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In Reply to: RE: I plan to run LMS on my headless Mac Mini... posted by Ivan303 on May 06, 2017 at 09:52:11
I tried using a USB attached drive to a Squeezebox Touch and it worked great after some time required for it to build a database. My thought was that I'd be able to swap libraries easily as I've got a few terabytes of Classical on a different drive and more on the Pop/Jazz system. The problem was that the USB library took forever again if you swapped back and forth from the drive to the server.
Considering that the Mac Mini uses hardly any power to run all the time, it's simpler to just run off the Mac as a server and the different in power usage is negligible. I've got 5 Mac Minis running the Asylum along with a DataProbe and router and don't exceed 1 amp of power for the whole bunch.
-Rod
Follow Ups:
I thought the Asylum was running off a Dell server, or was that mainly for the database? I'm kind of curious to know what the Asylum is comprised of today.
Yes, we ran Dell servers for years moving up from a 1950, 2450 to 2850s and an R710. Over time, it became apparent that power costs were our largest expense. A buddy of mine had moved all of his sites to Mac Vault and was blown away with the performance and cost, so we looked into it and decided to move in that direction.
Now, the whole server farm uses less power than one Dell server. My only complaint is Apple's version of BSD is a bit mangled causing me to call Munix and when you do updates, they tend to break like changing apps to default ports blowing away your changes.
On the upside, running on SSDs has improved performance for some apps.
-Rod
Interesting. I'm not clear on what MUNIX is. I found something on it in German. Are you not running straight MacOs / OS X ?Coming off SGI IRIX & Sun Solaris, Mac OS X (BSD) was a little different for me mainly with location of files and startup scripts but the underlying commands and utilities are mostly all there including man pages and my favorite vi editor.
Yes, Mac mini is very power efficient. I believe my older unit draws about 8 watts or so idle and no more than about 12 to 15 watts playing music. Of course for server duty yours are probably using more power.
Edits: 05/08/17
Munix => Mangled Unix, it's my acronym.
We're running a standard MacOS and it's got most everything you'd want. The primary issues are config files versus Apple's plist which is mostly annoying for figuring out how to do little things like changing default ports. Then, installing packages and finding them can be a challenge. It took a while to get them configured to be compatible with out FreeBSD configurations. Updates are a nightmare as Apple tends to break everything for what we're using them for. Despite their quirks, it's been a good move.
Power usage is stellar. We use only about 100 watts for 5 Minis with 16GB, 512GB SSD and 1TB HD plus a router and Dataprobe which gives us auto-ping checking and remote reboots.
-Rod
I was wondering why my Google search on MUNIX was turning up some weird results. ;-)I recall having to chase down a plist directory and XML file for something I needed to modify. Fortunately I haven't had to mess around in this area very much as I'm not that familiar.
That DataProbe seems like a useful tool.
Many years ago I used cron and a cronjob to launch a script which pinged the network and sent a report each morning to my pager - this was before smartphones. The script used Mail (sendmail) to send text to my pager number on basic network health. I could view ping results. If I didn't get that pager text at all, the network was probably down. Not very sophisticated but it worked.
You can set the Mac to reboot at a certain time each day or each week if you find that helpful, but it goes against the idea of uptime. Some UNIX based systems run for years without a reboot. I think the settings are under System Preferences > Energy Saver > Schedule.
Thanks for sharing.
Edits: 05/08/17
Yeah, the DataProbe is sweet. It's basically a smart power strip with a web GUI and somewhat cryptic terminal type setup for email address and basic stuff. Mine supports 8 power outlets. Once set up, it just works. Compared to having to drive down to the data center and wander around miles of server racks to find ours, it's a miracle worker!
The Minis are actually quite stable. While the old FreeBSD systems could run literally for years without a restart, the Minis are close. In the two years that we've had them, I may have had to hard boot the main web server 2 or 3 times. The others with less load just keep on ticking.
-Rod
Unless, of course, the Minis are running some version of Windows. ;-)
even when playing music. Plus I understand the new fans are quieter than before.
Now if I could just figure out a way to turn of the light on the front my wife would never know its on.
Next question: What's the best, most reliable 3TB Thunderbold drive I can use for file storage. Not a network drive but, for good or ill, my system uses a hard drive directly attached to the Mac Mini. Using a LeCie drive now and it's gone bad once and is noisy when on.
I don't see the advantage of a Thunderbolt drive for a music server. Most people using them are in video production where performance and transfer rates are important. However, my wife is doing video with Adobe Premier and I built her a 6 core i7 system with an SSD and fast 7,200 rpm 4TB drives. She had issues with work flow and backup and started just uploading her raw files to our QNAP NAS drive hard wired on a gigbit connection. She found that using the NAS was just as fast as doing everything on the local drives. Of course, the SSD handles the local cache and whatnot.
For your purposes, buy a pair of 4 TB USB drives. You can get them for about $130 or less. Connect one to the Mac and use the second one from another computer to backup over your network from one to the other. I did this for a long time and then. moved the library to a fast internal drive on a new system. I noticed no difference whatsoever. Streaming music just doesn't require much speed. To be safe, it'd be better to have 3 USB drives and use 2 for backups. I find that USB drives tend to fail every 3 to 5 years.
FYI:
Thunderbolt 2 vs USB 3.0 vs eSATA: Speed. All three standards are much, much faster than USB 2.0, which tops out at 480Mbps. eSATA can deliver 6Gbps (older versions deliver 1.5Gbps or 3Gbps), USB 3.0 runs at up to 5Gbps and the incoming USB 3.1 should do 10Gbps. Thunderbolt can do 20Gbps.
Since in theory, the drives themselves don't go faster than 6Gbps, in practice, Thunderbolt can never exceed that speed. A typical wav file is about 10MB per minute and would equate to about 0.1 gigibits, so you can transfer the whole file into memory in seconds while it plays for minutes.
As Cut Throat mentioned, a NAS drive with RAID is a better option and less expensive than Thunderbolt which I'm not sure that even Apple is going to continue pushing. You would still need a USB backup though. I've never run LMS from a NAS, but it should be the same with the exception that library updates might be a bit slower and you'd need to set it up as a saved Network location, so that you don't lose it on a reboot.
-Rod
that the person who set this Mac Mini up for audio only preferred to only use one USB output port and that USB be dedicated to the DAC.
That meant using the Thuderbolt port for storage.
Silly?
Maybe.
Audiophile?
You bet!
Yeah, having only two USB ports is an issue and you already have the Thunderbolt drive.
If that thing dies again, you might consider a real NAS. Our QNAP has been great and if a drive dies, it emails me and you just swap in a new one and it rebuilds the RAID array. They also support Thunderbolt along with being a standard Ethernet attached NAS. OTOH, I only saw 8 bay units with Thunderbolt which is pricey and a bit overkill unless you need 20 to 35TB of storage.
-Rod
I've been telling people for years that you do not have to run your USB DAC and storage off different style interfaces. They can both be on USB but just look at the USB device tree to ensure that your disk and potentially other devices are not on the same USB controller as the DAC. It's so simple to do but I suppose for some, it might be easier and more comforting to use totally different interfaces.... USB & Thunderbolt as an example.
Now if I could just figure out a way to turn of the light on the front my wife would never know its on.
It's called "painter's tape". I use it to cover an obnoxiously bright LED on the bedroom cable box. :)
to hide all of the stuff that's on all the time and keep my wife from running around the house in the middle of the night looking for stuff to unplug. =:-0
Black and grey electrical tape with do the job too.
-Rod
I had a 12v power supply on my desk running my 2m FM HAM Radio. The radio is usually squelched while I work but the power supply had two nasty bright LEDs on the front panel distracting my vision. A strip of black electrical tape completely blocked the light from the LEDs. And the tape is easily removed w/o leaving much gunk behind. And any small bit of residue just rubs off.
Edits: 05/07/17
Why not a network drive? Installing a NAS was the best thing (Computer wise) that I have done in the last 10 years.... Makes sharing files very simple, as well as backups, remote access and Music playback. The device sits in my Basement plugged into a router. No more noisy disks where I am 'living'.
Cut-Throat
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