MelonMonkey;158387 Wrote: > I'm relatively new to the forum so I've been doing my best to read as > much as I can to quickly get up to speed. I had plenty of time to > fiddle with Slimserver without the use of an actual Squeezebox thanks > to UPS (have to thank the Slim support guys for finally putting UPS in > their place and sending out a replacement unit). > > Anyway, I've seen countless numbers of posts asking what hardware to > use as a server and even more replies suggesting nearly any system will > work fine. That even a lowly PII at a couple of hundred MHz is > suitable, etc... > > I'm sure you can run Slimserver on an imbedded Micro if the software > dependancies are all met, but a slow system is far from ideal. > > I first installed Slimserver on one of the machines I keep on 24/7. A > Mac server that runs a few development mySQL databases, bug tracking > software and SVN. These services require very little CPU time as > they're only access a few times per day. > > The hardware consists of a Dual Processor 533MHz PowerMac G4 connected > to my LAN with 100baseTX. > > While browsing the web interface in cover mode I've been finding load > times unacceptably slow. It's painful to use the web interface for > extended periods. I'm sure some people may find it acceptable, but > when I get better performance loading graphics intensive sites from the > Internet, that's a problem for me. > > Yesterday I increased the thumbnail size from 100 pixels to 120 pixels > - which obviously made matters even worse. > > Today as an experiment, I moved all the music over to an Intel Core Duo > (1.66GHz) Mac mini. Its boot drive is a slow 2.5" model but the music > is on the same 250GB external Firewire drive as I've been using all > along. > > I copied the whole preferences folder from the G4 and installed the > current (11-29) nightly (same as the G4). The complete scan/indexing > of the library was much faster than on the G4. That's not a huge > concern as I'll usually clear the whole DB manually before going to bed > if I need to load updated tracks (scanning from the UI whether complete > or not, is just not as reliable yet). > > Speed while browsing has drammatically increased. I mean, I still find > the web interface somewhat slow (Perl is slow, there's no way around > that), but it's simply much faster than it was on the G4. > > If I had a faster system I'd continue testing with that to get > additional deltas, bt unfortunately I don't at the moment. > > Seeing as the 6.5 stream uses mySQL, it only makes sense that > Slimserver craves some CPU performance. While a lowly system may be > able to stream tracks to one or more Squeezeboxes without much effort, > access to the web UI - and therefore complex real-time queries, > requires some muscle. > > So what's the point? Just an observation. I'm not suggesting everyone > go out and buy new machines. I'm not certain I can leave the mini as > the server for long - it's one of my development and test machines aqnd > I'd hate to have to interrupt the music while working on a problem with > my own software. > > If I can make a wish for 7.0 it's for increased stability and speed, > while eliminating the outstanding bugs of the 6.5 stream. I think most > of us would wait on new features to have something solid to use in the > meantime. There have been few posts about artwork slowing things considerably, another one is the BBC radio stream. I wonder if you eliminate the artwork from the original setup if it is still unaceptable ? If it is artwork, maybe there is a way to optimize it.
I was running slimserver on PPC 266 Mhz linkstation like device and the only complain I had was that when browsing to music folder, there was some delay. Of course scanning is a different issue altogether. -- georgem George ------------------------------------------------------------------------ georgem's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7335 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30145 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
