[UCIMC-Tech] Reliability of PCs? Re: does Makerspace have a spare PC for WRFU streaming?

[Stuart Levy]

Thanks, everyone, for all the suggestions last week!

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 ...

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?

The story:

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?

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.

I do expect to be at tonight's 7pm WRFU meeting.

On 12/14/15 12:46 PM, Barry Todd wrote:
>
> Stuart,
>
> 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.
>
> On Dec 14, 2015 12:37 PM, "Jay Schubert" <jay.schubert at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jay.schubert at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     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.
>
>     - Jay
>
>     On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Stuart Levy
>     <stuartnlevy at gmail.com <mailto:stuartnlevy at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         Hey all,
>
>         I'm not sure how best to ask something of the Makerspace in
>         general -
>         hope you don't mind it going to you.
>
>         Question: does Makerspace, or the IMC in general, have a spare
>         PC in
>         good condition - *even a stripped one,* lacking disk or RAM -
>         which
>         could become WRFU's dedicated internet streaming server?    If
>         so, could
>         I have it?    I'd like to populate it with any needed hardware
>         and set
>         it up somewhere.
>
>         Details:
>
>         WRFU still aims to start internet streaming, hopefully close
>         to the turn
>         of the year.   Don McClure and I were talking about this last
>         night.
>
>         Chris Ritzo had set up a demonstration server using AirTime
>         software+service, during the October anniversary gathering. 
>          It worked
>         well, but depended on using AirTime's cloud servers -- which
>         meant we
>         got support (good) but have limited & expensive storage for
>         archiving
>         programming (not so good).   The service also costs about
>         $500/year for
>         a reasonable number of streams (not great either).
>
>         It's supposedly also possible to install the same AirTime
>         software onto
>         a *local* computer, let it be the streaming source, and
>         archive programs
>         onto its filesystems.   Then we could archive lots of
>         programs, and
>         wouldn't need to pay AirTime's cloud charges, at the cost of
>         having to
>         maintain and back up the machine ourselves.    I think that's
>         the best
>         way to go.
>
>         Am hoping there's a donated shell-of-a-PC which could serve. 
>          AirTime
>         is supported under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, so I'd probably install
>         that.   I
>         would go and buy any needed hardware to make it functional.
>
>         We'd need to find a good place for it where it'd (a) have a good
>         internet connection, (b) be reasonably accessible but (c) be
>         fairly
>         protected from temperature extremes, being tripped over, etc.
>
>         _______________________________________________
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>         IMC-Tech at lists.chambana.net <mailto:IMC-Tech at lists.chambana.net>
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>
>
>
>
>     -- 
>
>     - Jay
>

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