SqueezeboxServer 7.50 embedded on a LinkStation Pro v1. (LS-GL)

[aubuti]

It's a LinkStation Pro (v1), with 400MHz ARM CPU (ARM926EJ-Sid(wb)) and 128MB RAM. So it's below minimum hardware requirements, although I used it up through SC 7.3.2. It's possible that I've just gotten spoiled by how much faster my newer server is (1.6GHz Atom with 2GB RAM). Here's my SSOXX status info:

System
Hard-/Firmware : unknown (GenericLinux)
Load / Uptime : 0.40 0.20 0.12 / 4d 12.24:31 (97% idle)
Memory -- Swap : 121/123 MB (shr: 0, buf: 14, cache: 19, rss: 88) -- 33/965 MB
SqueezeboxServer
Version : 7.5.0-30291
Process status : PID 5326, state S (sleeping)
Memory usage : 94 MB total, 62 MB (66%) RSS
Uptime : 07:25:20, 56:54 (12.7%) CPU time
Database size : 8.8M and 2.6M persistent
SSOXX/SBS flags: noupnp en_US.UTF-8

I've disabled a bunch of SBS plugins, and stopped the MySQL process that was running on the LSPro. I'm happy to look into tweaking things a bit more with SSOXX. Thanks for your help.

[flipflip]

That looks good as far as I can tell. I guess it's not swapping, so I don't know if lower memory usage would makes it faster.

There are some memory saving flags you can set that disable legacy player support and debugging output but I don't know how much you can save.

[bluegaspode]

Do I see it right, that now we also have SSOLS (squeezeboxserver on LinkStation) ?

[flipflip]

We've had that for a long time. Just nobody ever used it.
Btw, it would also run on the SheevaPlug (original FW and Debian).
Or on any i686 Linux system.
Or..

[dsdreamer]

We've had that for a long time. Just nobody ever used it.
Btw, it would also run on the SheevaPlug (original FW and Debian).
Or on any i686 Linux system.
Or..

I "wasted" a lot of my own time building a suitable Perl environment for SBS on the LinkStation before I figured out you had already made a very nice solution for us. (Actually I learned a bit by doing this, so the term wasted is a bit harsh.)

I remain of the opinion that only the LS-XHL is worth using as a permanent solution, since 1.2GHz and 256MB of RAM should be plenty for this unless you have heavy transcoding in mind. Honestly, there should be no performance difference between the LS-XHL and a ShevaPlug, or possibly the LS-XHL should be better due to the full SATA bandwidth to the HDD.

For $200, I'm going to try one out and let you know how it goes. The only tricky part is getting ssh access to these units in the first place, which is harder now that acp_commander.jar is not working with the latest firmware (1.24).

[aubuti]

That looks good as far as I can tell. I guess it's not swapping, so I don't know if lower memory usage would makes it faster.

There are some memory saving flags you can set that disable legacy player support and debugging output but I don't know how much you can save.

I should say that the thing for which I have an easy objective measure -- scanning time -- is MUCH faster on the LSPro with 7.5-embedded and SQLite. My library of around 5500 tracks (5000 FLAC, 500 MP3) does a clear-and-rescan in about 35 minutes, compared to around 75 minutes with SC7.3.2 and MySQL. So there is a clear benefit there.

[DrewSB]

Thank you all for your work on this and for spreading the word around.

I have a LS Pro v1 with opened stock firmware including ipkg. What do you all think is the best/easiest way to get it running a newer version of SBS and it's associated dependancies? I am running 7.3 now, and my Linux skills are mostly limited to googling-cutting-pasting.

[andybjackson]

Like DrewSB I am very excited about being able to get a later version than 7.3.3 working on my Linkstation. That said I have just failed to get it to work on two different Linkstations, one which had 7.3.3 installed via ipkg and one which didn't.

The most prominent failure message is:
0348: [10-03-05 20:06:59.5969] Slim::Utils::MySQLHelper::startServer (224) FATAL: Couldn't find a executable for 'mysqld'! Exiting.
0349: [10-03-05 20:06:59.6076] Log::Log4perl::Logger::and_die (868) Warning: FATAL: Couldn't find a executable for 'mysqld'! Exiting. at /mnt/disk1/Glenwood/ssods4/var/home/SqueezeboxServer/lib/Log/Log4perl/Logger.pm line 900

I tried to install MySQL on the LS that did not have it before. As far as I could tell, when I reomved the IPKG SBS 7.3.3, MySQL was not removed.

Is there any more info that I can provide which may help? I'd be grateful for flipflip's (=legend for even getting me this far) or anyone else's advice on what to do next.

Regards and thanks
Andy

PS I should also say for others heading down this path, you want to use symbolic links and not native downloads/installs unless, like me, you want to fill up your system partition such that your Linkstation requires disassembly to get back to a working state. Also take flipflip's advice re Firefox rather than IE seriously.

[flipflip]

The most prominent failure message is:
0348: [10-03-05 20:06:59.5969] Slim::Utils::MySQLHelper::startServer (224) FATAL: Couldn't find a executable for 'mysqld'! Exiting.
0349: [10-03-05 20:06:59.6076] Log::Log4perl::Logger::and_die (868) Warning: FATAL: Couldn't find a executable for 'mysqld'! Exiting. at /mnt/disk1/Glenwood/ssods4/var/home/SqueezeboxServer/lib/Log/Log4perl/Logger.pm line 900

If you are talking about running SBS in SSODS:
SSODS does not include mysqld. And SBS running in SSODS would only look in /opt/ssods4/bin for external programs. And there's no mysqld there..
If you have mysqld on your box somewhere you have to link it into said directory so that SBS will be able to find it. E.g.

ln -s /usr/local/mysqld/libexec/mysqld /opt/ssods4/bin/mysqld

Then it should work.

Note that copying the mysqld file to /opt/.. won't work. You need to link it.

Btw, maybe you want to try the "embedded" branch instead of the normal release because that no longer requires mysql.

[aubuti]

Hmm, I went to upgrade to the latest nightly 7.5-embedded tonight (r30335), and now SBS won't start because the module YAML::Syck fails to load. I downloaded the noCPAN tarball from the nightly directory and tried to update via the SSOXX web interface, after first stopping SBS. I tried rolling back to r30291, which was running before, but I get the same error message about YAML:Syck.

Any advice? Thanks.