Re: [slim] Headless Linux DIY contra turnkey NAS
On Sat, 2005-11-26 at 18:39 -0800, trebejo wrote: > I am hoping to focus the above on a specific thread, and in particular > to broaden the option to include a do-it-yourself scenario. So I'm > going to provide some bytes for the savvy among us to chew on. Before I bought my first SqueezeBox, I was planning on going with a suitably small box in my main stereo listening room. Granted, this was years ago, but I decided that the SqueezeBox approach with a computer in my basement was the way for me. For many of the reasons you talk about. > Regarding noise issues, if the NAS device is noisy then it defeats the > audiophile raison d'etre of the squeezebox in an obvious way. I don't agree, as I don't see any reason to have the SlimServer box in the same room as my serious stereo. Its next to the furnace, which makes lots of noise on its own in the summer and winter. > The cost of the ReadyNAS barebones is about $600 plus shipping and > taxes. I am certain that for that money one can build a barebone linux > box of greater capabilities. It's been a few years since I've put > together a linux system (Suse 8) and I've never done the headless thing I think you can get a generic whitebox machine for half or a third of that. I bought a serious linux box (I write software for a living, so I wanted very fast) for $400 a couple of months ago. It has a fast AMD CPU, a gig of Ram, a good video card, case, and a 80 GB disk. Going to a 300GB disk would have added maybe $50 to it. I'm not sure what you mean by "headless" I know you mean "doesn't require a monitor and keyboard" But what more specifically do you mean? Specific example, my SlimServer box is untouched for months at a time. Here is an uptime command from it as I type this. 22:59:39 up 160 days, 11:04, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.05, 0.07 I do everything I want to do to it remotely, usually from one or two floors away. The machine has a KVM switch (keyboard, video, & mouse) that I used to set it up many months ago. Two way KVMs are cheap and available at your local CompUsa, Fry's, etc. So if you call that headless, it is easy and cheap. If you are really going low cost, you can just plug in the monitor/k/m from your main PC during setup, saving even the $50. Using this approach, you don't have to do anything magic at all. Stick a prefered ISO disk, boot, install and be happy. > Herger's SlimCD to manage a RAID system as well as run the slimserver; > that would be an obvious win wrt what OS to install. I agree with Jack's posting that RAID isn't necessarily what you want. Backup is essential, but RAID isn't clearly the solution. > Now onto the hardware side of things. The linux box should definitely > have room for four hard drives, since RAID 5 hits a sweet spot at that > number. Any mid-tower will hold four or more drives, which you may want even once you decide RAID is not the solution. Just remember two key things: 1) disks run hot and hot disks are more failure prone, 2) disks require power, and low end power supplies are not what you want for reliability. > I don't know if the box should have an additional drive to host the OS > and so forth. I recommend it, as you can just nuke the OS disk and install another one, mount your music disks and you are done. Just this is an operational engineering decision. > RAM is good and cheap and a gigabyte is a nice round number; that's > another $100. Motherboard and cpu together will probably go for about > $200; This will get a far faster machine than a Slimserver requires. > The noise reduction require a refined touch, as one has to travel > inside the computer case looking for specific noise sources and then > invest time, money and elbow grease to diminish or even eliminate them. Only if you put the Slimserver in the listening room. As I have posted elsewhere, the standard fans are cheap and noisy. Spending an extra $5 per fan makes a huge difference. My AMD 3400+ X64 system is very quiet, not silent, but much less noisy than the Dell P3-933 mid-tower that is sitting next to it in my office. > 1. Fan quality makes a big difference; apparently one can invest for > ~$10 rather than ~$3 fans and lose a lot of noise. But I've seen ads > for fans that cost $30+ so I'm still working on this clue. CPU fans that cost about $20 are fine, case fans that cost $15 and have thermal speed controls are about right. Big fans are more expensive but lots quieter at the same CFM than small ones. > 3. If the linux box can be made to run without a VGA card, then that's > an extra fan that doesn't have to run You don't need a high end video card for a SlimServer. A nice fanless, $25 video card is more than enough. It will be way higher than VGA, probably at least 1600x1200x24 > So adding up the tab, we get motherboard, cpu, RAM, and case for about > $400. As I said, I got a fast CPU and 80GB of disks from my local whitebox computer store for $400, and he installed all the hardware and guar
Re: [slim] Headless Linux DIY contra turnkey NAS
... > The reason that I haven't yet plunked down the cash for an Infrant box > is that I'm not sure whether I'll be happy with it for reasons having > to do with cpu cycles and noise. Since these boxes are not available > for review at your local Fry's, you basically have to dive in and buy > one before you personally experience it. > ... noise and speed levels are both highly subjective, edging towards the audiophile territory in terms of unmeasurable nontransferability. I've seen lots of posts, articles, and emails claiming that Shuttle SFF's are quiet enough and Mini-ITX's are fast enough, for instance, which are both inaccurate claims as far as I'm concerned. If you have doubt before even plunking down coin, I'd suggest buying a proper desktop computer and storing it in another room. Furthermore, if you don't want to be troubleshooting some very, very, very frustrating networking issues, I'd suggest doing what it takes to get a length of CAT-5 between that computer and your stereo. Wireless is great when it works, but it works really poorly in most real-world scenarios. > If you've set up a RAID/Slimserver system using linux and you'd like to > comment on what you did wrt software I would appreciate it. > I've done both, but not on the same box :) Software RAID sucks because neither Windows nor Linux will reliably inform you that a drive has failed or reliably rebuild after that failure. Hardware RAID sucks because the board is just as likely to fail as the drives, and every board is incompatible. Whichever one you choose, you will need a backup or else you will lose data -- RAID only buys data security for the lucky, its real purpose is to buy uptime. If I were building a new server box, it would look a lot like my old one (only with more coin dropped on the hard drives). I'd also go SATA instead of EIDE. 1) middle-of-the-road Intel or AMD desktop motherboard with built-in VGA and Ethernet. 2) middle of the road CPU for same 3) as much RAM as the board will hold (can be reduced if you're building a single purpose box, but I much prefer one relatively quiet box running everything all the time to lots of boxes needing updates and TLC). 4) two relatively small hard drives for the OS, say 20GB? RAID1 mirror would be okay, but I'd prefer to put the OS on one and copy it to the other every night. 5) two honking big hard drives for the media, say 300GB. Again, I'd prefer to copy every night. http://www.monkeynoodle.org/comp/tools/backups for a simple "back everything up" solution; I've been using it successfully for years. -- Jack At Monkeynoodle.Org: It's A Scientific Venture... "Believe what you're told; there'd be chaos if everyone thought for themselves." -- Top Dog hotdog stand, Berkeley, CA ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Headless Linux DIY contra turnkey NAS
People here seem to be very interested in black-boxing their music collection, and the topic of which NAS device to use keeps coming up here and there. Some folks have given very useful info but it's a bit scattered among many threads. I am hoping to focus the above on a specific thread, and in particular to broaden the option to include a do-it-yourself scenario. So I'm going to provide some bytes for the savvy among us to chew on. The reason that I haven't yet plunked down the cash for an Infrant box is that I'm not sure whether I'll be happy with it for reasons having to do with cpu cycles and noise. Since these boxes are not available for review at your local Fry's, you basically have to dive in and buy one before you personally experience it. Regarding the cpu cycles, I am concerned about how slimserver will run with a ReadyNAS (seeing how it eats cpu cycles in my venerable powerbook even with its 1 GB of RAM, it is something to think about); for example, waiting for several minutes or even hours before new additions to the music library show up ready to play. I have read the occasional complaint about this from ReadyNAS users so it's certainly a source of uncertainty. Regarding noise issues, if the NAS device is noisy then it defeats the audiophile raison d'etre of the squeezebox in an obvious way. The alternative is to place the NAS device in a separate room or somesuch, and rig up the network (e.g. good cable layout, satisfactory wireless performance) so that it's still accessible. Doable, but in the end a quiet device would certainly be preferable and give us more flexibility. Apparently the ReadyNAS performs better on both criteria above than the Buffalo and others; however it's a newish market and that may change. The cost of the ReadyNAS barebones is about $600 plus shipping and taxes. I am certain that for that money one can build a barebone linux box of greater capabilities. It's been a few years since I've put together a linux system (Suse 8) and I've never done the headless thing so it would involve some rtfming. I don't know whether I can use Herger's SlimCD to manage a RAID system as well as run the slimserver; that would be an obvious win wrt what OS to install. If you haven't seen it yet you can read about slimcd at http://www.herger.net/slim/detail.php?nr=763&kategorie=slim If you've set up a RAID/Slimserver system using linux and you'd like to comment on what you did wrt software I would appreciate it. Now onto the hardware side of things. The linux box should definitely have room for four hard drives, since RAID 5 hits a sweet spot at that number. One wants to run RAID 5 because it provides a complete backup of the content of any one drive in the array, and because it does so without consuming so much hard drive space in the process. There are other RAID options and in some situations they are the way to go but for "us" it looks like RAID 5 is the clear choice and four drives is a good ergoecotechnomic minimax fit. I don't know if the box should have an additional drive to host the OS and so forth. The advantage of that that I see is that one can then take out the drives and put them in some future container should the need arise, without violating the integrity of the past and future host boxen. Perhaps there is some performance advantage as well to having the system on one drive and the data on another (although I doubt that makes an important difference in our case). Since the DIY cases tend to have plenty of room it is certainly feasible to spend an extra $50 and get a 100GB+ hard drive on which to install linux and whatever other OS tickles your fancy. An extra hard drive not only raises the cost, however, it also raises the noise level (more on that below). RAM is good and cheap and a gigabyte is a nice round number; that's another $100. Motherboard and cpu together will probably go for about $200; I had a look-around at the local Fry's and saw plenty of motherboards for about $100 that have integrated gigabit ethernet (which is helpful), but I haven't considered what it takes to run RAID proper. As for CPUs it's been ages since I looked at the intel side of things (I got off at the Athlon 1.x ghz models) but for a long time it's been the case that you can get a decent "nothing fancy" cpu from amd for at most $100. So on the way to the "barebone" (meaning, before the four RAID drives) we spend about $300 on the motherboard and the stuff that sits right on top of it. The noise reduction require a refined touch, as one has to travel inside the computer case looking for specific noise sources and then invest time, money and elbow grease to diminish or even eliminate them. I've gone to a couple of web sites to get my thinking started along the "quiet" lines: http://www.silentpcreview.com/index.php http://www.endpcnoise.com/ There is a (computer) case that has garnered some nice reviews and it can be obtained for less than $100 (I believe "Radish" pointed it out on