Thecus N4100PRO Installing Last File Manager

Installing Last File Manager (LFM)
First attempts to have a decent file manager installed on N4100PRO. I love Midnight Commander and it would be great to get it going on the N4100PRO, particularly as I was able to easily install it on an DLINK DNS-323 NAS box. As a "substitute" for mc, lfm seemed to promise an easier installation process, being written in Python and the Python interpreter already existing for the N4100PRO.

The source code for lfm can be found on a debian mirror: for example: ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/debian/pool/main/l/lfm/lfm_0.91.2.orig.tar.gz

SSH to the N4100PRO (you have installed the SSHD and SYSUSER modules haven't you?), wget the file, untar it tar xzvf lfm_0.91.2.orig.tar.gz In the lfm-0.91.2 folder change the interpreter location for python to the location where you installed the PYTHON module, (in my case /raid/data/module/PYTHON/python/bin), build the application with ./setup.py build and then install it with ./setup.py install.

The lfm package will be installed in the /raid/data/module/PYTHON/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/lfm folder.

I edited the lfm file to have the interpreter location correct, and then found that I received an error message about the term variable. I tried with export TERM=vt100+ and was able to get lfm to run. (The range of available terminals on the N4100PRO is quite limited, only vt100 and variants - see the folder /usr/share/terminfo/v). It seems that there are bugs in the lfm python code which when keys are pressed generate heaps of messages like curses curs_set returned ERR This is a known problem. There is a patch for the messages.py file, see the bug report and attached patch here: bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=388150 Copy the patch to the N4100PRO and patch the messages.py file in the lfm folder patch messages.py This fixed quite a number of crashes but it seems that there are also problems in the actions.py file as well. The key commands for lfm can be found here: www.terra.es/personal7/inigoserna/lfm/

The lfm package works but does not look very nice at present, and some of the keystrokes still cause it to crash. More work is needed on this to make it a better utility for the N4100PRO.

--Butibum 10:17, 5 March 2009 (CET)