Hello all,
After doing research over the course of a month or two i decided to pull the trigger and purchase some hardware to use with LMCE. I ended up utilizing Fiire (despite many suggestions to the contrary), the 12TB (
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Fiire_Engine) and Prestige-lite (
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Fiire_Station). My experience with fiire has been *ok* in that it took a bit longer than i expected for my order to ship, I have a potential issue with a 500GB hard drive (mentioned below) and the UIRT i had included in my order did not arrive with the rest of my equipment. On the bright side, both pieces of hardware look good, the 12TB has what seems to be an aluminum case for cooling, and quite a few relatively quiet fans and the prestige is ultra quiet.
Here are some additional details:
Hardware:
Core - Fiire 12TB
MD - Fiire Prestige-lite (diskless/pxe boot)
Remote - Fiire chief (not wild about the color)
Network (LMCE) - Netgear 1gbps switch
Network (External) - Linksys (wireless g)
Software:
LMCE from DVD (no base OS loaded first)
The most difficult part of the implementation was implementing the wireless NIC in a configuration that LMCE/pluto would recognize as the external NIC. I ended up working around the issue by creating a udev rule then modifying the interface file to match accordingly.
Example from my system:
/etc/udev/rules.d# cat 70-persistent-net.rules
# This file maintains persistent names for network interfaces.
# See udev(7) for syntax.
#
# Entries are automatically added by the 75-persistent-net-generator.rules
# file; however you are also free to add your own entries.
# PCI device 0x1022:0x2000 (pcnet32)
#SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:0c:29:f7:6c:d5", NAME="eth0"
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:12:17:71:fd:6a", ATTRS{type}=="1", NAME="eth0"
# PCI device 0x10de:0x07dc (forcedeth)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:1d:92:63:39:d5", NAME="eth1"
# PCI device 0x1106:0x3119 (via-velocity)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:e0:4c:a0:01:04", NAME="eth2"
# PCI device 0x1814:0x0201 (rt2500pci)
#SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:12:17:71:fd:6a", ATTRS{type}=="1", NAME="wlan0"
My sample interface file:
cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.80.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
wireless-essid #######
wireless-key #######
address 192.168.1.105
netmask 255.255.255.0
The other issue i had was with the original boot drive, it had unrecoverable issues on rootfs, so i swapped the 500GB with a 1TB drive and redeployed MCE and things have been much better since. I do need to run a diagnostic on that drive though, if anyone is aware of a good linux disk utility please let me know.
MCE works great (fantastic job to every contributor), the only gripe I have is occasional OS level hangs (screen freeze) on the core which halts my media director as well. I'm thinking this may be due to the non-specific/inherent wireless driver i'm using though I can't find any evidence to support that. Due to the fact that i'm now more comfortable with the solution I'm giving consideration to rebuilding the core with a base kubuntu deployment and installing MCE on top of it, though I do need to do additional research before beginning to see if doing this is worth it (does anyone have any thoughts on this?).
- Ryan
