Hacking Help Wanted: Linux Geek? Apply Within.

[alphawave7]

I just got a Seagate Dockstar (a 'plug'-puter like Pogoplug and hacker magnet) and want to hack it to put Subsonic on it. Alas, I haven't touched Linux since my iOpener QNX days (1999?), and would need some hand-holding...but it would of course be a boon to the Subsonic community to have a very low-power, NAS-like 'cloud' solution for Subsonic, rather than donating a whole puter/lappie to doing the same task. Any takers?

[stueyboy]

My Subsonic installation resides on an Amahi server running Fedora 12. The user community of Amahi has a forum for the installation of Linux and Amahi on plug computers like the dockstar. However, their wiki suggests that the RAM on the dockstar might be a bit low for it to be of much use. Links below. hope it is of help.


http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Amahi_Plug_Edition

http://forums.amahi.org/

http://www.amahi.org/

[ScaredyCat]

http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/

Then use it like a standard debian install.


SC

[alphawave7]

It looks like I could do either method..running a thumbdrive linux, either Fedora or Debian. It appears I must first install 'UBoot' on the dockstar, to enable booting off the thumbdrive/external harddrive. Do I have this right so far? Currently, I allowed the Dockstar to phone home, so I suppose it got updated...however, I enabled SSH on my pogoplug site, and verified I have bash. Is my next step the UBoot? TIA!

[alphawave7]

Stuey- the memory issue would impact what, exactly? Can I not create a swap partition? Would this effect my large music collection (over 50K tracks)? Thanks for your help!

[ScaredyCat]

It looks like I could do either method..running a thumbdrive linux, either Fedora or Debian. It appears I must first install 'UBoot' on the dockstar, to enable booting off the thumbdrive/external harddrive. Do I have this right so far? Currently, I allowed the Dockstar to phone home, so I suppose it got updated...however, I enabled SSH on my pogoplug site, and verified I have bash. Is my next step the UBoot? TIA!

if you follow the instructions from the link I gave you above after prepping your usb stick/drive you just run the dockstar.debian-squeeze.sh script and it'll handle everything for you.

SC

[alphawave7]

Nice! Now to wiggle some 'hack time' into my schedule! Thanks ScaredyCat!

[alphawave7]

Debian Squeeze installed, java installed, now need subsonic.deb. How do I go about getting SS.deb onto the dockstar? Apt-get or wget...commandline specifics would help a ton! Thanks!

[Anima79]

Hello!

Use wget to download Subsonic to a folder on your dockstar (something like 'wget subsonic-x.x.deb') and install afterwards 'dpkg -i subsonic-x.x.deb'.

btw: Subsonic is running rather smooth on my Dockstar. Memory is an issue, though, and I would surely not prefer to have multiple users utilizing the dockstar at the same time. But for one person it is no problem at all.

I even have lighttpd, Samba, mysql, Mediatomb and Subsonic running on my Dockstar at the same time now.

Greetings,

Anima

[alphawave7]

Howdy Anima79!
Last night, I indeed tried wget and pasted the sourceforge link...it appears to have downloaded, and says download (IIRC, the link said subsonic 4.1.deb/download) approx. 33 mb.

I tried dpkg -i subsonic-4.1.deb and
dpkg -i subsonic-4.1.deb/download

with' Errors were encountered, no command found', and then 'no such file or directory'. Any clues where the subsonic.deb/download ended up, when I simply wget from root? Is there a default download location? Thanks for your guidance!

[alphawave7]

Hah! Baby steps!

Well duh! The downloaded .deb was called 'download', not ss.deb, so dpkg needed to be run on 'download'.

Now it says Subsonic is running, (update rc.d, started in /var) yet I cannot see it on the dockstar IP:4040. Any clues?

[alphawave7]

More baby steps.

I was impatient..the page timed out, but after a few refreshes, the familiar Subsonic log-in appeared! Yes..it's VERY slow. Now..how do I get my collection involved...it's on a separate hard drive (NTFS). If I simply plug in the hard drive, do I need to go into debian and mount it first, or will debian find it by itself? How (what string?) do I put the hard-drive's location into Subsonic's Music Folder? It's not as easy as simply sharing the drive like Windoze.

[Anima79]

Great you got it running. Subsonic will be much faster after some time, as it ist starting to cache files. Will write more later, my wife is just serving dinner

[Anima79]

Okay, back from dinner

I will give you some general directions, as I am short of time right now. Linux is for fun, and getting it to work is part of the experience! If you can't get it to work though , please let me know!

- DON'T use NTFS with the Dockstar. It is incredibly slow (less than 5MB/s). Use ext3 or ext4 instead. I use ext4, and I can copy files with about 25 to 30 MB/s over GB-Lan
- after pluging in the HD and formatting it to a proper file system, mount it to a place most convenient for you, e.g. 'mount /dev/sdb1 /home/data/music', where sdb1 is partition 1 of your HD.
- tell debian to mount the HD there every time it reboots: edit /etc/fstab with nano, and fill in e.g. '/dev/sdb1 /home/data/music ext4 defaults 0 2', where sdb1 is again your HD. Change places and names accordingly
- in my case, I installed Samba with help of the many howtos on the net, and I can sync my HD over Windows now. Subsonic will then use any new folder you put on your HD without hassle.

If you need specific help, I am glad to assist you!

Subsonic is really a great piece of software.

[alphawave7]

Thank you tons, Anima79, for your encouragement and thoughful response!

Yes, Linux is a lot like a recipe with 30 steps, when Windows has 5 for the same recipe. I discovered last night something I didn't have a decade ago when I first started 'hacking' in Linux-Youtube! I learned to partition and create a file system and did so, although I don't recall an opportunity to do ext3 (I assume it defaulted to ext2? Any way to check?).
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around MOUNT as well..windows at least appears to be different in this regard, but in fact may be the same (delayed-write suggests we aren't actually working ON the physical drive, eg. 'G', but in fact a 'mounted' location, THEN the drive is physically written. So far so good?
I also managed to apt-get install samba, but have done no other steps yet in the YT vids I've seen...too little time after work for play!
Thanks for sticking with me, and I see light at the end of this long tunnel! (oh, yes...Subsonic seems snappier today...although it has no music yet! LOL!