[mythtv-users] Server Setup

robert Larson dewmanstl at gmail.com
Sun Jan 17 18:43:44 UTC 2010


>
> On Sunday 17 January 2010 07:22:40 am robert Larson wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > I am pretty new to this group and with tinkering with mythtv. My Current
> > setup is  frontend/backend combo setup running on a Dell sc420. Integrated
> > Intel Graphics(pia) 4 gigs of ram and 1.4tb of external disk.
> >
> > My xmas present was a HP DL580G2 4 gigs of ram, 2x36gb internal disk (scsi)
> > (not 64x). Yes. a 4U server.This thing is bigger then my kitchen table. But
> > I figure that I should be able to host the backend on this thing without a
> > problem seeing that my sc420 is able to do front and back.
> >
> > So with that being said, I was wondering how some of you would build this
> >  if you had this beast in your kitchen and your wife was yelling at you to
> >  get it up and going... =)
>
> I'd first send the wife out of town for a week or two.
>
> The first question in my mind: What is your capture hardware?
>
> Do you want to run a backend on the bare iron, or perhaps in a virtual
> machine? I'm not familiar with that particular server, but if it has hardware
> virtualization in the CPUs, you could run a VM with PCI passthrough so you
> could use PCI capture hardware.
>
> This depends on what other functions you need the machine to perform, and what
> capture (and other) hardware you are using or plan to use.
>
> Probably the first thing I'd do is set up a good UPS.
>
> If running in a VM, you will first need to choose a host OS, and a
> virtualization solution. If you want to run a B/E on the bare iron, it's a
> pretty straightforward installation, I would think.
>
> The server is probably a bit noisy, you'll likely want to place it in a garage
> or basement, so running the needed network and RF cables will be an early
> task. Leaving it in the kitchen is asking for WAF problems.
>
>

Good Point about the rest of the system.

Currently I have a AVerTV HD A180. It was a freebie so I wont
complain. The sound card is a cheap Ensoniq ES1370. The capture card I
finally got working with the dvb-fe-nxt2004 firmware. Currently the
DL580 has 4 2.0 Ghz Xeon processors with 4 gigs of ram expandable to
32GB. Since this is pretty low on the memory side I was thinking of
staying away from doing any type of VM.

The WAF factor is pretty high at the moment and she likes the fact
that we can listen to music and she is able to watch her soaps at
night. Your right this thing has 8 fans and it sounds like a rocket
when its powered up. Cat6 cabling is almost complete from the basement
to the living room for the front end. The server has dual gigabit
cards which I assume will help in streaming the video. I have tried
wireless and its to much of a hassle and to much data for the wap's.
(currently 2)

I would like to use this entire server for the entertainment factor as
we don't have to much else that we would need it for. I might drop a
sql database on there later down the road for her recipes. But that's
later on...TV is more important then food!

I was thinking of using Ubuntu server 9.10 edition and then loading
xfce (not sure if I need it or not) The purpose of getting this big
beast was 2 reasons. One, it was cheap...( really cheap ), Two, I want
to be able to record more then one show at a time and or record and
watch something all at the same time. I know that I will be getting a
second tuner card (maybe the HD-Homerun) but I have not done to much
research on the HDHR. The last thing I would like to do is get rid of
the ATI-AIW remote which is nothing but headache (slow response time,
etc)

Hopefully this is a little bit more of detail.  =)

UPS is the next item on the purchase agenda....

Thanks!


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