313 · Jun 5, 2014, 11:58 AM

I am using HD44780 with LCD2USB on PfSense 2.1. My Lcd is messed up and character are not aligned.
Youtube Video

I have another identical LCD display and adapter and they work normally on a NAS with lcdproc 0.5.6, so I think it is a bug in the package?

stephenw10 · Jun 5, 2014, 2:18 PM

Can you try to kill the php client and start the standard LCDproc client?

Steve

nobita0313 · Jun 5, 2014, 3:10 PM

@stephenw10:

Can you try to kill the php client and start the standard LCDproc client?

Steve

Thanks for your quick reply!

I went though the following process:
1. Stop LCDproc though WebGUI
2. ssh into PfSense
3. cd /usr/local/
4. sbin/LCDd -c etc/LCDd.conf
5. bin/lcdproc

and there is no effect. Does it means that this is a problem of the driver?
Youtube Video

ps. php client and lcdproc client use the same LCDd.conf

kilthro · Jun 5, 2014, 3:28 PM

@ nobita0313
Did you try removing the package and conf files and rebuild it from fresh to see if that resolves it?

I have a question on the dev package. Since the last version or two that have been published, there are times that i will notice that the lcd display is blank except for the blinking heart with a 0 by connections ect. Its like it lost communication. The service is still running. If I restart it, its works fine. I am not sure why it just randomly stops working.

I thought it was during snort updates, rules refresh but I have noticed it happening at times that none of that happens. Even after some of these refreshes it works just fine. Has anyone else had this happen? I don't have the log setting to 3 since it was spamming the log with every lcd refresh or status refresh. So I have set it to 0. I haven't noticed any errors in the system log related to whats causing it to lose connection from service to display. I am on most recent version of pfsense 64 bit.

I can list out packages if needed or if there is anything else i can do to track/log whats going on, please let me know. It did work just fine for the past couple of years before most recent update maybe two… These were updated when pfsense was updated and all packages were reinstalled.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.