RipServer

[Ripfactory]

Actually, taking into account your responses here and elsewhere it's looking very positive e.g. the hardware is perfectly capable of CD/DVD burning, command line access is available, and single-file flac+cue was previously available but was dropped, so presumably a competent linux admin/programmer could re-enable this?

What did you mean previously with your response of it may not be "not as open as you may expect"?

Some technical questions - and the right answers will have me buying a box because I'm very impressed so far! There aren't really any wrong answers, it's just that the "right" answers would have me thinking "geeze, that's just how I wanted to build my own box, no point wasting time putting it together myself!". As background info to this, I'm very comfortable with administering linux servers and programming.

With the command line access, is this complete access to the system to change (or break) at will? (E.g. change kernel?)

Are the o/s and apps installed on the hard drives or a flash device?

If flash, what's the size of the flash?

Do the disks spin down on no activity, and if so, do they stay spun down indefinately if no external activity is received?

Can it be sent to sleep on a configurable schedule and/or no-activity timeout? (E.g. sleep on no activity for 15 minutes between 11pm and 8am, or 2hr of no activity otherwise.)

If it can be sent to sleep, does it have Wake On Lan?

Out of interest rather than having any strong opinions myself - what file system is used on the drives, and can this
be changed (e.g. by a competent linux admin using the command line)?


And thanks for all your responses - I'm sure I'm not the only one who very much appreciates your responsiveness throughout this thread.

I will check with dev on the flac/cue , but my understanding was that it was dropped from the source build (rather than just removed as an option). i will check this in our dev meeting this week and revert.

Not as open as you may think - some of the modules are closed and will only operate as spec'd/implemented. Of course, the balance is easily changed. We feel there is bags of flexibility for change and mod.

Access = complete

OS installed on a HD partition, no flash in this build

Discs spin down on no action.

We missed a trick on this build (being totally open!) Wake on Lan included, but preset sleep/inactivity was missed. On the change list....

No problem on responsiveness and thank you - forum posts are great as an escape from the daily business grind and its a great way for us to be close to users and of course build a better product - the more we listen, the better it gets!

[Ripfactory]

I also want to thank Ripfactory for all of the detailed & timely information in this thread. It has moved me to the brink of purchasing a unit from Ripstyles and the only thing standing in my way is the web browser interface into the Ripserver.

Are there any screen captures available anywhere that shows what this looks like and how key functions work?

Also, it says that orders at Ripstyles will ship "in April" and I'm curious if there is a clearer ETA or that they have yet to start shipping any units given how recent the press announcement was?

Thanks in advance for any help.

I have asked one of my techs to post both the screenshots and user manual PDF during our office hours tomorrow.

Ripserver had taken us all by suprise - a product launch normally takes some time for traction and RS only launched on 5th March, so during March Ripstyles have focussed on pre orders and whilst I cannot speak for them , orders placed this week should ship w/c 7th. i will however let them post a comment here to ensure thats correct.

[Ripfactory]

A more important question would be what Linux distribution was used for the base OS Debian, Gentoo, Redhat, Slackware, SUSE that would tell us more about the possibility of user enhanced/expanded capability.

Red Hat....

[Ripfactory]

Let me add my appreciation for your open and frank willingness to discuss Ripserver.

Thank you for clarifying that album art is currently captured--not sure how I got the idea that it would be added in the end of March update. I understand that Ripstation Micro is a windows program and as such is not directly implimented in the Ripserver. How much of the tagging capabilities of Ripstation Micro are currently implimented in current production Ripservers. Will you please provide a list of what tags are there now and then what will become available with the "end of March" release? Also is the update on schedule + or - a week or so?

At this point I am pretty much on board and just awaiting till tagging is resolved. BTW you will need to post how to upgrade to Slimserver 7 as many will want to do that immediately.

Thank you,
George

Everything tagged in RS Micro is replicated in Ripserver - if you want, I can have our metadata support team lead (yup, we actually have people with that job title....!) post a detailed tag listing and he can take metadata related questions directly. If that helps, let me know.

Update - plus 1 week - the end of next week.

Slim 7 - sure thing , though see my question in earlier post

[th00ht]

Which MP3 coder and FLAC compressions are supported?

[gsawdy]

Hi Ripfactory,
Thank you for the replies. I have just put an order in. So I expect that the Ripserver I will get out of the shipment to Ripstyles will not have SC7.
George

[Jumma]

Hi

The unit allows you to create additional shares and ships with open shares:

music
video
photos
mp3 (designed so you can index seperatley if you transcode to say Flac and

[..]

Everything I've read in this thread tells me I need to buy one of these. One question, though: I'd like to lock the music share down to prevent my family members from deleting the music collection - I would expect only the RipServer to need to write data here, other users (including Sonos Zoneplayers) only need read access: would your web ui allow me to restrict share access?

[Ripfactory]

Which MP3 coder and FLAC compressions are supported?

Lame plus the standard Flac compression range, based on current release codec.

Not sure if you want to drill down deeper into presets, but happy answer that also.

[Ripfactory]

Everything I've read in this thread tells me I need to buy one of these. One question, though: I'd like to lock the music share down to prevent my family members from deleting the music collection - I would expect only the RipServer to need to write data here, other users (including Sonos Zoneplayers) only need read access: would your web ui allow me to restrict share access?

No - it does not allow this via the web ui - the reason we pulled it was that we found that some people will want to run an external tagger on the share , so other applications need full r/w access. The only other way we could have made this happen was to have tag editing done by Ripserver only and this takes away great flexibility.

In an ideal world , we would include r/w on the shares menu so an experienced user could select this status, but it is not in this build. Will explore but no promises

[rydenfan]

Thanks

All units shipped as from next week will have 7 installed. But, we would like the experts view on this from this forum - ship with 6.5.4 and allow in place upgrade or ship 7 as standard?

You should ship all units with 7 standard.