New Linux Server results

After recently completing the installation of my new server to run SlimServer, I thought I would post some results.

My requirements were for a quiet, low-power consumption machine that would be easy to manage. I opted to build my own machine, based around a Jetway J7F2 mini-ITX motherboard. This uses the low power VIA C7 1.2 Ghz processor. The board is a fanless design, satisfying my requirement for low noise. As I will be using the server to house my music files, I opted for a large 320Gb Western Digital 3.5" drive. These are very quiet in operation. The system was built into a Noah mini-ITX case. I installed the maximum 1GB memory that the board supports.

The case has a fan, which is fairly quiet, and is the only source of mechanical noise in the system (apart from when the hard drive is reading/writing). I may yet remove the fan, but I need to see how hot the hard drive runs without it.

The ideal situation would have been to have a drive for the OS, and a separate drive for the music files, but the Noah case doesn't have room for this. An external drive wasn't really an option, with three kids running around the house leaving a trail of destruction in their wake ;->

For the OS, I decided to go for the Ubuntu variation of Linux. This was mainly because it was free, and a number of people on the Slim Devices forums were successfully running SlimServer on Ubuntu.

I was a bit apprehensive as I had no experience of Linux, but the install went smoothly. The install of SlimServer was equally straightforward, using the Slim deb package.

As I intend to run the machine headless (without a monitor/keyboard), I needed some way to control the machine from my main Windows XP desktop. This was easy, as Ubuntu has a VNC based remote desktop facility built in, so it was a simple case of installing the free edition of RealVNC on the Windows machine, and setting the preferences in Ubuntu.

Sharing the music files on the Linux machine with the Windows machine was a bit more involved, but I found some instructions on how to do this here, using Samba.

Now it is all up & running, the performance of the machine is very good. Considering it is a low speed processor by todays standards, it has no problems running SlimServer. When it is streaming music to the Squeezebox, the CPU runs at 15-30%. The system is using about 190MB of memory, out of the 1GB installed. I'm not sure why, but the interface on the Squeezebox is a lot quicker than when it was running from my much higher spec Windows machine. I think MYSQL runs a lot better out of the box on Linux compared to Windows, but I don't have any figures to back that up.

There are still one or two things to fine tune in the setup. The board supports ACPI power management (which means you can set the machine to do a safe shut down when pressing the power button, for example), but I need to fine tune this as at the moment Ubuntu pops up the standard shutdown dialogue, rather than just shutting down.

In the end, there was no need to worry about using Ubuntu, it all installed very well. The machine is a lot quieter than my noisy Windows desktop machine (an Acer), so I'm very happy with the results.