[numa]

Well, hello, I am programmer, admin, engineer type person and have long been into tube audio.  I frequent the hornshoppe forums, and noticed over here you all, and figured my setup might be of interest.

So what I have, is roughly 45000+ songs, in a variety of formats, some lossless rips, some mp3, some very high bitraite mp3, variable bitrate mp3, ogg, etc.  

Said archive of songs is neatly organized into genre, then artist, album, etc.

Media Server:
To keep my several hundred gigs of data safe I use a simple Ubuntu Linux box, with 5 250gig Sata hard drives, in a software raid 5.  the machine boots off of a hardware raid of 2 120gig pata drives.  The machine is a modest Pentium 4-1.7ghz machine, 512Mb ram.  This is a reasonably loud machine (of course) is large, and hot.  So it sits in the furnace room, which is also where my switch, router, voip server, etc sit.

This machine serves the following purpose
1.  shares files to the half dozen or so other machines, including windows
2.  Streams my library out of my home connection (6mb down, 768k up) to myself at work, my wife at work, buddies, whatever.
3.  Shares media files over internal network to mini-servers.
4.  other network tasks, ssh point into network from outside, sshfs server, dhcp server, caching forwarding dns server, Etc.

Mini-server1:  
This machine is a EPIA based 600mhz, fanless, with a 5400rpm drive (very silent).  This machine is headless (no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse).  Connects via home network (wired gigabit) to media server, operates Apache web server, with music playing via MPD (music player daemon http://www.musicpd.org/).  The MPD has it's own database of music, so I can search instantly, by album, file name, artist, etc.  This machine is also Ubuntu linux, case is a casetron c137, outside dimensions 1.5" by 7" by 9" (it's small).  This machine is connected to my tube amps, horns, etc.

Mini-server2:
This machine is a EPIA based 1Ghz machine, also fanless, 7200 rpm drive, 60gb, no keyboard mouse etc, also plays music via mpd.  But is connected my garage stereo.

So, at home tonite, I will go home, grab a laptop, via wireless network, goto internal website,  and depending on if I am working in garage, or in living room, have music blasted from server to the mini machines, and listen to music, build playlists etc.  There is no use of windows for any of the serving, which is good, as windows licenses are expensive, and I am completely legal.  IT's also nice to use for mini-servers these EPIA machines as they average less than 20 watts consumed.  no fans and silent hard drives.  

The nice thing about MPD http://www.musicpd.org/ is that when you tell it play a bunch of songs, you can goto another machine and edit them.  Oh yeah, the interface to MPD is actually PHPmp on my machine, but other interfaces work well.  

If anyone has any questions feel free to comment.  NUMA

[brj]

Hi Numa - welcome to AC!

Sounds like you have a great setup worked out - nice job!  Ubuntu is one distro I haven't tried out yet, although everything I've read says I should.  I'll have to drop it into one of my test partitions some day and explore...

Just out of curiousity, how are you handling the connection between your mini-servers and audio system(s)?  You say that your first mini-server connects to your tube amps, but are you using a soundcard with built-in DAC, or do you have an external DAC fed via S/PDIF or USB?

Thanks!

[numa]

Hey, yeah, my system's really not setup for digital anything, analog is sorta the way it as the moment.  Yep, onboard soundcard headphone jack to rca cables.  

It is certeinly possible to use the digital out, then to a DAC.

MPD actually uses the same playing mechanism as the old mp3123 (or 123mp3 whichever one had the OSS license, one didn't) for the decoding.

Ubuntu is great, nice debian base.  I sorta like KDE more (at the moment) so I use Kubuntu on my laptop.  

Prior to the ubuntu fad, I have had these mini-servers as RH9, debian testing/unstable, slackware (it returns) etc etc.  The Jinzora server (which operates on my media-server) can also be used as a jukebox, but the performance on a EPIA 600 with 256mb ram was, well, dismal at best.  too much fancy graphics for 3 continous users, especially when also doing downsampling for guest jinzora users.  

NUMA

[ScottMayo]

To keep my several hundred gigs of data safe I use a simple Ubuntu Linux box, with 5 250gig Sata hard drives, in a software raid 5. the machine boots off of a hardware raid of 2 120gig pata drives. The machine is a modest Pentium 4-1.7ghz machine, 512Mb ram. This is a reasonably loud machine (of course) is large, and hot. So it sits in the furnace room, which is also where my switch, router, voip server, etc sit.

I am NOT a unix admin or internals guy. I want a very low power box that can share gigs of data out to an 100mb ethernet reliably, and can support perl so I can run the Squeezebox server on it. I don't care how slow the processor is. I don't want it to run hot. All I want to be able to do is install software on it and have it provide streams of music and shared files on my network. I'd like it to be small, fanless if possible, and stable as a rock. Once it works I never want to touch it again, except to upgrade disks. I'd like to be able to store files on it from wintel boxes. On, and I want cheap.  

Recommendations?

[numa]

ok, i'll take a stab.  I know nothing abouth squeezebox, though it looks pretty cool

On a physical device, the question is how small do you REALLY mean.  I'm going to attach a few pics to show my mini-servers


http://thenuma.com/1.jpg

http://thenuma.com/2.jpg

http://thenuma.com/3.jpg

http://thenuma.com/4.jpg

http://thenuma.com/5.jpg

http://thenuma.com/6.jpg

http://thenuma.com/7.jpg

Now the mini servers are, well, fairly small.  

The first mini server in picture 1.jpg is on top of the teac tuner.  it has a 20gb drive.  

The other mini server is shown best in 7.jpg, it is the box on top of the technics (snicker) receiver.  It has a something size drive, probably 40 or 60 or so.

the computer with the open side is a windows box (yick) used for data recovery etc.  ignore it.  

However, as you can guess, they DO NOT use regular harddrives, they use laptop drives, which the biggest available right now, for a reasonable amount is around 100 gigs or so.  If you ahve HUNDREDS of gigs, you give up small.  I have a terabyte of storage, i need it, but I also use my server for pictures, videos, work, etc, etc.

[ScottMayo]

On a physical device, the question is how small do you REALLY mean.  I'm going to attach a few pics to show my mini-servers

I meant small in terms of capabilities. I've got two real issues - I don't want a lot of heat (it's going to get locked in a closet), and I don't want it driving up my electric bill much. I expect I'll need to go to full sized disk drives, so I might as well start with that in mind.

On the software side, I need to be able to put software on it, and being able to compile my own code for it is a plus. Otherwise I'd just go for a Buffalo NAS. (They have the Kuro box, which is a hackable NAS, but it looks like it's just getting off the ground and they aren't exactly talking it up yet.)

[EchiDna]

nice work numa...

you seem to be pretty well sorted out there  

[davehg]

the first part contains links to some really small, fanless, driveless Linux boxes, which can boot off CF cards.

You would store the music on an external drive, or another server in a separate location.

http://musicserver.blogspot.com

[shokunin]

I meant small in terms of capabilities. I've got two real issues - I don't want a lot of heat (it's going to get locked in a closet), and I don't want it driving up my electric bill much. I expect I'll need to go to full sized disk drives, so I might as well start with that in mind.

On the software side, I need to be able to put software on it, and being able to compile my own code for it is a plus. Otherwise I'd just go for a Buffalo NAS. (They have the Kuro box, which is a hackable NAS, but it looks like it's just getting off the ground and they aren't exactly talking it up yet.)

How much space? Do you need redudancy?  An nForce4 motherboard, a Venice A64 AMD processor, a seasonic power supply or other quiet PSU, add a few hard drives and you're good to go.  Enable Cool n Quiet and your system will be relatively low powered and quiet.   Most motherboards today come with a boat load of SATA and ATA channels so you'll have enough connections to grow.

Personally, I have several severs using Pentium-M processors and socket 479 motherboards.  I have one running Astaro Linux as my firewall, malware, spyware, anti-virus, proxy server for my whole family and it uses a whopping 35 watts according the Kill-a-watt running at 1.4ghz and 160gb hard drive.   A secondary file server is running another Pentium-M processor with 9 hard drives, an Ultrium LTO-2 tape drive and is usually idles at around 50 watts when the drives spin-down and are not in use.

You could also do what Numa did go with some mini-itx based boards.  They are limited on expansion and usually are limited to 100mb fast ethernet, but require less power and are cooler as well.

Glenn

[numa]

Yeah, mini-itxs are  a lot of fun, they are lower power, but also fairly limited in terms of raw power.  It's fairly easy to bog one into oblivion serving music out.  However, as a pure mp3 player, they work well.  the linux support is quite good, and very easy for any modern disto to deal with.  Those mini-itx boxen are fairly old, figure 1.5 to 2 years old, and at the time I bought them, the pentium-m solution was bigger, and quite a bit more money.  Course now you can get a mini-itx or near it, form factor pentium m for VERY little money, so , hey.

[FasterThanEver]

I'm interested in setting up some small computers as players in several rooms.  Your posts were useful and interesting.

How about some details on your mini-servers:

1. Where did you get the cases and power supplies and what did they cost?

2. Where did you get the motherboards and what did they cost

3. How did the installation of Linux and the other s/w you needed go?  

4. I think you said earlier that you use the on-board audio.  Do you find that to be as good as you'd like?  Did you consider a high-quality PCI soundcard?

Bill