http://www.winextra.com/forums/tags/freenas Bring back the eXtra in Windows en-US Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:03:36 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://www.winextra.com/forums/search.php http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-44008 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:47:20 +0000 george.mikal 44008@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <p>yes agreed with PJ </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42554 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:10:01 +0000 Nate 42554@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <p>Thanks, I did recover but not quite as I wanted and didn't know how to uninstall. I'll re do it this evening. </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42551 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:02:27 +0000 PJ 42551@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <blockquote><p><cite>Nate <a href="http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic.php?id=8546#post-42550" target="_blank">said</a>:</cite><br /> Thanks, PJ. I just installed Webmin on Ubuntu which runs as a virtual machine under Parallels on my iMac. I screwed up in one spot but was unable to recover.</p> </blockquote> <p>You're very welcome.</p> <p>I am sorry to hear that you couldn't recover. From what I understand you can do a simple</p> <p><code>sudo apt-get remove webmin</code></p> <p>and then reissue a</p> <p><code>sudo apt-get install webmin</code></p> <p>to reinstall. That should give you the opportunity to reselect all of your options, if there were any.</p> <p>For anybody else that's interest and just in case I didn't make sense the first go around, Webmin is a web-based front end to configure a server. In this case, my Ubuntu server was headless, meaning no monitor, keyboard or mouse. I conduct server administration functions through SSH or a web page. Typically something like entering "https://machinename:10000" as the address in Internet Explorer. From there you have a nice and easy to understand method of setting up options as well as updating Ubuntu packages and a whole slew of other things. </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42550 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:10:01 +0000 Nate 42550@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <p>Thanks, PJ. I just installed Webmin on Ubuntu which runs as a virtual machine under Parallels on my iMac. I screwed up in one spot but was unable to recover. </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42532 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:35:46 +0000 phreeBase 42532@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <p>I'll never forget the time I had trouble with a linux app, that was in a case weirdly similar to yours, the whole reason that I had installed linux on that particular machine.</p> <p>After a few days I asked for the help of a guru, who helped me set things up perfectly. The guru was the author of the app, which was a very well known one in the linux world at that time. </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42522 Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:23:45 +0000 PJ 42522@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <blockquote><p><cite>Pierre <a href="http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic.php?id=8546#post-42521" target="_blank">said</a>:</cite><br /> At least with the Linux community, you can hope for faster response to your woes than with commercial Windows software.</p> </blockquote> <p>That is one thing I purposely did not do; go to the Linux community for help aside from what I could read on the internet. With my luck, I'd find the one Linux guru that would talk me through everything and I'd be insufferably happy with the final install. What's wrong with that?, you may ask.... I'd never be able to replicate the installation on my own without a Linux guru at hand. One crash and I'd be back at square one. That's why the whole process of investigation and understanding is a major aspect of the installation.</p> <p>The two extremes of Linux exist here.<br /> 1. Webmin, with it's polish and ease of installation/use, is one of those programs that makes Linux shine.<br /> 2. MythTV really serves to bring to light all of the problems and nightmares that exist with Linux. The documentation is far below sub-standard. Many of the Wiki pages refer to MythTV versions that are two or three .x versions old which could easily mean you're reading about an unrelated version. The updates are unpredictable, at best. The plug-ins are reliant upon other programs that may or may not be installed. Often, only once the plug-in is installed will you find out if you are missing other plug-ins, modules, programs or libraries. But then, that's only after wading through reams of error messages....</p> <p>As Pierre indicated, 0.x versions of software require caution. Sadly, MythTV has been in 0.x status for a couple of years and will probably stay there for several more. That fact alone makes me reconsider using it as my primary media server.</p> <p>Allow me to re-iterate something: I'm extremely pleased with my Ubuntu Server install and am loathe to tear it down. Indeed, everyday I'm more convinced than ever that if I do tear it down it'll be to replace it with a more powerful machine running a 64-bit version. </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42521 Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:19:45 +0000 Pierre 42521@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <blockquote><p><cite>James <a href="http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic.php?id=8546#post-42520" target="_blank">said</a>:</cite><br /> Linux = PAIN. It always seems to be one step behind the latest technology... </p> </blockquote> <p>It's not necessarily true. When a product is in version 0.something, you should expect problems, whether it's a Linux or a Windows program. At least with the Linux community, you can hope for faster response to your woes than with commercial Windows software.</p> <p>As for hardware drivers, Windows is so hugely prevalent – and the Vista fiasco so present to memory – that most hardware manufacturers bend over backwards releasing working drivers for W7. Unfortunately, it isn't so with Linux drivers… </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42520 Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:31:25 +0000 James 42520@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <p>Linux = PAIN. It always seems to be one step behind the latest technology... </p> <p>Thanks for the write up. Very in depth and informative. </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8546#post-42508 Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:47:18 +0000 PJ 42508@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <p>This is part 2 of my continuing saga of trying to create my own home media server. The first part can be found in the post titled "FreeNAS".</p> <p>After having given FreeNAS a run I figured it was time for me to give Ubuntu Server 9.10 Karmic Koala (32-bit flavor, thank you very much) and MythTV a spin. FreeNAS was a relatively easy setup. Karmic and MythTV has been everything short of a nightmare. Getting Karmic to install was the easy part. To ease things even more, I installed an awesome program called Webmin. Webmin is a network admin's knight in shining armor. You can find it <a href="http://www.webmin.com/" target="_blank">here.</a> In their own words:</p> <p><blockquote>Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely. See the standard modules page for a list of all the functions built into Webmin, or check out the screenshots.</blockquote></p> <p>At the risk of sounding like I'm raving about a program I will add this: there are frequent updates, tons of administrative modules, it's free, and I couldn't even begin to tell you what the support section is like because I've never needed it - it's one of those awesome programs that simply does what it's supposed to do. Fantastic stuff.</p> <p>Through Webmin I was able to setup Samba and Windows networking and get my network folders published to my home network in less than 15 minutes. From that point, I uploaded all my music, videos, pictures and what not to the network folders. Network attached storage has never been easier.</p> <p>I even was able to install Transmission, a BitTorrent add-on that lets me drop a torrent link into one of my network folders and a few minutes later the download auto-magically appears in the networked torrent download folder. Awesome stuff!</p> <p>Then I installed MythTV, follow <a href="http://www.mythtv.org" target="_blank">this link</a> for more info, and my life suddenly became an odd mixture of heaven and hell.</p> <p>Again, in their own words:</p> <p><blockquote>MythTV is a Free Open Source software digital video recorder (DVR) project distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. It has been under heavy development since 2002, and now contains most features one would expect from a good DVR (and many new ones that you soon won't be able to live without).</blockquote></p> <p>There's much more that's not said in that description but we'll address that later.</p> <p>The initial setup was quite easy:</p> <p><code>sudo apt-get install mythtv</code></p> <p>The amount of configuration that followed was a nightmare. My shared media resided in folders on a separate drive which meant I had to change all of the settings in MythTV to point to the correct locations. Should have been easy. On the MythTV forums they claim it should be easy. "Should be...." Except there's several places where the changes need to be made and several more where they can be made and even a couple where they might be made if the code had been kept up to date. Do I modify the .config files directly or should I use the frontend interface? How about the backend interface? What about all of them? Well, all of them is what I ended up using. And yet, the settings never seem to stick. For example: one of the plugins is called MythVideo. MythVideo manages all of your movie or video files. MKV is welcome here. So is AVI, DIVX, M4V, M4P, ISO and a whole slew of other formats. Thank the fates above that there's finally a program that speaks all of those formats! Except, in this version there are some problems.</p> <p>ISOs don't play if you're using the "Storage Groups" but there's no instructions of how NOT to setup the Storage Groups. In other words, I was essentially led down the primrose path to establish Storage Groups (dynamic meta-groups that can include several storage areas) without being informed of the consequences. So, all that work and I couldn't get ISOs of my DVDs to work. That led me off to do research. A week later and I finally understand: get rid of the storage groups and I can play ISOs. So, how do I get rid of these storage groups. Not sure because apparently everyone knew not to set them up or once set up, nobody wanted to get rid of them. So now I'm waiting for the next version to come out which is supposed to resolve this issue. BTW, the current version is 0.22. The next version to come out will be 0.23. Not sure when that's going to happen though.</p> <p>Ah, yeah, almost forget the MythVideos section. I love it. A movie or video collection manager. Upload your video file to the storage folder and you simply hit the "scan for changes" button. The movie shows up right away in the index. Two more buttons on the movie window allow you to look up information about the movie on IMDB or edit the meta-data to your heart's content. Automatic population of the fields and images related to the movie is awesome! Check out the screen shot:</p> <p><img src="http://www.panamajim.com/Frontend.png"><br /> This is a picture of the frontend manager. Frontend, in this case, being on the Ubuntu computer.</p> <p><img src="http://www.panamajim.com/MythVideo.png"><br /> This is a picture from the MythVideo web page on my Windows computer.</p> <p>They look pretty similar and pretty good. From the webpage, clicking on the title of the video causes it to be played in your web browser in awesome glory and sound! You can't control the video though. It's a play or not play affair. Unless you're watching from a Mac or an iPod Touch. Their embedded players have controls that will show up. Haven't tried my PS3 yet but I'm gonna get there. Have to re-terminate my LAN cables to the PS3....</p> <p>So.... What do I mean by heaven and hell? The heaven part is when MythTV works. The hell part is just getting it TO work. Installation of my TV tuner card is a prime example. I bought a Hauppauge HVR-1600 TV tuner card. A classic stand-by card that always works. Except under Linux. The drivers aren't really up to snuff yet. That meant I had to build my own from several different locations. Me. Build my own. From different locations. RRRRIIIIGGGHHHHTTTTT. What a joke that was. Three days in the making but I finally got it done. And the card still didn't work. I had to re-arrange card slots and re-install MythTV a few times to get it all done. And still, it doesn't work because I have Verizon FIOS which requires I use a cable TV box. And IR Blaster support for FIOS in MythTV doesn't exist yet. I'm screwed. Oh, yeah, MythTV used to stream TV over the network but that plugin broke with the introduction of version 0.20.... Go figure.</p> <p>For the moment, MythTV doesn't do it for me but I'm not ready to dump the Ubuntu install yet because it's working so damn well. I guess I just need to keep looking for other Media Center possibilities. </p> http://www.winextra.com/forums/topic/8481#post-42243 Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:18:39 +0000 PJ 42243@http://www.winextra.com/forums/ <p>As I mentioned in my latest post to the Boss, I'm going to give the Ubuntu server a go. Looking things over, I like the functionality of the Firefly software, FUPPES, SSH and Transmission (BitTorrent). The lack of transcoding in FUPPES is kind of a show stopper though. Because FUPPES is really nothing more than a DNLA compliant server (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance</a> for more info) and I'm more interested in serving up transcoded media to several devices, I'm going to give PS3 Media Server an install. More to be learned at <a href="http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/</a></p> <p>There is also another motive behind this move. I'm still learning to live with Linux. Tossing BSD into the mix really isn't that helpful at this point in my life even though I will eventually need to learn it for work. To add more pain to my pleasure.... FUPPES appears to be no longer actively maintained. There is chat about creating a forked version but I'm not going to hold my breath. The talk dates back over a year.... PS3 Media Server is almost actively maintained. That alone is enough to encourage me to give it a chance.</p> <p>One of the possible future tracks for FreeNAS involved a switch over to Linux. I would have enjoyed that. Recently that was squashed when a commercial firm decided to support continued development of FreeNAS under BSD. BSD users are to Linux users what Mac users are to Windows users. Not saying anything negative about anyone there. Merely pointing out that there are Windows people, Mac people, Linux (ahem) people and then, there's the BSD-heads..... </p>