# gentoo on a shuttle or a min-itx board

## MonkeyMartin

have you instaled gentoo on a small computer like a mini-itx board or a shuttle.

what did you use this for  :Question: 

I was thinking of making a media box out of a shuttle with gentoo 

this box would paly dvds mp3 othe music formats and run MAME

any ideas

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## ozonator

I recently installed Gentoo on a mini-ITX board, the Via EPIA M10000 (1GHz 'Nehemiah' CPU), for use as a public-access terminal (web and e-mail access mostly). at a library; if it works out well, I'll do the same when I upgrade other terminals here.  So far, I'm tremendously impressed; it's better than I'd hoped.  Though there's a fan, it's nearly completely silent, the thing seems nicely designed, and it's plenty fast (I'd say it 'feels' just about as fast as my Duron 1200 at home).  I've got it in a standard ATX case (had one already) with an Antec 250W PSU (overkill for this board, but easy to find and inexpensive).

There are a few other threads in these forums that address issues with this board in particular; searching for 'nehemiah' and/or 'epia' should find them.  My summary:  use ac-sources (better support for the CLE266 chipset than gentoo-sources), via-rhine net (with pci=noacpi passed to the kernel, if you enable acpi),  xfree-4.3.99.x ebuild for X (has a 'via' driver for the onboard video).  For $CFLAGS, I'm using "-Os -s -pipe -march=i686 -mmmx -msse -mfpmath=sse -fforce-addr -fomit-frame-pointer -foptimize-sibling-calls -fstack-protector", and with the exception of a few things that choke on '-fstack-protector' (modutils, sash, popt, ORBit), have had no problems.

In short, I'd say definitely give a Nehemiah-based board consideration, especially for a media box (a slower VIA CPU would do for just audio, but for video, the speed of this one might come in handy).  I've not checked on video issues, however, including dealing with video-out; I think I remember reading that it works, but others here, or maybe the EPIA howto (this one  or this one or this one might help).  Also, there's a set of pages about building an mp3 server that might interest you; it has lots of details, including why the person chose a VIA-based board over a Shuttle.

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## lpr314

interesting linkz ozo, I'll have to check them out.

personally I installed gentoo on a nehemiah m10000, fanless and stuff, but as it was my first (and second) gentoo installation I went with the very basic installation howto and ended up with a 2.4.20 kernel (gentoo sources) and 

xfree 4.3.0 running on a vesa driver. it pulls up to 1280x1024 and it looks pretty good over vnc on my 17" tft that I have for the highspec computer. currently I'm not interested in sound/video support, it will probably just act as a server, downloading files when im not home and serving mail/www and so on.

of course I could move the machine to the livingroom and set it under the tv and use it as a media station along with its other purposes, I'll just have to figure out a way how to control it but perhaps the links will tell   :Wink: 

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## klarnox

I installed Gentoo on a Shuttle system.  It was an XPC SS51G which had the FS51 motherboard in it.  Gentoo worked great on the system.

The system was my portable gaming system. I dual booted with Windows XP.  The compact size was great when traveling to lan parties.  I used the box the system came in (because it had a nice handle on the top) to haul the computer, game cds, joystick, cables, etc.  That way all I had to do was grab the box and monitor and I was ready to go.

I'm sure the system would be great for a media system.  The system is extremely quiet, in fact the hard drive spinning was louder than the case fan.  Temp never seemed to be a problem with such a small case (like you see with many other similar systems).

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## ozonator

 *klarnox wrote:*   

> I'm sure the system would be great for a media system.  The system is extremely quiet, in fact the hard drive spinning was louder than the case fan.  Temp never seemed to be a problem with such a small case (like you see with many other similar systems).

 

The Shuttle machines run relatively cool and quiet thanks to their CPU cooler, which uses heat pipes to conduct heat away from the CPU.  This is what lets them put a very hot CPU into such a small case, and adds to their overall nice design.

Certainly for gaming the Shuttle would be a better choice, since you could have a regular P-IV CPU and a hefty video card, something the VIA boards don't have.  On the other hand, VIA boards are made to be quiet, energy-efficient, and cool, while still being fast enough for many things.  Not gaming, but for a regular workstation or a small server -- including a dedicated media box -- it would be fast enough, I think.  If it were only to be an audio server, even one of the slower VIA boards, which are completely fanless, would be fine.

I guess the way I see it, unless you needed more speed than the VIA M10000 (which 'feels' just about as fast as my Duron 1200, maybe only a smidgeon slower), the lower power usage would be a big advantage, especially for a machine that's on all the time.  The whole M10000 board (video, NIC, CPU included) apparently draws 23-24 W under load; even considering RAM and disk power consumption, the whole system will likely draw under 50 W.  In contrast, even a low-end P-IV draws 50-60 W alone; to that would have to be added what the board and other components use.  This isn't a small difference.

As for it being fast enough for media, the reviews I've seen have indicated that the M10000 is plenty fast for DVD and DivX playback.  For audio alone, it's more than enough.  Heck, my ogg/mp3 server is a Pentium 120, and even it is fast enough for that!   :Smile: 

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## klarnox

 *ozonator wrote:*   

> (snip)As for it being fast enough for media, the reviews I've seen have indicated that the M10000 is plenty fast for DVD and DivX playback.  For audio alone, it's more than enough.  Heck, my ogg/mp3 server is a Pentium 120, and even it is fast enough for that!  

 

I definitely agree, I guess I was just thinking about what I usually end up doing in a situation like that.  I build the slower machine with lower power consumption and use it as it was intended for a while...  Then at some point I decide I need it for something a bit more power intensive, the system doesn't perform well under the heavier load, and am disappointed that I didn't get the more powerful system to start off with.  

If the system is truly going to be a media only box, your suggested hardware is more than adequate.  :Very Happy: 

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## kwiqsilver

I have a via epia 533MHz system that I use as an ogg/mp3 player in my car. I wrote an app that plays the music and uses a 7 button VFD display (designed for a 5.25" bay) as the display.

The epia system I have is fanless, has more than enough power for oggs, boots up when it gets power, and has decent audio output.

Here's the out-of-date project page for it:

http://www.nongnu.org/oggcastd/

http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/oggcastd

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## meta

I'm the guy who owns ATH0.com... My M10000 has been wonderful, and I'm constantly amazed at its speed. At work I have several servers with SCSI RAID arrays and quad Pentium II processors, and the M10000 wipes the floor with them for kernel rebuilds and gcc/glibc upgrades. It also has no trouble doing a kernel rebuild while streaming MP3s to me and running an IRC client and web server. I haven't tried video playback yet, but the TV output works.

I'm just building the 2.6 kernel to try...

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## d3c3it

ive got 2 minicubes actually

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/d3c3it/pages/machines.htm

Both installed and run gentoo great.

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## think4urs11

I've 2 Shuttle and one VIA CL6000 here up and running

1. Shuttle SB51G

My main machine with Kernel 2.6/Xfree 4.3.99.902/MozillaFirebird/etc

Currently i still dualboot with XP (sometimes)

2. Shuttle SV25

Test box currently unused but also 2.6/Xfree/MozillaFirebird

3. VIA

Firewall/Proxy  Kernel 2.6/shorewall/apache/squid/etc

heavily overpowered with processor speed for what it has to do  :Smile: 

uptime by now approx. 40 days (60 without me beeing silly pulling the wrong plug)

plans are there for

WLAN access point

LCD display for some eye candy, firewall stats, whatever

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## lolowen

[url]blade5.bvu.edu/wiki[/url]. this is an excellenet howto on getting gentoo onto mini-itx. its written (mostly) by one of the guys over at linitx.org (alot of them including me use gentoo)

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## IamtheOne

Don't go to blade5.bvu.edu anymore...

Go to http://www.alterself.com/~epia/wiki/ now...

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## kwiqsilver

Do any of you know how to disable that damn boot up beep on the Epia? I want to put a Vorbis & mp3 playing Epia in my car, but not until I can get rid of the beep.

Also, is there a good way to get the boot time down to a few seconds?

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## MooktaKiNG

I use a Mini-ITX type motherboard and case on my server. Its a via Epia 5000, which is only a 500MHz CPU, but its fanless. Very quiet and stays cool. It lives in my room. Me and my server get along quite well  :Very Happy:  :Very Happy:  :Very Happy: 

I've slapped everything into this little computer. Thats why i call it beast.

I put: shorewall, mysql, webmail, imap, pop3, smtp (authenicated), apache2, samba, cvs, sshd, gentoo LAN Mirror, gentoo LAN rsync server, virus scanner, bogofilter, ldap, transparent proxy, wireless access point, bittorrent tracker, sftp server (secure ftp), so basicly its a gateway for everything.  :Very Happy:  :Very Happy:  and i love my server. I can't live without it. I put all 5 different emails that i have into one (including hotmail).

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