Difference between revisions of "Youtube subscriptions"

Revision as of 04:42, 18 November 2010

Note: the information here will be valid once I publish the updated plugins to svn (in a day or two) --Mad ady 12:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Description

The Youtube subscriptions plugin allows you to view your Youtube subscription videos the same way the youtube interface shows them to the registered users. The plugin is included in the base usmp plugins. The plugin has two components: proxy+web interface and a helper script that generates a list of new videos from your subscriptions. The proxy script can be run periodically to ensure you can access the latest videos.

Prerequisites

• Your Youtube username and password must be entered in the WDTV Youtube section and saved. You can check this by looking for your credentials in /conf/account_list.xml

Configuration

• Enable Youtube Subscriptions from the web interface, under UMSP
• To periodically update for new subscriptions(e.g. every 10 minutes), add this entry to your crontab (crontab -e from ssh):

*/10   *   *   *   *   /usr/bin/php5-cgi /tmp/umsp-plugins/youtube-subscriptions/youtube-subscriptions-helper.php --insecure >/tmp/youtube-subscriptions-helper.txt 2>&1

• After the update, you should get videos under UMSP->Youtube Subscriptions->Your account
• If you have YOUTUBE_QUALITY set in your configuration, the videos will have the requested resolution (if available) automatically. If it's not set, you will get 720P quality by default
• If you want more than 30 videos per channel listed, add this to your configuration:

config_tool -c YOUTUBE_VIDEOS_PER_CHANNEL='50'

• If you want more than 300 videos in New Subscription Videos, add this to your configuration:

config_tool -c YOUTUBE_NEW_VIDEOS='500'

• If you make changes to your configuration, make sure to save it before rebooting

config_tool -s

Troubleshooting

• If you don't see your channels in the UMSP GUI, do the following checks:
  • run /usr/bin/php5-cgi /tmp/umsp-plugins/youtube-subscriptions/youtube-subscriptions-helper.php --insecure by hand in the command line. Look for error messages and their descriptions
  • check that the file /tmp/youtube-subscriptions.cache exists and has content inside (ids and names of youtube clips)
  • check that cron is running and that your crontab is working fine

# config_tool -c CROND='ON'
config saved val:key => (CROND,ON)
# /etc/init.d/S90crond start   
# ps | grep cron
10624 root      3648 S    crond
10721 root      3712 S    grep cron 

• if cron runs properly you should see messages like this:

Jan  1 05:22:01 Deneb cron.err crond[10624]: USER root pid 18851 cmd /usr/bin/php5-cgi /tmp/umsp-plugins/youtube-subscriptions/youtube-subscriptions-helper.php --insecure  >/tmp/youtube-subscriptions-helper.txt 2>&1

Security

• Currently (version 0.4.2) there is a problem with the certificates that the built-in package curl has shipped in and it can't verify if the server you are talking to is actually the Youtube authentication server. This check is disabled by using --insecure parameter when running youtube-subscriptions-helper.php. When curl will come with the correct certificates, you can drop --insecure and it will verify the authenticity of the Youtube server. Keep in mind that the authentication process is still encrypted regardless of --insecure.

Developer/Changelog

• This plugin was developed by Dan
• mad_ady adapted it to use youtube authentication + some debugging
• Discussion thread http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=713&start=0