TorrentFlux is an open source bit torrent client for Linux, Unix & BSD platforms that runs on a web server. It is implemented on the LAMP stack. Manage all of your Torrent downloads through a convenient web interface on a high powered server, on a fast network connection from anywhere!

Now that we have a basic Ubuntu box up and running the next step in building a media server is to have some storage to hold the goods. Taking some basic SATA cards and 6 new 500gb SATA drives I proceeded to assemble a raid system.

The key to the software Raid5 setup is to use MDADM. You can find full instructions for the setup of raid disks under Linux at Gregory Gulik’s site.

I liked the idea to use LVM which allows you some future flexibility to expand volumes, add more arrays to your volumes and in general get out of a bind if need be. The basic idea is to virtualize your array and volume setup so they can be modified without loosing data.

Lastly the Linux Raid wiki has lots of good info about the setup of software raid systems. Read through some of this info to get a good feeling about what you are doing before depending on the raid system for your live data.

First up is the Ubuntu install. I downloaded it and burned it to a CD for an easy install. I installed the server version as it’s the cleanest base install for a media server. You could also use the desktop version if you desired. Keep in mind that the server version has no (and I mean NO) GUI interface for management and setup, so you must be comfortable getting jiggy with command line interfaces and editing text files. Hey it’s Linux, it’s not that bad. Kind of reminds me of the 80’s and my work on HP3000 systems.

Some great places to get more info about the basic Ubuntu setup include:

https://help.ubuntu.com/

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/

Well, after a few weeks of playing around with FreeNAS, it was time to build out the plan for real. First up was some added hardware to create a “real” NAS box. Hard drives are top of the list, then network, cables, etc.

Hardware Procurement list

1. 6 - 500GB Hitachi Sata II Drives
2. Misc Sata cables to hookup everything
3. Adaptec 2610 (Dell) RAID card - for hardware raid (from Ebay)
4. CF to IDE boot drive adapter (from Ebay)
5. Intel Pro 10/100/1000 Network adapter
6. New case (from Re-Pc)

So, first up was to build out the new raid system. The plan was to use 6 500 gig drives using a hardware raid controller to present them to FreeNAS. The problem was the hardware raid controller would not build out greater than 1.5T and would not complete building the raid group with the new disks. Next challenge was that when the system booted up freeNAS it would fail upon creating a volume on the hardware raid controller. After much research I decided on moving to software raid as the best solution.

1. I added 2 Sata HBA cards to directly hookup the 6 drives

With my new HBA direct connections to the drives, I forged ahead with FreeNAS software Raid setup. In short, it failed miserably. I couldn’t get anything to build out cleanly and never got a stable drive set out of it. Lots of research, many hours of testing, before I finally gave up. Hum, what to do next?

PUNT

Next up I installed Ubuntu Linux onto my existing NAS hardware setup. With great hopes I pushed install with a new CD in the drive…

Well, we finally took the plunge into the 21st century and got a new TV along with a new AppleTV. The system is slowly coming together. The FreeNAS box has all the storage, which an older iMac G5 serves out content via iTunes. The AppleTV then streams it’s TV & Movies from the iMac to allow a larger content store than you can normally sync up to the AppleTV. This solution is very seamless and works great thus far.
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Well, after a few years of use, my MacBook Pro’s 80gig hard drive was just not cutting it anymore. With the launch of Leopard it’s now a very easy thing to backup / recover your entire system so that was the catalyst to get this job done. First up was ordering the drive. I picked out a Hitachi 250 gigabyte sata drive for the upgrade. Next was to backup the existing drive using Time Machine.
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With just a little while to go until Steve Jobs fanboy rally MacWorld Keynote Address, and with dreams of iTablets, $3.99 movie rentals, and ultra-thin macbooks. John Siracusa at Ars Technica has posted this years Bingo Cards . My favorite squares are: “Boom” and Leopard vs. Vista. So get yours now and watch the video and play along, or play at the keynote live in person. Don’t forget to read the rules.

FreeNAS configuration for a OSX network

The next key part of our local network is our FreeNAS storage server. It’s primary use is to store encoded media files for projection on our home theater system. We source content from an EyeTV PVR recorder on the mac. Once the shows are recorded we transcode into a variety of codecs as the need arises, usually choosing some form of H264 that can play nicely in quicktime.

The basic setup couldn’t be easier. You need the following kit to get started:

PC hardware for server (any Pentium box should work)

iso disk burned from the FreeNAS image

reboot your pc with the cd and install!

Configure up your FreeNAS box

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How to bypass the squid proxy server

One of the really sweet things about having your own fully functioned firewall at home is being able to run a transparent web cache. It’s on for all traffic with no configuration required for any of the client computers in the house. It makes surfing faster as it caches all the static content that you regularly see when browsing the same sites over and over. The only problem with this little slice of nirvana is when you have a device or application that needs http access directly to the internet and it’s not compatible with the web cache. This could include devices like and XBox, or Xbox360, Tivo PVR’s, Replay TV PVR’s, Eye-Fi wireless upload card, etc.

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Smoothwall Express 3.0 upgrade

I have been running a Smoothwall 2.0 firewall at home for the last 2 years. I installed it on an old Dell P133 box It’s old but good and works fine for this use. Over the years I had heavily moded it to tune and enhance the features etc. With the recent release of Smoothwall 3.0 I figured it was time to get upgraded to the latest and greatest to see what improvements we might get.

I was not disappointed by the upgrade. First off in typical form for the Smoothwall community, they make it incredibly easy to download and install on to your system. The initial install went smoothly and in about 30 min I had the new firewall up and running. I simply burned the CD iso using my mac and rebooted the firewall to boot from the CD and start the install.

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