Unfortunately no one can be told what fun_plug is - you have to see it for yourself.
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Hi I've been reading the forums for a while now and am ready to consider adding a bit more functionality to my DNS-323. I have been running it for a while with a single 500 GB drive in the right slot. The other night I successfully installed another matched drive in the left slot (by powering off, installing and formatting the new one, then replacing the old one and rebooting). All seems to be good, I had to do a few removes and startups to restore the original volume name to the "first" drive that is still in the right slot. I decided against a RAID setup and will stick with two standard drives.
I now have two main goals which I hope to get assistance with from this forum. I also have a final question or two which may clarify the right path to take.
Now I am aware of the various versions of the fonz's fun plug but am not sure whether I should go straight for the newest beta version or select another of the previous versions. I have some linux experience but I have not really looked into the process of installing said fun plug so don't know how difficult it would be to remove or upgrade an existing fun plug install. I also don't know whether it will hamper my ability to install future firmware updates from D-Link?
My first priority is to set up an automated nightly backup from the first drive to the second drive as per the rsync howto's on the wiki page. Even if I can achieve this goal without any of the distractions below I will be happy.
My second priority is to install the "Squeezecentre" or "Slimserver" software on my NAS to act as a media server for my Logitech Squeezebox unit. I understand that this setup is known to have poor/slow performance but I am prepared to try it nonetheless. If I find it unusable at least I can say that I've tried it myself before investing in an eee-Box or similar sff pc to act as a media server. I understand that Slim Devices is in the process of developing an update to the Slimserver software using a streamlined database that is optimised for running on NAS's anyway. If anyone here is familiar with this setup is it absolutely necessary to install all this debian stuff, I'd like to avoid this level of complexity if possible?
Lastly can someone please talk me through the basic concepts of using a USB stick to run the fun-plug related services? I basically want to be able to run a service like my media server (ie. "slimserver") while still allowing the disks to completely spin down when there is no activity. Unfortunately my Squeezebox player does not work *directly* with either i-tunes or UPNP AV but I think that if I can run this service and it's associated playlist on the usb stick, the NAS drives should only spin up if I start to play songs on the player. Is that fair enough?
anyway that's enough for now. any and all comments are appreciated.
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Stutz Jr wrote:
Now I am aware of the various versions of the fonz's fun plug but am not sure whether I should go straight for the newest beta version or select another of the previous versions. I have some linux experience but I have not really looked into the process of installing said fun plug so don't know how difficult it would be to remove or upgrade an existing fun plug install. I also don't know whether it will hamper my ability to install future firmware updates from D-Link?
I run 0.5 and am very happy with it. I wouldn't install a previous version personally unless there was a specific need to do so that wasn't provided in the current version. As to the firmware, no installing ffp whould not in any way interfere with it. All you need to do to disable the ffp is to delete the fun_plug file, and all you need to do to uninstall it and revert to astraight-out-of-box configuration is delete the ffp directory. As to installing it, there is nothing simpler - drop the .tar and fun_plug files into the root of Volume_1 and reboot ... wait a few minutes .... hey presto it is installed. You need to do a little configuring after that, but it is straightforward and documented well in the wiki how to: ffp.
Stutz Jr wrote:
Lastly can someone please talk me through the basic concepts of using a USB stick to run the fun-plug related services? I basically want to be able to run a service like my media server (ie. "slimserver") while still allowing the disks to completely spin down when there is no activity. Unfortunately my Squeezebox player does not work *directly* with either i-tunes or UPNP AV but I think that if I can run this service and it's associated playlist on the usb stick, the NAS drives should only spin up if I start to play songs on the player. Is that fair enough?
Sounds reasonable to me, although I don't use the 323 for this, so can't really comment. As to the basic concepts of the usb: you have the fun_plug file in the root of your Volume_1 HDD, this executes on NAS boot and, providing you have configured it correctly (and there are lots of posts on this and the different ways to go about it) all of the ffp services are loaded from the usb stick. If there is a problem accessing the usb stick for whatever reason on boot the usual config is that ffp will fall back to loading from the Volume_1 hdd. You
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Stutz Jr wrote:
I basically want to be able to run a service like my media server (ie. "slimserver")
If all you want is squeezecenter, there's also http://www.inreto.de/dns323/squeezecenter-funplug/
It installs automatically, no need for any manual setup. But you can't use other ffp packages with it (doesn't make much sense anyway, since slimserver will eat all your memory).
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Hey thanks guys for the responses, I had the feeling that my tasks were going to be mutually exclusive.. Shame really as it would be nice to be able to use my media player without having to have the PC on..
It is nice to know these plugs seem a lot easier to install than I thought, at least I can easily chop and change and decide which functions I really want.
Silly question but I gotta ask, if I was to run the slimserver funplug, would that mean I can no longer use the NAS for regular storage or access the admin interface?
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note: I'm kind of banking on the proposed updates to streamline the slimserver for low memory usage
question: is it not possible for the DNS323 to use swap space in lieu of RAM memory? that was what I was alluding to when I asked about running services off a USB stick
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Stutz Jr wrote:
Silly question but I gotta ask, if I was to run the slimserver funplug, would that mean I can no longer use the NAS for regular storage or access the admin interface?
It's an add-on and doesn't remove, disable or change any of the original firmware functions.
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I've just started downloading your 0.5 fun plug and the squeezecenter fun plug to a folder for later installation (I haven't decided which to try first). I noticed in your changelog that there are ongoing changes to the beta version.. Is the process for upgrading to the latest instance of 0.5 just to reinstall it or must the existing files "fun_plug" and "fun_plug.tgz" be deleted or overwritten?
thanks again
edit: typo
Last edited by Stutz Jr (2008-11-30 12:18:40)
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please excuse the above question, I see it's answered in the wiki howto
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