All my current machines have backups of backups be it via Time Machine and/or full images via SuperDuper! in various locations, but my rather large media archive had been sitting on a bunch of external drives plugged in to my Plex media server box. Over the past year I’ve grown quite tired of this bunch-o-externals situation and I decided that it was time for a NAS device to join the network in order to provide efficiency as well as a piece of mind against drive failures. I have looked at various devices from Netgear, Qnap, Promise and Thecus for an all-in-one solution, but after seeing the prices as well as the downsides; the tinkeringwithin swayed me in the way of DIY as it always does. :)

I had a whole lot of components lying around  from previous endeavours that I wanted to use. Hence, much of the stuff listed below were not purchased new. The reason I decided to use unRAID instead of other solutions is easy. Actually the FAQ section in the unRAID wiki lays it down. My favorites are bold:

No striping, so safer for multiple drive failures; parity protection, so resistant to single drive failure; flexible, can mix and match drive brands, sizes, and types, easily add additional drives, etc…

Each drive is an independent file system. An unRAID array can be thought of as a parity protected JBOD. If the array fails, the individual drives are still accessible, unlike traditional RAID arrays. Spin down can be controlled per drive, so a drive with rarely accessed files may stay off (spun down) for months, saving power costs, and possibly increasing its life. With standard striped RAID arrays, the entire array must be spun up or down, so generally stays spun up.

The server is now built and functioning gloriously with a total of 6.75 TB of space. It is connected to my APC UPS via apscupsd and it cleanly shuts down in the case of a power outage. All of the hardware and software components are listed below:

unRAID OS: 5.0-beta6a
MOBO: ECS A780GM-A (V1.1)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual 5000+ 2.6GHz ADO5000DOBOX
CPU Cooler: XIGMATEK HDT-D1284
RAM: 2X KINGSTON 1GB 800MHZ DDR2 CL6 MEMORY KVR800D2N6/1G
Case: Dark Arena 4 HotSwap
Power Supply: Seasonic S12II 80+ Plus Bronze 520W
UPS: APC BE700GR Back-UPS ES 700VA
Expansion Card: Digitus PCI-X DS-30103 (JMicron 363)
OS USB Flash Drive: SanDisk Cruzer 4GB

Parity Drive: Seagate ST2000DL003 2TB
Data Drive 1: Western Digital WD10EACS 1TB
Data Drive 2: Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB
Data Drive 3: Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB
Data Drive 4: Seagate ST2000DL003 2TB
Data Drive 5: Seagate ST3750330AS 750GB

Installed packages: preclear_disk.sh, unMenu, apcupsd, bwm-ng, DS_Store and ._ file cleanup script, unMENU Image Server, iStat, mail and ssmpt, unRAID Status Alert, Monthly Parity Check, pci utils, Clean Powerdown, screen, WebGUI and Simple Features, infozip

Since I use my server in an OS X/AFP only environment I did not want the SMB shares broadcasted. The SMB shares are broadcasted via avahi even if the SMB service is turned off. To accomplish this I added the bit below to my /boot/config/go file as per this thread on the unRAID forums

 #disable avahi smb broadcast
avahi-daemon -k
rm /etc/avahi/services/samba.service
avahi-daemon -D

On my Plex media server box, the shares are mounted using autofs that is built into Mac OS X. There are other ways of auto mounting the shares suchs as adding the share to the Login Items or using third party applications such as Mountwatcher, but using autofs gives me transparent re-mounting of interrupted shares at the system level. There is a cool tutorial by Poldi on the Plex Forums if you are looking to implement it.

UPDATE – July 14, 2011: Upgraded to 5.0-beta9 from beta6 and in order to disable the SMB shares on this version, you need to make a change to the go file:

#disable avahi smb broadcast
avahi-daemon -k
rm /etc/avahi/services/smb.service
avahi-daemon -D

The file that the /boot/config/go file is removing at boot used to be called samba.service. Now that the netatalk subsystem is upgraded from version 2.0.5 to 2.1.5 in this new beta9; it is now called smb.service.

This new skin was released for XBMC a couple days ago. MediaStream by Team Razorfish is a community effort that has been going on since October 2007. It’s is a very polished piece of work as you can see in the video and need nearly no configuration and tinkering to get it working right.

This skin has replaced my other favorite Aeon for now. One other skin that I am looking forward to is the new default Plex skin. The Plex team has teamed up with the CenterStage team to bring a default skin for Plex in the coming weeks. Judging by the preliminary demos and screenshots, it is going to be a cracker.

To watch it in HD, just click the HD button on the right to jump through to Vimeo and make sure you go full screen.

Plex is an indie fork of the popular Xbox Media Center for OS X Leopard. Aeon is an outstanding skin in alpha stages for XBMC. You might have heard about both of them and you might have also seen many galleries and screenshots.

Well, I’ve got a video demo. And it is in HD if you wish to watch it that way. Just click the HD button on the right to jump through to Vimeo and make sure you go full screen.

This video which is not as smooth as the real thing, probably due to the screen casting software; showcases the system I’ve been using for the past 3-4 months. I have a Mac mini hooked up to a Sony Bravia and the experience has been nothing short of fantastic. So much so that I have deleted Front Row.

I am currently using the Movies, TV Shows and Music components of Plex. I use the Music component only to listen to Shoutcast radios–especially Dinamo 103.8 and Soma–and Last.FM stations since Plex developers haven’t gotten round to integrating iTunes and iPhoto yet; but judging by the speed they’ve been crunching at, it is just a matter of time. Plus, I have about 17,000 songs in my iTunes library and trying to navigate them with the remote is a big pain.

Plex scrapes IMDB for movies and TheTVDB for TV shows and grabs the director/writer/cast listings, ratings, genre, year, runtime, plot overviews as well as posters. There is also support for various python scripts developed for the original XBMC. I especially like The Apple Movie Trailers script which provides streaming trailers to nearly 2000 movies within the Plex interface.

There is support for the Apple Remote as well as Harmony Remotes, Universal Remotes and XBox360 controllers.

The Plex community and developers are ever helpful over at the Plex forums. Get yourself a Mac mini and head on over to Plex to meet Elan and the rest of the team as well as Barkley. ;)

This video has been floating around the web for a while. I realized that some peeps were looking for a subtitled version. Well, here you go..

Info: After much taping, editing, deleting, drinking and swearing we are proud to present… Sales Guy vs. Web Dude! A mashup of true and mostly-true stories from IT hell. If you’ve ever called tech support and wondered what the hell they are doing down there… well, this should answer some questions for you.

thewebsiteisdown.com

The photo above was taken in Pupa Apple Store, Mayadrom Shopping Center, Istanbul. They are also bundling a copy of Vista Basic with every Mac purchase. How about selling Pepsi in a Coke fridge?

This one above is from the Bimeks weekend paper insert. It says Virus free with OS X. You can load Windows as well!

And the prices are so cheap(!), aren’t they? 2197 Euros + 18% Tax for a 2.4 Ghz 15″ MBP. That’s 4 grand for a Windows laptop. ;)

Link

David Heinemeier of 37signals says on his post titled The MacBook Air could easily be the only machine:

But what I continue to be impressed with the most on the Air is simply the build quality. The MacBook Pro has OK build quality, but the regular MacBook frankly blows in this department in my mind. The plastic feels too cheap, it creaks and bends, and the black surface gets permanently smudged way too quickly. It just doesn’t feel tight in the same way the Air does.

What most people are complaining about the Air is the non user replaceable battery; right?

On the other hand it feels very well built, very tight; right?

Have you ever heard of structural rigidity?

The fact that the underbelly of this thin piece of gorgeous metal structure is one solid piece plays an outstanding role in the way that it feels so tight and well built. Most people would be complaining that it creaks and flexes and it was built like crap if it had a big deep hole at the bottom.

This is very much like the big difference in handling between a two door sports car and the convertible version of the exact same car. Most of the time, the convertible version handles like crap, because it flexes due to the absence of a roof. Oh, and it also makes all sorts of crackling noises when you run over a pothole.

To overcome this, engineers tend to equip the convertible one with extra bracing elements throughout the chassis which helps the structural rigidity, but also increases weight.

And weight helps neither handling nor portability.

Someone pinch me!!

Props to Geohot. Instructions can be found on his blog and on hackint0sh.org as always. Will try this on a few OTBs beginning of next week… Just wanna wait for the early adopters to report back their findings over the weekend.

You wanna Mac Pro, but don’t got the dough to get a Mac Pro? You can build yourself one on the cheap, though not legal; or as quiet, or as good looking. There is a few tutorials out there and I am sure it works perfectly as we are all one big happy family under the Intel sun. ;)

• Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800 by hacker extraordinaire Adam Pash
• DIY Hackintosh Tutorial: Build a Mac Pro for Cheap by Darwinian at MacApper
• Hack Attack : Install Leopard On your PC in Just One Step at Dailyapps
• OSx86 Project is where all the magic happens
• The ultimate OSX on PC guide

I might give this a go if I find the time in the next month or so. I’ll keep you posted.