VortexBox - open source NAS media server with Auto CD/DVD Ripper & BitTorrent Client

Ok guys heres the deal...I accquired an old Dell dimension from someone who gave it away on freecycle It comes with 128mb ram and I,m assuming 30GB harddrive (I havent checked the specs yet cux I dont have a keyboard for it) It will become 110Gb when I install this backup hardrive I got laying around. I wanna turn this old clunker into a media center because I cant re-sell it for squat. How do I go about it. Do I just plug the PC directly into my AT&T gateway router or do I install vortexbox first If I even need too because I,m just gonna dump files on it and access it via XBMC on my Xbox?


Also Can I still access files on the PC thats connected to the Gateway without a keyboard or mouse plugged in?

As well will the 128mb of ram installed be an issue in regards to streaming music and video?

Please Help

128 mb or ram is a little low. Upgrade to 256 if you can. It will probability work OK with 128 thought. Just try it an see what happens. You will need a monitor and keyboard to install VortexBox then you can disconnect them once the system is running. VortexBox should be connected the the network at all times. It uses the network to get information about your media.

If you can replace the 30GB drive with the 110 GB drive. It's easier to configure VortexBox with only one drive. If you want to use a second drive you can but you will have to edit a few files at command line. I have a doc for doing this on the VortexBox site.

agillis Wrote:128 mb or ram is a little low. Upgrade to 256 if you can. It will probability work OK with 128 thought. Just try it an see what happens. You will need a monitor and keyboard to install VortexBox then you can disconnect them once the system is running. VortexBox should be connected the the network at all times. It uses the network to get information about your media.

If you can replace the 30GB drive with the 110 GB drive. It's easier to configure VortexBox with only one drive. If you want to use a second drive you can but you will have to edit a few files at command line. I have a doc for doing this on the VortexBox site.

I,m somewhat of a novice is the editing something a caveman can do lol because I,m not that good with programming. I have two drives that total 110GB, 1 80GB and another 30GB. Will I need to format them before hand because I still have some movies on 1 of the drives, or will VortexBox format it already?

Does Vortex come with VI or Pico installed by default or both?

Editing config files isn't to hard. Most of the time they are commented out meaning they throw a // or # in front of a line or you just have to change the location of something. The config files in Linux have come leaps and bounds above what they used to be since they are normally well commented by that author.

Heres an example of that config file he was talking about. Easy to find things and edit.
http://linuks.mine.nu/gnustep/chroot/etc/ripit/config

The reason I ask about VI or Pico because they are different command line editors. VI is very Unix like and often hard to remember what key strokes do what and Pico is very user friendly since it has the commands right on the screen and hard to screw up.

I would just use the 110GB drive by itself for starters. VortexBox will format the drive for you. Just boot the VortexBox CD and follow the instructions. This doc will also help.

http://vortexbox.org/documentation/vorte...all-guide/

As for editors VortexBox has both VI and pico installed by default. VI for the hard core Linux people and Pico for the Linux newbies

I would recommend connecting the VortexBox directly to your router. But it will work over wireless as well

Haha, I've been a Newbie for 10years. I just refuse to learn VI because well I'm a newbie.

Did I say nano. I meant pico. That's the easy to use file editor. We try to have something for everybody

A few month ago I released VortexBox to this forum. VortexBox is a free open source Linux based Media server distribution. VortexBox will automatically rip your Audio CDs to FLAC and MP3 files and then server them up to any media player including XBMC, Windows media player, Logitech Squeezebox Media players, iTunes etc. Vortexbox also has experimental support for ripping DVDs to its hard drive.

Now it's time for the next release. The latest version of VortexBox also has a web based bittorrent client you can install. If you have a server on all the time anyway it manage well be serving and getting files from the net. If you have any questions or comments please respond to this post.

http://vortexbox.org

This looks like a VERY promising project! ...though I would prefer to have TorrentFlux WebGUI intead as I suggested here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=37861

Gamester17 Wrote:TorrentFlux (or more specifically the TorrentFlux-b4rt fork) would be great for controlling the included BitTorrent client via a web browser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TorrentFlux
http://tf-b4rt.berlios.de/

I am not suggesting to include the whole TorrentFlux BitTorrent client, (though that could be possible too instead of rTorrent, TorrentFlux comes with BitTornado by default but it is possible to use other BitTorrent clients as back-end, it even supports Usenet NZB download clients), what I am suggestion is to copy only the web interface client part (the website so to speak) from the TorrentFlux-b4rt fork.

"TorrentFlux is an web-based system for managing BitTorrent file transfers. It is an GPL open source package. Manage all aspects of your torrent transfers through the secure and convenient web interface from anywhere you can get internet access! You can even set your system up to subscribe to (& auto-download) RSS torrent feeds and start your transfers while you're away (during the night, as other transfers finish, or however else you like if you write script!). The transfer themselves are performed on top of a third-party developed BitTorrent client as the back-end downloader, TorrentFlux provides a web interface for these scripts and the ability to manage multiple transfers, users and even protocols (receive completed files via http) all from the Web GUI"

Good idea?

althekiller Wrote:Something like Transmission would be far to heavy for the live cd.

I though Transmission was a very efficient BitTorrent client with a very small memory footprint? I read that rtorrent has more dependencies than transmission, is that correct?

Note though that TorrentFlux can be made to use rtorrent as the back-end:
http://tf-b4rt.berlios.de/forum/index.ph...869.0.html
http://tf-b4rt.berlios.de/forum/index.ph...789.0.html
http://tf-b4rt.berlios.de/forum/index.ph...114.0.html

"rTorrent can be controlled via XML-RPC over SCGI"

PS! I having problems registering on vortexbox.org forum, don't get e-mail with password.