(Image: http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ )Nicely done Coolio.
The CS407 isnt the fastest embedded Linux box, but SqueezeCenter runs just fine - when installing plug-ins and re-scanning the music library it does groan a little under the strain, and SqueezeCenter stopped a couple of times, but once scanned, it's working just cool.
Sonos, move over! (a bit, cos clearly you're better, obviously).
Download SleepTool v1.0.27 Here - source code included.
Enjoy
Mart.
Sent from my Windows Mobile® phone.
If your MCE machine goes to sleep between recordings (this is a good idea, as most PC's are 200w of your electicity bill all the time they're on), or because of a timed sleep due to inactivity, the extender has trouble 'waking' it again when you want to watch TV. We leave our DMA2100 on all the time (because it takes about a minute to start up when the power comes on)So Linksys? how about a firmware update with proper Wake-On-Lan support? - and hey, while we're at it , how 'bout 'polling' that MCE machine on the network to see if it's there, and restarting the extender session?
Oh yes, then there's that irritating BRIGHT BLUE LED on the front - but black masking tape soon solves that one 8-)
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use IO::Socket;
use Sys::Syslog qw( :DEFAULT setlogsock);
my($sock, $oldmsg, $newmsg, $hisaddr, $hishost, $MAXLEN, $PORTNO);
$MAXLEN = 1024;
$PORTNO = 53003;
my $programname = 'dlc.pl';
$ENV{PATH} = "";
$sock = IO::Socket::INET->new(LocalPort => $PORTNO, Proto => 'udp')
or die "socket: $@";
logit('info',"Listening on Port $PORTNO for Domia Lite Messages..");
print "Awaiting UDP messages on port $PORTNO\n";
while ($sock->recv($newmsg, $MAXLEN)) {
my($port, $ipaddr) = sockaddr_in($sock->peername);
#$hishost = gethostbyaddr($ipaddr, AF_INET);
print "Recieved DLC Command `$newmsg'\n";
logit('info',"Recieved DLC Command: $newmsg");
if ($newmsg eq "devicecommand:1a01:")
{
logit('info',"Waking PC..");
print "waking up PC.\n";
system("/sbin/wakelan -m 0123ABCDEF11");
}
}
die "recv: $!";
sub logit {
my ($priority, $msg) = @_;
return 0 unless ($priority =~ /infoerrdebug/);
setlogsock('unix');
# $programname is assumed to be a global. Also log the PID
# and to CONSole if there's a problem. Use facility 'user'.
openlog($programname, 'pid,cons', 'user');
syslog($priority, $msg);
closelog();
return 1;
}
Once you're up and tested (replace 0123ABCDEF11 with your PC's MAC Address, and correct the DLC code - example above uses A1 ON), you can add this to your boot-up so it runs in the background by appending the line
/wherever/dlc.pl & 2 >/dev/null
(dont forget the ampersand &, as your box will not complete it's boot up scripts.. like I did)
Now, clearly if you run a 150w PC all the time with this, then it kind-of defeats the point of all this, but some small embedded linux device, like a Router, or Unslung Linksys NSLU2 can do the job just nicely.
Stay tuned for some more postings in Perl, as we build a Home Automation controller out of that handly NSLU2 that takes a whole 2watts of power 8-)
Download ZIP of binary and VB 6 code.
I'd be interested in hearing from you if you've enhanced this or written any other Domia Lite code for other HA purposes.
Mart.
I'm also surprised that the product doesnt offer some sort of certificate based two factor authentication - say a private certificate based set of folders that would not open without password and installed certificate perhaps?
AV Protection
Nope! - a brave move for a product that is essentially based on Windows 2003 server with some changes, You will be asked to open ports 80, 443 and a few others to enable RDP to your clients on your home network. To leave this for any period of time without a supported AV product installed and working is not a smart move- especially with all your data loaded on there.
OneCare would have been a nice build-in for this, but clearly not. At the time of writing Avast! have a WHS aware AV product. -so there are options already.
X-Raid
I call it X-Raid, but there are other names for it, this is essentially a form of 'RAID' that creates redundancy by spreading your data, and (I'm assuming) parity for it around over the disks you have installed, despite them being different sizes - nice, though there have been many comments on the forums saying that the server 'balances' between disks all the time especially if you hit it with a heavy upload of files - I suspect a later patch from the mothership will set this up so it only happens at set time windows for example.
This is 'software' RAID whatever way you look at it, and it will never really compete with a hardware based controller with caching etc, that you find in commercial servers, and I wonder if a hardware option would be better given many OEM's have spun WHS dedicated hardware already...
I've yet to add more than a single disk to my WHS, so a more in-depth comment on this will arrive here later once, I've seen it at work.
Hacking already!
While at Tech-Ed I spoke to several MS staff regarding WHS and external network storage - many of us (including me) already invested in Home NAS devices (mine is a Synology CS107), which have redundant RAID on SATA disks already, and WHS's efforts are therefore less appealing to me - Sadly, MS told me a the time that there is no support for NAS'es, but as always, I set about working out how to share the folders on the NAS via the site regardless- my interest in WHS is remote access and backup primarily for now.
In actual fact , once you realise that a shared folder in WHS is resident on the D: drive of the server (your primary disk, 2nd partition if you have just the one ), and the neat folder interface is supplied by some ASP.NET in IIS on the machine, it becomes a little easier.
From what I can see, the actual interface shares the folder contents via some server-side code which cleary we probably cant force to show a non-local network share. (after all we're asking for 'share forwarding' something that windows cant do anyway).. except in IIS...
It is possible to create virtual directories in IIS to point to network locations, and this appears to work nicely as it does on any other windows IIS box.
Sniffing around in the iis folders gave away how to add some links to the WHS web page:
if (Has3rdPartyWebsites)
<%if (Has3rdPartyWebsites){ %>
(remove it, along with the corresponding <%} %>bit as well at the next paragraph)
When you click the links you do get the ugly IIS folder list, but there are 3rd party apps to make this look nice, and I'm not giving up just yet on adding it to the folder tab in the main site 8-)
If you're listening MS: Remote storage (E.g NAS'es) would be a nice supported feature, especially if you then consider making the WHS an embedded device with LOW power consumption and no moving parts 8-)
More on WHS later as I'm not done, with 178 days remaining, though I must say all it's done is made me think that my 'unslung' Linksys NSLU2 (Which uses a 1/10th of the electricity of my WHS) is capable of most of the functions I need, I may need to explore this further - if I do I'll post what I've built - think 'embedded WHS' with Linux 8-)
We have to be mindful that WHS is targeted at the average consumer, and for that it's a great solution, especially looking at the fine examples from the OEM market (HP, Tranquil etc), I suspect the geek movement are busy as we speak moving features onto this platform ..
