Alan, I am not @Wes, but I can help you with your questions.
All those instructions only and exclusively pertain to the installation of ROCK on your Nucleus and, by doing so, provide once more a fully functional operating system on this Roon Core device. So,
You don’t need to touch your iPad. You need use a second computer only in order to download the ROCK installation file and write it on a USB stick. This can be done on either a Mac or a Window machine. Please note that on that download machine nothing will be altered or installed… it’s just a device to get the file downloaded and written onto the installation USB stick.
No, because using Etcher to write the install image onto this USB drive will format the stick and all prior data will be lost.
Again, use your Mac Studio just for downloading the codecs file. This will then have to be transferred over the network into the /Data/Codecs/ directory of your Nucleus.
Just keep your cool and follow the instructions closely; this is not wizardry and I am sure you will easily succeed. When you conclude your installation, the Nucleus will have ROCK as new and hopefully working operating system. Then is the time to let @Wes know, so that he can from his side take the necessary steps to convert ROCK on your Nucleus into the proper Nucleus operating system.
Thank you Andreas and Wes,
As I expected, the wheels came off the process eventually. I got through step 5, installing the flash drive on the Nucleus, but installing the Codecs was my Waterloo. I assume I was supposed to choose “Download Source Code” rather than “Download PGP Signing Key” for FFmpeg, but after that I could not follow the rest of the instructions. I’m not even sure that much was correct, e.g. in the Roon Missing Codecs instructions I got to through the link in the ROCK install guide, it gave a “for example, grab https://johnvansickle.com…” but I’m not sure if I was supposed to do that or simply go to ffmpeg on the web and download that program, which is what I did. I guess I really got lost on the next step of “Accessing Roon OS’s Data Directory.” The instructions for MacOS don’t seem to apply to my computer’s Finder. Wes, you’ve been very helpful so far but is it possible for you to call me to try to walk me through the rest of this? Thanks.
Alan
This means, ROCK should have been successfully installed on your Nucleus. If you rebooted after the installation has completed, ROCK should already be running and should be accesible from your network. Even its web administration page should already be accessible. So, before proceeding with the codecs issue, first let’s make sure ROCK is correctly installed and accesible:
On your Mac, use the Safari browser to try and load ROCK’s web administration page:
http://192.168.1.175
Or, http://rock
Or http://rock.local
As it is the same hardware (Nucleus with its network interface), I assume that on your network it will still be assigned the same IP address as before. But that does not necessarily hold true. Therefore, the options with a hostname (‘rock’ or ‘rock.local’).
Let’s hope the admin page comes up in your browser…
If it comes up, all is well… and it means, that ROCK will expose its DATA directory over the network, and this is what we need in the last step, when we will copy the ffmpeg file into the DATA/Codecs directory of your Nucleus running ROCK…
So, now let’s grab a copy of ffmpeg from the web…
ROCK needs a specially formatted ffmpeg file. That is what the installation guide means when telling you that it needs a ‘statically linked ffmpeg file’… The installation guide proposes this as a possible download option:
My default attitude to this indication is to assume that this is a safe option from where to download, having no clear idea where else to get a ‘statically-linked’ file. So yes, please download this exact file.
I just did so, and the downloaded file shows in my Mac’s Finder as 41 MB in size.
You are instructed to ‘uncompress the file twice’… So, in my Finder I simply right-clicked the downloaded file, and I am offered as default option to open the file with the Archive Utility.app. Please do so…
The Archive Utility.app of your Mac will do the uncompressing, and present you in your finder with a newly created folder like this:
Inside this folder you see the needed ffmpeg file… Only this single file is needed… so just grab it and copy it outside this folder…
Assuming you have come that far, now in the last step you’ll have to copy this ffmpeg file into the right directory of your Nucleus.
Next step then is trying to find the Nucleus in your Mac’s Finder. In the Finder’s ‘Go’ menu, select the option ‘Network’. This will show you in the Finder window all network-accesible host computers. Hopefully, the Nucleus shows up, possibly as ‘Rock’…
Then, click on this ‘Nucleus’ or ‘Rock’, and the network-exposed DATA directory should be found. If so, open this DATA directory, and find the ‘Codecs’ folder inside. If there is no Codecs folder inside the DATA directory, create it.
The last step would be to copy the previously extracted ffmpeg file into the ‘DATA/Codecs’ folder of the Nucleus. Then, reboot and try to connect from your iPad or any other endpoint to the new Roon Core.
Thanks Andreas for all the detail. It seems the very first step does not work. I tried help://192.168.1.175 and got an error message “Safari can’t open the page.” I tried http://rock and got Rocket Homes. I tried http://rock.local and it started but never finished loading. I note that after I went through step 5 of the Rock Install Guide, the message on the TV hooked up to the Nucleus says “Roon can be accessed by opening any Roon Remote product. If you don’t see this device there, check “Roon OS devices on your network.” Roon OS Web UI can be directly accessed at http://192.168.1.175/” Of course my iPad still can’t access Roon, even when I type in that address in the Help window. I nevertheless downloaded the ffmpeg file using the link in the instructions, which ended up showing a blank page, but I went into the downloads and found it. I brought up the page you show above and copied the ffmpeg file to desktop. But I can’t get past this step. Perhaps here is where my knowledge/skill falls off the cliff. When I open “Go” in the top left-hand menu on the Mac and choose Network, it doesn’t show any network accessible computers. The window is simply blank with a bunch of horizontal lines. When I go into System Settings and click on Network, I don’t see an option to find network accessible computers. Sorry, but Help!
So it seems that after the installation of ROCK we are back at square one… There seems to be some other problem which blocks access from your Roon remotes (iPad etc.) to your Core… Without resolving this step first, the last step involving the ffmpeg file seems moot to me.
Just to make sure that in general the Nucleus is network-accesible, I’d repeat the ping probe we did before:
In your Mac Studio, open again the Terminal application, and then do
ping -c 10 192.168.1.175
Please try to post the output here… on the Mac you can easily do a screenshot, using the key combination Shift+cmd F4…
In your Mac’s Safari, trying to go to http://192.168.1.175 should load the ROCK web administration page. If the ping is successful, but the page doesn’t load, then we will be certain that the installation of ROCK didn’t resolve the underlying problem. There must be something else going on, blocking the access from your Roon Remotes to the Core. Hopefully @Wes will tomorrow take this on again, I am now very interested in finding out what’s really going on.
LOL… happens at my place too!!
That’s fine. Keep it there for when it will be needed. But first the access issue must be resolved.
Thanks again.
Here’s what came up with the ping in Terminal (first without the dash and then with; not sure which you intended. You have to be VERY literal with me as I am not the world’s most sophisticated computer operator.)
The default interactive shell is now zsh.
To update your account to use zsh, please run chsh -s /bin/zsh.
For more details, please visit Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac - Apple Support.
alanwisermacg52:~ alan$ c 10 192.168.1.175
-bash: c: command not found
alanwisermacg52:~ alan$ ping -c 10 192.168.1.175
PING 192.168.1.175 (192.168.1.175): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=71.014 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=177.253 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=158.190 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=5.418 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=2.947 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=2.429 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=9.657 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=28.642 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=2.576 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.175: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=2.477 ms
— 192.168.1.175 ping statistics —
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.429/46.060/177.253/64.219 ms
alanwisermacg52:~ alan$
Not sure if all that is good or bad.
I tried using the web address for Safari in your message, but just got an error message saying Safari can’t open the page because the page’s address isn’t valid.
That’s good… the Nucleus with its newly installed ROCK responds… it is network accesible. What I don’t like, though, is the time it takes to receive the responses… A max time of over 177 ms, with an average of 46 ms…
On my WiFi-connected iMac, this same ping probe to my Roon Core shows a max time of 5 ms, with an average of 2.9 ms…
Something on your network doesn’t seem to be quite right… So, we now can be sure that the installation of ROCK didn’t get us any further, the same problem as before persists. Let’s wait if others or Roon support can come up with any new ideas…
If you could try this, you will find out if there is something wrong with your network.
Or if the ongoing problem is due to something wrong with the nucleus.
I suppose I might find someone with an audio system I can plug the nucleus into. The pressing question for me would be, would I have to reconfigure the nucleus to work with the friend’s Wi-Fi. And if so, how?? or would the nucleus automatically sense and adopt the different Wi-Fi?
If you haven’t assigned a static IP to the Nucleus and DHCP is enabled, then it should work.
Maybe @Andreas_Philipp1 can say something more about it.
There was a similar case not long ago, I’ll send you the link:
You just need another network to connect the nucleus to the router via ethernet.
Then you will have to connect with your iPad to the friend’s wifi.
Then connect to the Nucleus using the Roon App, giving your username and password.
Good morning! Before falling asleep last night, I remembered that @Alan_Wishnoff reported at the very beginning of this thread that he had three devices that he used as Roon Remotes: iPad, iPhone and Mac… all three Apple devices, all three probably managed under the same AppleID.
We also know that the Mac is a Mac Studio model that I assume runs the latest Ventura Mac OS, and I then remembered having seen an article some days ago about ‘Mac OS content blocking’ on Mac OS Ventura. You can set up content blocking rules on your Mac, which then also apply to all other devices managed under the same AppleID. Here’s an Apple macOS User Guide article about that:
So, could it be that something like this is going on here? We apparently have a Nucleus device which responds to ping requests from an Apple device on the same network, but still that same Apple device can’t connect via HTTP or the Roon App. It occurs to me that a simple way to test this would be to use any non-Apple device to try and connect to the Nucleus. You could try loading the ROCK admin page using a Windows PC or an Android cell phone…
Assuming we have the correct information about the network setup and no important details are missing, something weird is going on, and trying to figure out what could be blocking access to the Nucleus, this is what I could think about…
It seems a far fetched idea… but I believe that these OS settings maybe could happen without the user realizing that he was in fact setting up some sort of content blocking…
We now have two tests on the table, which both could possibly help to make things clearer: (1) connect the Nucleus to another network (best Ethernet to router) and then try to load the ROCK admin page on a device connected to that network, and (2) try to load the ROCK admin page from a non-Apple device… Windows PC or Android device…
Per a prior suggestion, here’s a screen shot of the Roon OS web page that comes up when I go into Configure Roon OS devices on your network, then press More about Roon OS link. This seems to have a different IP address than what the Nucleus tells me. Is this just some generic exemplar page, or is it my actual data?
Anyway, I will try using a non-Apple device as a remote and, if that fails, set up the Roon on someone else’s system with a different WIFI.
Hi Alan, this is a generic help page; the data in this example isn’t same as your own… This is the page though that should come up when going to http://192.168.1.175 on your network…
