INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 24 for Linux => Topic started by: Goatshade on October 24, 2018, 09:20:10 am
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Title basically asks it. Not sure how feasible this is but if a poor girl like me wanted to build a relatively cheap media server and NAS using a router running DD-WRT and a (large) mounted external storage volume, this would theoretically be the way to do it without having any other additional always-on machines.
Not entirely sure how MC would run or be accessed and configured but that's why I'm here. Still a baby when it comes to Linux. Feasible, y/n? :P
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Thinking about it I don't think running MC on a router would work out too well, assuming if it was even possible in the first place. Even if you did manage to install MC on a router (which I don't think you could) it'd probably only handle audio-only. Video I'm sure wouldn't work very well at all. That and I doubt JRiver would invest time and resources into trying to get MC running on routers running custom firmware like DD-WRT and OpenWrt, especially after what happened when they got MC running on QNAP NASes then having to end development.
If you weren't intending to use video, I'd recommend adding a Raspberry Pi (or a IdPi) - those are low power and can be always-on and they run MC pretty well (albeit, like I said, audio-only). True, it'd add one more always-on machine, but they're worth it in my opinion. They can also be used for other things in addition to running MC, like using it as a RetroPie for emulation of older game systems (a Pi can handle almost anything before the Nintendo 64).
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Routers are way too low spec to run anything like MC. You'll often have very little RAM, and the majority of routers use MIPS CPUs, which MC does not run on.
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Mm, okay. I figured as much. It's okay; attaching a low-power server to it was my next option. I have a rather old and repurposed HP desktop (Pavilion a6214x) running Debian—surprisingly snappy with GNOME as the DE. Previously, I thought I was restricted to less intensive distributions like Lubuntu but it seems either that this machine has a bit more power or that Linux DE's in general are less resource-intensive than I thought.
I'm not sure it qualifies as "low-powered" but I have configured it for automatic login and automatic boot upon power failure. It also accepts wake-on-LAN packets sent via MO 4Media. This means that I can set it to suspend. Waking it, too, is a very snappy endeavour.
It won't be able to play audio because I'm sticking with Nouveau but that's fine; its only job is going to be indexing and pushing content to other zones anyway. The only worry I have is its NIC—100base-T full-duplex maximum. Could be something of a bottleneck. I'll test it. Otherwise, outside of MC on the router itself, I can't imagine anything more perfect.
We'll see.