Old laptop for a media server ? (F11, mediaTomb, transcoding, uPNP server, etc.)

[Richard Heck]

On 10/05/2009 01:38 AM, Linuxguy123 wrote:
> We have a Dell 5100 laptop sitting here not doing anything.  My wife got
> a new one a year ago. We need a media server to serve large digital
> images to client computers running digikam and we also want to run
> mediatomb to act as a server for our laptops and our uPNP capable tv.
>
> The 5100 has a Pentium 4 running at 2.66 MHz.  Right now it has 256 MB
> of RAM, but I think I have 1 GB sitting around here for it.  Plug in a
> new 7200 RPM 500 GB hard drive ?  Run a 1 TB USB drive for more
> storage ?
>
>    
Definitely add RAM. Even if you don't have the big stick, RAM is dirt 
cheap and will make a big difference.

> I would like to run Fedora 11 on it.  (What else ?)  Boot init 3 ?  Run
> init level 5 for doing administration ?
>
>    
I ran Fedora on a server for quite some time, but eventually switched 
away, for the simple reason that upgrading the server was too painful 
with Fedora---as I'm sure we all know. And if the upgrade process 
aborts, then I end up having to reconfigure the whole server. Not to 
mention that I have to take the thing down anyway to do it. This could 
be a reason to think about some Debian-based distro, or you could try 
CentOS, which is what I'm now using. I don't know if MediaTomb can be 
compiled for CentOS, though---I run Logitech's Slim Server, or whatever 
it's called now, to feed music to a Squeezebox and two Transporters---or 
if the formats you would need would be available there. If not, then I'd 
think about Debian.

> I am running the F11 Live CD on it right now.  It seems to work fairly
> well, albeit a bit slow.
>
>    
You should see my server, then: 300MHz Pentium III.

> I love the form factor.  It would be quiet and small.  Its got a monitor
> and a keyboard and built in battery back up, for a couple hours, anyway.
> We have a wireless card for it too... I could do administration on the
> couch instead of in some closet somewhere.
>
>    
The only thing I might worry about is heat, and what that will do to the 
laptop if you're leaving it on all the time. (I'm guessing you want to 
leave it on all the time.) You could try putting the laptop on one of 
those laptop cooler things, that has built-in auxiliary fans. I've got 
one that plugs into one of the USB ports.

> Will it do the job ?  I'm worried about the transcoding part of things.
> Our TV doesn't support many video formats but mediaTomb does transcoding
> so that we can watch just about anything we can store.
>
> Will it do the job ?
>
>    
Transcoding is labor intensive, but, given enough RAM, and assuming 
you're not trying to transcode full HD, I'd think you'd have a chance of 
having enough power. I think MediaTomb also has an option to "buffer" 
the output, and if you set that high enough, then that'll help a lot.

If I were doing this now, I might think about building a dual-core 
Atom-based box in some smallish case. The only downside to this sort of 
thing, and this applies to the laptop, too, is that you very likely will 
run out of disk space at some point, even with a 1TB drive, if you're 
really collecting the videos, and then you have a problem. A 
conventional case gives you a lot more room for new drives.

Richard