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 ? -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
