Difference between revisions of "User:Keithamus"

Latest revision as of 00:36, 23 January 2012

Current Setup

I currently have one backend with 2 Zotac Ion frontends.

Frontend 1

Frontend 2

Backend

Why I chose this system

Frontends

• The whole setup was good value for money (considering it is a 5tb fileserver/backend with two frontends + TVs), around £1000 (which is US$1600 (xe.com) at the time of writing).
• The Zotac Ions are fantastic boards. They handle everything nicely, including 1080p content (with VDPAU enabled)
• The Zotac boards are supposed to take around 21w of power under full load.
• The M350 cases are tiny! They can be hidden in corners and crevices very nicely. They also have 2 hidden front usb ports, ideal for bluetooth, usb storage, or other dongles which don't need to see the light of day.
• I have both Zotac machines completely hidden from view, one behind a door frame and one strapped to the back of the benq monitor.
• I chose the Benq for the 1080p, and that it is much cheaper than a 1080p HDTV.

Backend

• Its 5tb in raid5...
• The case was by far the most expensive component, but it almost perfectly suits the 5 1.5tb HDDs that it houses.
• The server is really surprisingly quiet, and runs very cool.
• According to my calculations as well as other peoples reviews, this will use about 60w under full load, when underclocked. Not bad for a 5tb server backend.
• Its 5tb in raid5...

Problems

• Forget about putting anything inside the M350 cases except for a mobo, an hdd or two and some ram. These tiny cases have no room inside them, but then again, theres nothing else you need in them!
• The wireless is utter crap. Read the fix down the page. Even when it is fixed, watching live tv with it is a bit poor - I have a Wireless N switch with Gig eth and when I browse the internet on my laptop, it'll slow the tv down.
• Disk-less is a wild beast. Minor changes to the base system mean running ltsp-update-image which takes about half an hour to finish.
• The servers network card is pretty crap, I recommend replacing them with Intel Pro cards.

Real world figures

In terms of crunching power, wattage and temperatures, this system really can't be complained about;

• Zotac Ions play 1080p fine with VDPAU. No issues. No questions asked. It Just Works (TM).
• I said on the notes to my old setup that 500gb is more media than one can watch. That was a bit of a Bill Gates moment. I stand corrected, 6tb might be enough though (I hope!)
• 2GB is so damn cheap and it runs these systems fine, any more would be overkill. I would say 2GB is overkill but at about £20 for a matched pair noone is complaining.
• The 1.6ghz dual core processor in the Zotac Ions can be a bit slow at times. It is really painful to watch the "prescaling images" bar when you change theme/first open mythtv.

How I built the disk-less server

This documentation is here so I will hopefully never forget it, and so I can repeat the steps in case of disaster.

Setting up PXE/LTSP

First things first, on the server, install the appropriate packages:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server ltsp-server tftpd-hpa nbd-server nfs-kernel-server

The dhcp3 server will serve DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) IP addresses to all connected clients, so you need to take down your routers DHCP. The LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project)package gives you scripts to create & serve LTSP images (for diskless clients with persistent storage). TFTPD (Trivial File Transfer Protocol Daemon) will give DHCP clients the ability to download the initrd and vmlinuz kernel files, and finally the NBD (Network Block Device) Server gives LTSP a port to connect to download the SquashFS images. Once these are installed, the following needs doing:

sudo nano /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf

Here is my dhcpd.conf:

default-lease-time              600;
max-lease-time                  1440;
ddns-update-style ad-hoc;
authoritative;

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {

        range 192.168.0.110 192.168.0.199;
        filename "pxelinux.0";

        option routers                  192.168.0.1;
        option subnet-mask              255.255.255.0;
        option broadcast-address        192.168.0.255;
        option netbios-name-servers     192.168.0.101;
        option netbios-node-type        2;
        option domain-name-servers      208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
        use-host-decl-names on;

        host ...your reserved IP leases go like this. one host for each.. well host... {
                hardware ethernet 00:12:34:AB:CD:EF;
                fixed-address 192.168.0.102;
        }

        host ...your reserved DISKLESS hosts go like this, with the host-name option added... {
                hardware ethernet 00:12:34:AB:CD:EF;
                fixed-address 192.168.0.103;
                option host-name "myth1";
        }

The "pxelinux.0" file comes from the root dir of TFTPD. So lets edit TFTPD to point to a sensible place.

sudo nano /etc/default/tftpd-hpa

#Defaults for tftpd-hpa
RUN_DAEMON="yes"
# All the v's are for "verbose", the more vs the more verbose.
OPTIONS="-l -s -vvvvvvvv /raid/pxe/"

I chose /raid/pxe/ because my RAID device is mounted at /raid/. Choose a sensible directory for you. And make it before you start the server:

sudo mkdir -p /raid/pxe/

We're also going to do a few softlinks so we later don't have to move stuff. Everything will be in our raid folder:

sudo mkdir -p /raid/diskless/ /raid/pxe/ltsp/ /raid/pxe/pxelinux.cfg
sudo ln -s /var/cache/mythbuntu-diskless/overlay /raid/diskless
sudo ln -s /opt/ltsp /raid/pxe/ltsp

Now lets make an LTSP image:

sudo ltsp-build-client --mythbuntu --mythbuntu-user-credentials USERNAME:PASSWORD --chroot mythbuntu-karmic-`date +%Y%m%d`

This will start building a mythbuntu base install client. Leave it for a few hours and come back to find your "mythbuntu-karmic-TODAYSDATE" image installed! The build-client script also automatically manages NBD, so there isnt much to do there. But look out for the "port number" as stated toward the end of the script.

Next we'll make a pxelinux.cfg file for the mac addresses of our clients. So my client is 00-12-34-AB-CD-EF. So I'll do this:

sudo nano /raid/pxe/pxelinux.cfg/01-00-12-34-AB-CD-EF

Pay special attention to the "01-" at the beginning. In this file will be:

DEFAULT mythbuntu

LABEL mythbuntu
        KERNEL ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-20091205/vmlinuz nbdport=2001
        APPEND rw root=/dev/ram0 initrd=ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-20091205/initrd.img nbdport=2001 hostnameoverride=HOSTNAME ipv6.disable=1

Note because we put the "ltsp" dir in /raid/pxe/, we've made our lives alot easier inside the pxelinux scripts :D.

One last thing to do:

sudo nano /etc/exports

/raid/pxe/ 192.168.0.0/24(sync,ro,no_subtree_check)
/raid/diskless/ 192.168.0.0/24(rw,no_root_squash,async,no_subtree_check)

Just shove the whole pxe dir into the whole subnet on NFS, not the most secure way of doing things but saves alot of fiddling around and hours of confusion as to why a particular directory isn't loading. Same goes for the diskless overlay dir, but make it rewritable otherwise our clients wont have persistent storage!

Finally, we'll restart the server, and test out our image. Working ok? Great. Lets customize it!!

sudo mount -o bind /proc /raid/pxe/ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-TODAYSDATE/proc/
sudo chroot /raid/pxe/ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-TODAYSDATE

We're now Chrooted into our LTSP image. Any work done on this will effect the image and not your server, and it will mean re-updating the image file. To reupdate we do this:

sudo ltsp-update-image -a mythbuntu-karmic-`date +%Y%m%d`

It is very, VERY recommended that whenever you make a change to your image, make a snapshot of it incase you mess anything up:

sudo cp /raid/pxe/ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-NEWESTDATE/ /raid/pxe/ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-`date +%Y%m%d`
sudo mount -o bind /proc /raid/pxe/ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-`date +%Y%m%d`/proc/
sudo chroot /raid/pxe/ltsp/mythbuntu-karmic-`date +%Y%m%d`
#make your changes here
sudo ltsp-update-image -a mythbuntu-karmic-`date +%Y%m%d`
sudo nano /raid/pxe/pxelinux.cfg/01-00-12-34-AB-CD-EF
#change the name of the old PXE details over to the new ones.

Stuff to install on the Mythbuntu build

For my particular setup, I made the following changes to the default mythbuntu build:

# enable mythbuntu mythtv updates repository
wget http://www.mythbuntu.org/files/mythbuntu-repos.deb && dpkg -i mythbuntu-repos.deb

#update os
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

# install essentials + extras
apt-get install lirc openssh-server mythtv-themes* mythbuntu-apple-trailers mythplugins nano bash-completion flashplugin-installer gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad nfs-common openssh-server vlc wget nvidia-common nvidia-current

# make sure nonfree drivers are loaded
echo -e "\nblacklist nouveau" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

# autostart mythtv
mkdir -p /home/<USER>/.config/autostart/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/mythtv.desktop /home/<USER>/.config/autostart/mythtv.deskop

# autologin mythbuntu
nano /etc/gdm/custom.conf

# /etc/gdm/custom.conf
[daemon]
DefaultSession=mythbuntu
TimedLoginEnable=false
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
TimedLogin=<USER>
AutomaticLogin=<USER>
TimedLoginDelay=0

nano /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

# /etc/lirc/hardware.conf
REMOTE="Cyberlink Remove Control"
REMOTE_MODULES="lirc_dev"
REMOTE_DRIVER="devinput"
REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/input/by-path/pci-0000:00:04.0-usb-0:6:1.1-event-mouse"
REMOTE_SOCKET=""
REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="/etc/lirc/lircd.conf"
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""
START_LIRCD="true"
LOAD_MODULES="true"
LIRCMD_CONF=""
FORCE_NONINTERACTIVE_RECONFIGURATION="false"
START_LIRCMD=""

nano /etc/lirc/lircd.conf

begin remote

        name cyberlink
        bits 32
        eps 30
        aeps 100

        one 0 0
        zero 0 0
        gap 135995
        toggle_bit_mask 0x0

                begin codes
#NoGap
                        Home            0x80010066
                        DVD             0x8001018E
                        Music           0x8001018F
                        Pictures        0x80010190
                        Videos          0x80010191
                        Radio           0x80010181
                        LiveTV          0x80010179
#NoGap
                        SAP             0x80010188
                        Teletext        0x80010184
                        LastCH          0x8001016B
                        Subtitle        0x80010172
                        Language        0x80010170
                        Aspect          0x80010173
                        Back            0x8001009E
                        Guide           0x80010082
                        Menu            0x8001008B
#NoGap
                        VolUp           0x80010073
                        VolDown         0x80010072
                        Mute            0x80010071
                        ChanUp          0x80010192
                        ChanDown        0x80010193
#NoGap
                        Pause           0x80010077
                        Record          0x800100A7
                        Play            0x800100CF
                        Rewind          0x800100A8
                        Forward         0x800100D0
                        SkipFoward      0x800100A3
                        SkipBack        0x800100A5
#NoGap
                end codes

end remote

nano /etc/lirc/mythtv.conf

# LIRCRC Created by Keithamus
# Author: Keithamus
# Created for use with LIRCRC, completely free for any use whatsoever.

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Home
        config = ALT+H
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = DVD
        config = ALT+D
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Music
        config = ALT+M
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Pictures
        config = ALT+P
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Videos
        config = ALT+V
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Radio
        config = ALT+R
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = LiveTV
        config = ALT+T
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = SAP
        config = F8
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Teletext
        config = F2
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = LastCH
        config = H
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Subtitle
        config = T
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Language
        config = +
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Aspect
        config = W
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Back
        config = Esc
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Guide
        config = I
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end
begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Menu
        config = M
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = VolUp
        config = F11
        repeat = 1
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = VolDown
        config = F10
        repeat = 1
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Mute
        config = F9
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = ChanUp
        config = Up
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = ChanDown
        config = Down
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Pause
        config = P
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Record
        config = R
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Play
        config = Enter
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Rewind
        config = <
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = Forward
        config = >
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = SkipForward
        config = PgDown
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

begin
        remote = cyberlink
        prog = mythtv
        button = SkipBack
        config = PgUp
        repeat = 0
        delay = 0
end

mkdir /home/myth/.lirc/ && ln -s /etc/hardware/mythtv.conf /home/myth/.lirc/mythtv