How to set up a minimal installation?

[fnad74]

I've just received my B2. Yes, I ordered it just before B3 was announced. I don't care not owning the latest machine, but I'm so disappointed by B2... Here are the only things I use: cryptsetup + squeezecenter + samba + torrent. I turned off all unwanted services and top tells me 240k are already used out of the 256k available (without real culprit: squeezecenter takes 30%, then comes apache and mysql, but killing them doesn't free that much space). How a Linux distro without Xserver and window manager can consume so much memory is a mystery to me (I run ubuntu + gnome + all the above with 256k on an old desktop).

Squeezecenter is so slow that it breaks my nerves... Samba doesn't start during boot... The first torrent I was downloading didn't resume after reboot... In the end B2 just doesn't do anything properly. I'm not expecting any improvement now that Excito's support will focus on B3.

So has anyone tried to install a clean minimal distro together with cryptsetup, squeezecenter, samba (or nfs) and/or torrent?

Thanks,
F.

[RandomUsername]

So many people are conditioned to thinking about RAM in the Windows way. Linux uses RAM in a different way - what's the use of having RAM if it's not being used? On my B2, of 96% of RAM in use, 47'% is cached (so it can be freed up should an application need it). My swap usage is only about 160MB. Compare that to my XP machine with 3.5 GB RAM which has 400 - 500 MB of page file in use most of the time. I don't use Squeezecenter (I can't even get it to finish scanning my library) but I think the bottleneck is the CPU, not the RAM.

I can't speak for some of the other issues you say you're having but I don't think you can complain about performance - were you not aware of the specs of the Bubba before you bought it?

[fnad74]

Well, when the system is short of memory and starts swapping all the time, you start having performance problem.

But you're right: it's probably mostly a cpu issue: squeezecenter consume a lot of cpu and memory, and it requires apache, mysql and other services; so in the end I'm trying to avoid running squeezecenter on B2, namely to use squeezebox touch internal server to connect directly to a network drive on B2, but that's a subject for another forum.

I knew the spec, but Excito sold its B2 with everything (squeeze server, web server, horde, torrent, etc.), so I naively thought it would run all this without problem and I would even have more room to install some personal stuff. That's where the great disappointment is. Brand new B3 owners probably don't have this problem. Now I wish I broke my leg and postpone my buying bubba of some weeks: I wouldn't be wasting my saturday afternoon on my computer.

[fnad74]

Ah, I'm so stupid when I become optimistic. I've been kicked out of Bubba after issuing an iptables command to open ports for nfs (why the f... don't they provide a simple way to have a DMZ on WAN?). I tried the usb stick provided by Excito: it doesn't work. Now I have a splendid black brick blinking blue on top of my shelf, lost two days of my life and I'm lighter of a few hundreds euros.

Will probably soon launch a new contest: how far can you throw your bubba?

[Ubi]

You did not brick your Bubba.

The USB stick should work fine. Try it a bit more, read the docs, and if nothing works send excito support an email. They are generally very rapid and friendly with answering support calls.

Ubi

[fnad74]

I already sent back my bubba once to Sweden, so this time I persevered. In the end the reinstall worked on the 5th or 6th attempt. I stopped running squeezecenter on bubba, so memory/cpu are back to normal. Now I'm looking where /etc/sysconfig/nfs might have been moved to. No info on the forum...

[johannes]

Dear fnad,

I read your post, and I'm sorry that you aren't satisfied with your B2. I can't really respond to some of the issues you are having, but I do agree that Squeezecenter on B2 can be slowish depending on your music collection size. (I do use it myself together with Squeezebox classic on a B2 and am fine with performance, at ~10k mp3 files. However the Squeeze-center web-UI is slow, but there is no reason to use that.).

Also if performance is you main concern please notice that we do have the 30-day satisfied customer guarantee that we'll of course honor. B3 is roughly the same price now so you'd of course be free to return your B2 if you wish, given the 30 days is fulfilled. Satisfied customers is all we depend on, so if you feel like using B2 for a throwing contest we have failed, and will do what we can to sort it out.

Email me at [email protected] and let me know your ordering information, and we'll se what we can do.