thanks for trying the new beta. the linux versions do not generally support voting because gnome-screensaver does not support it. you aren't doing anything wrong. it's possible to fix this, but it's not easy and it will take a while.

what version do you really have (it shouldn't be 2.7b2)? you can check by running "electricsheep --help" and looking at the beginning. also, i suspect there's an issue with nicknames. can you check yours by running this command and replying with the output: "grep nick ~/.electricsheep/preferences.xml". thanks!

I have installed 2.7b4.

grep nick ~/.electricsheep/preferences.xml results in:
nick="Zababa"

I have looked a while yesterday where to define my nick until I have seen it in the executable electricsheep-preferences

I also see it really is still a beta. Once the screensaver stopped after about 4 min running time. It did not play anything, the screen was just black. When I moved the mouse it disappeared but did not start again after the preset idle time. After computer restart it worked again.

It also happens that a couple of minutes after screensaver start, the Desktop appears again for a fraction of a second and then the screensaver continues playing again immediately. However, after this Desktop-flash the mouse cursor is visible ontop of the animated MPEG. It seems to happen more often in a moment where the screensaver does not find appropriate follow-up animation and must hard-cut to an unrelated sheep video.

Thanks for running the beta, Zababa. I see you on the credits page.

The man page says how you can edit the defaults. I will try to make this clearer.

I have seen it stop working. It seems like the X server gets confused because the condition is permanent to reboot. All display is done by Mplayer so it's not clear where things go wrong. Or it's possible that the sheep client is producing a bad video stream which is somehow confusing Mplayer, I don't know.

I have been running the beta for the laast 24 h, but My computer seem to have not computed any single frame. It is nowhere in the credits.

It was again a situation where the sleeper ended with a black screen. I think I did not restart but started it anew with the command electricsheep. Since then it was running for 24 h, processor had full load... but no result. /-: Not a sigle frame credited in the loops or in the edges.

I will restart for tonight.

I had the same qualms originally.
The credits aren't calculated on the spot. Instead they are updated every few hours or so.
You're currently listed as with 69 frames. ^.^

Cheers,
RMI

--
"Mary had a little lamb"
Parse error
Terminated

thanks for the bug report david. if you can run it with the "--debug 2" option set and then email (or post here) the output, i would appreciate it.

it looks like ffmpeg isn't in the right place. you are not supposed to install ffmpeg, just make it a sibling of the electricsheep directory, and then patch it, and then compile it. and then make the sheep client.

btw i highly recommend you use the latest code from cvs instead of the tarball, which is very out of date.

thanks, glad it came up for you. are you of weirdosgang?

i think i have the fix for the black bar on my other computer at home, i'll post it here in a couple days after i return.

i'm guessing the thing that's making it go black is related to your use of it in xscreensaver which i haven't tested. i'm working on ubuntu which uses gnome-screensaver. i want to maintain compatibility though, so this kind of bug report is really useful. can you try running it directly from the command line "electricsheep --debug 1" and seeing how that behaves? and run electricsheep-preferences and make sure your cache size is reasonable (2000 or more). thank you.

Yep you caught me! ;)

Anyways, I tried what you said with these results:

Electricsheep runs flawlessly from the command line, I can run and rerun with no problems at all (Unless I run it from xscreensaver in between). No black bar. Normal debug output.

When I run it from xscreensaver, still does the things I described before. If I then run "electricsheep --debug 1" it will loop this text (not always the same id):

=====================================
electric sheep v2.7b2
time start Tue Dec 18 15:52:57 2007
updating cache path=/home/jmt/.electricsheep/
time display loop Tue Dec 18 15:52:58 2007
idx=0 ncached_sheep=158 best_atime
found new anim id=1601.
idx=0 ncached_sheep=158 best_atime
found new anim id=1601.
idx=0 ncached_sheep=158 best_atime
found new anim id=1601.
idx=0 ncached_sheep=158 best_atime
found new anim id=1601.

until I press ctrl + c. It will continue this until I delete the .xxx files, then works fine again.

Hope this helps to narrow it down!

I'm now going to try to run it from the kde screensaver with the old .desktop file, just to see if it works at all. I'll post the results later. =)

thanks. see if you can fix the monitor problem by adding these two lines to electricsheep.c:

argv[c++] = "mplayer";
argv[c++] = "-really-quiet";
+ argv[c++] = "-monitoraspect";
+ argv[c++] = "16:10";
argv[c++] = "-fps";
argv[c++] = fps;

replace 16:10 with whatever the aspect ratio of your screen is. now about xscreensaver, get the latest version of electricsheep.xml.in from CVS, then rerun "./configure" and then "make clean; make; sudo make install". delete your "~/.xscreensaver" configuration file. then run "electricsheep-preferences" and make sure the cache is set to an appropriate value (eg 2000).

and then try again and let me know what happens. :)

Wicked! I think you nailed the xscreensaver problem...its working great now!

And the aspect ratio fix worked too! I didn't realize 1280x1024 was 5:4 until I did some research, but I figured it out =P Fullscreen goodness!

Well thank you for your help! I freaking love this program! You're awesome! =)

Well, It certainly made me hopeful when I opened up the KDE (3.5) control center! The screensaver preview window displayed the animation, and the preview button worked (although it had the black bar). But when it came time to actually initialize the screensaver on it's own, it just comes up with a blank screen. I know it's running it tho, because I have to manually kill electricsheep afterwards (doesn't do it on its own). Also, when attemptng to run it like this, it does not appear to be generating (or downloading...not sure how it does it exactly =) any .xxx files at all.

Well, that's what happened under the KDE screensaver daemon on my system. I used the electricsheep.desktop file from here: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/ElectricSheep+for+KScreenSaver?content=24325 . Let me know if I need to supply you with any more information. I suppose I'll check back here once a week or something, as I'm sure you won't be working on it too much with the holidays coming up. In the meantime, I'm going to look into using gnome screensaver under KDE, but I have a feeling that it's not possible heh.

thanks for the bug report. i will be working through the holiday, but i am going to focus on gnome-screensaver and xscreensaver, and of course the program itself. i don't know much about KDE, so i hope an expert from that side will figure it out. funny that we both followed up to this thread almost simultaneously!

Woah yeah that is kinda freaky hehe!

Just wanted to update that indeed gnome-screensaver works under KDE, and electricsheep appears to be working just fine, aside from the black bar which I will TRY (I'm pretty novice at this stuff lol) to address with the info from your other post. Thanks!

they are made with x264, i am not sure why others can't decode them.

this might do it on windows.