>>>The larger the music library gets, the worse the performance. It's
>>>getting to a stage where it really isn't good enough to run - when for
>>>example two people run searches on the music library, all three players
>>>will stall.
Ah, a topic near to my heart.
I'm running a dual P3 800 mhz Linux box. 512 MB RAM. 750 GB RAID 5 array
(4 x 250 GB drives, PATA), 3Ware 4-port RAID controller. I have about
300 GB of MP3s in the SlimServer library. 2 Slimp3s, 1 Squeezebox 1,
although it's the Slimp3s getting active duty.
The server does some very light email chores and file serving, but its
primary task is to run Slimserver. Which it struggles with. Which still
surprises the heck out of me.
Doing a search or active use of the web interface will often interrupt
music playing. The web interface can take 10-20 seconds to respond or
get to the next tab, although it's usually 2-5 seconds.
Until browsing was fixed in the 6.1.x releases, it could take 50 seconds
to get from one directory to enclosed directories using the remote and
display. Sometimes, the player display would actually blank out. Now,
it's better, but each button press still takes .5 - 5 seconds to
respond, usually .5-1.5 seconds. It's still aggravating, regardless.
I can't shake the feeling that if the server were multi-threaded that
these problems would be completely absent. One thread to make sure the
players didn't go dry, one to handle navigation via the remote, one to
handle the web server, etc. Part of me keeps hoping SlimDevices has a
master plan to fix all this. Python, Java? A tidy C++ core maybe? I'm
not holding my breath.
In the meantime, I'm going to throw an absurd amount of hardware at this
problem. I'm putting together a dual Xeon 3ghz server, likely with a
Areca SATA RAID 5. (The performance of the 3ware RAID cards has always
been underwhelming, Perl proc hogs aside. The Areca/Tekrams I have
running elsewhere seem far, far better.)
I'd be curious if anyone out there with a "large" library (I'll let you
define what that means) is getting good or even snappy performance with
their setup? Care to brag?
Stew
Mitch Harding wrote:
If disk IO is the limiting factor, I'd consider a RAID array. With
drive prices, RAID 5 is affordable and gives you both improved disk
access times plus data security.
On 7/29/05, Jim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
thomas wrote:
Hello,
I have two original Slimp3s and one of the second generation wired
players. All three run from one Slimp3 server. The server has about
60GB of music. Often, there is more than one person viewing the web
interface. The players are only ever controlled from the web interface,
nobody has access to the hardware players or remotes.
The larger the music library gets, the worse the performance. It's
getting to a stage where it really isn't good enough to run - when for
example two people run searches on the music library, all three players
will stall.
I know the server is designed with single users in mind, but there must
be a way of increasing performance. Originally I ran the server on a
Windows box, but have found performance slightly better when running on
Mac OS X. The Mac box I have is only a dual-1Ghz G4.
What hardware and OS is recommended for best performance? I don't mind
spending some money on getting it right, but am reluctant to unless I
have a pretty good idea of what sort of improvement I can expect and
what hardware and OS is likely to perform best.
Unless you're transcoding on-the-fly, I'd look first at the hard drive
speed and RAM. I suspect since you're using a somewhat older Mac (early
2002, yes?), that the drive isn't all it can be. The stock 512MB of RAM
that came with the dual processor units should be enough, though PC133
isn't screaming fast.
Western Digital, and others, have IDE drives with integrated 8MB caches.
They're affordable and perform very well compared to a 2MB cache version.
Personally, I use Linux (Fedora Core 1) to host SlimServer and three
players. My library is pretty "medium" in size, 3,000 songs at ~11GB.
2.4GHz Celeron with 512MB RAM and one of the WD 8MB drives, cost me
about $300.
Jim
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