The Home Server Thread

yashiro

yashiro

yashiro

Soldato
Joined
9 Dec 2003
Posts
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I'm having a bit of a crazy idea these past few weeks. It's along the lines of:
Some micro atx board,
boots and runs the OS from compact flash,
storage is on a collection of internal drives possibly using ZFS.
which also implies using Solaris at home.

Plan:
Make a small home server for less than a HP EX475 1TB MediaSmart that's at least as powerful, hardware wise.
http://mswhs.com/2008/12/29/hp-ex485-and-ex487-review-roundup/.

Basic Requirements:
Lower power usage.
Low noise output.
Free Operating System.
Act as file Server for Windows, Linux, Mac, Xbox & PS3 (DLNA).
Wired Lan.

Extended Requirements:
Doesn't look too stupid, externally.
Gigabit Lan.
Intelligent storage management.

What do folks in this forum use at the moment?
 
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What's the status of ZFS on BSD though?

At the end of the day it's more about data storage than some gui front end.

ZFS on Linux is a non starter at the moment.
BSD, no idea, probably has a kernel based port?
Solaris, home of ZFS, works as well as can be expected.
 
I'm running some crusty AMD mb with a x2 4000+, 4 HDD (1 boot, 3x 750gb RaidZ) and an intel pro 1000 NIC all sat in a spare silverstone lc17 case I had running opensolaris.

Works wonderfully especially with timeslider now I've been able to get rid of my dodgy rotating snapshot script. Share's SMB, CIFS and iSCSI. Sat it in the spare room so it doesnt disturb anyone and it means I can run my HTPC off a cheap SSD which is virtually silent except for a 800rpm 120mm fan.

Waiting for open xvm server to be fully released so I can merge my storage and ESX into a single box :D
 
I run my server(s) on Ubuntu Server with the drives formatted as XFS. It works quite nicely with LFS and/or soft RAID. I run a Samba server, MythBackend with all the capture card functions, mt-daapd, full LAMP stack with remote web access to the Myth scheduler. It's great.

One frontend I use boots Mythbuntu off of a cheap 4 GiB CF card. It's slow to boot, but has no moving parts making it perfectly silent in the living room.

You might be interested in the Nexenta project. It's a Solaris kernel married with the familiar GNU userland and Debian packaging and re-compiles of most of the Ubuntu repos. Seems like a best-of-both-worlds.
 
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I now use an Atom Micro-ATX board from Jetway in a small case. Runs everything beautifully, including file server, but also GB of mail via dovecot, the squeezerver for the squeezebox etc.
It is perfectly silent and sucks 1/3 of the power my previous "normal recycled PC" home server
 
NSLU2

Firmware : Unslung
Storage : 16GB Corsair Flash Voyager GT
Weight : 0.4 lbs ( 185 grams )
Power consumption : ~ 4W
Moving parts : None
 
Only use mines to move files into and watch on TV...

OS: Mythbuntu
PSU: 115w
CPU: 1GHz PIII
Memory: 384MB PC133 SD-RAM
HDD: 80GB IDE
Network: 100Mbps LAN

Plays my DiVXs perfectly. :D
 
we are going to be building a server in a couple of months, basically to stream TV shows to 2 x computers and one PS3.

Does linux have a utlitiy like ffdshow-tryouts for windows where u can manipulate picture quality settings for divx?
 
Throwing a suggestion into the mix, here's what I got:
"Jetway J7F4K 1.2GHz Eden CN700 Mainboard"

Its a low power SoC, allegedly only using 7w when its working, but to be honest even if its using twice as much, its still less then most modern CPU's, since the weekend its running Arch Linux, and it runs it very well, installed MythTV with MythVideo plugin and now it shows videos from HDD. It runs SD content perfectly fine, but understandably struggles with 720p content. Might do better with some tweaking, but I doubt it.

Anyway only downside seems to be that it only uses 1 gig of ram max, but it has dual gigabit lan and a pci slot. 2 Sata connectors and one IDE. Onboard audio and that unichrome pro video card. Without any tweaking it seems to do 400-450 fps with glxgears. Not that you would use it for 3d that much.

Its current use is a main machine/medea centre/router/nfs/web server. Once I get some time, il take some pics (especially now that I got mythtv working on it) and post it.

Edit: Looking at your requirements, it currently lives in the same box it came in but with more holes for connectors until I'l purchase a case for it, found one that can take 2 3.5" HDD's and has a few other cool features but it costs £100-£120, which for a case seems a tad on the expensive side o_O.
 
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So here we go, a few pics of the setup:

Here is what the box looks like, its the above and I have yet to find a good case (cheap if possible) for it.

A close up of the thing, with the vga splitter attached.

One goes to the "main" monitor, while the other goes to the other monitor, which acts as a tv at this point. And yeah it is a crap TV and speakers, but the latter were 30 quid and the TV was free :D

Anyway, it is all controlled via wifi with this N810. The whole setup is running MythTV on Arch Linux :D.
 
eXor said:
Haha, that's awesome! Now all you need is a widescreen display.
Click to expand...
Thought about it, but the problem is that id need two, hopefully identical, or at least have the same resolution displays, which would be expensive. Id need two as id want the better one to be my main pc "display" as I use it more then the "TV" one, it be crap to have a display which is way better then the TV one, and moving moving monitors about kinda defeats the point a bit. Currently one is at 1280x1024 and the other is 1024x768, so have to change res to watch movies, but its not too bad, quick menu items to do the swap ;).

The other one is that pc isn't going to handle HD content. Its just not up to the job, last time I checked 720p res, the sound was lagging behind and it was noticeably laggy.

Who knew that cardboard boxes could double up as cases and that Tux has a girlfriend? :D
Click to expand...
Hehe, I was trying to find a case that can take 2 3.5" HDD's while not being a full size case. Seeing that I couldn't find it, had to improvise ;). Have found one now, it has all features that I need, but it does have stupid led's at the front and comes with a price tag of £100-£120 :o. Deciding what to do :(.

Both of them are meant to be Tux, but the yellow one is a "duck" Tux but just looks weird and freaky :o
 
Foxconn WinFast K7S741MG with a 1.8ghz socket A athlon
(all IDE) main boot is a 320gig HDD, 3 250gig HDD for music, video and software/other
400W PSU
random black case
gig LAN
running ubuntu linux
cost me about £50

will probally replace the 3x250 with sata drives when i get round to it
 
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