You can create webmin users and then enable only the modules that you will use for those users. That way, you'll only see a small fraction of the functionality that's available.

Now that sounds promising.

I'm heavily leaning toward using Vortexbox at the moment for all the music-streaming related integration it already has, plus the ongoing development and support for Squeezebox server specifically.

I could install webmin on an alternate port and then likely have more web-based administration than I'd know what to do with.

I'm playing with a 1.6GHz Fit PC with an 8GB SSD at the moment using Ubuntu Server and OpenBox window manager. It will boot from cold to the app running (it's a touchscreen frontend client for my broadcast control system) in just under 30 seconds. That's with 12 secs of BIOS and no tweaking on the OS side. Although I can't seem to get Bootchart to run on it, so tweaking will be a bit more involved than it otherwise would've been.

The one I have only has 1GB of memory, they sell a 'GTI' version with 2GB and a 2GHz CPU. Stick a 1TB 2.5 inch SATA disk in it and you're good to go.

Yeah. That's one area I've mellowed on over the past two years. I used to have my 24/7 mini-itx box do the whole firewall/router/AP deal for our network. But it never had a web GUI, and now I've gotten rather addicted to the ease of management that Tomato/USB on a router gives us.

So the firewall/AP/QoS are handled by the WNR3500L with Tomato, though I still do the fileserver/email/dhcp/www/DNS/etc.. by hand on the 24/7 server. For now.

Pulled the trigger last night and ordered the ZBOX and the DCDC power supply. That ZBOX is difficult to find in-stock at the moment, but Google product finder to the rescue there. I had to go through some 5 stores to find a combination of in-stock and one that would accept a Canadian paypal account (delivery is to the US because none of them had sane Canadian shipping).

I'll pick up some RAM locally as it's cheaper, and I'll toss in one of the spare 2.5" drives I have here now. I should have this started within the next couple of weeks.

http://shopbot.ca helps a lot when I'm looking for stuff within the country.

How about a pogoplug? Everything can run off 5V.

Underpowered, few peripherals, and lots of dangly bits needed to build it out into a system.

What Mark said.

I didn't find the DNS flexible enough on Tomato, so I went back to full-featured DNS/DHCP software (on Windows Server, as it happens, but I'm equally at home with BIND, for my sins).

Have you considered anything like a pandaboard?

Linux - Check.
Small - Check.
Audio - Check.
Video - Check.
Wifi - Check.
Ethernet - Check.

Uses a SD card for boot/OS. You'd have to use a USB mass storage device for your music if you're going to be storing a lot of stuff on it.

Consumes less than 5W @ 5V on full load.

Pandaboard = no SATA. Which means to use onboard storage requires USB hackery which means super-slow file transfers.

But otherwise it looks really nice.

For this project I'm not so concerned about a few extra watts since the system is not going to be on 24/7 and is primarily intended for running in one of our vehicles only while the vehicle itself is running.

The smallest and most integrated package I found was the Zbox Nano. At $215 shipped, it was also the lowest priced option. Can't forget that it includes a case and even comes with some mounting hardware.

Surely high speed transfers in car aren't really an issue if it's just for streaming to devices? Plus you can just pull the drive when you want high speed transfers to update music.

I saw afterwards that you'd already bought a solution anyway. Somehow I missed the post when I was posting!

In-car I don't need fast transfers. But when I connect the system to my gigE network to load up the disk or do RSYNC, I do want it to go as quickly as possible.

But speed aside, without an onboard drive controller it would be a bit of hacking and an entirely larger packge/case to fit everything into. I've also not seen any aftermarket cases that are as elegant as the ZBOX. I'm looking at enough customization from a software perspective, so I want the hardware to be as straight-forward as possible.

How are you liking the router? I'm using IPCop, but the mini-itx board I'm using is a little loud and uses more power than I like.

The router is great -- super wifi coverage (when wifi is "on", rare here), and it's cool and 100% reliable.

The mini-ITX box is fanless and dead quiet. Though it does get a little warmer than I'd like, so yesterday I removed the cover from its m350 case and things seem better now.

That's a JetWay JNC9C-455-LF mobo with 2GB of RAM, a PicoPSU, a 60GB SSD system drive, and a 750GB bulk storage drive, crammed into a fanless M350 enclosure. Vertical on a wall under a worktable.

Oh, and to finish a different thread: in the end, I got the VGA-to-DVI-D converter box for it, so that the VGA output could feed into our new USB/DVI-D KVM switch. Got the converter from monoprice -- works perfectly.

Cheers

WebUI from OpenWRT, LuCI: http://luci.subsignal.org/trac

Going to have to look into installing this on top of a different distribution.

This Zotac box is proving very difficult to get a hold of. I thought I'd finally found a place to buy from and placed an order last week. Not having heard anything from them in a week I wrote to them yesterday and again today to inquire as to the status of said order.

"Oh, we had a problem that we thought we'd be able to work around, but the short of it is that we're out of stock and won't be able to ship anything before November 10th"

Great.

Using the Google shipping/products page is proving to be somewhat frustrating as well. It's been wrong on pricing/shipping for almost every link I've clicked on and I've only been able to find the product in stock at 2 additional places of some 10+ links clicked.

Are these things actually selling in great numbers or did Zotac only make 10 of them for the whole continent?

Are any of these what you are looking for?

tanstaafl.

No, Amazon doesn't have the Zbox Nano AD10 model. It's always the first place I look, at least for comparison's sake.

No, he's hunting for the Zotac AD10 aka. "nano".

Bruno: no digital sound outputs on that box, other than HDMI.. is that going to be a problem?

Mmm.. this thread suggests that they've never really been in stock anywhere yet, except perhaps a single pallet load maybe.

-ml

How about NCIX -- they claim to have stock now.

I already put through a new order last night. From a place that also sells janitorial and food services equipment no less. And got a very quick refund from the original store too. Fingers crossed it ships within a couple of days. They say it's still in stock and my order is "processing."

And WRT digital audio, no, it won't be a problem. This system will pretty much live its life serving content and won't be itself connected to anything but network (occasionally) and power.

Well, that's another online store that f*cked up. "in stock" changes to "back order" two days after I order and no email or notice is sent to me. If I hadn't kept visiting the store and checking status I wouldn't have known about this. On top of everything, they also require you to call in to cancel orders. Although they were pleasant enough on the phone.

Processed order through NCIX. Unfortunately it's $30 more base price. Higher shipping. $4 recycling fee. And of course extra tax on the higher amounts. They do price matching but no one else in Canada seems to have a better price.

You'd think I was trying to buy a Nintendo Wii, or a Tickle-Me Elmo - back in their day.

Are you sure the fitpc2 couldn't satisfy your requirements? Their parent company has a distributor in Canada.

http://www.compulab.co.il/representatives/tracan.pdf

I've had to give the one I was testing back to its original owner, but all in all, I've been really impressed with it. It ran Ubuntu 11.10 desktop absolutely flawlessly without breaking a sweat. You could get a 1TB disc in it no problems. Given it also have built in wifi, you shouldn't need anything else plugging into it.

It actually would fit the requirements quite well, but it's about $100 more expensive. I know it already runs on 12v, so I could potentially save the money I spent on the DCDC-USB...

But I'd probably still need/prefer to buy it to clean the power up and, more importantly, to provide the soft-off triggered by the accessory line in the car.

It looks like NCIX has come through. The package, originating in Vancouver on the other side of the country, has now already made its way into the province. Tracking information still doesn't mention a specific delivery date, but in my books, it's looking like some great service so far. I also really appreciate how NCIX sends detailed reports of the order status as it changes within their organization up until the item has actually been "shipped."

I should have the DCDC supply sometime tonight as well, but I think I'll end up paying with the Zbox for the week installing VortexBox and seeing if I can find any information on getting the LuCI UI on top of it as well.

Even though it's early in the process, I have no doubt based on experience with the Squeeze and iPeng products that this will work famously. Which does lead me to wonder why some folks in the SB forums are so hell-bent on finding "alternative" products, prompted by Logitech's apparent lack of advancement of new Squeeze models.

When an iOS device makes for such a capable player within this ecosystem, I can't fathom changing over to a completely different platform, something as clunky as some of the options I've seen tossed about on that forum. If someone already has SqueezeBox server set up, and an iOS device, as many do, it seems like a no-brainer to give it a try. iOS devices aren't free, but some of the alternative products cost a lot more.

The server software has received a new name, and is now called Logitech Media Server. The really need to stop changing the name, but this newest version brings online UPnP and DLNA serving capabilities and support for photos and video. Supposedly they're going to use it to complement their GoogleTV-based offerings, so it seems like they're doing some in-house software consolidation. The changes also open the door for other products to make use of the very good underpinnings of the server. Let's hope however that Logitech continues to make sales so they can keep developing the software, since it's clearly the most valuable IP of the entire ecosystem.

Oddly, when I was sifting through uPNP/DLNA sofware for a friend, there seemed to be plenty of server side goodies available (both Open Source and closed commercial), but very little in the way of client software.

The gadget makers seem to be doing a good job of keeping the client side stuff under lock and key (no objections here).

Cheers