PCLinux Server - Experience and Questions

[dgaust]

Ok, now that I have my HTPC built and working nicely, I figured it's time to work on another project.

As I have some older hardware lying around, I decided to build a headless system that would be able to act as a NAS and an automatic downloader of stuff using Azureus and RSS feeds (best invention ever).

Anyway, the parts I had lying around was an old P4 1.83ghz, 768mb RAM, onboard video (being headless this won't really matter) and a motherboard of indeterminate origin (HP system) and an 80gb ATA drive.

Now I thought I would test build the system and see if it works and the experience is usable through the VMC interface.

Basically as it needs to operate as something else other than just a NAS, I couldn't go down the FreeNAS route, so I was looking at a LinuxDistro. My first experience with Linux was through Ubuntu so I decided to download the server version of 7.04.

Unfortunately this didn't seem to like my hardware, and refused to install. I think it may have something to do with the SIS chip on my mainboard as there is a lot of talk on the internets about this issue.

So in desperation, and after reading someone on this forum espousing the virtues of PCLinux (sorry I can't remember who it was), I downloaded an image and installed.

I must say I'm impressed by the ease of use with this distro. Nearly everything has a GUI and it comes with just about everything I need installed (actually everything except azureus).

In any event, I set up some shares fired up the Samba GUI and within minutes had set up some shares and mapped them on my Vista system, set up watched folders in VMC and bingo my videos showed up. Brilliant, I can now navigate folders and watch video stored directly from the server (with no disk space yet).

I also set up the RDP program which now loads at boot so I can control it from laptop.

Unfortunately restarting the server meant I could no longer access the shares. I couldn't figure out why for a little while, but it appeared that Samba wasn't being started upon boot (this is a little silly IMO, as once it is configured it should auto start), but by loading up the configuration GUI I could tick a box to enable startup at boot and now I have a fully functioning NAS.

Browsing and streaming through the wired network (100mbps) is crisp, just as quick as the systems HD, so I really think this could be a solution for my storage needs into the future. However, due to the current wiring situation in our apartment the wife wasn't happy about having a PC in the dining room, or cables running everywhere, so I was ready to shelve the server until we actually decided to get off our butts and buy a place.

But then I remembered I had a wireless 108Mbps USB adapter lying around and decided I might try that. Plugging it into the PC, and firing up the Configure Network Adapter GUI prompted a warning saying there was no wireless device detected, and asked if I wanted to use the windows driver through ndiswrapper, pressing Yes and locating the .inf file resulted in the adapter firing up and asking for the connection details. Put all the connection details in and bang, a wireless connection at a theoretical connection speed of 108mbps.

The browsing through the VMC interface is a little slower now than the hardwired connection but streaming is fine (I’ve only tested SD res stuff though at the moment).

So now I have a headless media server system, hidden in the spare room ready to serve all my storage needs.

However, I am in need of a few things and have some questions:

• Some hardrives – I figure 4 x 500GB would be enough for any storage that I may need in the future. I’m not a huge hoarder of video/music so I can’t see need for much more than that. These would most likely be in a RAID 5 configuration so I think it would work out at 1.7Tb of storage

In saying that, I would be using SATA drives, and the motherboard doesn’t have any SATA ports. Does anyone have any recommendations for a PCI SATA controller that would work with linux? This is a cheap system so I don’t think I would need or want a hardware raid controller. I think software RAID will be good enough.

• Case – I need a decent case that has enough room for 4 drives (maybe 5 so I can keep the setup I currently have on the ATA drive) with some decent room so I can keep them cool.

• A gigabyte NIC – Would be nice as I plan to upgrade to a gigabyte network as soon as we get the new place.
• If I can get my hands on some flat Ethernet cable, I could run cabling under the carpet in my apartment without any major drama. I could probably get the wireless working better with some tweaking but I hate tweaking.
  
  I’ve looked at this stuff http://www.vpi.us/cable-sf.html and this http://sewelldirect.com/Taperwire-Su...able-25-ft.asp
  
  Does anyone have any comments on these products?

So all in all that’s been my experience with building a PCLinux server. I would recommend this distro to anyone wishing to do something similar to what I have done, and to anyone considering a linux distro for everyday use.

It’s the only linux I’ve used where everything I’ve needed could be configured via a GUI (ExtremePC if you’re reading this, that’s for you ) and it does everything I need.

Combining it with Azureus at RSS feeds for automatic downloads is the icing on the cake.

[arkay]

Nice job!. Instead of Azureus though you might want to take a look at ktorrent. It's a native linux app, supports rss and isn't as bloated as Azureus.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[dgaust]

Thanks. It certainly was a good learning experience.

I think I did try kTorrent on my first build which was actually a KUBUNTU build. One of the main features that I wanted in the RSS feed was the downloaded file in a specific directory depending on what filter was used.

From memory kTorrents RSS feed didn't allow this, and as I wanted a set and forget Azureus was the only one I found that can do it. I don't particularly like Azureus on my other systems because of the resource issues, but since it's only a file server/downloader I don't think it is too much of a problem for the moment.

[arkay]

True, if it works then go for it. It's not as much a resource pig as it is under windows.

I use ktorrent on my linux server but I haven't implemented auto download. I just use the rss feeds to selectively download with.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[Lester_Burnham]

Hi,

Good to see another good linux configuration up and running.
Do you guys leave the box logged in with the GUI up and running? I would think you have to with ktorrent unless it has a web frontend like Azerus. I installed Deluge and found that my torrents stopped when I logged out of my RDCMP session (or whatever it's called), so I installed Torrentflux and it works a treat, with RSS feeds and Web interface only.

Lester

[dgaust]

I just keep the GUI running and RDP into if need be. It's only been running for a day or so, so I don't want to go around screwing things up.

[peedon]

dgaust - sorry I may have missed this, but what do you use the RSS feeds for??

[dgaust]

Here I am answering questions when no-one has answered mine

Anyway, if you subscribe to a RSS feed you can then set filters to set the torrent client to automatically download files as they become available.

Check out the tutorial here