A dedicated headless Linux server would be the most stable and maint-free hardware setup.
You could either use Samba to allow the music drive to appear in Windows Network Neighborhood, or avoid Samba altogether and let the user transfer new music to the server using WinSCP. As for control and maint from a Windows computer, you can set up puTTY to connect to a Linux user account, and set up various .bashrc aliases to do the basic stuff. A few aliases could let the clients do what they need with slimserver without having to know anything about Linux: lockmusic unlockmusic slimstart slimstop slimrestart Setting up a remote login for each server would let you administer all the client systems without leaving your office. You could install plugins, upgrade to new versions of slimserver, troubleshoot by examining logs, even do stuff like applying ReplayGain tags to the entire library or creating an mp3 mirror library from FLACs for use in portable players. You could set up a cron job to sync the library to a client's backup drive every night. Even better might be a service where you mirror the client's library to an external drive when you first set the server up, then keep the mirrored drive at your office and sync it over the internet every night. A complete, bit-perfect, off-site backup would protect the client not only against the eventual drive failure, but also against theft, fire, and other disasters. -- Pale Blue Ego ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pale Blue Ego's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=110 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35307 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
