Post AdF0C5eoZjPYY51Mm0 by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
(DIR) More posts by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
(DIR) Post #Ac4cqWjt9rA0mfZ9gu by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-22T18:50:49Z
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Are there any Raspberry Pi aficionados here?I'm looking to buy a Raspberry 4 Model B in order to set up a Plex server, along with a USB hard drive for storage.My question is. Can the PI be used for multiple purposes at once?Dream setup: Plex server, torrent client (preferably where I can add/remove torrents remotely from my PC on the same network), and PiHole in one.
(DIR) Post #Ac4ddKz5ePJgW5x1V2 by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-22T19:05:33Z
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@SemiNorwegian yes, but your bottleneck will be the storage. You have to minimize SDCard storage utilization. The USB3.0 ports is where you want your storage to be.
(DIR) Post #Ac4ekrX98DU7Rp24xc by Viking@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-22T19:18:07Z
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@SemiNorwegian I have a raspberry pi, and use it for a pihole.For a plex server, I expect you would be much more happy with a real ryzen small desktop system.If you have to same money, something like the bottom one.
(DIR) Post #Ac4eo04rp1jIoaIkSG by Wy7usa@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-22T19:18:41Z
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@SemiNorwegian You are probably better off getting one of these:https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-Computer-Support-Display-Ethernet/dp/B0BVFVRDXN
(DIR) Post #Ac4kYGAwnktdpl1UW0 by CattleBaron@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-22T20:23:04Z
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@Wy7usa @SemiNorwegian $128 for Beelink
(DIR) Post #Ac6Ts9ihCfXEhOd6fI by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-23T16:25:36Z
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@Viking @Wy7usa I looked at local stores and the cheapest "mini-PC" I could find are these. Going from a cool $300 and up. I'm hitting around $700 for the first mention of Ryzen.I also imagine these mini-pc's have a higher power consumption than a PI could ever dream of?@BigSkyRider I would naturally look into getting a speedy USB3 SSD disk. Should I look for a powered USB, or does the PI have enough juice?
(DIR) Post #Ac6V0olKalkyGEYZVY by Wy7usa@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-23T16:38:21Z
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@SemiNorwegian @Viking @BigSkyRider Didn't realize you were in Norway. I guess alcohol isn't the only expensive thing up there.Excess power use = heat. Where I live it is usually cold and it offsets my heating costs.The Pi should have plenty of juice to run the SSD.
(DIR) Post #Ac6bCaXBuuQNKiwFu4 by Viking@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-23T17:47:44Z
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@SemiNorwegian @Wy7usa @BigSkyRider Perhaps it is possible to order it from the Chiners?https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Newest-R-yzen-Mini-PC-Win10_1600971362760.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.70f139eerndvgw&s=pWebsite seems a bit clunky, but I have friends here in the states that have ordered from Alibaba.My always on PC is a 6 core ryzen 5600G, and it only uses 20W power, unless I put a big computational load on it.I recommended a real PC, because you mentioned you would like a Plex server. I think an RPi is under-powered for a Plex server, I fear that you might see jerky video.
(DIR) Post #Ac6caBKbNAgG4UrdZo by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-23T18:03:12Z
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@Wy7usa @SemiNorwegian @Viking my experience with older rpi's is that I prefer powered usb hubs to relying on the rpi power... personal preference there, solid state disks are pretty low power requirements.I haven't done actual power tests to know the consumption differences, but if you dig around in arm mini pc variants, you're basically in the same bucket of things. My dislike at this point for rpi is exclusively my dislike for the sdcard and how that leads me to want to reload the bios
(DIR) Post #Ac6d8Hi6A7ZrhY7FhI by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-23T18:09:22Z
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@Wy7usa @SemiNorwegian @Viking with the use-case described, you don't have a ton of compute requirements unless your plex is doing a lot of transcoding. with rpi4 or whatever you go with, if you can get your storage right, everything else will fit. I like the m2 type ssd's for host OS, and tend to keep my VM disks on secondary usb3/sata. https://www.newegg.com/p/2SW-002G-00066?Item=9SIBJ6VJJY7998
(DIR) Post #Ac6hWivF2XQYrfAkk4 by MrAnthrope@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-22T19:49:13Z
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@SemiNorwegian Intel nuc running proxmox os so that you can have each service in its own container or vm. Check out this guy's helper scripts.https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/
(DIR) Post #Ac6hWk0wynaWFeqpHM by Brianwarden@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-23T18:58:36Z
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@MrAnthrope @SemiNorwegian is have never had good experience with video and pi
(DIR) Post #Ac824LEnnUQbUmabOy by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-24T10:23:29Z
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@BigSkyRider I see the new RPi5 comes with a built in PCIe slot.With this, I guess I could be so lucky that I can just plug in the M2 card I just so happened to remove from my mothers dead computer recently.As far as I have read, people seem to be quite satisfied with RPiPlex, as long (as you stated), it doesn't have to transcode.The RPi5 claims to have a 2.4GHz processor. I will also be the only user having to be served by the RPi.
(DIR) Post #Ac82lDqz7wJ92utcwK by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-24T10:31:14Z
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@Brianwarden What model of Pi have you used? Have you tried Plex specifically? I've been trying to read up on experiences with the PiPLEX server.They seem fairly positive, as long as it doesn't need to transcode any content.
(DIR) Post #Ac83En6z7LF6nLTmrY by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-24T10:36:35Z
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@BigSkyRider Is there perhaps a way to pre-transcode the content on the Pi itself? I must admit I don't really know what we are achieving with transcoding, but I suspect it has something to do with file formats or "codecs" or something?It would have more than enough idle time to be able to go through and prep my content for my next streaming session.
(DIR) Post #Ac8JUxi54yt5Z5Z0gy by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-11-24T13:38:47Z
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@SemiNorwegian yes, it does have to do with file formats/codecs. There's some settings in the plex server to control some of the behavior. I used to run my plex as a vm with 2 processor cores (mostly because I had extra) and 1 GB of ram without any issues. Now I run my plex as a jail on my freenas. My people don't watch a tone of tv, bit here and there at night, but I don't have any performance jitter.
(DIR) Post #AcVvchwJrWQtrfQFSS by Brianwarden@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-05T23:04:20Z
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@SemiNorwegian sorry, i have a 32 bit 3 that use for pi hole and a 4 that i dont really use . was trying to use as a basic editor for travel hockey but no can do . no ass . the problem i have is not enough clocks to transcode, so you need to rip 2 copies of video. 1 exact 10M for future and a 2M for plex.
(DIR) Post #AcVw9wnNeKtPUm5iAC by Brianwarden@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-05T23:10:21Z
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@SemiNorwegian now it's been a while, so I'm a little fuzzy, but you might be able to do low bandwidth on external Drive and get by with it but I don't know. I know some people run Linux on their pi and wonder if that would be better for software options
(DIR) Post #AdESMXZcF30TaEOuTw by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T10:38:29Z
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@Viking I'm looking at this project again.I've ordered a Pi5 (unknown shipment date) just to give it a go. Luckily I should be able to return it if it's not usable. Or if I don't find any other uses.Would something like a ASUS ExpertCenter PN42 N100/4/128GB be usable? Trying to find something from local vendors that might be usable.https://www.asus.com/us/displays-desktops/mini-pcs/pn-series/asus-expertcenter-pn42/
(DIR) Post #AdEauxCeG0v8YEZvP6 by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T12:14:20Z
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@Viking @Wy7usa @BigSkyRider Would this do?
(DIR) Post #AdEffkcTGARwx2E7dY by Wy7usa@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T13:07:37Z
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@SemiNorwegian @Viking @BigSkyRider Thats about the weakest PC I have seen. Also they seem to be quite expensive.How much for this device? I would not pay any more than $100 for it.I would look for something with at least 4 cores and 8 GB ram.
(DIR) Post #AdEhTV6TK2wbGJXuFM by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T13:27:49Z
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@Wy7usa Thats a close to a cool $400 here.
(DIR) Post #AdEi5rVWTNwrkdYURU by Wy7usa@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T13:34:45Z
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@SemiNorwegian Just looked it up here. They are not cheap here either. I'd stay away from that one.
(DIR) Post #AdEsUhDoqnCgdGksSm by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T15:31:17Z
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@SemiNorwegian spec wise It'd be able to work although the ram is a little small for the use-case, @Wy7usa has a good target minimum, 4 core 8 gb ram.I picked up one of these minisforum boxes for $375 a few weeks ago... there might have been a holiday sale, currently out of stock. https://www.newegg.com/minisforum-um480xt/p/2SW-002G-000E6?Item=9SIBJ6VK504895
(DIR) Post #AdEuPHPjZlAF3EsCkS by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T15:52:43Z
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@BigSkyRider @Wy7usa I would love to order one of these tiny machines from Newegg and Amazon. But I'll be slapped with a 25% VAT charge, as well as a fee for handling my VAT charge if I order anything from abroad.I would dread running into any issues that would require shipping the item back to the vendor.
(DIR) Post #AdEufyVX7fmXKwXwyu by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T15:55:44Z
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@BigSkyRider Those minisforum machines not only knocks the socks of thhe Aspire machine they had at my local store. But they take up way less space from what I can see.The case for the XC-840 looks like a huge arena when you look into it and see the dinky little fan on its processor. Waaaay down in the cavernous case.
(DIR) Post #AdEvnpc0BFMQ1BslrE by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:08:21Z
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@SemiNorwegian the downside with the minipc form factor that I've hit so far: 1: the external power supplies die, but I found a replacement for 20$, that will hopefully work, find out next week; 2: adding a hdd is tricky, has to be slim hdd, bought 2 hard drives and found out one was too large physically to close the case. I've bought 3 of them so far, one is running my mail server and gitlab, while the other is my zoneminder, and the new one will wind up as my primary in a few weeks.
(DIR) Post #AdEwEjolpYfdrogWKu by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:13:12Z
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@SemiNorwegian does your local store have on staff nerds? I feel like they're doing you wrong if they're not stocking up on current gen hardware. They should be the ones to push through those insane charges by purchasing a lot of these in bulk... I was trying to explain it to my mother... but these little tiny boxes have more compute capacity than the servers I was racking when I started in IT... and the power consumption.... it's so low for the compute output, that's my big refresh reason.
(DIR) Post #AdEwu0m5gs2YKY70wC by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:15:51Z
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@Viking @Wy7usa @BigSkyRider I think I might have stumbled across something! Seemingly reasonably priced, compared to size and specs of the XC840.Beelink SER5 MAX Mini PC.Ryzen 7 5800H 8 Core16GB RAM500GB M2 NVMENorwegian supplier (no import duties, and Norwegian warranty): $536.I think that is more than fair, trying to decipher specs, looking at form factor, and how the XC-840+500GB USB drive was $417.
(DIR) Post #AdEwu1fONGHB63zB8S by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:20:40Z
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@SemiNorwegian @Viking @Wy7usa I've looked at the Beelink boxes more than once and almost bought them a few times, I like them. Those specs will kill it for your use-case, and leave you some extra room for another small virtual server if you wanted to. plex will run fine with a single proc, give it two and you'll never hear from it, 2 - 4 gb of ram. Torrent server I'd go about the same, which would leave you about half of those specs left over.
(DIR) Post #AdEydDnKEHYhhEoMCG by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:40:03Z
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@BigSkyRider @Viking @Wy7usa If that is the case, I'm game!What would be my next step, when the machine arrives?It comes with Windows 11. But I'd be happy to try a "user friendly" Linux variant.I found it kinda "cool" when I was SSH'ing into my RPi and using it "headlessly".
(DIR) Post #AdEz6ITTuNzqboOT5M by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:45:17Z
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@SemiNorwegian @Viking @Wy7usa IMO: wipe windows off the disk, replace it with linux of your choice (I'm a fan of linux mint for user friendly light weight UI). Once you're into a linux OS, install a hypervisor... I default to qemu+kvm/virt-manager, but virtualbox is pretty friendly... hardest part with qemu will be the network bridging but there a lot of good guides. Once you have a hypervisor, then you can create virtual machines, which is where I'd put plex/torrentserver.
(DIR) Post #AdEzLmF9ViwxHN4a24 by Wy7usa@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:48:06Z
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@SemiNorwegian @Viking @BigSkyRider Beelinks are great, I own 4 and just bought another.
(DIR) Post #AdEze76GhkQfB4f2XY by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:51:25Z
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@BigSkyRider I don't think there is a nerd to find in that store. I'm not counting awkward gamers.The store is a huge chain, spanning multiple Scandinavian countries. They've more or less killed any smaller PC stores.This Beelink I just happened to find comes from a small two man operation who services computers and has courses for tech-illiterate
(DIR) Post #AdEzoSj59dLb94kaX2 by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:53:17Z
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@BigSkyRider Why can't I just run Plex/Qbittorrent as any other "app"?Why does it have to be virtual?
(DIR) Post #AdF0410nxkJdpCSLzc by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:56:06Z
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@SemiNorwegian dealers choice, you don't have to. I do the things I described to create segregation between my systems and enable portability at the end of the compute life-cycle... eventually that system will get replaced, but if you virtualize the servers, then it becomes a relatively simple matter to backup/move around the storage.... I haven't rebuilt my mail server in 4 or 5 years, but I've changed the hardware for it at least 3x.plex and torrentserver are less complicated than mail.
(DIR) Post #AdF0C5eoZjPYY51Mm0 by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:57:34Z
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@BigSkyRider Ooooh I see. That makes sense.Having the things set up in virtual machines would let you "image" whatever state it is in, and just re-deploy it on a new piece of hardware?
(DIR) Post #AdF0OAMysfBkdfRCSm by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T16:59:45Z
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@BigSkyRider And yes. Plex and torrent server seem like 1-2 command lines to install.What would be the easiest way to let other machines on the network download files that are stored on the Beelink?Some sort of FTP server perhaps?
(DIR) Post #AdF0ngzeiu7b3jhQNk by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T17:04:22Z
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@SemiNorwegian the easiest path for moving files around between linux environments is sftp (ssh based file xfers) via filezilla type clientYou're correct that plex/torrent server are totally simple to install/config.... and after thinking about it I probably advised you to overcomplicate things, which is what I do, so maybe just all in one.What I'd do:install/config nfs server on the host system, pointed at a massive USB disk. share nfs to torrent/plex vms. map drives to nfs from guests.
(DIR) Post #AdF0tT79EqpdkdxSlM by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T17:05:24Z
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@SemiNorwegian the host system could die. Recover vm disks from the ssd to move to another compute module, reconnect the usb disk to the new compute module and bring things back online.
(DIR) Post #AdF1YyneKyf1tYdEjQ by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T17:12:54Z
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@SemiNorwegian my strongest opinion: purge windows, don't boot that kernel, nothing good will come of it in the long run. Virtual machines, and everything else I'm rambling about is squishy, up to how you want to manage it over the hardware/software lifecycles. If you share your plex with people outside of your house, one other piece of software to look at is Tautulli (https://tautulli.com/) which is a decent little monitoring stack for plex.
(DIR) Post #AdF1lu3HIk6Ovz6WnY by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T17:15:14Z
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@BigSkyRider All the "clients" who would be connecting to this Beelink for filesharing are Windows machines.But I suppose there shouldn't be much of an issue running the Filezilla client on a Windows machine.Is "sftp" built into Linux, or will I be spending some time setting this up?As of now I can't imagine the Plex server (or fileserver) being accessible for anyone outside of the local network.
(DIR) Post #AdF2WcOgl5ytn1OWEi by BigSkyRider@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T17:23:41Z
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@SemiNorwegian sftp uses ssh, so if you install the ssh server option during OS install, you just need to be able to ssh to the machine to be able to use filezilla to connect from windows. Another option would be to install/config samba which would give you Windows File shares so you could map windows drives to the system so you could access the files via a drive letter in windows:https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/samba-file-server
(DIR) Post #AdF47u1qGfUf8q3CIC by SemiNorwegian@noagendasocial.com
2023-12-27T17:41:38Z
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@BigSkyRider Thanks for all the feedback. I can hardly wait for this Beelink to show up, so I got something to fiddle with.If possible I would like to have two separate users on sftp/samba. To protect the youngest eyes in this house, it would be nice if I could set up a certain selection for that user. While another user has a broader selection of folders to go rummaging through.