linux experts

bluesnake

enfield_freddy wrote: »

umm , I don,t get that last statement , you refer to raspberry Pis ? they only have USB access , so will be very slow.

Not any longer, and not for a long time, just do not buy mark 1, model A. A few years ago they were upgraded a few times. Think even the Cpu got enhanced too. It even supports IR remote I believe?

The Banana was apparently twice as fast, not as popular in the UK, but I have not been checking the specs or marketing for over a year now.

Ah, the hp cube servers that can support 4xhdd. They were about 120w micro servers. I thought they were a waste of time, but someone did the calulation that compared to a 300w pc (and many these days are more than 300w, some going over 600w). These servers were on 'never ending' 'special offer' for about £119 after cashback. Anyway these paid for themselves, after 10 months of 24/7 electrical cost compared to a 300w. Also at the time the price per KW was cheaper too, but the servers may have gone up.

Edit:
35W server - the new version? £185
http://www.ebuyer.com/517760-hp-proliant-gen8-g1610t-microserver-712317-421
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/servers/387361/hp-proliant-microserver-gen8

enfield_freddy

sorry I will rephrase that , anyone can build a simple server using a Linux system , and indeed instructions are on the web how to convert a raspberry Pi , HOWEVER the only means of attaching drives (to a PI) is via USB, which is horrendously slow.

bluesnake

Guy, please google the good old Pi. You will see a photo of the Pi2 like this

There you will find

• A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU
• 1GB RAM
• 4 USB ports
• 40 GPIO pins
• Full HDMI port
• Ethernet port
• Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video
• Camera interface (CSI)
• Display interface (DSI)
• Micro SD card slot
• VideoCore IV 3D graphics core

Here is the 'how to' again for Kodi (new name for XBMC)
http://mymediaexperience.com/raspberry-pi-xbmc-with-raspbmc/

I would guess, and say about 5 watts to power this. Fairly sure thare are ways to get wifi working too.

Just reading that one version of Pi took 200ma, but 33% of that was to convert 5v to 3.3v. so it works on about 1watt, compared to you many watts for a PC, and costs $35us, then the is the psu, box, remote control, cables, say £75.

With this in mind, one of my friends has reportedly put the pi into his Sky box.

StuC75

Ive always preferred having the PC (in my case the HP Home Server) tucked away in the pantry running headerless , with Ethernet running into the broadband router (just got the Asus RT-AC68U fibre modem router combination) so its using Giga Lan ports all round and fast wireless.

Then I use the raspberry pi's on the TV's to stream through content. Its much quieter than having pc under the tv and can use the TV Remote control to operate it..

enfield_freddy

bluesnake , you have missed the whole point of the original question


"how to add raid to a xbmc setup"


yup I know about the PI , yup its got an Ethernet port .


how the hell do you add extra drives to it ? raspbmc runs from a SD card , and has no physical connections to sata or ide , the only way to introduce media is via a usb OR over an Ethernet connection (maybe from a nas ,,,,, that's where we started)


the PI is pathetically slow .


as a nice footnote , and answering a question I asked a few weeks ago,


"how to use the un used space on a hard drive after a install of openelec"


I have now solved it.


previously if you installed openelec on (say) a 1t hard drive it created a 240 meg partition and the rest was waste , even if you placed the drive in a PC caddy and formatted the waste to fat / ntfs / ext / it would not boot


however if you pre format the drive in ext4 then load openelec , it creates its own 240m partition and leaves over 900m spare for media files to be added by PC.

ffox

It doesn't matter which Linux you have. Stick with OpenELEC since that's the media centre. RAID set up will largely be identical to any Linux system. The actual XBMC/Kodi apps does auto start when you boot into the X server.

Fightsback

For a HTPC as long as you are not gaming consider AMD Kabini, dirt cheap and just the job.

prowla

Oh, and it'll be needing a widescreen display to view this page!