Mac install help

[Anna]

I am trying to install get_iplayer on my Mac (Mac os 10.4)

I followed the instructions on the install page and then tried to run it, but got -bash: get_iplayer: command not found

I then read somewhere about typing ./get_iplayer I tried this and got:

get_iplayer v2.66, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; use --conditions for details.

WARNING: Running the updater again to obtain plugins.
INFO: Current version is 2.66
INFO: Checking for latest version from linuxcentre.net
ERROR: Failed to connect to update site - Update aborted

Now I'm not really sure what to do. Can anyone help?

[linuxcentre]

Maybe you are behind some form of firewall or proxy?

[Anna]

I have the firewall on my mac turned off and I don't think there is a proxy. It could be being blocked by the router. Is there a port I can open or something?

[impressed1]

I installed get_iplayer on my snow leopard Intel Mac yesterday. It worked! Thanks very much for the program!

Anna, I too saw the message about running the updater, but in my case it succeeded without any problem. It exited get_iplayer having updated, then, next time I ran it, didn't try to update again. If you can reach linuxcentre from your browser, and the firewall isn't set up to bar specific programs, and the browser isn't using a proxy (see the browser preferences), then maybe it was just a glitch in the network and now it might work.

Persevere, I have get_iplayer and the various players and the web PVR manager all working on my Mac. Which is why I am
Impressed1!

[Anna]

I have tried over the past few days several times to get it to work, but every time it comes up with this error. I can access the website through my browser and i am definitely not using a proxy. The router may be using some sort of firewall to block it, I want to know if I can open/forward any ports to make it work?

[linuxcentre]

You need TCP port 80 outbound to linuxcentre.net.

[jsokolow]

impressed1 -- how did you get web PVR manager to work on your Mac? I'm stumped.

Thanks,
Jennifer

[impressed1]

Jennifer, I just followed the instructions here at Linuxcentre, with a bit of inference and guesswork. First, download the pvr manager program from here. It's a perl script called (confusingly) "get_iplayer.cgi". This is a completely different program from get_iplayer and it doesn't implement a GUI. Instead, it acts as a web server, serving up web pages that your browser can interpret to produce a GUI. So, having installed the get_iplayer and get_iplayer.cgi programs in a directory called your_directory (or whatever), type these commands at a terminal:

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cd /Users/you/your_directory
perl get_iplayer.cgi --port=1935 --getiplayer=/Users/you/your_directory/get_iplayer

and that should start get_iplayer.cgi running. It has to stay running for your web browser to be able to talk to it. Mine's been running for several days.
I think you have to use firefox, not safari, to have it all work nicely (although safari does produce something that looks interesting). In firefox, enter
http://127.0.0.1:1935/
in the URL bar and hit <enter>. That causes firefox to look for a webpage from a webserver on the local computer (127.0.0.1 is a magic number that means "this computer") supplied on port 1935 (which is where we just told get_iplayer.cgi to supply webpages when we started it up). (You can put this in a firefox bookmark.) If all is well, firefox should come up with the PVR webpage and you should be able to program the PVR, and have it record and play programmes, by poking at the webpage. get_iplayer.cgi, doing the work behind the scenes, will call get_iplayer itself to actually record programmes.

A couple of points about the PVR GUI that I found obscure:
(1) it only actually goes and fetches the programs from the BBC, as opposed to queing them for later fetching, when you tell it to. That's actually great for me, since I want to queue programmes for recording and then have cron ask get_iplayer to fetch them in the early hours, when my broadband data allowance is free. I have that working.
(2) once you've started the GUI, it doesn't update the available programs listed until you hit "refresh cache".

I wish there was a wiki where we poor users of this wonderful code could create instruction pages which were a bit more intelligible than the rather terse instructions available now!

[jsokolow]

Hi Impressed1,

Thanks for your informative reply! I have used get_iplayer and the Web PVR Manager on a Windows machine, and I have also noticed some of the idiosyncrasies you mentioned.

Now I have a Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard. When I sent my previous post, I hadn't even realized that Web PVR Manager could be used on a Mac (the Windows version installed it automatically for me). I did some looking around and found, as you said, the get_iplayer.cgi file, which I downloaded.

However, no matter what I do, I cannot get Terminal to recognize this file. No matter where I store it and what path I use, it tells me "no such file or directory." Meanwhile, I can run the regular get_iplayer script, stored in the exact same location, just fine by typing "./get_iplayer".

I tried the code you included in your post and still got the "no such file or directory" message.

Love to hear any thoughts about how to get my computer to recognize and run the get_iplayer.cgi file.

thanks again,
Jennifer

[impressed1]

That sounds very odd... "no such file or directory" is the message that the perl interpreter prints, so perl is running but it can't find the script. I wonder if it's looking somewhere really odd, instead of the current directory? Or I wonder if there's something really confusing about the switch from windows to apple that's messing you up?

try

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cd ~/your_directory
ls -l get_*

which should list the get_iplayer and get_iplayer.cgi scripts. (The ~ character is interpreted by the shell running in the terminal to mean "my home directory". Substitute whatever you called the download directory for "your_directory".) If you try

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file get_*

it should say that both files are there and are "a /usr/bin/perl script text executable". Yes?