NAS Hardware: Netgear ReadyNAS rn104 with Debian
#1
Hi,

I wonder why you use such overpowered hardware for NAS and mediaplayer.
That's why I want to show my solution.

It's a Netgear ReadyNAS rn104 which is available in Germany for 190 Euro.
The 2-bay brother rn102 is 120 Euro.

They have more or less the same hardware:
Marvell Armada 370 ARMv7 CPU single core @ 1.2 Ghz (with floating point).
512 MB DDR3 RAM @ 600 MHz
128 MB ROM
3x USB 3.0, (1x/ 2x) Gbit Ethernet, eSATA, 92 mm fan
Power-, Backup- & Reset-button
a few LEDs and a LCD which is non-functional with kernel.org kernel.

The older brother DuoV2/NV+ should work as well with the guide mentioned below but it brings slightly slower hardware.

The stock firmware is... well... for the standard user. Not for me Smile

I installed a stock debian and a self built kernel, which Arno made available for the rn10x: http://natisbad.org/NAS2/index.html
(He's got a guide on how to install kernel and debian on your NAS)

It works great. At least as long as the debian maintainers don't add new kernel requirements to systemd Wink
(I installed debian testing. Wasn't the best decision)

Recently I added a Technisat DVB-S2 USB device.
I tried vdr/vdradmin but this consumed about 400 MB RAM and was a hell of config.
Luckily I tried tvheadend, which only uses 150 - 200 MB. No swapping any more! Great!
It is really responsive. My Core i5 cries from the javascript showing 1600 channels, but the NAS doesn't even sweat.

I have a lot of other services running: dlna, monit, samba, owncloud, git, webmin, mediawiki, etc.
The only remaining memory eater is mysqld... I should reduce it's memory footprint through the config.
Everything else consumes almost nothing, compared to an x86 or even x64 system.

Datatransfer is about 80MB/s via HTTP, FTP, samba etc.
Recording HDTV with tvheadend consumes only 15% CPU.
Only SSH (SCP) transfer stresses the CPU and achieves only a few MB/s. I believe the device has got some crypto hardware which doesn't get utilized by the kernel yet.

I like it. And I would buy it again Wink

If you want it to be quiet, you have to choose 5400/5900 drives.
The drive bays aren't well isolated from the case.
I had an old 400 GB drive installed which really was annyoing.
The Seagate 7200 rpm are ok.

I hope you found this interesting.
Any questions?

JPT
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#2
Good morning

I own the same NAS, stock installation however. I tried without luck to compile TVHeadEnd to install it on ReadyNAS OS.

Based on your comment, it would appear you managed to install TVHeadEnd on yours, provided it was running a stock Debian from the link you provided. Could you please provide a link to TVHeadEnd build you used, before I go ahead and update it ? This is an ARMv7 unit, so i'm having a hard time finding a correct build for it.

For that matter, to me ReadyNas OS6 is basically a debian wheezy derivative, any reason why I could not install tvheadend on it (without going through the package manager) ?

Thanks and regards
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#3
Sorry, I have installed a Debian on the NAS. So I only had to define the APT source and then apt-get install tvheadend.
I recently uninstalled tvheadend because the kernel drivers for the SAT receiver are totally unstable on ARM.

Try an armhf package from here: http://apt.tvheadend.org/stable/pool/main/t/tvheadend/
Maybe you can manually install it into your netgear OS?
Those armhf-binaries should basically run...
A DEB is an ar archive containing tar archives.

Never ever do an apt-get update or upgrade on the Netgear system. This will break everything.
use dpkg to install the deb.
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