Digital Picture Frame Guide

Digital Picture Frame Guide

Recently I received requests from people how I created my Linux Digital Picture frame out of some old laptops, I told them to search Google for a write up but apparently a lot of the write ups were too difficult to understand for a complete Linux newbie. So I've decided to post easy to follow (hopefully) instructions on how to build your own, you may have to Google for some answers but hopefully I snagged them all. So here I go!

Requirements:
An old laptop that has a CD ROM drive and a USB port
An internet connection (pref. high speed Ethernet)
The DSL boot CD from http://www.damnsmalllinux.org

1. Install Damn Small Linux

• Insert the DSL boot CD
  
• Boot from CD (may have to change BIOS settings)
• When prompted, type "install" and hit the enter key
• Type in your main hard drive which is most likely hda1 (try hda2 if hda1 didn't work)
• Select no for multi-users
• Select yes for ext3 file system
• Continue to cleaning the hard drive and installation
• Select Grub as the boot loader and restart the machine
• On boot, select 800x600 as the initial installation
• Leave the root and DSL password blank!
• On the DSL X Setup, answer the questions accordingly
• Congrats on installing Damn Small Linux! Be sure to eject the CD!
  

2. Grub Configuration

• Open a terminal session and log in as root and type "nano /boot/grub/menu.lst"
• Change the timeout to a shorter time (I recommend 3-5 seconds)
• Edit the line below "Title DSL" and replace "noacpi" with "acpi=force"
• If you laptop only supports 800x600, change vga to equal 788
• Exit, save, and reboot

3. DSL Packages Install (Internet Connection Required)

• Enable Apt by right clicking the desktop and going to Apps -> Tools -> Enable Apt
• After it finishes the installation, open the terminal as root and type "nano /etc/apt/sources.list"
• In the one uncommented line (the line without the ':' in the beginning), change "old stable" to "stable"
• Save and exit the document
• Type "apt-get update"
• After the update type "apt-get install feh unclutter acpid"
• After the update restart the computer

4. Configure the SlideShow

• Open a Terminal as root and type "nano /usr/local/bin/slideshow.sh"
• Type as followed:

#!/bin/bash
# This file is located at /usr/local/bin/slideshow.sh
killall feh unclutter
unclutter &
feh -zZFr -D 300 /mnt/sda1/Pictureframe

• Save and close
• Type "chmod a+w /usr/local/bin/slideshow.sh"
• Type "exit" to logout as root, you want to make sure that you are logged in as DSL for the next step
• Type "nano ~/.xinitrc" and comment out the line that starts with "dillo" by adding '#' in front of that line. Add the following below that line:

#dillo /usr/share/doc/dsl/getting_started.html.....
mount /dev/sda1 &
slideshow.sh &

• Exit and Save
• Shutdown, you're almost there!

5. Using this Picture Frame System

• Load a USB Drive on a Windows Machine
• Create a folder called "Pictureframe"
• Place all the pictures you want to display in that folder
• Take that USB drive and plug it in the Picture Frame System we just configurered
• Turn on the laptop