Tag Archives: FreeNAS

TuneIn to TMS on My Private Network

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I’ve been fretting about listening to the Test Match Special cricket commentary on my iPod here in NZ. The old plan was to VPN in to My Private Network UK (£5/month and bloody good) on the media server then use Squeezecast App. Now that I have FreeNAS VPN is out so a new idea was needed. I found that iPod Internet radio has come on a long way. The App TuneIn Radio is £1.19 and aligned with the iPods VPN client works perfectly as a UK based radio with the right setup.

Initially it didn’t work with VPN because TuneIn radio couldn’t figure out the WiFi was still there with VPN on. It gave a helpful message to turn on Cellular Data. My ipod’s not a phone, but it worked immediately.

media server revisited… (Why do I do this?)

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The media server (aka minime) was running on the 70GB HDD that was in my older laptop when I dropped it hard (nearly breaking my face, back and camera at the same time, don’t ask).  I had the old minime disk that XP used to be on, and that is 160GB.  So, I have to swap them around.

Still no working CD-ROM so I did some research and found that in the FreeNAS /conf file is an XML configuration file (the same one that is delivered to you when you back up the config – doh!).  I hypothesised that if I did my previous trick of doing the initial install on the old laptop then replacing the config.xml before the reboot, then I would be away…  I have an external caddie for the IDE drive (bought when I dropped the old machine) so set that up on FreeNAS and copied the config.xml file over.  My cunning plan worked perfectly.

I could have copied over the whole configuration at the same time, but I was unhappy with how I had played with permissions on the first attempts at sorting out the printer and I was also unhappy with the location of the slimnas app.  I’d decided to make a /app folder for both the printing and the slimas apps.

I thought that having the slimnas setup all working (and the music and playlists on another external drive) would make it a breeze.  I installed slimnas, copied over the database files (/mnt/data/app/slimnas/squeezebox/SQL/msql) and the preferences/plugins (/mnt/data/app/slimnas/etc/squeezebox) and started squeezeserver.  No dice. “ps ax” did not show it running.  I got it running by editing the 5 places in the server.prefs file.  Sadly the database was not there, so I will have to do a full scan, then restore the trackstat stuff, but that’s life.  I may have to do that anyway when I move the music one more time, back to the /mnt/data folder. If I bother.

Next was setting up the print server once more.  I had tried the FreeNAS as a print server original instructions but been clueless in the past and worked my way through by reading various sites.  With my greater knowledge the instructions now make sense, so I am hoping I can muddle through.  I feel pressure to get it working by tomorrow, but need to sleep.  Shattering time in rough seas fishing for blue cod today.

The death of the fit-PC and its rise

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In attempting to fix the annoying “iTunes won’t start cleanly” problem I performed a standard upgrade of Windows XP, basically running the install on top of the old installation.  It went swimmingly until it asked me to confirm the loading of the video driver that was unsigned.  At this point I could not click OK in any way as the mouse and keyboard were disabled.

In trying to fix this (including power downs to reinitialise the setup, and putting the disk in a different machine) I managed to trash the XP installation.  I have access to the files but the little XP server is dead.  Another iTunes Authentication down the tube.

After much swearing and gnashing of teeth I decided that this was the time to start playing with FreeNAS.  I started the installation on my laptop and on the reboot put it back in to the fit-PC.  This worked perfectly.  With a little fiddling I got slimnas (squeezeserver) working beautifully (much faster than under Windows).  A lot of fiddling (and learning) later I had a print server working.

For PPTP (allowing the squeezeserver to appear to be in the UK to the BBC for cricket commentary) I appear to be out of luck.  I’ll have to cope for the last ten weeks until I get home.  I can run a squeezeserver on the main laptop if I can’t find a free to air commentary in New Zealand.

I’ll also have to use the laptop for iTunes syncs but that is not so bad; I’d already been doing that really.