[mythtv-users] Looking for MicroATX AM2 CPU supporting motherboard suggestions.

[Jeff Holicky]

Just to add my two cents.  I ended up going to
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ and last night installed onto my 1GB USB
key Ubuntu 8.10.  Without changing any setting it booted up fine on two
machines (by merely adjusting the boot level CD/USB/HDD) and I was able
to get full sound (ogg music supported - oddly not mp3), internet
access, printing (laser support) and on one was able to access the NTFS
harddrives.  

The goal for me - on a FE is to have a nice big 120mm fan to cool it
down, but otherwise to have no other moving parts. A CDROM spinning
tends to sound like an airplane and I would not want that to start up
just because I accessed some folder.  Network booting relies on the BE -
which means if it goes down I am toast.  If I can get the FE going then
I could still access a network drive or some other shared HDD.  So the
USB would be a great solution - and very low cost.  A HDD - if you are
lucky it barely makes a noise - but it adds to heat and power
consumption - plus a "when it crashes one day" headache.  Once I get the
USB just right, I can make a backup and archive on DVD.

Yes the logs are a concern - the constant re-writing and those areas
going bad.  I need to review that - I am not fully versed in how flash
memory handles bad sectors - do they merely mark as bad and move on
without the user knowing?  If the answer to this is YES (they mark and
move on), then one could buy a big 8GB USB - it may be overkill, but
would outlast any bad sector problems.

I see the benefits of a USB boot up system far outweigh CDROMS, HDD and
NICs.  Affordable and one could always have spares.

This example above was a HUGE eye opener for me.  If one day XP won't
boot, yes I will need to scramble, but at least I could throw this at
the machine, boot into LINUX and still browse the net - for finances and
email.  A very cheap insurance policy.  Further such a USB key allows
you to work offsite in various offices - and you can take everything
with you to boot up, not just the working documents/data.

jahsr

----- Original message -----
From: "Dan Wilga" <mythtv-users2 at dwilga-linux1.amherst.edu>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2008 16:13:02 -0500
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Looking for MicroATX AM2 CPU supporting
motherboard suggestions.

At 3:03 PM -0500 11/5/08, Jeff Holicky wrote:
>The CF / SD memory has limited writes.  Not such a problem when doing
>things like music/videos since the amount of writes are small, but I am
>wondering about logs.  Are you suggesting that there is little to no
>writing to the CF card each time it reboots?  Once it fully boots are
>all logs stored on the BE?

You could do it this way, but IMHO you will most likely outgrow the 
hardware before you ever have problems. Modern cards have wear 
leveling, which prevents the same portions of the card from being 
used too many times.

If you're that worried about log writes, you can also just add more 
RAM, send them to /dev/shm, and then periodically move them somewhere 
more permanent. Granted, you will lose data in the event of a kernel 
panic, but this might be an acceptable tradeoff.
-- 
Dan Wilga                                                        "Ook."
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