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Thanks, everyone, for all the suggestions last week!<br>
<br>
My first inclination was to snag a spare donated PC, and put it in
some more-or-less-accessible space, like in the office next to the
WRFU automation computer. Then if it crashed & needed
rebooting, or its backup disk needed attention, etc. it'd be easy to
get to. That seemed easier to me than using a machine in the attic
as Chris offered. But now I'm less sure ... <br>
<br>
How do you-all feel about the reliability of the machines available
- either the donated PCs, or the older rack-mount machines that
Chris mentioned in the attic space? Did I just have bad luck with
the one we picked (story below)? If we used one that was in a rack
in the attic, would there be a way of rebooting it or seeing its
console remotely (IPMI?) or would that need physical access?<br>
<br>
The story:<br>
<br>
On Sunday Sophia and Don and I picked out one of the red-dot
("passes POST") HP compact desktops from the janitor's closet, and
brought it to my house to install software on it. BUT, it doesn't
work. It does past POST, and a short memtest86+ memory test. But
booting Linux on it (Ubuntu or CentOS), it tends to lock up during
or soon after the boot process. (It mostly just went to a blank
screen, but at one point, I caught a couple of machine-check
panics.) Only once did it even get to a login prompt. I'm happy
to test others, but for Barry and whoever's been working with them,
how flaky have you found them to be?<br>
<br>
Computing requirements: I don't really know, but would expect them
to be pretty light. The Airtime server runs with an Apache web
server and Postgres database. It *might* do transcoding of the
incoming audio stream to serve various bitrates of outgoing streams
(I'm not sure yet), but that doesn't seem like a big strain for even
a pretty modest CPU, for a small number of streams.<br>
<br>
I do expect to be at tonight's 7pm WRFU meeting.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/14/15 12:46 PM, Barry Todd wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAB+US67zoDpVE8PmU=SE=Vwx6VaaNqKMHVu8epRmRBfGQZrKyQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<p dir="ltr">Stuart,</p>
<p dir="ltr">Do you have specs on "desired" components for an
Airtime pc. Will a core2Duo be.sufficient or maybe something
better to begin with. Are you going to IMC meeting Tuesday
night. If so we can meet earlier to talk.</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 14, 2015 12:37 PM, "Jay Schubert"
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jay.schubert@gmail.com">jay.schubert@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br type="attribution">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">I'm pretty sure there are still 10-15 donated
machines in the janitor's closet opposite BTP which the
board decided should be for IMC projects as first priority.
They're core 2 duos and there are also stacks of hdd's and
most of the machines have ram. I think the ones with red
dots all post. There are also lcd monitors down there.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>- Jay</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 12:31 PM,
Stuart Levy <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:stuartnlevy@gmail.com" target="_blank">stuartnlevy@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hey
all,<br>
<br>
I'm not sure how best to ask something of the Makerspace
in general -<br>
hope you don't mind it going to you.<br>
<br>
Question: does Makerspace, or the IMC in general, have a
spare PC in<br>
good condition - *even a stripped one,* lacking disk or
RAM - which<br>
could become WRFU's dedicated internet streaming
server? If so, could<br>
I have it? I'd like to populate it with any needed
hardware and set<br>
it up somewhere.<br>
<br>
Details:<br>
<br>
WRFU still aims to start internet streaming, hopefully
close to the turn<br>
of the year. Don McClure and I were talking about this
last night.<br>
<br>
Chris Ritzo had set up a demonstration server using
AirTime<br>
software+service, during the October anniversary
gathering. It worked<br>
well, but depended on using AirTime's cloud servers --
which meant we<br>
got support (good) but have limited & expensive
storage for archiving<br>
programming (not so good). The service also costs
about $500/year for<br>
a reasonable number of streams (not great either).<br>
<br>
It's supposedly also possible to install the same
AirTime software onto<br>
a *local* computer, let it be the streaming source, and
archive programs<br>
onto its filesystems. Then we could archive lots of
programs, and<br>
wouldn't need to pay AirTime's cloud charges, at the
cost of having to<br>
maintain and back up the machine ourselves. I think
that's the best<br>
way to go.<br>
<br>
Am hoping there's a donated shell-of-a-PC which could
serve. AirTime<br>
is supported under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, so I'd probably
install that. I<br>
would go and buy any needed hardware to make it
functional.<br>
<br>
We'd need to find a good place for it where it'd (a)
have a good<br>
internet connection, (b) be reasonably accessible but
(c) be fairly<br>
protected from temperature extremes, being tripped over,
etc.<br>
<br>
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</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
<div>- Jay</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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