Stryker’s Meanderings

As it stands my media needs are served by two servers, one Ubuntu 10.x and one XP. I use “Xbox Media Centre” (XBMC) for my media needs on diskless clients.   All my TV tuning and scheduled recording needs are fulfilled by “For The Record” (FTR).

Ubuntu Box (netcentral).

Hardware:

• Atom 1.6Ghz
• 2GB RAM
• 1 * 500GB for O/S, greyhole landing zone, and non-RAID storage
• 4 * 2TB for RAID
• 1 * 1TB for recorded TV

Duties:

• Storage
• BootP server
• DHCP, DNS, NTP, VPN

Storage.

The storage is handled using a combination of Greyhole and SAMBA.

Greyhole. http://www.greyhole.net/

I have four 2TB and one 1TB disks.  Greyhole is given a folder to use on each.  You then define the shares you intend to present using samba.  Samba simply places all files for the shares in a “landing zone” on the server and greyhole then moves those files to an appropriate hard disk (usually the one with the most free space) and replaces the original file in the landing zone with a symlink, simples.  Grey hole also handles replication of files across the disks for stuff I really don’t want to loose such as my music.

BootP server.

I saw no reason for my dedicated media PCs to have their own disk drives, plus its a big advantage to have only one media PC setup and distribution to look after so diskless clients was the way to go.

A rather generous and gifted user on the XBMC forums is maintaining a package which will install all the server side software and configs you need on an Ubuntu server to serve up diskless images for XBMC media PCs. The only real requirment of the media PCs is that they are 64bit based and have Nvidia or ION graphics chipsets. The boot image is hosted on the server and various config and home directories are NFS mounted from the server also. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=83840

Windows XP Box (ftrsvr)

Hardware:

• AMD Sempron 3000+ 2Ghz
• 1.5GB RAM
• 1 * 120GB for O/S and DB

Duties:

• Msql server (for FTR)
• FTR Core and Scheduler
• Argos Tuner
• NINAN

For recording TV I now use “For The Record” which I must say is the coolest tv scheduler and recorder I’ve ever used. Be sure to use the “Argos” tuner written by the same people to run your capture cards, its the simplest and most reliable solution. http://www.4therecord.eu/

FTR has some of the best scheduling capabilities I’ve ever seen and the Argos tuner was the easiest to setup and manage my usual selection of FreeView and FreeSat channels to date. FTR has software clients to hook into the scheduling and program guides, and also provides a web based interface.

FTR is based on a modular design with the main components being the core, the scheduler, web client server and tuner. If you required the various components could be on different servers! You also have the option of running the tuner module on multiple machines with different tuners, the core server will even wake up the tuner servers when they are required.

XMLTV is used to populate the channel guides using data from the Radio Times website.

The recordedTV share is hosted on netcentral so the ftrsvr PC has only a modest hard drive for the OS.

Ubuntu 10.x (backupsvr)

Suppose I should mention this machine.

It is another Atom based PC with a 750GB hard disk. Its sole duty is to run Bacula for backup and bare metal recovery of the O/S on netcentral and ftrsvr. Its only switched on once in a while to carry out incremental backups of the other servers.

More detailed post to follow:

Recently I’ve ditched mediaportal in favour of using XBMC and FTR.  Honestly I got fed up of the buggy experience afforded me by mediaportal so started looking for alternatives.

For recording TV I now use “For The Record” which I must say is the coolest tv scheduler and recorder I’ve ever used.  Be sure to use the “Argos” tuner written by the same people to run your capture cards, its the simplest and most reliable solution. http://www.4therecord.eu/

For general HTPC functionality I use Xbox Media Centre (XBMC).  It does everything you want for a media centre and soon will also have a FTR plugin for watching live TV.  If you’ve used other media centres the setup of XBMC may seem a little strange but stick with it, its worth it!! http://www.xbmc.org

I also use the XBMC diskless package which is setup on my unbuntu home server…. no more hard disks required in my media PCs http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=83840

Ok so I mostly use MediaPortal for my media HTPC experience (I also use SageTV but thats another story).  I never understand why people buy a beautiful HTPC case to sit under their TV then try and cram a gazillion cards and disks in it for storage and TV…. cos then you need more cooling, thus noise and you have a cat’s chance in hell of any real expansion once you realise how sweet a PC based media solution is and want more! <deep breath long sentence >

Soooo, one nice and vital feature of both MediaPortal and SageTV is the ability to locate all the hard disks and capture cards elsewhere, away from your beautiful pristine living room and pretty HTPC case.  Storage is sorted, hence my earlier post about my WHS pc, however this post is for the build of my MediaPortal TV server.

Its the old case from the WHS, ample for a TV server.  Its got a 110mm fan in the front, and an 80mm fan in the back, plus a dual fan CPU.  This thing is on 24 hours a day thus it pays to be well cooled/noisy hence not in my living room.

Overhead shot, note the 110mm fan right in front of the hard disks, nice.

For this system I choose a sempron 3000+ to sit at the heart, YES a lowly little sempron, why?  This system is geared for all digital broadcasts, its has a hauppauge nova 500-dt dvb-t tuner (two channels) for Freeview, it also has two hauppauge dvb-s cards for Freesat.  Digital channels means no transcoding, all the server has to do is record the digital stream to disk.  The sempron is light on the power demand.  Notice the Gigabyte motherboard also has 5 PCI slots, ample for more internal tuning cards.  For the record this system only has a 450 watt PSU.

Gratuetous card porn – Note the PSU and case fans pulling air from around the CPU

I could squeeze another PCI card next to the graphics card above if I needed to, I’ve tried it

CPU close-up, nice the way the camera caught the fan blades, this PC was running when the pics were took!

External cables

Another reason why you don’t want all the TV cards in your HTPC, I’d hate having all this round the media cabinet under my TV in the living room.

Specs

CPU: AMD Sempron 3000+

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7VT600-P

RAM: 2GB DDR400

Storage: This system may have two hard disks but all storage is handled by netcentral the WHS server

Graphics: Who cares it just does TV capture so is not an issue

O/S: Win XP SP2

Duties

MediaPortal TV server

Electronic TV Guide grabber (Radio Times and DigiGuide)

Ninan (binary news downloader with web based interface)

Misc

Typical case temp: 28C

Typical CPU temp: 30C

MediaPortal

SageTV

I have a WHS box stuffed with 7 hard disks, was getting a little warm and cramped in there so made use of a new case that was going to be junked at work.  Its an excellent case and I have no idea who makes it.  The hard drive bay is cooled by 110mm and 70mm fans, nice cool hard disks ensue.

Here is a shot of the old case:

And now the new case

The server runs WHS on a Pentium D 2.66Ghz with 1.5GB RAM (My old HTPC kit)  There are two SATA ports on the motherboard and I have two four port PCI SATA cards. The SATA cards are just the generic £15 jobs off ebay and they work really well!

The hard disks are of various sizes providing 3.7TB of storage for my home media centres.

In future now I have a blog I’ll take more progress pics and make notes