My Zynthian v5 kit arrived yesterday and I managed to get it assembled and booting on a fresh micro SD card. Also ran updates via the web interface.
Now, if I just want to get on whatever test branch is necessary to use the external gear SysEx feature discussed above, what would I need to do for that?
The feature is not yet developed. It will be soon, but not today 
Anyway, you should change to testing branch in all repos and update to get the latest MIDI routing improvements.
Regards
Oh! I had just gotten mixed up about which feature was ready.
We are quite close now. It’s a low hanging fruit…
Great. Thanks for working on this.
I read that the new version of the Linux kernel has SMB network sharing support built right into the kernel. I would presume that, once Raspberry PI OS gets that new kernel, Zynthian would eventually get it too, which should make supporting SMB network shares easier?
Also I would like to somehow mount the Zynthian v5 above the Casio CDP-S360 keyboard I’ve got but the Zynthian is a little too big to stay on there. I am trying to figure out the best approach for that. Maybe some kind of stand which tilts the Zynthian upwards?
We will announce a vesa mounting gadget for the V5 in the next weeks. I think this should solve most of the “mounting” problems.
Regards!
SMB sharing has never been a problem, but we prefer SFTP 
Regards
Great to hear about the vesa mounting solution. Looking forward to that.
I know how to use scp and sftp with WinSCP and FileZilla respectively, but you can’t actually mount those to the file system in Windows, which severely limits how you can use them as compared to SMB, so I would like SMB to be supported for full Windows compatibility.
For example, let’s say there’s a large audio file out on the Zynthian that I need to open in my Windows Audacity app. With scp or sftp, I’d need to download the entire file to local storage, and then import into Audacity, which makes another copy of the entire file run through ffmpeg as part of its import process, and then delete the local copy after I’ve got it in Audacity. However, if SMB is supported, then I can skip the intermediary step of making a copy of the entire file on local storage. Instead, the network share can go directly to Audacity / ffmpeg, downloading as it imports in one seamless operation.
The way Linux handles this, where anything can be mounted in the file system, is objectively better than how Windows handles this, where each protocol gets its own third party app except SMB which is built into the OS. But unfortunately, for a lot of use cases, a lot of people are still stuck on Windows anyway. If I thought that not supporting SMB would somehow put pressure on Microsoft to fix their crap then I’d say don’t support it, but that isn’t what’s happening. Instead, what’s happening is that the Linux kernel itself is getting SMB support.
(I edited out some comments about being frustrated with Linux elitism)
I tried this today and I get that same error screen on boot after changing just one. (zynthian-ui ) I was real careful to wait for half an hour after switching to the testing branch before telling it to reboot.
I’ve actually got a system going at this point where I have two outwardly identical 32 GB micro SD cards and while I’m testing with one of them, I’m already flashing the Zynthian OS to the other one since I’m pretty sure I’m going to screw it up.
Let me know what logs I should be capturing or other actions I should be taking to find out what’s wrong. Thanks.
(later edit) I forgot to mention that the web interface also goes down when the Zynthian hits that error screen. I haven’t tried to SSH in but I would guess that would be the way to retrieve any logs of why it’s failing so I’d just need to know how to turn on the logging and/or what the path to the logs would be.
You MUST change all repositories at once.
This advice is deeply wrong. There are dependencies across repositories. Please, ignore it and change all repos to testing, update and wait until it finishes.
Regards
Hi @zynthianers!
Please, ignore this advice. It’s wrong. Repositories have cross dependencies. For changing to testing branch, you MUST change all repositories at once and update.
Sometimes, it’s useful changing a single repository to a given development branch for testing a new feature or fix, but it’s not the case with the testing branch.
Regards
I did already try that with the same result earlier today, but I can try it one more time to be really sure.
OK, good news: I found out what I was doing wrong.
After changing all the repos to testing under Software → Repositories, I needed to not reboot, but instead navigate over to Software → Update, click the “Update Software” button and wait for that to completely finish before rebooting.
That finally did the trick.
So, the worst advice to change branches at all. This is not stackoverflow, most people on this forum have never even heard of git checkout. I understand that the open source developer community needs testers, but this is not the right way, asking random people to experiment with unstable sotware. I see many people walk in this trap again and again, and there are no clear guidelines about the process. They are not prepared for these situations, and they spend hours and days frustrated in front of the error screen.
I’m a DIYer and software developer, like many others here, so this is not a big problem for me. I can’t afford the commercial product, and I know that this is not a support channel for a commercial product. But I see many people here without software development knowledge, who want to make music with their expensive hardware, instead of suffering with a software in development. I think it’s not a good idea to ask them to test in this way…
Hi, I thinks that’s why you have to be in the Stable branch and not moo e from it unless you know perfectly why… And how.
Stable is then as it should, and as other products with firmware every three months;-)
I am not a programmer, but a musician, but I want to try new implementation.
Therefore, a “good/best practise advice for testing branch” in the wiki would be great.
There are many, very technical people on this forum who stay on stable because they don’t want to be crash test dummies whilst others are willing to accept the challenges that testing presents. We depend on these willing volunteers to test the software because there is not a R&D team with dedicated test engineers waiting in the wings to spend hundreds of hours testing. It is basically just @jofemodo and you.
I do agree that the suggestion to move to testing branch can sometimes be made without warnings and maybe the wiki could be updated so that such suggestions can point at a page that explains the risks and shows how to make the change.
My experience of the forum is that most people do understand the risk and file the advice that had been repeated many times, like using a different uSD card and backing up data. There are few instances of users complaining about suffering the issue you describe.
Zynthian is a DIY project and there is, to some degree an expectation that users who want to customise their device or try the latest developments, take some responsibility for their actions and understand that they are stepping off the stable road. There is a big clue in the names.
Maybe a new ‘Repositories’ chapter on the Zynthian Software - ZynthianWiki and the Zynthian Web Configuration Tool User Guide - ZynthianWiki pages with some warnings and guidelines could help. The same text could be on the webconf Repositories page.
Being a web developer, I’d be happy to make these changes if it would compensate for the deeply wrong advice I gave 
I recommand to use two different SD Cards: one for stable, one for testing.