Any listing of "How to" DIY media server?

[Gus]

Periodically I've seen examples here of DIY projects people have done and was wondering if there's been a linked listing of these anywhere.
Originally I'd intended to simply buy a server, but having read and followed forums like this, I'm becoming more confident with the idea of having a go at building a box myself. On the other hand, if anyone knows of some good examples people have posted of DIY boxes that have a VIA or Atom-based processor (to keep the power down), RAID capability, 1 Gigabit LAN and either Linux or WHS, would love to see a link...
Gus

[Uluen]

I'll be building a new server for my home in a couple of weeks. Quad core Xeon, 4-8GB RAM, server motherboard and possibly Solaris on ZFS.

Will this be your first build?
I've never built any of the tiny boxes but if you can't find a complete How To maybe you could ask more general questions here? Like "how powerful CPU do I need?" and such?

[Leon van Bommel]

I've built a tiny server using a Alix board: http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2c3.htm
It runs FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org/, version 0.69) from a 1Gb CF card. Installation was quite some work, but pretty straightforward using the tools from m0n0wall and SlimNAS (http://www.herger.net/slim/detail.ph...kategorie=slim). All data is on an external USB HDD (WD 1Tb GP: http://www.westerndigital.com/en/pro...sp?DriveID=385).
Even though the boards hardware is what most would consider lower than low, performance of 7.0.1 is very good. Step 1 of a rescan of all songs (10000+) took around 43 min vs. 17 on my old server (quadcore 2.4Ghz). While only playing CPU load hovers around 5%. Only problem is that rescanning AND playing is a bit too much to ask from the 500Mhz CPU: it'll hit 100% utilisation and then stutter sometimes.

Needless to say power usage is almost neglible, and fanless means it's quite ... quiet.

[Kim.T]

I like that you only need a "power brick" to power the board - no need for an ATX power supply with or without P4. I would like to see some powerfull boards from VIA or with the Atom processor with that !

[tyler_durden]

My server is made on a Via C7 mother board (PC2500e). I run Kubuntu linux, have 500 GB of HDD space, CD burner, and 1 GB ram. I use a 500 GB USB HDD for backup. I used an old PC case and power supply so if you're looking for a trendy, green project I can't help you.

Performance is snappy- I run two SBs, and serve cover art to SBC and sometimes a computer's web browser. I have about 700 CDs in .flac format that are using about 55%-60% of the available storage.

It was more effort to get the backup drive working than any of the rest of it. The backup drive is ntfs for windoze compatibility and it took some messing around to get it to automount and make it writeable by linux (ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs). I'm still having some trouble making it work by UUID instead of /dev/sda1 type designation.

I'm in the process of writing a how-to and will post a link to it when it's done.

TD

[Gus]

Appreciate all the comments, observations.

Uluen, in answer to your "first build?" question, yes, it is!

Cheers,
G

[joncooper]

My spec will be (once complete) as follows:

Generic ATX Case with plenty of space for 3.5" drives (I've opted for an Antec Three Hundred)
Generic ATX power supply
A couple of inline fan speed limiters for the ATX case fans
Atom proc/motherboard from TranquilPC
A stick of Crucial 2Gb DDR2 ram
Promise SATA300 TX4 PCI card
Old 10Gb Laptop hard disk with PATA adaptor as system drive
Ubuntu 8.04, using software RAID for storage, once I decide what to buy

You'll find the storage aspect is the most expensive!

[Leon van Bommel]

I would like to see some powerfull boards from VIA or with the Atom processor with that !

As far as I know there's no plan to attach a lower power chipset to the Atom, so seems we're stuck with the 22W 945GC chipset for now, making a 12V plug type power supply unlikely. I've already complained about it being out of line for a 4W CPU.
Perhaps a company is willing to join a mobile version of the Atom with one of the mobile chipsets for an embedded board, but the cost involved does make that sound unlikely too.

[jimbob666]

I built my server based on a VIA EPIA 5000AG system board. Low power usage, very small form factor and silent operation were the selling points. I am running Clark Connect Linux on the box and followed these instructions (which were excellent):

http://www.ulverston.myzen.co.uk/mini-itx/index.htm

Performance across a standard 54Mbps wireless network has been flawless. My Linux music server has now been running happily for 132 days

I have attached an image of the finished server. The server sits discreetly in the TV cabinet..

[syburgh]

I did a number of builds before I was happy.

• Intel D201GLY2 system was fast and cheap (compared to C7), but needed active cooling
• Koolu net appliance (AMD LX800 Geode @ 500MHz, same as PC Engines ALIX) has a horrific Realtek NIC which is bad for performance (>50% CPU utilization bad, ALIX has much better NICs). Once you have it set up with SC7 it runs great (works with FreeNAS+SlimNAS). Web UI is much slower than modern CPUs (1-2 seconds per page view, plus time for searching, etc.) but snappy from SB3
• AOpen Digital Engine Core Solo is what I currently use (no fan, 2.5in disk, gigabit Intel NIC, but kind of expensive for relatively obsolete kit. some previously posted photos are also below)
• Intel SS4200-EHW: only use it as a SMB+rsync+IMAP server now, but I did set it up with FreeNAS+SlimNAS without incident just to try it out. Good performance, but FreeBSD ACPI support is lacking for this platform (cannot poweroff from FreeNAS). SS4200 also has a gigabit Intel NIC, but lacks a VGA/DVI port (so you will need an Intel serial port header to have access to BIOS @ 115200/8n1. The hardware bit is trivial as there is a knockout on the back for the header, but many PCs don't even have serial ports these days so the logistics could make it tricky)

My observation is that only rescans and the web interface entail any meaningful CPU load under SqueezeCenter. Streaming music (even multiple concurrent streams) is fine on just about any platform.

IMO the web interface is painfully slow on LX800 compared to larger systems, and the new SC7 skin seems noticeably slower on all platforms than SS6.5. If you don't rescan often and don't use the web interface then you will be happy with just about anything as your SC server (e.g. embedded as part of NAS or router firmware, extremely low power developer boards, etc.).

I use the web interface a lot, so I decided to use a passively cooled 1.8GHz system (25-30W depending on load) and have it suspend to RAM when it is idle (2-3W to keep network interface alive, waiting for WOL). Wish it wasn't idle quite as much as it is.

If I had to do this again I would care less about active power consumption and ensure that the server reliably suspends to RAM/disk and resumes using WOL. The power savings of ACPI S3 are probably of greater impact than (expensive) low power components.