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

Linuxguy123 linuxguy123 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 5 13:46:18 UTC 2009


On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 08:44 -0400, Richard Heck wrote:
> 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


Thanks for the reply.   I will be transcoding 1080 HD.  Anyone have
experience with how much processing power that takes ?





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