Using Arch as a media server

I plan to use Arch as a media server, for an Arch-based media center at my TV.
I don't want to deal with RAID, so I'm planning on running large single-partition disks to hold media, each with a slightly bigger disk for doing rsync incremental backups. For serving the media I'll be running openSSH and mounting the media volumes over SFTP from the media center.
I'll also be running a webserver on this machine. Someone suggested that I run the webserver on a virtual machine to segment it securely from my precious media.
Does all of this sound like a fine idea?
Last edited by Slax (2010-09-02 11:13:30)

Going back to Slax's original post:
I would recommend using raid and/or lvm partitions on the server, they really aren't that hard to administer/setup and they offer you much easier scalability in terms of storage space. I mean, you can grow an LVM volume (and then grow the fs partition on top of it) quite easily if you just stick another disk in the server. But if you replace a disk on a physical harddrive's partition, you have to copy the contents of that entire partition to a hardrive on a newly partitioned hard-disk.
You can also shrink other lvm volumes to make room to grow a different volume (but then you have to be careful of the filesystem you use on top of the LVM volume, some filesystems, e.g. XFS can't be shrunk). Raid can also potentially speed up disk access times, depending on the Raid level and/or CPU bottlenecks. (Raid 4/5/6 all have a significant CPU overhead for parity calculations on write).
I would also point out that Samba/CIFS offers another way to share files over your network, which will also allow windows-running computers to access your files shares. Also, Samba/CIFS has a reasonably easy to setup password-authenticated security model. On the other hand, non-authenticated NFS is dead easy to setup, and securing NFS might not be harder than setting up Samba for any purpose. Basically, I'd recommend Samba if you're interested in sharing in files between Windows-running computers and your server, otherwise NFS is probably a better choice.

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You will need to run media server on a PC / Mac and use TC as NAS that stored your media files.

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That said, if there was a hack intot he ATV, that would be cool. I know it has a USB port on the back for "servicing and upgrade" use - whatever that means. I suspect that with the right hack, that port could be used to integrate in the control side of these whole-house audio systems. For example, one of the manufacturers makes an interface device that connects to a Mac computer via USB, and taps into iTunes making the Mac the media server and allowing their touchpad to control iTunes from anywhere in the house. This would be the ultimate solution for me if I wanted to buy another Mac computer. I was just hopeing to use the ATV instead. Again, even a Mac mini is way less money that their media server, so not a bad solution too.
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manasij7479 wrote:3.This should be an stfw type of question, but I'm really confused about which way to go for a remote desktop connection.
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Hi
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Message was edited by: wickkd

Can we somehow use TC as a media server so that my PS3 picks up TC as media server and is able to stream all my digital files stored on my external HDD (connected to TC) to my PS3?
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