abernardi

Hi all, it's been a REALLY long time, glad to see you're all still here. My unRAID has been mostly inactive, but I fire it up from time to time and it's always been dependable. I had it up and running a couple months ago with no problems, but tried to boot it up today and it appears it's not being seen by my router or vice versa. I'm still on 4.7 and am including the syslog. I plugged it directly into my macbook pro and they didn't see each other either. Any ideas? unRAID_syslog_1:4:15.txt

I also have a UPS on the unRAID. It's saved my butt a few times. I'm going to have to move it into another room at some point when I get the sound system up and running. The best place for it is the pantry, but it's a small closet and there's no good ventilation. As it is, it gets pretty hot on very warm days. More stuff to figure out!

Thanks Les, I want to commit to you that I will stay off the 6moons website all day tomorrow because I feel like an addict right now. At the moment I'm in a "wait and see" mode. The only purchase I need to think about right now is this pair of speakers I'm pretty jazzed about... I had been auditioning lots of speakers over the last few months and it was mostly disappointing. Then a couple of weeks ago I was at one shop, about to leave because I wasn't crazy about what I was hearing, when this guy who was listening with me asked what I was looking for and not finding. I said I wanted something that sounded real, like the sax player was in the room (we were listening to a solo sax at the time). He nodded and said, "Follow me, I want to show you something." It turned out he was the owner of the store (I thought he was just a customer like me). He took me into another room in the back and said "This is my personal playroom." He put on the disc we had been listening to on the other speakers and BAM! The sax wasn't in the room, it felt like I was transported into the room the sax was playing in. This guy ruined me. I was about to give up and just get a little cheap system, lots of bang for the buck and move on. But this just stopped me cold, I felt like I couldn't enjoy music again! I know it's crazy, but I got bit. Of course this was a highly customized system that I couldn't even guess how much he had invested in. So I looked over the system and it was mostly recognizable high end equipment, McIntosh, Krell...tubes and solid state...active crossover...fancy cables with lifts, etc...but the speakers I didn't recognize. He said that was because he and his partner had made them. They were a unique design influenced by the "Heil Air Motion Transformer". It's kind of like a ribbon tweeter, but much more efficient and handled frequencies from 500Hz up! He also had a 7.1 theater set up with these which was also impressive. Anyway, I'm rambling here, sorry. The upshot was that they made a few prototypes, the business never got off the ground, he had a few extra pairs they had been futzing with as surrounds for the theater and he named a price that was almost achievable. So we'll see. He's retiring in the next few months and there are only a few of these in existence, so I guess I should make a decision soon. So that's when I started searching out solutions that could put me in the ballpark of his system, or somewhere in the neighborhood at least. While music servers aren't new, they are still a maturing technology, particularly as it trickles down to the point where we can do it with an iPad or iPod. I don't remember what kind of server he was running in his theater but it was pretty sophisticated, yet it didn't sound as good as when we popped in a CD. I'm not a physicist, but maybe these DACs have an easier time with a good CD transport than a file server that wasn't necessarily designed to be really really stable. Apparently they're only recently understanding how even low level jitter can adversely effect the sound. One article I was reading claimed that even 3 - 5 pico-seconds could have a measurable effect, and it's more noticable at higher bit rates, so your hirez files are particularly susceptible to jitter. The science is beyond me and it could just be a lot of mumbo jumbo to sell garbage to people like me. But I do know that what I heard in that room was better than I thought sound reproduction could get. And I work with sound professionally, and have heard many reference systems. Nothing sounded that real. So... you know, it's intriguing. Anyway, let's see how to bring this back around to our beloved unRAID... hmmm.

I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't fully agree with you (of course you're right that I've been reading too many posts and magazine articles, that's for sure!). Firstly, I'm not intending to rush into anything. I also think I do have a basic enough understanding of jitter and the problems you can run into sourcing media from a computer and how expensive it can be to get a clean, accurate data stream to a DAC or getting a DAC that can create an accurate analogue signal. I'm not an engineer but I have read up on it. My aim here is to do this relatively inexpensively. I didn't realize that a good DAC didn't care how it gets its data. I've read posts and reviews talking about the importance of getting an accurately clocked signal to the DAC and how that improves performance even in the best DACs. I also like to play with bleeding edge on the cheap, I'm not looking for this to be a perfect solution out of the box, and it may never be. I don't know what the Oppo is capable of, and neither do a lot of other people who are trying to get their media through it, but it's fun to see how far you can go with little investment. So I don't agree with you that I don't know what I want to achieve. And yes, I don't understand how this all works, I thought I made that clear in my post. DLNA is new to me and I wasn't sure what the scope of it's performance was. So thanks for the clarification. As for the quality of a phantom center channel, I've heard several excellent systems with phantom centers. Some would argue that with some speakers it's preferable. I think Magnepan only recently came up with an acceptable center channel speaker. As to codecs, I work with many, too many, different formats. Frankly it's annoying and time consuming, a real bottleneck. But it's what we have and I'm trying to find the simplest way to deal with it. And as for doing research, that's what I'm doing here, hoping some fellow audio lovers are mulling over the same questions or have had experience with this. I don't digest dull white papers or wikis very well, I learn better through conversation. It's more enjoyable that way too.

Hi all, I'm rebuilding my stereo and home theater, or at least planning it out. I'm looking for the cheapest way to get audiophile stereo while also having it serve as a very good HT. Currently the Oppo BDP-95 is an incredible value and it's in the experimental stages of functioning as a DLNA compatible device. In fact I'm considering using it AS my preamp all together. My understanding it that the drive itself supports Bluray, DVD, CD, SACD, DVD-A, avi, divx, gif, jpg, mka, mkv, mp3, mpg, png, vob and wma. It also will play files directly from an attached USB or eSATA drive but I'm not clear which formats it supports (I think the same as a disc). And then it will support NAS with DLNA. Here's where unRAID comes in. Natively via a network it only supports jpg, mkv, mp3, mpg, pcm, png and vob (I know I'm mixing codecs and containers. It won't support other codecs than the ones listed in the supported containers), so it's very limited. I don't know much about DLNA, so I'd appreciate some help. I think media servers like Twonky and Mediatomb will transcode to supported codecs on the fly, right? And these can be installed on unRAID? If so, this could be a very neat media solution. My music is mostly in Apple Lossless, some mp3 and mp4 for music. My video is all over the place, lots of codecs. The BDP-95 is great because it has an analog 7.1 output that has already done all the decoding necessary (including dolby TrueHD and the DTS equivalent). I want to connect this directly to an amp, bypassing a preamp. Volume can be controlled via the Oppo remote. I can stream all my media from the unRAID via ethernet or wireless and a DLNA server. Then I can play my other blurays, SACD's and DVD-Audio from the Oppo itself. I'm trying to avoid a preamp because I like the idea of going as direct as possible and avoid a lot of high cost cables and electronics. I didn't believe in all the hype around jitter for many years but I'm now finding that it actually is a huge problem for sound quality and I believe the more direct the better. I also think ethernet can avoid the jitter issues encountered in the USB>S/PDIF>DAC stages. If this is at all feasible, the big problem I see now is organization. I'll have to use my TV as a monitor to play music. And I hear the DLNA interface structure is clunky. Again, this is a realm I don't know about. Do these media servers like Twonky also produce a user interface, like XBMC for example? Or is it simply making the files available to the Oppo? OR is there a way I can just stream these files to the Oppo straight from my Mac using iTunes, Songbird, Decible, etc for music, and XBMC for video? Also the BDP-95 has separate higher quality stereo only outputs, but I haven't found any info if the stereo L/R outputs will double as LF and RF for HT. And while we're at it, the front L/R speakers I'm considering are really expensive and getting a center channel to match would really be cost prohibitive, so I want to do a phantom center which means sending the center channel info to the LF & RF. I know good HT processors can do this, but like I said, I'm trying to avoid that. OK, my eyes are crossing and my brain is getting slushy at this point. Anyone playing with this stuff have any advice? Am I on a feasible track here?

Well, everything seems to be fine now. I don't know what happened, but after it crashed the 2nd time, I had a running syslog going thru telnet and it didn't happen again. I've had the server running now for about 3 days, solid as a rock. BTW, we just had a power outage here and the UPS worked magnificently! Gotta love UPS

Must be Y2K just a little late! I've had it up and running for about 2 hours and just played back some media and there are no problems. But the crashes happened when I was writing data. I'm going to hunt around a little more to see what I can find. I'll report back. In the meantime, anyone with suggestions would be much appreciated.

Anyone?

I woke up this morning and found that the unRAID had fallen offline at around 6AM. It wasn't reachable by http, telnet and the router reported it unavailable. I tried to shutdown with one click of the power button which should make it shutdown cleanly, but no response. So now that's a crash. I finally had to do a hard shutdown by holding the power button. When I started it up again it booted fine, but reported 1 sync error and started a parity check. It took about 10 minutes for most of the drives to mount, except one, the only IDE drive, took about 20 minutes to show up. The parity check finished up around 5:45PM and reported no errors. I started copying a 2gb file over to the tower and about 1/3 of the way thru it dropped offline again and crashed! I checked my patches, they seem to be OK. All the temps looked fine. The router hasn't dropped anything else, so I'm guessing it's not in the router or switch, but that's not based on very much. I started up again and it's doing a parity check again, but shows no sync errors and all the drives mounted quickly this time. I'm including 2 syslogs, one I took this afternoon before the crash and one just now after start up. They look awfully similar, but I don't know how to interpret them. A few lines that came up orange in UNMENU in both syslogs could be a concern: It also reported replaying xxxx transactions in xxxx seconds, different in each syslog, but orange in unmenu. An example: And then duplicate objects showed up, but that's happened before and I don't think it's a problem...for example: I'm not sure where to go from here. Suggestions? THANKS! 2_syslogs.zip

Daveguy, Have you tried to get in thru Telnet? I use JellyfiSSH, it's a free download, just google it. Make sure you have the right ip address. Connect and log in. If you're successful there are a few things you can try (I picked up these tips when I was having the same problem). First try to re-establish the web interface by entering at the prompt: Try the web interface. If that doesn't work, try: If that doesn't work you can call up some of the syslog by typing: This should display the last 10 or so messages generated in the telnet window and will continue displaying more messages as they are generated. You can copy and paste these into a txt file. I'm not sure how to get the entire syslog to display in the telnet window, but you can generate and save the entire syslog to the flash drive by typing: This will save a txt file on the your boot flash drive. Then you can do a clean shut down of the unRAID by typing: Then once it's shutdown, you can just plug the flash drive into your mac and retrieve the file. I haven't tried this last option, but I think it will work. Let me know if this helps.

Yup, I'm adding a new 2TB HD as I type. I'm up to 11TB! Who would have guessed? I was going to replace an old 250GB IDE drive with the 2TB, but after I opened up my box, I realized I've used up all my SATA heads (4 on the mother board, 4 on two PCI cards)!!! Damn, now I have to get a PCI card with 4 heads? So, I decided to leave it be and swap it with a 750. At least I'm picking up an extra 1.25TB. BTW, all these backup strategies are interesting, what about the Mac crowd? I've been using Carbon Copy (free) to clone my boot disc, but I just expanded that to 2TB too and put my iTunes library on it. So I think I'll keep using Carbon Copy for everything but iTunes and then backup iTunes to the unRAID. Media files for my editing projects are tricky. Some of that stuff comes and goes and I don't have to worry about it. But some personal projects and multiple use media I've just kept on an external FW drive and backup to the unRAID.

Rajahal, What ever came of this? I'm having some stuttering problems myself. Was it smoother locally?

I also have one and it has excellent range and is very solid, but the unlit keyboard is a deal breaker. It's also so small that it's very frustrating. For XBMC on Windows, I'm still looking for a good remote. Suggestions?

will do

I'll look into XBMC Live. I wanted to control from the imac because I sit right by my imac when I'm watching movies and it would just be convenient to use the same keyboard & mouse to control the xbmc. Right now I have the little lenovo controller, which is great, but it's small and not really ergonomic.

Yes, that happens to me too.

Gee Auggie, you shouldn't limit yourself like that, you gotta start thinking bigger jmos, I'll try your idea, thanks.

I'm having an ongoing problem that crops up from time to time: When I have disk 1 of the unRAID server mounted and I put a CD or DVD in the DVD drive of my Mac, the Finder shows the DVD as disk 1. I noticed this as iTunes was importing a playlist from disk 1. I put in a DVD and suddenly I got an error from iTunes that it couldn't write to disk 1. I went into the iTunes preferences and found that now it thought the music library should be located on the DVD, not on disk 1. I think this has something to do with how OS X deals with volumes. Before I put the DVD in the drive the path for my music files was: volumes/disk 1/Master Music Library. And after I put the DVD in the drive it became: volumes/DVD/Memento (I had put in the movie Memento). Anyone know what's going on?

I have a Windows 7 HTPC connected to my TV via HDMI. My media is stored on my unRAID and my iMac is on the other side of the living room. They're all connected via ethernet. I've been using XBMC on the Mac and Windows, but I find it would be much quicker and easier to just use my Mac to access the files and send to the TV. I know I could run a DVI and Audio cables across the room, but I'd rather use the Windows PC, since it's already hooked up. I thought I could use Remote Desktop Connection to configure the mac as one display and the TV as a second, it won't let me on a remote connection. Any ideas how I can do this?

OK, ... answered my own question about hosts & disks, just took a closer look at the syslog and worked it out. The array rebuilt the new disk successfully but reported thousands of errors, tho the parity appears to be valid. I decided to check the parity to see if the errors would go away and the thing froze on me again. I think it has to be the card. :'(

bump^

I hope this isn't annoying, but I have a very basic question...As I read through my syslogs I'm getting confused with all the disk and host identifiers. I know which disks the sd(x) and disk(x) identify but then there's ata(x), md(x) and host(x). Which is which? I'm trying to determine if I have a bad SATA card. I've been trying to add a new disk to my unRAID server and as it tries to rebuild I get a lot of errors on ATA5 and ATA6. It keeps reconfiguring the disks down to UDMA/33 and then freezes. I realize this can be a cabling problem, so I changed the cables, but no luck. So I'm going to change one of the cards, but I don't know how to tell which one is malfunctioning. I'm including the current syslog. Update: I changed the cables again and the rebuild was successful, but if you look at the syslog, there still are numerous communication errors. Can someone look at this and tell my what's going on? THANKS and THANKS again. syslog_9_20_10.txt

I use MakeMKV on my mac to make the MKV file. I'm not at home right now, but I wonder if MakeMKV can go backwards and convert it back to a video_TS folder?

These are all good suggestions. What I ended up doing, since I have so many movies I want to sort differently, I just used the playlist function. It wasn't actually James Bond, I was using that as an example. Specifically, it was one set of movies that included a certain actor and another set that included a certain director. Instead of storing all my movies in one folder, I made three separate folders, one for the actor, one for the director and one for the rest, assigned them as sources and then made 2 playlists with a rule that the file name contain the name of the folder of the actor for one and the director for the other. That seems the easiest way. Now what I want to figure out is how to add these playlists to the home screen menu. In the Aeon65 skin, I think I can do that because it has custom fields for the home screen, but I can't find that in Confluence. I can put Movies and TV shows, but I can't find how to put anything else. Any ideas? THANKS!

That's the only thing I could think of, to move all the Bond movies to one drive. Now, as I look closer, it's not even as consistent as I first thought. It's generally sorting them on a disk to disk basis, but then it throws a red herring in and something on the same disk shows up quite a bit later. It just becomes a problem because it isn't just the Bond films. I've made sort lists for a certain actor and for some directors, etc., so it would mean moving around quite a bit of data. Oh well...