Serving Torrents, Xbox 360, and a Vista HTPC

If this is too many topics for one thread, let me know and I will start a new thread for each topic.

So I just completed building my first unRAID server and transferring all my data (mostly media) to it.  I would now like to do the following with it:

- seed and possibly download torrents

- serve media to my Xbox 360

- serve media to my Windows Vista x64 based HTPC, which also doubles as my desktop PC.

I at least conceptually know how to do all of these things, though I haven't tried them all out yet.  What I'm wondering is how best to do it, minimizing power consumption and network lag. 

Regarding torrents, I figure I can just point each individual torrent to a location on the unRAID server and it can either seed from there or download to there, no problems.  What I don't like about this method is that my HTPC/desktop will have to be running the torrent client (uTorrent) alongside the unRAID server.  So basically I'll have to be running two computers 24/7 if I want to be seeding torrents 24/7.  This seems like a waste of power to me.  Does anyone have any better solutions?  Or if now, is there any way to minimize the power consumption of both the computer running the torrent client and the unRAID server?

Regarding the Xbox 360, I haven't tried to access the unRAID server from my Xbox 360 yet, but I've read about others' successes.  What is the best way to do this?

Regarding the HTPC, I have tried streaming music from the unRAID server through the HTPC, but I haven't tried and video yet.  The music streaming worked fine, except that there was a noticeable lag when switching between songs.  I was just using VLC to play the music and manually dragging and dropping the music into VLC's playlist from an explorer window browsing my music share on the unRAID server.  So I haven't tried a more standard music application yet, such as iTunes.  Do people have success running music directly from the unRAID server, or is it best to keep music on the computer and just use the unRAID server as a backup?  Also, when I was streaming music from the unRAID server and I tried to simultaneously copy music to a flash drive, I got lots of stuttering and interrupted playback.  This is clearly not desirable. 

Here are some starting points for your research:

• BubbaRAID - serve torrents from your unRAID server
  
• UnRAID Topical Index, Torrents
  
• UnRAID Topical Index, XBOX360
  
• UnRAID Topical Index, iTunes
  
• UnRAID Topical Index - assorted other media related apps and tools
  
• search stutter in the forums, there are a number of threads about it
  

I can speak for others when I say it is always appreciated when it is apparent that a user has tried to do their own research first, and then asked questions when the answer could not readily be found, or was confusing, or needed help to fit to their particular needs.  It is 'un-motivating' when it appears a user has not even glanced at the UnRAID Manual, the FAQ, or other resources available in the Wiki.  (This was just a general comment, I'm not referring to your questions above.)

Thank you for the links.  I did conduct my own research before creating this thread and actually came across many of those same threads, but I'm just so new to unRAID and linux that most of what I found is incomprehensible to me.  I was hoping someone would break it down for me.  I'll keep reading and trying to figure things out on my own as well.

I appreciate you being polite, but I don't think you would have made your 'general comment' in this thread if it wasn't directed toward me. 

I appreciate you being polite, but I don't think you would have made your 'general comment' in this thread if it wasn't directed toward me.  Tongue

I'm sorry.  I guess I had been thinking about other threads where new users had asked some really basic questions, that seemed like they had not even tried to read the basics of unRAID.  Some of us have put a lot of effort into improving the documentation.  I'll admit it still has a long way to go.  Especially since much of the FAQ and other Wiki articles make extensive use of links to long discussions, which you have to wade all the way through to find a little pertinent info.

I really did not intend a 'squelching', and I am sorry if it sounded like that.

Hey, it's no problem, I sincerely appreciate your and everyone's help. 

Well, after more research it seems like I should give up and 2 of the 3 aims.  Running torrents directly from the unRAID server (not involving any other computer) seems difficult and not user-friendly.  I would rather not be running both my computer and my server all the time to download and seed torrents, so I'm just dedicating a drive in my desktop to the task instead.  I can leave my desktop on 24/7 to seed, then only turn on the unRAID server as needed to serve and store media.

Same goes for serving media to the Xbox 360.  It seems the only way to do it is to have a Windows PC running between the Xbox and the unRAID server as a pass-through, so that means running three individual computers at once, just to play back some media.  That just seems wasteful to me.  Perhaps once in a while I could see the desire for it, but it since I already have the HTPC/desktop, it seems I should just play the media from there directly.

So the one course I'm sticking with is streaming media to the HTPC/desktop.  So far, what I've found is that as long as I'm doing nothing else with the server besides streaming that one thing (movie, album, whatever), it works beautifully.  Streaming music and SD movies are just fine.  I haven't tried any HD stuff yet, I'll try that this weekend.  If I try to do anything else, such as start a file transfer, I get stutter.  I can live with that for now, maybe I'll try to tweak the server to get some more performance out of it in the future.  So I guess I don't really have any questions at this point.  I think I'll give XBMC on Windows a try as well.  I've used MediaPortal in the past and liked it, but it is kind of a pain loading all the codecs and such into it. 

This is kind of a sidenote, but does anyone have any experience using an MCE remote on both an Xbox 360 and a HTPC simultaneously?  My problem is that both devices pick up the remote's signals, so if I turn off one it turns on the other, and so forth.  I guess I need some way of selectively disabling one of the device's 'listening' for the remote.

BubbaRaid, which RobJ linked to can do the torrents stuff for you.  If you are willing to read up on it you should be able to get it up and running with a little effort.

I run BubbaRaid on my server and have not had many (if any) problems with it.  The current version requires that you are running unRAID 4.4.2  and not one of the newer betas.

At this point in time there is no "Double click this .exe file to install" type procedure (and there probably never will be).  Most of the install stuff requires a little "messing around" but it is not to hard for most things.  Once you get the hang of it you get better and better at it.

I've been reading into BubbaRAID, and still most of the discussion is greek to me.  However, I'll give it a try when I get a chance (might not be for a few weeks, because of school), the install at least looks easy.  At this point all I would want to do with it is to download and seed torrents (using rTorrent, I guess?), so I can just focus on that and block out all the rest.

Just to clarify something in my mind, BubbaRAID and unMenu are two completely separate things, right?  And its possible to use both simultaneously?

Just to clarify something in my mind, BubbaRAID and unMenu are two completely separate things, right?  And its possible to use both simultaneously?

Great, thanks.  Also, I remember reading in the BubbaRAID thread that the ultimate goal is to package BubbaRAID and unMenu as one item, so that a single install covers both.  Is that already the case, or do both need to be installed individually?

I've been reading into BubbaRAID, and still most of the discussion is greek to me.  However, I'll give it a try when I get a chance (might not be for a few weeks, because of school), the install at least looks easy.  At this point all I would want to do with it is to download and seed torrents (using rTorrent, I guess?), so I can just focus on that and block out all the rest.

 

Just to clarify something in my mind, BubbaRAID and unMenu are two completely separate things, right?  And its possible to use both simultaneously?

As Joe answered already.  BubbaRaid and Unmenu are different and completely separate.

For BubbaRaid you would be using rtorrent in combination with wtorrent most likely.  rtorrent is the "back end" and only command line based.  Wtorrent is the web based front end that interacts with rtorrent.  It works pretty well and has allowed me to stop using my other machines to download torrents on.  One of the limitations though (if is remember correctly) is that you need to write directly to a disk and not a user share.  This is not a huge problem for me because i have one disk (750GB) that is used for torrents, storing documents and the like and that is about it.

Great, thanks.  Also, I remember reading in the BubbaRAID thread that the ultimate goal is to package BubbaRAID and unMenu as one item, so that a single install covers both.  Is that already the case, or do both need to be installed individually?

They need to be installed individually still at this point.  bubbaQ has said that he wants to get BubbaRaid as stable as possible before he tries to merge the two.  Also, with unRAID 5.0 coming out it could change how some of this stuff is done and make it even easier to package everything together.

One of the limitations though (if is remember correctly) is that you need to write directly to a disk and not a user share.  This is not a huge problem for me because i have one disk (750GB) that is used for torrents, storing documents and the like and that is about it.

Yeah, that's no problem, I prefer to only download to a single HDD anyway, since I've heard torrents put a bit more wear and tear on a drive then most read/write processes (something about partial, unclosed writes).  So I figure I'll devote one of my older, smaller drives to downloads and expect it to fail sooner.  As long as I can seed from any drive in the array, I'm happy.

One of the limitations though (if is remember correctly) is that you need to write directly to a disk and not a user share.  This is not a huge problem for me because i have one disk (750GB) that is used for torrents, storing documents and the like and that is about it.

 

Yeah, that's no problem, I prefer to only download to a single HDD anyway, since I've heard torrents put a bit more wear and tear on a drive then most read/write processes (something about partial, unclosed writes).  So I figure I'll devote one of my older, smaller drives to downloads and expect it to fail sooner.  As long as I can seed from any drive in the array, I'm happy.

This is why I install lots of memory. The more memory, the more buffer cache, the more writes are collected into bigger chunks before writing out.

rtorrent does have the ability to move a file after downloading and seed from a different directory.

Good to know, WeeboTech.  Does that reasoning apply to all computers, not just unRAID servers?

I feel like such a newb asking some of these questions, but I've searched and searched and I can't find the answer.  Seems like this should be a no-brainer, and included on the first post of the BubbaRAID thread along with the install instructions:

I got BubbaRAID to install and run properly.  What next?  How do I access its webpage, like the one seen in this screenshot.  I'm hoping that once I can get in there to mess around a bit, I'll be able to figure out the torrent stuff.

I don't see a general 'help' forum, so I guess I'll post this here, and maybe in the BubbaRAID forum.

Help!  All my user shares are gone, what happened?  I installed BubbaRAID successfully (I think), the server boots into BubbaRAID and eventually says 'BubbaRAID is ready' above the tower login screen.  I was able to boot into BubbaRAID several times and all my user shares were there as normal.  Yesterday I booted up the server and its all gone!  Now, when I look at the tower through the network from a different computer, all I see is 'flash' and 'printers', all my user shares are gone.  Plus the flash drive only contains the following folders:

bubba

config

smarthistory

whereas I know it used to contain a bunch of files in the root directory.  Plus, all but the Bubba folder are empty!  My first instinct is to wipe the flash clean and reinstall unRAID, but I wanted to make sure that's the right thing to do. 

Good to know, WeeboTech.  Does that reasoning apply to all computers, not just unRAID servers?

Depends on the operating system and hardware.

However, 4GB is normally enough for any task.

I got BubbaRAID to install and run properly.  What next?  How do I access its webpage, like the one seen in this screenshot.  I'm hoping that once I can get in there to mess around a bit, I'll be able to figure out the torrent stuff.

I can't help on this one, Post on the Bubbaraid thread.

No one has responded to my post on the BubbaRAID thread, can anyone else lend some advice?  I'm thinking about PMing BubbaQ directly.  It really isn't fun being locked out of all my data.

Edit: NM, problem solved.