My $60 home made NAS/music server

[randytsuch]

Hey,

I had CC4.0 up and running, but began having lots of problems when I installed slimserver and softsqueeze - after a while it was doing some very confusing things. So, I installed a fresh version of CC3.2 and eveything looks okay - installed the perl dependancies, installed an older version of slimserver, then upgraded (I don't know why)

I got eveything working, I guess but for a while I couldn't get softsqueeze to connect. I could see my files in the slimserver web interface, but couldn't play them. I adjusted the network settings in softsqueeze and now I can connect and see the files, but softsqueeze "can not open them"

Anythoughts?

Hi Tim,
Any luck getting it going? Sorry I don't know what to tell you here, it is beyond my knowledge of CC, and I don't use softsqueeze on my CC PC. But, you may be better off going back to 3.2. Seems like people have better luck with 3.2 and slimserver. I just used 4.0 because it is the latest.

I do have the problem in 4.0 where it says slimserver is not running. I did not notice before because I normally just use winscp. I even made a custom command in winscp to turn off my CC PC, it is the equivalent of typing "shutdown -h now" from putty, which will turn off the PC.

Randy

[tscales]

Well,

I'm optimistic that when i do hook up a squeezebox this problem will go away, but it doesn't bode well for my purchase.

I like CC3.2 and it is working flawlessly compared to cc4.0 - got all my data (music) transferred to the CC box without a problem (minus a few corrupt folders) and am able to browse to the CC box from any XP machine in the house - woohoo!! As far as "can not open file" I'm guessing softsqueeze doesn't have the correct permissions, so I tried to mess with the SSH connect tab of softsqueeze, but I can't seems to get anything there to work.

Aside - winscp has been telling me to run disk-check - how do I do that?

[randytsuch]

Well,

I'm optimistic that when i do hook up a squeezebox this problem will go away, but it doesn't bode well for my purchase.

I like CC3.2 and it is working flawlessly compared to cc4.0 - got all my data (music) transferred to the CC box without a problem (minus a few corrupt folders) and am able to browse to the CC box from any XP machine in the house - woohoo!! As far as "can not open file" I'm guessing softsqueeze doesn't have the correct permissions, so I tried to mess with the SSH connect tab of softsqueeze, but I can't seems to get anything there to work.

Aside - winscp has been telling me to run disk-check - how do I do that?

Hi Tim
You could try this command for disk checking, but I have not seen winscp ask to check my disk, so I am not sure if this will help

http://www.ss64.com/bash/fsck.html

BTW, I run a SB2 and a SB3 from my server with no problems. I am quite happy with my setup.

Randy

[dick]

This thread has inspired me to attempt building a CC server and put slimserver on it so thatnks to you guys.

I've set up a 500MHz PIII with 256Mb RAM and 2 HDDs (will leave one to host the server s/w and will eventually replace the other with a 500Gb beast for the flac files). I have installed CC 3.2 and set it up on my network.

As a Linux newbie I apologise for the dumb question but how do I install the mising Perl module?

TIA

[randytsuch]

This thread has inspired me to attempt building a CC server and put slimserver on it so thatnks to you guys.

I've set up a 500MHz PIII with 256Mb RAM and 2 HDDs (will leave one to host the server s/w and will eventually replace the other with a 500Gb beast for the flac files). I have installed CC 3.2 and set it up on my network.

As a Linux newbie I apologise for the dumb question but how do I install the mising Perl module?

TIA

See this thread from the cc forum

http://www.clarkconnect.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=fun&Number=86991&Searchpage=1&Main=86991&Words=%2Bslimserver+%2Bperl&topic=&Search=true#Post86991

I think the 2nd post will help you.

Randy

[outsider]

Randy, excellent write up!
I wish I could have the patience to sit down and document things I've done.

Anyway, just a few words that might help regarding the installation, and overall setup for others that are considering this.

Why did you choose the Clark Connect version of linux? The reason I ask is because since that OS is mostly an internet gateway and server, it likely has a lot of software running (mainly to do with mail servers, web servers,firewall, bandwidth managers...) that you don't actually need.
Maybe something like Puppy linux or Damn Small Linux be a better fit for this?

Secondly, I wasn't 100% clear on how you joined the 2 drives to get a 300gig partition. But it is what I think, where a partition is spanned between the 2 drives, I would strongly recommend against that.
Reason being is that if either drive fails, you loose all your data. Statistically, you're worse off this way then just using the one drive to store your data.

I personally have slimserver running on a SuSE 10.1 linux box. There is no graphical interface installed (almost any linux flavour can be installed without a graphic display), and I have 4 250gig drives in a RAID 5 array, where I have redundancy if one drive fails.

[tscales]

Randy has been a great resource.

I chose Clark Connect cuase I wanted my server to run head less (since I only have one monitor and am sick of switchin the cables around) and you can very easily, thru the web interface, turn off the web serve email serve and FTP server if you don't use them.

Its a pretty nice web-gui in my opinion. Am I speaking accurately Randy?

-tim

[outsider]

Hey, as long as you're happy and comfortable with it, that's what's important.
Every version of linux can be run headless. There's nothing special about clarck connect that any other linux suite can't do.
Just out of curiosity, the web-gui that you use... What is it Webmin?

[randytsuch]

Hi
Sorry, have not been here lately, so I did not see you post before.

Mostly I picked Clark because I saw some people here recommend it. They said it was pretty small, did not take a high horsepower machine to run, and you could easily run it headless.

There may be better versions of Linux to do what I am doing, but Clark works for me, and I am happy with it, so I have no plans to try anything else.

I tried to install some other linux a while ago, but it did not boot up, and I had no idea why, so I gave up on it. Then I stumbled upon a post here recommending clark. Said it could run headless, and did not need a high powered machine to run it.

I made the boot cd, installed clark, and it just worked, no problem. It does have a lot of capabilities that I am not using, but I have most of those turned off, so it does not eat up resources to run them.

Clark has a default program called webconfig that lets you run the clark machine from another PC. You just type in the clark's address/admin, and log in, then you get access to a set of screens that let you monitor and control the clark machine.

webmin is a more powerfull version of webconfig, but I have not tried it.

I actually now use winscp most of the time to control my clark machine. It makes it easy to transfer files from my windows PC to my clark PC.

I did span two drives to make the 300g partition, kind of by accident. And, I see how it would reduce reliability. But, I am using this PC as a music server, so I am not keeping any files on it that I do not have elsewhere.

But, it should be pointed out for others, who may not have their files backed up somewhere else, and would be SOL if the clark drive died.

Randy

[tscales]

Puzzle me this...

So i guess my server crashed - okay - I go to reboot, it doesn't start up so I check out the BIOS. My CD, Floppy and both drives come up as "Unknown Devices"

I'm curious if its apower supply thing?

-Tim

[randytsuch]

Puzzle me this...

So i guess my server crashed - okay - I go to reboot, it doesn't start up so I check out the BIOS. My CD, Floppy and both drives come up as "Unknown Devices"

I'm curious if its apower supply thing?

-Tim

Hi Tim,
Bummer. Not sure if it's a power supply, since it does come up. When I had a bad power supply, nothing happened, but if your supply is marginal, weird things could happen.

Could also be a motherboard problem. Not sure what else would cause your problem. You could try to reset your bios to the default values, and see if that does anything.

Randy

[tscales]

How do i reset the Bios?

[randytsuch]

After you enter the Bios, there is usually a way there to reset everything to the default values, whatever it started with.

But, make sure you know what everything is set to before you reset it, so you can restore all the settings if you need to.

Randy

[tommypeters]

I'm just about to build a music server based on a Micro-ATX MB and a 2,66GHz Celeron D processor, 512MB - 1GB RAM, S-ATA drives.. The MB has built-in GBit Ethernet and VGA, S-ATA, USB2 and other normal stuff. It's main use would be as a NAS running Slimserver, might also double as a file server for the "HDD Challenged" computers at home.

I'm not decided yet, but it may find a third use as my wife's "Internet Computer" - she would just need a web browser. It would then replace her slow, old, current computer. The MB can take an AGP graphics card, and I have one spare if I (she) need better graphics than the built-in.

Based on this info, do you recommend to have Linux, FreeBSD/FreeNAS or WinXP (don't have a spare license for any Win Server op)? If it's only to be used as a music server/NAS I guess the only caveat I know of is S-ATA hibernation. You might know of many more...

I have worked with Unix many years ago, in recent years only Windows...

[randytsuch]

I'm just about to build a music server based on a Micro-ATX MB and a 2,66GHz Celeron D processor, 512MB - 1GB RAM, S-ATA drives.. The MB has built-in GBit Ethernet and VGA, S-ATA, USB2 and other normal stuff. It's main use would be as a NAS running Slimserver, might also double as a file server for the "HDD Challenged" computers at home.

I'm not decided yet, but it may find a third use as my wife's "Internet Computer" - she would just need a web browser. It would then replace her slow, old, current computer. The MB can take an AGP graphics card, and I have one spare if I (she) need better graphics than the built-in.

Based on this info, do you recommend to have Linux, FreeBSD/FreeNAS or WinXP (don't have a spare license for any Win Server op)? If it's only to be used as a music server/NAS I guess the only caveat I know of is S-ATA hibernation. You might know of many more...

I have worked with Unix many years ago, in recent years only Windows...

The main reason I picked the ClarkConnect version of Linux was that it was easy to set it up in a "headless" configuration. Makes for a good server, my machine is on top of some shelfs, in my garage. Basically no maintenance, once I got it set up and running. So, if it is just a file server, CC will work fine.

The part of the equation I don't know how to answer is setting it up as your wife internet machine. I am sure you can do it, but it is something I did not do. I also wonder how "user friendly" it will be, compared to winXP. I would worry about this part the most, and make sure it will be easy for your wife to use.

Randy