Sonos Update to 3.7 and Linux

As a note on the VM topic - so long as you're not using a NAT configuration and instead use a bridged ethernet emulation, connections will work fine. During testing of the 3.7 controller, I utilized both pieces of software - one in a VM and one in my native OS (10.7.2 for those interested) and seamlessly jumped between them.

You own ten Sonos zone players and you think Windows is expensive? I'm not buying it.


I'm not buying it, either. Cue claxons and canned laughter.

Yes, I think it's expensive, because I don't need it for anything else. I'd also have to fork out for a copy of VMware (unless an equivalent free VM has come along in the meantime; I haven't run a VM in a few years now, so I haven't looked into this).

I therefore tend to look at it as the total cost of running a desktop controller. In other words, do I want to spend more on a software controller than I would on a hardware one, whilst simultaneously bogging down my PC with an extra operating-system that I use for just a single application?

No, I don't, and if I can avoid putting any money in Microsoft's pocket, that's a bonus.

Sure a VM is not supported, but they tend to always work. More than Wine does. Agreed?

Truer in the past than now. WINE works with a bewildering number of things and doesn't have the resource overhead of a whole operating-system loaded under a VM. Unfortunately, the 3.7 desktop controller isn't one of the things that works.

Now that the new desktop controller has been released, however, a bug can be filed about it on WINE's site. That wasn't possible while it was still in beta.

Then again, there's nothing compelling to me in the new desktop controller, anyway. The packaging may have been redesigned, but it's still the same functionality inside. I still can't search a WM-served library and all of my music is WM-served. It does me no good at all that a search function I can't use was improved.

Sure an old version worked. So what?

Er, working controllers are better than non-working controllers. Was it a trick question?

Do you have a reason to think UPNP wouldn't work?

Propagation across subnets was my initial fear, if the guest OS were on a different subnet than the host.

I run WinXP in VMWare on my work computer. I'll try bringing it home and see if Sonos Controller runs on it, if you are interested.

I'm sure it would work if both host and guest were on the same subnet, but please don't go to any trouble on my account.

There's no way I would ever run a separate OS on my desktop just to be able to use the new controller. The 3.6 controller works just as well for my purposes as the 3.7 one would if it didn't crash, which is to say 'adequately'.

Any chance of you telling us how to downgrade to 3.6...?


My pleasure, but just to be clear, your firmware will stay at whichever version it's at now. Only the desktop controller will go back to 3.6.

The following assumes you're a Linux user, but the same trick would work on Windows for any user with an incentive to go back.

First of all, remove the 3.7 DCR from your system. Go through the proper uninstall procedure under WINE.

Next, reinstall 3.6. If you don't have the installation .exe still lying around, you can currently still obtain it from Sonos, but I strongly advise you to save a copy of this somewhere safe, as Sonos will probably remove it from their server at some point as obsolete.

Install the controller under WINE and associate it with your Sonos system. Then, exit the program.

Step 3 is to go to the following address in a Web browser:



Replace x.x.x.x with the IP address of one of your zone players.

You'll see something like this:



Whichever version number you see is unimportant. Just note it down. It's actually just the build number available under About My Sonos System on the controllers, but it appears here in punctuated form and we'll need that string for the next step.


Edit: If your version happens to have a letter following the final five digits, drop the letter. Thanks to MDBill.


Finally, pull up pcdcr.dll in a binary editor. Unless you're running an odd WINE configuration, it will have landed here on a 32 bit machine:


or here on a 64 bit one:


I use vim with the -b flag as my binary editor. Whichever tool you use doesn't matter, so long as it treats the file as a binary. All hell will break loose when you save this file if your editor treats the contents as text, so do make sure you are operating in binary mode.

Locate the string 16.7-48310 in this file and replace it with the version number returned in step 3 above. The two strings should be identical in length. Then, save the file. Did I mention that you must ensure you do this in binary mode? Good.

That's it!

Fire up the old desktop controller and it will now be fooled into thinking that it's up to date with the rest of the system. You won't be prompted to upgrade it, so neither will it baulk and refuse service.

It's a hack, but it works.

You will need to repeat the binary edit part of this procedure every time Sonos update the firmware to a new major revision number. At that point, the desktop controller will see that it lags behind the minimum required version number and prompt you to upgrade it. What we are doing here is defeating that check by convincing the desktop controller that it has the same version number as the firmware running on the rest of the system.

Hopefully, the day will soon come that the 3.7 DCR runs on Linux. Until then, there's this.

Thanks to Henkelis for the idea.

This does indeed work for running the 3.6 desktop controller with a sonos system upgraded to firmware 3.7 (just tested on a Ubuntu 10.4 64bit), but I suspect the controller will start misbehaving when the control protocol changes.

There will have to be a Wine based solution in the long run (or a native controller). I don't appreciate the idea of running a complete extra operating system on each computer just for controlling music.

Thank you Ian. That worked a treat!

Cheers

When I pulled up the VERSION number of my Zone Player, I got the following: 17.5.51200e. At first I substituted this entire string and the controller crashed when I tried to run it. But then I went back and deleted the "e" and now everything works as before.


Thanks. My version didn't have a letter appended, so I'll amend my instructions.

I too used vim -b for the editing job. vi takes the same -b flag, so I suspect that will work as well, for those who don't have vim installed.

The original vi didn't have a binary mode, so your vi is still derived from vim. vi --version will tell you if that's the case.

I'm glad this helped you and other people out; and me, of course. 🙂

Thanks Ian. Worked like a charm, except that the version number I had to change from was slightly different from 16.7-48310. I did a search on "16." and found a string with the right configuration. This may help others who have slightly different versions. I imagine it's because I hadn't updated to the latest 3.6x version of the software before 3.7 came out.

Ian
Thanks for your post detailing how to make a 3.6 controller work with 3.7 - I've done that for my PCs. Essentially the same appproach works on the Mac with some changes for the Mac architecture.
The starting point is to use Finder to "Show Package Contents" of the Sonos App. In the Contents folder edit the Info.plist bundle version to match the new version, eg 17.5.51200 and save. Then open the MacOS folder and open the Sonos file using TextEdit - this will edit text strings in an executable. Now search for the old version string 16. and make the changes to replace the string with the new version - there are two instances. Save and close and all should be fine.
This post comes with the usual warnings about modifying at the operating system level etc - don't do it unless you know what you're doing!
If you need to find a Mac 3.6 installation image Google is your friend.
Andy

Hi,

Any idea of how to install Sonos Controller on a recently installed Linux (which does not have the controller 3.6 yet) ?

many thanks ianmcd!

and just to save anyone else 5 seconds of googling: to uninstall the broken desktop controller open an terminal and type:

Has anyone encountered problems with ubuntu 12.04?
I have not gotten Sonos Desktop Controller to work with my ubuntu installation 12.04.

For anyone more comfortable with a script than the idea of manually editing a DLL, I offer the following Perl hack without warranty.


ianmacd, I commend you on your script and your work-around. Thank you for sharing this, it has helped me out no end!

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