From e21fd70c590fc5345645c7c424b6eb4cfcd08bf4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: fduncanh Date: Fri, 27 May 2022 15:13:28 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] README edits --- README.html | 20 +++--- README.md | 202 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------- README.txt | 68 ++++++++++-------- 3 files changed, 175 insertions(+), 115 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.html b/README.html index 07adf7f..d35755c 100644 --- a/README.html +++ b/README.html @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@

UxPlay 1.52: AirPlay/AirPlay-Mirror server for Linux, macOS, and Unix.

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Now developed at GitHub site https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay (where user issues should be posted).

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Now developed at a new GitHub site https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay (where user issues should be posted).

Highlights:

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This project is a GPLv3 open source unix AirPlay2 Mirror server for Linux, macOS, and *BSD. It was initially developed by antimof using code from RPiPlay, which in turn derives from AirplayServer, shairplay, and playfair. (The antimof site is mainly inactive, but periodically posts updates pulled from the main UxPlay site).

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UxPlay is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 “Buster” and 11.2 “Bullseye”, Ubuntu 20.04 and 21.10, Linux Mint 20.2, Pop!_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.5 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, Arch Linux 5.16.8, macOS 12.3 (Intel and M1), FreeBSD 13.0.

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This project is a GPLv3 open source unix AirPlay2 Mirror server for Linux, macOS, and *BSD. It was initially developed by antimof using code from RPiPlay, which in turn derives from AirplayServer, shairplay, and playfair. (The antimof site is no longer involved in development, but periodically posts updates pulled from the new main UxPlay site).

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UxPlay is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 “Buster” and 11.2 “Bullseye”, Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04, Linux Mint 20.3, Pop!_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.5 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, Arch Linux 5.16.8, macOS 12.3 (Intel and M1), FreeBSD 13.0.

Its main use is to act like an AppleTV for screen-mirroring (with audio) of iOS/iPadOS/macOS clients (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks) in a window on the server display (with the possibility of sharing that window on screen-sharing applications such as Zoom) on a host running Linux, macOS, or other unix. UxPlay supports a “legacy” form of Apple’s AirPlay Mirror protocol introduced in iOS 12; client devices running iOS/iPadOS 9.3.5 or later are supported, as is a (non-free) Windows-based AirPlay-client software emulator, AirMyPC. (Details of what is publically known about Apple’s AirPlay2 protocol can be found here and here).

The UxPlay server and its client must be on the same local area network, on which a Bonjour/Zeroconf mDNS/DNS-SD server is also running (only DNS-SD “Service Discovery” service is strictly necessary, it is not necessary that the local network also be of the “.local” mDNS-based type). On Linux and BSD Unix servers, this is usually provided by Avahi, through the avahi-daemon service, and is included in most Linux distributions (this service can also be provided by macOS, iOS or Windows servers).

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Connections to the UxPlay server by iOS/MacOS clients can be initiated both in AirPlay Mirror mode (which streams lossily-compressed AAC audio while mirroring the client screen, or in the alternative AirPlay Audio mode which streams Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio without screen mirroring (the accompanying cover art in this mode is not displayed, but metadata is displayed in the terminal). Switching between these two modes during an active connection is possible: in Mirror mode, close the mirror window and start an Audio mode connection, switch back by initiating a Mirror mode connection. Note that Apple DRM (as in Apple TV app content on the client) cannot be decrypted by UxPlay, and (unlike with a true AppleTV), the client cannot run a http connection on the server instead of streaming content from one on the client.

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Connections to the UxPlay server by iOS/MacOS clients can be initiated both in AirPlay Mirror mode (which streams lossily-compressed AAC audio while mirroring the client screen, or in the alternative AirPlay Audio mode which streams Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio without screen mirroring (the accompanying cover art in this mode is not displayed, but metadata is displayed in the terminal). Switching between these two modes during an active connection is possible: in Mirror mode, close the mirror window and start an Audio mode connection, switch back by initiating a Mirror mode connection. Note that Apple DRM (as found in Apple TV app content on the client) cannot be decrypted by UxPlay, and (unlike a true AppleTV), the UxPlay server does not allow the Apple client to directly run a http connection on the server instead of streaming content from the http conection on the client.

Possibility for using hardware-accelerated h264 video-decoding, if available.

UxPlay uses GStreamer Plugins for rendering audio and video, This means that video and audio are supported “out of the box”, using a choice of plugins. AirPlay streams video in h264 format: gstreamer decoding is plugin agnostic, and uses accelerated GPU hardware h264 decoders if available; if not, software decoding is used.

For systems with Intel or AMD integrated graphics, hardware GPU decoding with the gstreamer VAAPI plugin is preferable. VAAPI is open-source, and in addition to Intel and AMD graphics, the open-source “Nouveau” drivers for NVIDIA graphics are also in principle supported: see here, which requires VAAPI to be supplemented with firmware extracted from the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

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For NVIDIA graphics with the proprietary drivers, the nvh264dec plugin (included in gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad since GStreamer-1.18.0) can be used for accelerated video decoding on the NVIDIA GPU after NVIDIA’s CUDA driver libcuda.so is installed. This plugin should be used with options uxplay -vd nvh264dec -vs glimagesink. For GStreamer-1.16.3 or earlier, the plugin is called nvdec, and must be built by the user: see these instructions. This older form of the plugin should be used with the -vd nvdec -vs glimagesink uxplay options.

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For NVIDIA graphics with the proprietary drivers, the nvh264dec plugin (included in gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad since GStreamer-1.18.0) can be used for accelerated video decoding on the NVIDIA GPU after NVIDIA’s CUDA driver libcuda.so is installed. This plugin should be used with options uxplay -vd nvh264dec -vs glimagesink. For GStreamer-1.16.3 or earlier, the plugin is called nvdec, and must be built by the user: see these instructions. This older form of the NVIDIA plugin should be used with the -vd nvdec -vs glimagesink uxplay options.

Note to packagers: OpenSSL-3.0.0 solves GPL v3 license issues.

Some Linux distributions such as Debian do not allow distribution of compiled GPL code linked to OpenSSL-1.1.1 because its “dual OpenSSL/SSLeay” license has some incompatibilities with GPL, unless all code authors have explicitly given an “exception” to allow such linking (the historical origins of UxPlay make this impossible to obtain). Other distributions treat OpenSSL as a “System Library” which the GPL allows linking to.

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For “GPL-strict” distributions, UxPlay can be built using OpenSSL- 3.0.0, which has a new GPLv3-compatible license.

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For “GPL-strict” distributions, UxPlay can be built using OpenSSL- 3.0.0, which has anew GPLv3-compatible license.

Getting UxPlay:

Either download and unzip UxPlay-master.zip, or (if git is installed): “git clone https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay”. You can also download a recent or earlier version listed in Releases.

*Current UxPlay is also a pull request on the original site https://github.com/antimof/UxPlay ; that original project is inactive, but the pull requests are now being periodically merged with the antimof tree (thank you antimof!).

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If you intend to modify the code, use a separate “build” directory: replace “cmake [ ] .” by “mkdir build ; cd build ; cmake [ ] ..”; you can then clean the build directory with “rm -rf build/*” (run from within the UxPlay source directory) without affecting the source directories which contain your modifications.

The above script installs the executable file “uxplay” to /usr/local/bin, (and installs a manpage to somewhere like /usr/local/share/man/man1 and README files to somewhere like /usr/local/share/doc/uxplay). It can also be found in the build directory after the build processs.

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Finally, run uxplay in a terminal window. If it is not seen by the iOS client’s drop-down “Screen Mirroring” panel, check that your DNS-SD server (usually avahi-daemon) is running: do this in a terminal window with systemctl status avahi-daemon. If this shows the avahi-daemon is not running, control it with sudo systemctl [start,stop,enable,disable] avahi-daemon (or avahi-daemon.service). If UxPlay is seen, but the client fails to connect when it is selected, there may be a firewall on the server that prevents UxPlay from receiving client connection requests unless some network ports are opened. See Troubleshooting below for help with this or other problems. See Usage for run-time options.

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Finally, run uxplay in a terminal window. If it is not seen by the iOS client’s drop-down “Screen Mirroring” panel, check that your DNS-SD server (usually avahi-daemon) is running: do this in a terminal window with systemctl status avahi-daemon. If this shows the avahi-daemon is not running, control it with sudo systemctl [start,stop,enable,disable] avahi-daemon (or avahi-daemon.service). If UxPlay is seen, but the client fails to connect when it is selected, there may be a firewall on the server that prevents UxPlay from receiving client connection requests unless some network ports are opened. See Troubleshooting below for help with this or other problems. One common problem involves GStreamer attempting to use incorrectly configured or absent accelerated hardware h264 video decoding (e.g., VAAPI). Try uxplay -avdec to force software video decoding; if this works you can then try to fix accelerated hardware video decoding if you need it. See Usage for run-time options.