[mythtv-users] Anyone successfully use a hacked NAS box as a backend?

Joe jfwd at phlobus.net
Wed Sep 8 16:37:42 UTC 2010


My current combined FE/BE just had a hardware failure - power supply
died I suspect.  A replacement is on the way, but in the meantime I
got this idea.  There are lots of these NAS boxes around, and many run
embedded linux and seem pretty hackable (nas-central.org).  Has anyone
successfully hacked and used one of these as a master backend?

There was a recent thread about using a Sheevaplug as a master BE,
possibly using a NAS for storage.  But if the NAS already has
sufficient processing power itself, seems like you could get all
functionality without the need for the plug at all.  If that works,
then I could set up my current combined FE/BE as a slave backend (it
has an additional PVR-150 tuner and enough horsepower to run commflag
jobs).

The objective here being that I could then shut the slave BE
down/sleep it when nothing is going on to save some power.  I imagine
the NAS boxes are relatively power efficient, especially if I can
successfully spin down the drive(s) when not recording.  Probably uses
a lot less energy than leaving my current (Athlon X2-5200 based) FE/BE
on 24/7.


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