Possible linux convert

[bcjenkins]

Greetings all,

I am looking to add a second server to my Sage setup to offload placeshifting support. I currently run the windows version and was thinking about adding a linux server to the mix because of some other things I want to do. I have a few questions I hope someone can answer:

1. Is there a performance increase?
2. Will it work with 2 PVR 500s, 1 Fusion 5 Lite, 1 Fuison 5 Gold RT?
3. Can XP clients connect easily (assuming over Samba, would webdav be better)?
4. I am thinking of switching video to DirecTV, what boxes work well with serial control?

I won't be watching any TV directly on this box. I am looking to isolate it from being bogged down with transcoding jobs from place shifters.

TIA

b

[ChePazzo]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Greetings all,

I am looking to add a second server to my Sage setup to offload placeshifting support. I currently run the windows version and was thinking about adding a linux server to the mix because of some other things I want to do. I have a few questions I hope someone can answer:

1. Is there a performance increase?

So, the biggest performance increase you are going to get is the dedication. Typically, if you have a windows box, you use it for more than just SageTV. I suggest getting a PC for nothing but the sage server, put it out of the way and do not hook up a monitor.

My Linux server is less powerful than my XP server, but it works better because:
* I don't have to reboot it all the time
* It runs nothing but sageserver!

I am sure that an XP box would run as well in this configuration as long as I put it in the basement and only installed sageserver, but that would cost a lot more money and cleaning it up to remove the crap that Windows would want to preinstall is kind of a pain.

1. Can XP clients connect easily (assuming over Samba, would webdav be better)?

I am currently running the server on Windows (small bug I'm waiting to get fixed in the Linux v6.0.15 - it reads all imported videos as bitrate:0kbps and length:0sec) and have moved all imported videos to the Linux box (running smb) and map via UNC paths to those.

I connect to that server from my XP box via ssh, placeshifter, and "Network Neighborhood" for various tasks. I also have tested connecting from the MVP to the Linux server. In every case, it works wonderfully (except for that one pesky bug).

I won't be watching any TV directly on this box. I am looking to isolate it from being bogged down with transcoding jobs from place shifters.

I am pretty sure that all transcoding gets done on the server when placeshifting, so I'm not sure that you could isolate the server from transcoding jobs.

One thing I am looking forward to (when I am able to move 100% to the Linux server) is having an out-of-the-way box handle all server/TV recording functions and when I need to edit MPEGs, I can use the XP box over SMB and the server CPU doesn't get taxed.

TIA

b

Mike

[bcjenkins]

Mike,

Thanks for the post. I thought I would clarify. I am looking to have a second server that is there largely to serve place shifting. I would turn off place shifting on the first, and have it run only on the second. I don't want anything to interfere with recording TV, and a taxed processor would.

Any thoughts on the tuners?

FTR - My Sage server is a dedicated XP box sitting in the basement without a monitor attached.

B

[AngelofDeth]

Maybe this has changed recently or with the beta, but I thought the linux version did not support serial tuning. I could be wrong though, as I don't use it.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Thanks for the post. I thought I would clarify. I am looking to have a second server that is there largely to serve place shifting. I would turn off place shifting on the first, and have it run only on the second. I don't want anything to interfere with recording TV, and a taxed processor would.

You will not be able to do this.

Placeshifters/MVPs transcode jobs, and video conversion jobs run on the server only...

There is no way in Sage to have 2 servers, with one doing recording only and one doing transcoding, with both sharing the same DB.

BTW due to a transcoder bug my CPU has recently been at 100% for a while doing a transcode job, but this did not affect any recordings! The only time CPU load will affect recordings is if you are using a capture card with software encoding.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by AngelofDeth

Maybe this has changed recently or with the beta, but I thought the linux version did not support serial tuning. I could be wrong though, as I don't use it.

It just changed 2 days ago. The latest Linux beta has DirecTV serial control support. It supports all the same protocols as the windows version of SageTV. If you've got any problems with it, please submit a bug report.

[Narflex]

The PVR 500 cards will work great. The Fusion cards are not supported yet (I'm not sure yet if they will be supported, I'll have to check on that...but I did see the USB Fusion HDTV receiver working in a test the other day on Linux). ATSC/DVB/QAM is still in internal development on Linux at this time; but we're very far along with it as you'd imagine.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by nielm

You will not be able to do this.

Placeshifters/MVPs transcode jobs, and video conversion jobs run on the server only...

There is no way in Sage to have 2 servers, with one doing recording only and one doing transcoding, with both sharing the same DB.

BTW due to a transcoder bug my CPU has recently been at 100% for a while doing a transcode job, but this did not affect any recordings! The only time CPU load will affect recordings is if you are using a capture card with software encoding.

You can't set up a Sage server without tuners?
Turn off placeshifting access on the one that does? I know I can route the traffic coming in from the internet to a specific server via IP, so I assumed I could target the server I wanted to do the place shifting.

I thought you could set up a second server to be a network encoder (the one with the tuners) and the other to do the transcoding? I might have misread though.

B

[ChePazzo]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Mike,

Thanks for the post. I thought I would clarify. I am looking to have a second server that is there largely to serve place shifting. I would turn off place shifting on the first, and have it run only on the second. I don't want anything to interfere with recording TV, and a taxed processor would.

Any thoughts on the tuners?

FTR - My Sage server is a dedicated XP box sitting in the basement without a monitor attached.

B

Try this:

set up one sage server like normal and this is your primary server. It does all of the tuning and recording. Turn off placeshifting and Extender and all of that. Save everything locally.

set up another server. Import everything via UNC paths. set up (via UNC) the original recording dir on the other machine as a recording directory on this one. Don't hook up any tuners to it. Don't schedule any recordings. turn on placeshifting and MVP and all of that.

This should do what you want. The CPU of the non-recorder does all of the transcoding and the CPU of the main one runs the 'real' instance of Sage to schedule recordings, etc.

[Opus4]

Two separate servers are not going to share recordings with full show information. You can view recordings as imports, though. To get any EPG data on the 2nd separate server, you would have to have a source configured on it, and even then you would be lucky to have any recordings from the other system recognized as recordings... but they would most likely be seen as some entirely different show since the recording IDs will most likely be different.

If a server is set up as a network encoder, then it stops acting as a server & is only a client of the main server.

- Andy

[ChePazzo]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Two separate servers are not going to share recordings with full show information.

Ok, what if . . . .


You had 2 servers. each one had 2 dir paths:
/var/media/...
/var/media2/... (smb mount of other server)

each server had 2 recording directories:
/var/media/tv
/var/media2/tv

AND, you also shared the Wiz.bin through smb:
/var/stupidhack/Wiz.bin

THEN....

server1 (tuning only) has the original wiz.bin
-rw-r--r-- Wiz.bin

server2 (placeshifting only) maps his wiz.bin to a symbolic link:
lrw-r--r-- Wiz.bin --> /var/stupidhack/Wiz.bin

NOW, server 2 (no tuners configured) has full Wiz.bin info and can placeshift through the SMB.

would that work?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

would that work?

My guess would be no. You would have 2 apps reading & writing to the same database file, with each system caching data in memory. I don't expect that one app would know when the other app has made any db changes and they would walk all over each other... sort of like 2 people cooking 2 different dinners in the same skillet at the same time in an efficiency apartment. That's my guess, anyway, & maybe I don't know enough about it to make a good guess. It would be interesting if such a combo could be made to work.

- Andy

[ChePazzo]

Ok, so it sounds like you *can* do almost what you want to do, except that the placeshifter server will never have any program information. The 'SageTV Recordings' directories would be seen merely as Video Import directories. You could still placeshift them and have watched status (unique to each placeshifter), you just wouldn't know what each show was about beforehand.

I wonder if it would be possible to have an import that was able to read the Wiz.bin of another server merely for the sake of populating the program info.

[bcjenkins]

So we are saying the linux server does not support network encoding? Or network encoding is not cross platform?

TIA

B

[ChePazzo]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

So we are saying the linux server does not support network encoding? Or network encoding is not cross platform?

TIA

B

which box would be the tuner and which would be the placeshifter?

Sage has stated that running the Linux as a 'network encoder' does not work ... yet. When I tried, Windows discovered the Linux network encoder, but the recordings were all 'no signal'.

If I understand, I believe that this is a known bug that is being fixed.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

So we are saying the linux server does not support network encoding? Or network encoding is not cross platform?

TIA

B

Currently the Linux Server can't act as a network encoder to other Windows machines.

Linux servers can be network encoders for other linux servers (but they have that old restriction of requiring the same file access paths for video on both machines)

Windows servers can be network encoders for anything with no restrictions.

In the future we'll update the Linux server so it has the same capabilities.