tisdag 25 december 2012

Building a home media center, part 2: testing the CuBox

So, I have tested a variety of things with the CuBox. Currently, it is hooked up to a 250G eSATA hard drive and serving as a simple file server. This is what I have tested so far:

  • Video playback, I have not got it working in XBMC under Arch Linux. Probably driver or codec problems, it's almost always drivers or file permissions. 
  • Truecrypt performance. Transfer speeds are 17 MB/s for Twofish, and 6,5 MB/s for AES encryption, which is not enough for a demanding file server, but will work fine for a simple home media center. 
  • Unencrypted transfer speeds over gigabit network seems to be peaking at about 30 MB/s on the file server, I am not sure however if this is due to the CuBox or the network, as I cannot verify any other sources as faster on the network. The router states 300 Mbit/s, and that might be for wired connections too. 

Currently, the CuBox is serving the network with music, and in the short-distant future, it will probably be movies, CD-books and other files too. The 250G-drive will be exchanged for a pack of 3 RAIDed 3T-drives after christmas. I really need some extra storage space, both my 500G encrypted drive and the 750G drive from the old laptop are nearly filled. I'll try to organize them a little and save some space, but I do need more storage space, even though I might be able to save some by cleaning the two external drives I have. I have to order drives soon, though. 

I also have got myself a memory card for the Raspberry Pi, so now I just have to flash it with the Raspbian image and start configuring it. I will most probably send it to a friend as a torrent seeding server to distribute music for local bands, a little project I have been thinking about for a couple of days. For that, I'll need the 500G-drive avaliable, though. So I need to get myself some storage space. I'll get my hands on some 3T drives soon enough, and then I just need a case for them. I have been looking around for that for some time, but without much luck. I found one, which then became out of stock everywhere. But I'll keep my eyes open. 

I'm still hoping to get my hands on a Cubieboard soon enough, as they have started shipping them to peope who preordered. I'll prepare a home media center ready for our livingroom at least for next christmas, but it needs rigorous testing before I can give it to my parents. Anyway, not much more to do at the moment Merry christmas! Even though christmas technically ended before I finished writing this...

söndag 2 december 2012

Building a home media center, part 1: testing the CuBox

So I have gathered all the necessary peripherals for testing the CuBox:

  • 1 CuBox and power supply
  • 1 eSATA hard drive, eSATA cable and power supply
  • 1 USB2 hard drive, cable and power supply
  • 1 Deltaco 7 port USB hub
  • 1 micro-USB cable to access the TTY
  • 1 Logitech MX400 mouse
  • 1 Razer Arctosa keyboard
  • 2 short gigabit ethernet cables
  • 1 Dovado 3G-router for testing wired network transfer
  • 1 HDMI-cable
  • 1 Philips LCD-CCFL-TV
  • 1 4-slot power extension cord
  • My main workstation laptop and power supply
Will report back with test results as soon as I have them. It seems like the CuBox video drivers does not want to play nice with my Ezio DVI-monitor, it is reporting a refresh rate of 37,5 Hz, which it cannot handle as soon as I start X. Console is working, though. I will use both LXDE and XBMC for testing, as well as SAMBA. Most of it is already set up and working. Wish the little coputer good luck, people!