In a moment of boredom over the Christmas holiday I've put together a personal website detailing the build of my Mini-ITX server.

I'm a Linux novice so setting up ClarkConnect and installing Slimserver and AlienBBC was a bit of a challenge, but I got there in the end.

If anyone else is interested please have a look at:


http://www.ulverston.myzen.co.uk/mini-itx/index.htm

***EDIT: This is my new URL since changing ISP***

Its aimed at beginners, but hopefully gives enough info to get a system up and running properly.

Thanks to all previous posters that have silently pointed me in the right direction (Patrick Dixon & Randytsuch) and who's work and information I have blatantly plagiarised!!

All comments are appreciated.

Mick.

Very nice. Everything explained clearly, including how to navigate in vi!

One small shortcut; you could have hooked up the 320GB drive before installing CC. It's easy to detect, format, and configure any extra drives during the install.

Hi Mick
Very nice webpage you made of your project. Your PC looks very nice.

Glad the project worked out for you. I find it very convinient to have slimserver and my music collection on a seperate machine, so it is not dependent on my main PC.

Randy

Pale Blue Ego

I was a bit concerned about partitioning the extra drive during C-C installation after reading on Randytsuch's post that indicated the default settings combined both drives into one big one.

If I was more confident with manually setting up partitions I probably would have had a go.

I've now added an extra page to the site with some general observations and performance results (network file transfer speeds etc...) for anyone who's interested.

Thanks for the comments

Mick

Hi Mick. Great write-up on the website. Should be really useful for anyone starting from scratch. I particularly like the CC-tweaks.

Nice work.

Mick,

You might like to add the following extras to your bit about using vi.

1. If you mess up in the middle of vi'ing a file you can do :e! in command mode which will reset the file to the state before any edits (i.e. when you stared editing or the last save - :w).

2. You can save an exit at the same time :x!

3. Try running vimtutor from a prompt. It is a vi tutorial.

Benway

I'll add you useful comments the next time I edit the site.

Vimtutor doesn't appear to be installed with the standard ClarkConnect installation, so I'll skip that bit...

Thanks

Mick

Mick,

Just had a look at your site and it has inspired me to have a go at building a system just like it - I hope this is ok with you.

I have been thinking about putting another HDD into my existing machine but I do like the idea of a second quieter machine running Linux (not that I know much about it but hey, you have to start somewhere).

I am going to have a proper read of your site tomorrow while I am at work, gota have something to do, and I may even start to order the parts.

Thanks for the inspiration,

Graham

Benway

I'll add you useful comments the next time I edit the site.

Vimtutor doesn't appear to be installed with the standard ClarkConnect installation, so I'll skip that bit...

Thanks

Mick
Just use nano.

(much, much easier than vi!)

Hi,
First of all, thanks a lot for your great write-up, this is just what I was looking for.
I'm not quite clear about this bit, though:

If you plan to use SATA hard drives and want to spin them down when idle the current ClarkConnect kernel 2.6.9 doesn't support the 'hdparm' commands I used. You will have to find a Linux distribution that uses a kernel 2.6.15 or above (support even then is a bit patchy).
So with CC I can't spin the drive down? What exactly would I have to do about that? Ok, search for another Linux distribution, but what then? Probably very stupid question, but I'm afraid I really know squat about Linux so far ...

I'd originally tried it with a Samsung SATA drive but the Linux drivers in kernels prior to 2.6.15 don't support the hdparm -S command with SATA drives, see this link for more info:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problems_with_SATA_and_Linux

Not sure if theres any easy work round with clarkconnect without trying to update / patch the kernel - you'll have to get advice from someone that knows more about Linux than me...

I tried Fedora Core 6 which works fine with SATA drives, but I quite like the web interface of ClarkConnect, so I went back to an IDE drive.

I'd originally tried it with a Samsung SATA drive but the Linux drivers in kernels prior to 2.6.15 don't support the hdparm -S command with SATA drives, see this link for more info:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problems_with_SATA_and_Linux

Not sure if theres any easy work round with clarkconnect without trying to update / patch the kernel - you'll have to get advice from someone that knows more about Linux than me...

I tried Fedora Core 6 which works fine with SATA drives, but I quite like the web interface of ClarkConnect, so I went back to an IDE drive.
Ah, ok, I'd assumed you were talking about somehow patching up CC to support Sata spindown, but now I've once more reread your page to finally notice you're using an IDE drive...

Nice work, Mick.

Just to add to the pool of experience: I've been using the EPIA 5000 as my fanless server. It's the oldest, slowest (500MHz) and cheapest of the lot, but works fine with Slimserver, FLAC transcoding to WAV, running Samba file serving and CUPS printer sharing.

The OS is Gentoo Linux, which I recommend if your a tweaker who's happy with the command line and wants to learn a bit more about Linux. Otherwise, I would say "avoid" because it can get frustratingly fiddly at times. Having said that, it's Linux so once it is up it stays up. If you go with a distro that relies on a GUI, then you'd probably want a more powerful board.

I'm using two 3.5" Samsung IDE drives and noise hasn't been an issue, probably because it's sitting next to my PC. I remember trying to find out why the boot disk wouldn't stay spun down. I don't think it is so much to do with journeling as much as stuff like logging, etc. I tried Google and turning all non-essential processes off in an attempt to track down the cause, but ultimately gave up. I would recommend Mick's approach using a 2.5" disk, since they are now fast, cheap(er), quiet and use less power. If you are really brave, you could even try a flash memory disk!

Patrick

I have been running Slimserver on Clarkconnect 3.2 for some time and its been really stable. One thing I wanted to try was alienbbc but I didnt as I was worried I might knacker the whole OS. Anyhow while looking through the great write up I saw how easy it was so thought what the heck and followed the instructions.

I now have alienbbc running :) Took ages to compile mplayer but I only have a 600Mhz.

So thanks again for a great write up.

Thanks Mick you have inspired me to build my own Mini Atx. One question which I have googled without much success, is how do I play I-tunes files? I notice that SS does not play them without I-tunes installed, How have you got round this?
Cheers Chris

I don't use iTunes, but I'm assuming the iTune library has to be on the same computer as the iTunes software(?)

If not the SlimServer settings appear to allow you to point to the location of the iTunes library when iTunes isn't on the same computer as SlimServer - see: Home / Server Settings / iTunes

A posting on the ClarkConnect forum seems to suggest getting a iTunes server to work under ClarkConnect is possible (but it does sound a bit complicated, see:

http://www.clarkconnect.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=88859&an=0&page=0#Post88859

Hope that helps a bit...

Mick

...how do I play I-tunes files?...

If you install mplayer you'll be able to play aac files (not those purchased from the itunes store though) and as a bonus you'll also be halfway towards getting AlienBBC to work. Search for the thread on installing AlienBBC on ClarkConnect which includes the instructions for installing mplayer.

Thanks Mick, just what I was looking for. Pretty much followed your spec. and I'm building it at the moment.

A mistake I made was not buying low profile memory, so the media tray no longer fits. I'm checking with the memory supplier to find out if I can exchange otherwise I might have to take a hack saw to the media tray to get it in :(

One question, I don't seem to have a cable to attach the 2.5" disk to the motherboard, any ideas what I should be looking for?

David

Thanks Mick, just what I was looking for. Pretty much followed your spec. and I'm building it at the moment.

A mistake I made was not buying low profile memory, so the media tray no longer fits. I'm checking with the memory supplier to find out if I can exchange otherwise I might have to take a hack saw to the media tray to get it in :(

One question, I don't seem to have a cable to attach the 2.5" disk to the motherboard, any ideas what I should be looking for?

David

Hi,
I think something like this maybe the converter thing you are after.
http://www.datapro.net/products/1920.html

This thread has also got me got me thinking about having a crack at low power server.
Doug.

I must have been lucky with my standard RAM as it fitted fine under the tray (not much head room but it cleared ok)

For the 2.5" drive I used a cable similar to this one:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=28724

A quick tip on plugging the cable on to the 2.5" drive (as you could plug the cable in both ways on the one I got) - The No.1 pin (red stripe on cable) goes towards the cable select jumpers - see build photos on my site.

Mick

I've built a very similar machine (allright, nearly identical - same board and case, but only 512 MB Ram, 40 GB Hitachi & 400 GB Samsung HDDs) and just finished setting it up. Wasn't quite sure what I was doing at some points, but thanks to your instructions I've sailed through without a hitch. The thing is very quiet and performance is excellent, no perceptible difference to the big PC from either the SB or the web interface. This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much!

Hi Mick,
Thanks so much for the instructions on your website. I had CC4.0 and SlimServer 6.5 up and running without a hitch on a 60GB IDE hard drive. However, I have this problem and hopefully you and other Linux experts here have the answer. I have another 400GB Seagate IDE hard drive (formatted in NTFS filesystem) with FLAC files and would like to add to the system. Does CC4.0 support NTFS filesystem? If so, how do I install an additional hard disk with NTFS filesystem?

Thanks in advance,

Hi Mick,
Thanks so much for the instructions on your website. I had CC4.0 and SlimServer 6.5 up and running without a hitch on a 60GB IDE hard drive. However, I have this problem and hopefully you and other Linux experts here have the answer. I have another 400GB Seagate IDE hard drive (formatted in NTFS filesystem) with FLAC files and would like to add to the system. Does CC4.0 support NTFS filesystem? If so, how do I install an additional hard disk with NTFS filesystem?

Thanks in advance,
No clue, but perhaps you'll find something here:
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/

I tried to install ntfs capability on CC3.2 but without success. ClarkConnect forum may help, have a look at: http://www.clarkconnect.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=samba&Number=87101&Searchpage=1&Main=87101&Words=ntfs&topic=&Search=true#Post87101

Not very hopeful. I reformatted my drives to FAT in the end for compatibility with winXP.

If you succeed post your results

After a quick search for NTFS on the ClarkConnect forum it looks like C-C doesn't support NTFS without a patch to the kernel.

The linked site above gives you the info on where to download the .rpm to do this, but the forums suggest it might mess up some of the firewall stuff in C-C.

Could you backup the drive and re-format?

Or if you're feeling brave Partition Magic allows you to convert between filesystems. I've used it to convert between NTFS and FAT32 without issue.

However you REALLY should backup before trying something like this.

A question for mick and those others having built a mini-server similar to his: Does anyone of you have some experience with the perfomance on browsing the web interface including album artwork?

I'm thinking about replacing my Linkstation with a "real" server-PC. Quietness is not such a big issue as it might very well be located in the basement but power consumption is of course always an issue therefore your solution looks very attractive. It's just that it should deliver performance for browsing by album artwork without having to wait 5-10 seconds for each page (e.g. in the Artist-Year-Album view) to load in the browser.

Thanks for any info on that in advance! Cheers,
Sebastian

Having used the linkstation for the past year I can say with some authority that the SlimServer web interface is far quicker on the mini-itx server. PeterR has commented that he couldn't discern any difference between his new server and his main PC.

Artwork is a different story - I haven't any experience using artwork on the linkstation, but I thought I'd investigate how fast it was on the server...

For reference I'm using the default 50 items per page and the new release of SlimServer 6.5.1. My Artwork is far from optimised, most either 300x300 or 500x500 jpegs.

The first time I browsed a page of artwork, it took about 10 seconds to populate, this continued as I scrolled through each of the subsequent 50 album pages. When I then went back to the first page they appeared almost simultaneously, so I assumed they had been cached by the browser (Firefox 2.0).

I cleared the browser cache and re-started a new browser - the artwork appeared straight away, so I fired up IE6 and browsed artwork, and again instantaneous artwork.

I can only conclude the artwork must be cached in memory by the server after the first viewing, and then sent from memory for subsequent views. (I can confirm this must be true as the hard drive containing my music directory remained spun-down when I used IE6 to browse artwork in SlimServer).

This behaviour is very fast (as long as you don't mind waiting for it to cache the artwork on first viewing).

I'm not sure if this is normal behaviour (for all platforms) or specific to this version of Linux.

How long the artwork stays in cache I'm not sure (I'd assume until the system is either re-booted or something more important overwrites it...)

Hopefully one of the other users might be able to comment on the performance of artwork on their server compared to a fast PC.

Mick

I have a power question here (for the author of this thread)...

You have chosen 90W PSU, while there was 60W also on the shelf (as I can see on Travla www).
3,5" HDD draws some 27W, via-epia mobo will live with some 20W, that still leaves 13W for 2,5" HDD. Wouldn't 60W be enough, or you just wanted to have some safety margin? While now using simple solution (see below) I am still collecting info about totaly fanless mini-ITX solutions.

I was almost ordering some via-epia stuff, when I found a 2nd hand Compaq D510U - P4 2000 low-voltage, no fan on CPU, slim design, just one pretty quiet fan on the PSU. Without hard drive it costed exactly thesame as the case for your mini :-)
However I don't require it to be totaly silent, which was your priority. In my case the desire for the mini-ITX solution would be primarily power consumption, hence the original question on PSU.

BTW if you really think about something more silent, why not go for two 2,5" (to get some decent storage), and run the system (some other than CC) from flash card?

Szymon

I am not using CC but Windows 2003 server. I have a power meter connected between the wall socket and transformer plug. My MoBo is a VIA EN 15000 with a Matrox Millenium 80GB SATAII disk. POwer consumption is fairly static at 27W. I have disabled a couple of fans in the Travla case and monitor key temperatures with Speedfan

My choice of the 90W case was due to the 60W being out of stock...

But since then, I have read that some 3.5" drives require quite a bit more power on start up than the idle / seek average power consumption indicates (but I'm sure the 60W would still be fine)

It appears the only difference with the Travla C158 60W and 90W cases is a different external 'brick' power supply (I could be wrong), the 90W is capable of delivering up to 4.74A and 60W supplies up to 3.16A; I'd doubt they would use a different internal DC to DC converter for the two options.

I looked into booting from compact flash, and as far as I could understand you have to:

1. Install Linux to a hard drive (with out the swap partition)
2. Configure the system and install all the software you need (SlimServer etc...)
3. Mount the Flash Card as a drive
4. Copy a boot loader to flash
5. Copy over the Linux Kernel
6. Make a file system image, adjust it a bit, compress it and copy it over to flash
7. Shut down and replace the hard drive with the flash drive and you should be running silently from flash.

See here for more information:
http://silent.gumph.org/content/4/1/011-linux-on-cf.html

The thing that put me off was every time you want to change something, update software or adjust a setting you have to re-install the hard drive to apply the changes and then re-build a new image on the flash drive.

I might give it a go as a little project, I do like ClarkConnect (but first I've got to find if it's possible to install it without a swap partition), otherwise I'd have to find another Linux distribution.


I Like the idea of replacing my noisy 320GB 3.5" drive with a pair of quite / low power 160GB 2.5" units. I found this nice mounting kit:

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=12#mounts

But at £92 (UK pounds) each for the 2.5" drives, its a very expensive option. As the 3.5" drive only spins up when it's needed, I think I can put up with the compromise.

Mick

After a quick search for NTFS on the ClarkConnect forum it looks like C-C doesn't support NTFS without a patch to the kernel.

The linked site above gives you the info on where to download the .rpm to do this, but the forums suggest it might mess up some of the firewall stuff in C-C.

Could you backup the drive and re-format?

After searching through the CC forums, I couldn't find any helpful info on how to rebuild the kernel to support NTFS so I gave up pursuing this method. I'm going to back up the drive into DVDs, reformat the drive and then copy the music back into the drive. It's definitely a time consuming process.

Mick, thanks for your hard work, I may try working through this process myself.

However, one question for you and something which may be of added benefit to your site, how much did the project cost?

I'm new to SB and SS, I am looking for a NAS, I'm not sure whether to jump in on building a NAS (i built my own pc) or go for a QNAP and "put up" with SS 6.3 for a while due to cost?

I assume your build can be modded for other NAS applications, print server etc via CC?

Thoughts?

Mick,

A big thanks for the guide – I can honestly say I would have either thrown the server out the window or bought of the shelf and loaded XP if it wasn’t your guidance. The Linux tips are a big plus as well.

@Russ: As long as you’ve been inside a PC before, you shouldn’t have too many problems. The mini-ITX’s are a little fiddly though. Cost was about £400 (UK) + Squeezebox. (Mine has still not arrived from Amazon after 6 weeks (!) but I did order the ‘all-black’).

Haven’t looked to much at what CC can do, although browsing their forum; print serving, firewall, mail and webserver etc are all covered.

Warren

Russ

(All that follows is probably only relevant to the UK, I've no idea of PC component prices elsewhere...)

You could in theory put together a brand new system based on standard PC components for about £125 thus:

Case with 350w PSU - £27
Sempron 2600 CPU - £23
Motherboard ECS NF3 Skt754 - £26
256MB DDR400 RAM - £15
250GB Hard Drive - £42

All prices from www.aria.co.uk

This would give a system that is about the same price as a NAS box but would be far easier to install SlimServer (and more capable of running it), it would also have the added benefit of all the ClarkConnect extras (e.g. web / mail / print /FTP server etc...).

But the cost of Mini-ITX components are quite a bit more expensive, my systems was:

Case Travla C158 with 90W PSU* - £93
Motherboard & CPU - VIA EPIA CN10000G* - £116
RAM - 1GB Corsair Value Select DDR2-533 - £65
System Hard Drive - 2.5" Fujitsu 60Gb - £45
Storage Hard Drive - 3.5" Maxtor 320GB - £56

*from www.mini-itx.com/store/

Which works out about £375 plus delivery.

I was particularly after a quiet system, which made me discount the standard PC option with its case, PSU and CPU fans.

The use of the 2.5" hard drive isn't essential (as it's only used to keep the noise to a minimum). I could have also saved a bit more money with the a lower spec motherboard and RAM...

Probably the cheapest you could put together a Mini-ITX system would be about £260 for a single drive 250GB unit (about double the price of a similar 'standard PC' based system) - it all depends on your priorities.

As a previous LinkStation user, I'm a big fan of the small NAS box, but it just wasn't up to running SlimServer 6.5.1 (it was also a bit slow navigating with the remote too). - If moneys tight, I'd go for the PC system detailed at the top of this post - it's not much more expensive than a 5 year old 2nd hand PC!!

Mick

Can I just ask, why mini-itx and not a barebones system?

I assume because of redundancy, noise and power consumption issues?

Yeah, I looked at barebone systems, they look quite attractive...

They work out probably very slightly cheaper than the Mini-ITX option (starting from about £100 for the case / MB combination), but I preferred the fully fan-less option of the Mini-ITX.

Unless your obsessed with noise and low power consumption (like me), the small barebone systems look like a nice elegant solution.

Mick

Mick, the only other question I have for you is about cooling.

Does the cae you use come supplied with a fan?

I am worried without at least one fan that the cooling won't be adequate, yet I don't want a noisy box.

Any suggestions? Perhaps using a cooler on the 3.5 IDE harddisk, but I'm not sure the disk would then fit?

Russ

The case I used had a single 40mm fan mounted in the floor, but I've never needed to connect it. (It should be noted that the Travla C158 case does have lots of ventilation as standard)

The 2.5" drives don't get warm when in use, but the 3.5" drives do (quite warm to the touch, but not 'hot').

By far the hottest thing in my build is the Mini-ITX fan-less motherboard, as it relies on a heat sink and passive air convection to remove the heat, so it gets quite warm to the touch.

I had a play to see if it gets any hotter when closed up in the case compared to just sitting on a bench, and I couldn't tell the difference after several hours of use.

The Via BIOS doesn't give access to CPU temperatures, I can only assume this is because they don't want people to get alarmed at the higher than normal figures it might report - who knows.

Mick

Mick,

I have another question.....

I'm looking at the memory situation now. Is the memory you used "standard" or low profile?

The reason I ask is because crucial want £56 for 1gb, Mini-itx say the low profile is nearer £80 and the ultra low profile over £100. That is quite a difference, could I get away with using standard, or is the case not big enough? I'm wondering if what crucial sell and the low profile is any different? Are there really three sizes?

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=7AC29BC7A5CA7304

thanks again.

Russ

I've just added an extra photo to the website showing the RAM installed (look at the 'Hardware' page).

I got away with full height RAM (~30mm), but if the motherboard memory slot was slightly more to the rear of the board, I'd have required the low profile type (less than 23mm high).

I believe another poster had this problem - Not sure which motherboard he was using though...

Mick

Thanks again Mick,

I was going to go for the Jetway 1.2ghz fanless mobo, however, clearly I cannot judge if that gives enough clearance as the Epia for "standard" RAM to fit, so rather than getting that little bit more processor power but ending up spending another £50 on RAM, I think I will stick to your setup, at least I know the components will fit!

That is unless someone has fitted the Jetway J7F2 1.2GHz Fanless board in the travla C158 case and been able to fit standard RAM? Long shot in asking, I know!

I could try asking the guys over at mini-itx?

Cheers,

ask the guys at mini-itx.com - they are quick to reply and will help with this!

I have just finished building a Mini-ITX, using the Jetway 1.2Ghz board. I used standard RAM ordered from Crucial with no problems. The case I am using is the Noah Case from LinITX.com. The case is higher than the one pictured on Mick's site, but the CD drive and hard drive take up a lot of that height.

As an aside, the Jetway gives you access to the CPU temperature in the BIOS, with it typically running at 50 deg.

Hope that helps.

Just for info, the guys at mini-itx have told me the jetway can use standard RAM in the c158 case!

I've just built a small machine but using standard micro ATX form.

The only problem i have is a noisy HDD. The Zalman processor cooler runs very slowly and the core runs cool. Similarly the ATX power supply.

I've wrapped the HDD in foam which reduces the HDD noise and now I am very happy. I can also use better graphics cards and TV capture cards or a better sound card.

I have one more question on cooling.

I was looking for a hdd heatsink, again not sure something like the zalman will fit though?

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/harddrivesolutions/zm-2hc2

Also, is it worth using a heatsink on the RAM?

I noticed one of the requirements was to get it to come on at a set time in the morning. Did you get it to do this?

Russ

I don't think RAM heat spreaders actually do anything (except look nice) especially as your probably not looking at over-clocking your RAM. The Hard Drive heat sink would require a 5.1/4" drive bay, so you need to look at bigger cases - the hard drives don't get too hot anyway...

DMCE

Yeah I used the motherboard BIOS to automatically switch the box on in the morning, I'm not sure if all motherboards support this, but the VIA EPIA CN10000 does.

Mick

Thank you Mick, for making this Mini-itx tutorial. I've got it bookmarked!
I will pretty much build the same kinda system. Via ML6000EAG, 512MB DDR, 30GB or 40GB laptop disk and the Travla C158-60W. Your tutorial will come in handy. I might work with an external USB harddisk for music data.
---
Did you choose for the Fujitsu harddisk for any particular reason? Quietness/Power consumption?
---
How did you connect the laptop drive to the IDE on the motherboard? Do you have to buy a seperate convertor for this or does it come with the case/board? - forget it, sorry, saw the answer in this thread
---
quote:
"note the 2.5" laptop drive attached to the removable CD-ROM tray (there where mounting holes provided but no mention in the supplied info that this was possible)"

Theses holes, are they on the drive or the bay where the drive fits in? You didn't install a CD/DVD-ROM drive did you? Did you connect one temporarly just for the CC installation?

slimmert

I connected a spare CD-ROM for the initial C-C install, as you point out, fitting the 2.5" onto the media tray prevents installing a permanent optical drive.

The holes are already in the media tray and line up with the standard threaded holes in the underside of a 2.5" drive.

I chose the 2.5" Fujitsu (and the 3.5" Maxtor) purely on availability from my local shop. If I had the choice I would have used a Samsung Spinpoint 3.5" drive (rather than the Maxtor) as they are quieter. (It seems all 2.5" drives are very quiet, so just get the cheepest...)

Mick

Hi all

Excellent guide mick_w - many thanks.

I've built up a similar unit using the Jetway J7F2 1.5GHz and the Travla C158 60w case. After installing CC on the 2.5 I disconnected the cd drive and tidied up the cables. Now the BIOS is refusing to recognise the 2.5 drive. Am using a maplins 2.5 ide adapter, I must admit the adapter connection going into the drive is not very tight. Got a 3.5 on order to store my music but might end up using the 3.5 for the o/s and music if I can't sort this out. Any ideas !?

808

I have the J7F2 board 12 watt and had similar fun and games with PATA 2.5 drive, I gave up and got an SATA drive and had more no problems and a bonus, neater cables.
Still use PATA 3.5 drive formatted EXT2 to allow the OS to shudown drive to save power.

Doug.

thanks for the info - do you think I'll have any problems with Clark Connect using a SATA drive ?

I didn't have any problems as CC4 seems to have all the VIA drivers on the install disk.
Doug.

ok will give it a go, thanks !!

Hi All

I am about to rebuild my slimserver from scratch using CC4 previously I was using cc3.2. As the motherboard died and I have all the music backed up I thought I would start from scratch so will be using this guide :)

Now the only thing is I am a bit confused regarding MySQL. Does slimserver 6.5 install mysql or should I install the mysql that comes with CC. I want to install Joomla as well as slimserver which requires mysql. So do you think I should install CC then mysql and then slimserver. Or just do CC followed by slimserver. Which would give me a mysql that could be used by other apps?

Ok I think I found the answer in the wiki. Sorry I should of looked there first

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?ExistingMySQLInstance

So I will install CC then mysql and lastly slimserver

I built one of these mini-itx machines according to mick_w's original specs and it worked flawlessly. It's running fedora core 6, Slimserver 7 (trunk) and has a seagate 750gig sata drive in it. It looks like this will be the perfect host for my 2500+ cd flac library.

So, I built a 2nd machine, only this time, I thought I would go with the 60 watt version of the case. Big mistake. The cases are actually different! The 60 watt version won't work with the 90 watt power adapter and the 60 watt case won't power up the system with the 750gig HD attached. But with a 200gig Samsung drive, it works fine.

So...I've got this 60 watt system for sale here if anyone in the US wants it. Specs:

Case: Travla C158 Black
One PCI Expansion slot mini-ITX case with 60W PS.
Single PCI riser card included.

Mobo: VIA EPIA-CN10000EG 1.0GHz VIA C7 nanoBGA2 Embedded Processor VIA CN700 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU

Memory: CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Desktop Memory Model VS1GB533D2

OS hard disk: HITACHI Travelstar 4K40 HTS424020M9AT00 (0A25592) 20GB 4200 RPM ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

Media hard disk: Samsung Spinpoint SP2004C 200GB/7200rpm/8M SATA

Installed OS: Fedora Core 6, updated as of 4/4. Gnome GUI installed, but defaults to boot "headlessly". Samba installed, configured to share the "media" hd. Separate instance of MySQL installed. Developement tools and libraries installed. Slimserver 7 (4/4/07) installed.

PM me if you are interested in buying this machine. The parts minus the media hd ran me $365. $300 gets you this machine and I'll throw in shipping and the 200 gig Samsung HD.

Any takers?

Will the hardware in the original mini-itx sever post work with windows xp? I plan to use slimserver for audio and windows media player for video to stream to a pioneer elite plasma. Any ideas on a simmilar device that will fullfill my requirements?

Thanks.
Brian

Will the hardware in the original mini-itx sever post work with windows xp?

I just saw a (positive) reference in a sailing magazine, of all places, to a windows xp home installation on hardware very similar to this. But I don't have any direct experience with running XP on this hardware.

I want to build a mini-itx xp server like this http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1638841,00.asp but fanless and dual hd like the one mentioned in the original post using the VIA EPIA-CN10000EG motherboard.

Thanks for your help.
Brian.

Problem: connecting LinkStation to the small ITX server

First: you have put together a very nice tutorial. I'm a total linux novice and I followed your explanation to the letter (almost) and have now a box running CC and slimserver.

I built the ITX server only to run SlimServer (so I only have a 2.5 HDD with CC and slimserver running) and I wanted to stream the music files from an older Buffalo Linkstation to the SlimDevice via the ITX server instead of installing a second HDD for the music files.

1. is it possible to do this?
2. and if yes how do I need to proceed to tell slimserver from where to get the files?

Can someone point me into the right direction - I've been browsing the Net for hours without any success.

Thanks

You'll need to install a samba client, which CC doesn't have by default IIRC.

The samba server allows other machines to connect to the CC shares, a samba client allows CC to connect to shares on other machines.

You'll need to install a samba client, which CC doesn't have by default IIRC.

The samba server allows other machines to connect to the CC shares, a samba client allows CC to connect to shares on other machines.

Thanks Patrick,

OK. To be honnest I have no clue about linux and I'm doing things without knowing what I'm doing. I have installed a samba client using the following code:
apt-get update
apt-get clean
apt-get install samba-client

(there is also a tool called 'flexshare' which I have installed using the CC web interface-although I don't know if that is of any use for my problem).

Now I need to mount the folder on the NAS where my music is stored (well I think this is what I need to do). I found a thread that gives the receipe: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28638&page=2

The code for this was:
mkdir /mnt/nas (call it what u like)
mount -t smbfs -o guest,rw //192.168.x.x(your NAS IP)/urnetdrivename /mnt/nas

where in my case'nas'=folder on the nas where the music is stored ='Music' (I suppose).
I don't know if 'urnetdrivename' is a code or if I need to replace this by something else...
Anyway: I get an error message 6246: tree connect failed: ERRDOS - ERRnosuchshare
SMB connection failed.

SO I have a vague idea what this means but I don't know what to do about it. HELP!

I haven't used a samba client for a while, but what you need to do is to mount the directory on the NAS with the music in it, on the CC machine. Then you point SS at the mount point on the CC machine. I'm not sure if this is what you've tried.

So assuming your mount command is right (and it looks OK to me), 'urnetdrivename' is probably the share name on the NAS, and '/mnt/nas' is the mount point (that mkdir /mnt/nas just created) where the NAS directory will get mounted on the CC box. You then point the SS music folder to /mnt/nas (or make a softlink to it within the current music directory)

I've added an extra page to the website with a guide on how to get this working.

http://freespace.virgin.net/mick.webb/pages/nas.htm

I'd been struggling with this too for some time - Thanks Patrick for the info on Samba Client

If your:

LinkStation shared folder name (where you store your music) is called - media
(login to the LinkStation settings to check what yours is called)

LinkStation IP address is - 198.168.0.10

and you have created a directory on the Mini-ITX server called - /mnt/nas
(that's what the mkdir command did)


Then the command becomes:

mount -t smbfs -o guest,rw //192.168.0.10/media /mnt/nas

(obviously change the command to suit your actual shared folder name and IP Address)


As Patrick says, once you have the LinkStation 'mounted' then you point SlimServer to the directory on the NAS share via the new mount point. If your directory's on the NAS 'media' share are called 'Music' and 'Playlists', then you give SlimServer the following addresses

/mnt/nas/Music (for your music location)
/mnt/nas/Playlists (for your play list location)

Hope that helps a bit

Mick.

The only other thing to add, is that if you want the NAS share to be remounted on every re-boot of the CC machine, you need to add the mount details to /etc/fstab.

Otherwise it will disappear when you reboot, and you will have to re-run the mount command again.

Hi Mick and Patrick,
I had given up on the idea of connecting the Buffalo Linkstation and actually installed a spare HDD into the black box when DADA I saw the new page on your website. Does it work... well yes and no.

Mounting the NAS share temporarily worked perfectly. Then I modified the /etc/fstab file as instructed and rebooted without success.
The black box now hangs during reboot at 'mounting SMB filesystems' step. Upon hitting RETURN (I had to reattach a keyboard and screen), the system tells me the SMB conection failed (or something like that) and the boot process completes. I had a little bit of a panick when I couldn't log into the server with the browser, putty or WinSPC but after another reboot I could (mystery). Anyway, I deleted the additional entry which was as per your tutorial:
//192.168.1.102/share /mnt/NAS smbfs defaults 0 0
(where 192.168.1.102 is the IP for the buffalo and share the name of the share (this seems a default on the linkstation and worked when mounting temporarily).

Could the reason be that I left in the entry in the fstab file to mount the share on the 3.5 HDD? Or is there a syntax error (given may null knowledge in linux I wouldn't know). Any idea how to resolve the problem?

Thanks

Komikada

Have you tried replacing 'defaults' with 'guest,rw' ?

Have you tried replacing 'defaults' with 'guest,rw' ?

Yes, and that works! So the instruction is:
//xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/share_name /mnt/NAS smbfs guest,rw 0 0
Mick, you may want to update your tutorial.

By the way, linux is kind of fun. I wish I understood more about what I'm doing. Do you have any suggestion of a good book?

Thanks for all the help.

Sorry about the miss-direction, the fstab line was the only thing I didn't try for myself...

I'll update the instructions on the site

Thanks again Patrick


Mick

My new server components will arrive somewhere this week. It's based on the same exact Epia board Mick used on his setup. Rest of the specs are: 512MB DDR2 memory, Travla C158 Mini-ITX Case with 60 Watt PSU, 60GB 5400 rpm laptop drive for Clarkconnect and Slimserver.

I haven't ordered a 400 or 500GB 3.5" harddrive yet because I'm not sure what to buy.

Do I understand correctly, does Clarkconnect not support hdparm or other energy consuming tricks on SATA drives? Is that still the case with CC 4.1? If so, is there an easy patch for a Linux novice like me?

I rather go for a SATA drive, there's more choice and at a better price (Samsung SpinPoint T166 less than 90€). Also wiring is much easier/cleaner.

I've successfully got slimserver up and running on an Epia (600 MHz) after following your instructions (I was essentially updating a previous installation on this machine from scratch). I had a couple of problems due to my setup which I think may be useful to note here:

1. AlienBBC & Slimp3 (getting on a bit now!)

You need to have Lame installed to produce mp3 streams from the AlienBBC rtsp feed


2. NSLU2 as remote NAS

The default drive name contains a space i.e.'Disk 1'

This needs the drive path enclosed in quotes for use with the mount command e.g. mount -t smbfs -o guest,rw "//192.168.0.77/DISK 1" /mnt/NAS

Without quotes this gives the error message ERRDOS - ERRnosuchshare (You specified an invalid share name)

In fstab a different approach is needed - the space is replaced by \040

for the example above:

//192.168.0.77/DISK\0401 /mnt/NAS smbfs guest,rw 0 0

Without \040 using fstab gets message that the line in fstab is bad

I recently bought a E-nano 8253 board (www.iei-world.com.tw) - around 300 CHF with a celeron M processor. It is passive cooled; runs SODIMM ram; and is smaller than the mini-itx form factor. it does have network and IDE support... and a VGA output.

I dont have much time to play with it at the moment - but it should be powerful enough for most applications... ;-) The small size is really good though. And once it is working nicely I will post some pictures.

Hello

I am running CC for about 2 hours and its memory usage is at 91% is this normal? I only use it for Slimserver with Samba.

Christian

I am running CC for about 2 hours and its memory usage is at 91% is this normal? I only use it for Slimserver with Samba.


Yes IIRC. CC is designed to maximise RAM usage and minimise swapping, to give best performance.

I have 512MB installed and CC is using 251.59MB at the moment. That's a near 50%. It probably relies on the amount of services it's running.

Yes may be - does anybody know which min. services have to run for use with slimserver, samba maybe console access via web?

Christian

Just the basic CC is enough, you don't need to install anything extra but SlimServer. If you want to have a share for use with another (Windows ) PC you need Samba.
The 50% memory use is with core and the next following services running:
MySQL Database
Samba/Windows Networking
Web Server

and ofcourse SlimServer

I have 8 services under Core Services running. I am not shure to shutdown some...

Logging Service / Secure Shell / System Scheduler/Cron / System Watch / User Authentication / User Database/LDAP / User Database/Synchronize / Web Service

Christian

As Pat says, this is normal behaviour, I wouldn't shut down any of those services.

To Demonstrate what's happening:

If you check you Physical Memory usage after a reboot you will notice that it is using about 220Mb (out of the 1Gb).

Then go in to SlimServer and browse through all your albums using artwork (you will notice this will be a bit slow as its fetching all the data from the hard drive) and play some tunes via the SqueezeBox.

You will notice your Physical Memory usage has increased.

All recently used files are stored (cached) in RAM to speed up the system, therefore it is quite normal to see your Physical Memory usage near maximum.

If you replay the same songs and browse album artwork again it retrieves the data from RAM rather than the hard drive (I notice this on my system as the hard drive only spins up when required).

Mick

I have just finished building my own black box following Mick's instructions. It was really easy and it's a fantstic site.Oh, and I am really pleased with my black box! Thanks again Mick!

For anyone that's built a similar system using a 2.5" laptop hard drive for the main operating system, I've added a useful tweak that you might be interested in to the website, see:

http://www.ulverston.myzen.co.uk/mini-itx/pages/tuning.htm#Stop%20Hard%20Drive%20Clicking

I noticed on my system that the 2.5" drive regularly made a click shortly after it had wrote data (which is quite often with the Linux ext3 file system).

After some digging I found that this is due to the Advanced Power Management (APM) option on some laptop drives aggressively unloading the read/write heads shortly after the drive becomes idle (probably to save power and prevent drive damage in the portable environment that they were originally designed for).

Note - most drives only quote a life of 600,000 load/unloads cycles for the read/write heads - the ext3 file system used by Linux will achieve that very quickly (if the heads are unloaded after every disk access) due to it's journalling nature.

A simple line of code added to the "/etc/rc.d/rc.local" file will turn off APM, stopping the clicking and most probably improve the life of the drive.

Mick

I always heard the clicking noise but never thought about it. I did the "trick" and no more click. Great, thanks!

Please pardon me if this has been covered [the forum search does not seem to be working right now].

I have built a similar box and it has been working. Now I can't get slimserver to run for more than about 30 seconds. I keep restarting it in puTTY [service slimserver start]. It gives me the OK and checking the status says running. But when I go back to making my playlist in Moose or SlimFX the service stops after about 30 seconds - oddly it does not interupt playing the current song (I don't know if it would have stopped after the song). None of this happens if I don't use Moose or SlimFX. The regular slimserver interface works fine.

Any ideas would be helpful.

Thanks

This is a known problem with Perl 5.8.5 (which is included in Clark Connect)...

You have to compile a new version based on 5.8.8 to get the CLI type plugins (SlimFX & Moose) to work properly. There's instructions on the website:

http://www.ulverston.myzen.co.uk/min...pages/perl.htm

But be warned it does cause some of the other processes not to run (System Watch and User Database/Synchonize) - this doesn't seem to be a problem though if you you are only running it for SlimServer and Samba server.

If you follow the instructions it doesn't overwrite the existing Perl installation, so if you want to go back to using the old 5.8.5 (because you find it brakes too much stuff), all you have to do in PuTTY is:

rm /usr/bin/perl

(to remove the link you created to the new perl 5.8.8)

mv /usr/bin/perl-old /usr/bin/perl

(to rename the old version of perl 5.8.5 so it is picked up by the system again)

Hope that helps

Mick

I've upgraded my CC system with a SATA connected laptop drive mainly to get less IDE cable mess in the little Travla case. My purpose was to use this new small drive (40gb) as a system drive. My other 80gb laptop IDE drive, who served as system drive before, should be the data drive.

It wasn't too hard, a few hickups, I followed Mick's manual again.
- After setting my BIOS to use IDE instead of Raid the drive was recognized correctly.

- Installation of CC went smooth. I expected the new SATA drive to be "hde" or maybe "hdf" or someting, I was wrong, it is recognized as "sda" location.

- After installation I connected the IDE laptop drive (previous CC system) but at first boot it took this drive for booting CC. I had to change BIOS settings' boot order.

- Booting from SATA drive got errors saying that "hda" (the data drive) had read-write permission errors.
I had to boot from the IDE drive again (with old CC system) to chmod recursively the whole drive. After that, reboot was ok, no errors.

- I only had to re-partition and format (after backing up data) the IDE drive with ext2 format and I was ready to.

Following the steps in the manual was kind of confusing now and then because of "sda" and "hda" usage. Maybe it's a good idea to say something about SATA drives too in the manual. Using SATA as the system drive doesn't hurt and it makes these ITX cases a lot more tidy.

Only one thing I have to now is to lift the system sata drive a bit up from the cdrom tray because the drive's power connector is a stressed by having not enough room. Are there spacers available (like those used for motherboard mounting) you can use to lift the drive up?

That does it Mick. Guess I missed it, hmmm...

Thank you
Vic

After only owning an SB3 for a few weeks I stumbled across the guide here to building a mini-itx system, I just wanted to say thanks to mick_w as it has helped me build my own ITX system which is now up and running.

I went with the same case (in 60w) and motherboard as the original poster however instead of clarkconnect and a 2.5" drive I decided to go with a CF disk on module IDE drive and have installed freeNAS with the slimNAS software.

Hardware installation took about an hour, and the setup of freeNas and slimNas and AlienBBC took about another hour on top. All in all was very easy with the help of information from this site, only issue I came up against was that I did have to connect the IDE flash module to its own power supply seems that the CN10000EG board will not power it through IDE, but once I realised this installation problem free.

I did also remove the front panel USB & Audio header leads and the floppy drive power leads from the power loom as I do not need them and it reduces clutter and should hopefully free up more air movement in the case.

Currently I am using a 36gb WD Raptor as I had a spare with nothing to do, I will however replace this with a 500gb WD once I get around to ripping my CD's to flac rather than MP3.

The slimserver web interface runs as fast on freeNas as it did on my windows server and using the SB3 with the remote is fast and flawless.

Things seem fairly hot in the box the disk runs at about 45degC when in use dropping to 30degC when freeNas spins it down during periods of inactivity and although I can't measure the cpu temp the heat sink is fairly hot to the touch. I hope that once I replace the disk with a 7,200rpm rather than the 10,000rpm raptor that disk temps will drop.

Question for mick_w, did you connect the case fan in the end? the system is silent without it, but as I am still unsure of the temps i have connected the supplied case fan to move a little air, problem is for its size it makes a horrible noise, do I really need to use it?

Still trying to figure out how to auto shutdown/startup the system with freeNas, but I'm sure I will be able to find a way to schedule a command to do this.

Again many thanks for this helpful thread.

Mark