[jrebman]

Can anybody tell me how to do it?

Do you do it on the SB itself -- if so, how as I don't see any buttons anywhere.

Do you need to be able to read anything off the SB screen on power up to do this?

Thanks for any help -- except for telling me to run DHCP

-- Jim

[andy_c]

Hi Jim,

This is covered in the manual here, on page 9, step 5a.

That said, I'm not sure why you'd want to do this.  I can see setting the machine running SlimServer to a fixed IP.  This will ensure that the Squeezebox can always find it.  But then again, my setup is just one server and one Squeezebox, so maybe there's concerns with multiple SBs that I haven't experienced yet.

[jrebman]

Andy,

Thanks,  looks like I should do a bit more RTFM.

Anyway, the basic issue is this -- I will be using up to 3 SBs, and they will be hardwired, and some folks on the Infrant forums say that this ReadyNAS NV+ can run out of processor steam when serving multiple (and in some cases, even one) SB, and the upshot is that the most reliable configuration (as far as running Slimserver on the infrant server is concerned) is to hard wire the SBs and give them all static IPs.  Some people have no problems, and others have thrown their infrant servers in the trash because they can't reliably stream music without lockups, reboots, gaps in the music, etc.

I also have a dedicated hardware firewall going to my WAN connection and everything else in the house uses a static IP and NAT (because my WAN connection is also itself an intranet in my community with 35 households on it.)  I know this probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'm still learning and following the advice of our net admin people.  One of these days I'll get all this stuff nailed.  Now, if we were to go back 20 years and be running Novell servers, than I would be completely at home .

-- Jim

[andy_c]

I also have a dedicated hardware firewall going to my WAN connection and everything else in the house uses a static IP and NAT (because my WAN connection is also itself an intranet in my community with 35 households on it.)  I know this probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'm still learning and following the advice of our net admin people.

Whoa!  Sounds like a very unusual setup.  No wonder you have to take special precautions.  I've never heard of this "neighborhood WAN" thing before.  That would make me paranoid, what with personal financial data and all... yeah, financial data, that's it! .

[bpape]

You set it just like a normal PC.  During setup, just tell it not to use DHCP and specify the IP.  No matter the neighborhood WAN, if you have a router in the house with a firewall, your internal 192.168.x.x IP is still valid.

Bryan

[jrebman]

Andy,

Actually, I am part of our LAN team and setup the households that don't understand this stuff at all, with their wireless or wired routers, so everybody is reasonably well protected, plus we have some sort of redundant linux firewall coming into the community.  This is a cohousing community, and everybody here knows each other, and there are only a handful of folks who would even have the slightest clue on how to go about cracking the security.  We share a business-class internet connection (which will eventually become fiber), have great up/down speeds, and only pay $8 per month as a "power user". Not a bad deal at all.

Brian,  The problem in a nutshell is that I was approaching this all from the wrong end.  I thought you could do all this setup stuff via the slimserver interface and didn't realize that you had to use the SB itself and the remote for setup.  As I'm blind I don't see anything when I plug the SB in .  The rest of the stuff I have a decent, though incomplete handle on.


Now I know that basically I can't do any of the SB setup without a sighted assistant.  Not a big deal, was just trying to do it on my own -- I can be a bit stubborn about that kind of thing

Thanks all for your help -- I'm now on the right track and may have all this working by this weekend.  Still need to move the server, run some new cabling, mount the new firewall in place by my patch panel, blah, blah, blah.  There are a lot of steps to setting this music server system up, but in the long run I'm sure it is going to be a whole lot better than fumbling through stacks of unmarked CDs until I find the one I want   And, with any luck it will sound better too.

-- Jim

[jakepunk]

I am amazed that the Infrant can't handle multiple streams.  Do you have some links to their forums where this is discussed?

[ctviggen]

There are a lot of steps to setting this music server system up, but in the long run I'm sure it is going to be a whole lot better than fumbling through stacks of unmarked CDs until I find the one I want   And, with any luck it will sound better too.

You'll never go back to CDs.  I have a CD player, which I keep for the rare instances when the computer is down or I buy a new CD and want to hear it immediately.  Other than that, I listen to nothing but the squeeze boxes.  Although I'm using DHCP on my home network, I might switch to fixed IP addresses.  I find that reboots of the computer will sometimes cause a different IP address to get assigned to the computer, which causes me some amount of trouble with the squeeze boxes.  They keep looking for the wrong server, and I have to reboot them, too.

[Ron F.]

I have also had to set a fixed IP address on my SB3 - the reason was not that I needed a particular IP address, as any would do, but that I needed to specify a specific Default Gateway on the Squeezebox - and the only way to do that was to fix its IP address as well.

My wireless access point is NOT providing my WAN connection - that is being done by another device attached to the router.

-Ron

[jrebman]

Jakepunk,

I don't have any specific links, but since the only forums I spent anytime in were the boot/upgrade and streaming services, you'll probably find some of what I'm referring to in them.  It seemed to me that there were a number of folks who just got utterly frustrated with their servers that they eventually gave up on them  Now, there are all sorts of possible explanations -- trying to run a full complement of services -- http/s, ftp, perl, mysql, upnp, slimserver, and itunes all simultaneously on a server with only 128 mb memory.  As I said, this is mostly preventative in nature and I don't have any real world experience with how my system is going to respond when all is setup and running, but I did buy a diskless NV+ with a gig of RAM, and I only have the basics: http/s, ftp, and slimserver running.  I guess that also implies that perl and mysql have to be running or slimserver wouldn't work .

I honestly don't anticipate any problems, but the rest of the house is static IP, so why mix and match?

I also just thought that maybe I saw this being discussed on one of the slim forums, but it's been weeks since I've been on either.

It's been a long ride and Murphy has been on it since the beginning -- the server closet in my new office had a piece of slashed CAT-5 inside the wall, which took a network tester to find, then once all that was diagnosed and repaired, I still couldn't talk to my server, despite it showing up in RAID-ar.  Eventually, when all other possibilities had been tried, I just reinitialized the firmware and reset the server, and it finally started to work.  This was a new server, fresh out of the box, and the construction of my office is all brand new.

I sure hope my new Plexstor external drive doesn't have any of these kinds of issues -- my hair is getting thin (or thinner.)

Like I said, (and I am counting on what you say, Bob), it's been a total pain getting there, but when it all comes together I'm sure I'll be very happy.

-- Jim

I am amazed that the Infrant can't handle multiple streams.  Do you have some links to their forums where this is discussed?

[Papajin]

Depending on your router, you may also be able to use DHCP on the SB's, but have the router always give them the same IP.  My D-Link router allows me to do that, and that's what I do because it bugs me when the IP's are out of order.  On my router at least they call it DHCP Reservation.