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Installing Linux without any removable drive

I dont know if this is common practice or really new, but it just occurred to me out of pure necessity (the box in question can’t boot from USB, and i have no empty CDs, and only broken floppys).
You can install Linux (tested for the debian installer, I think it should work for the most other distros too, but this is untested) without any boot media.
You just remove the HDD from the system in question, put it in any other box with a working OS, run unetbootin, slap a netinst bootdisk of your distro of choice on the disk*, put it back in the system you want to install linux on, and voila – the installer runs just fine. The trick is that the debian installer seems to put all needed files onto a ramdisk, so there is no problem in formatting the disk it originally booted from (of course it works only with netinst-images).

As I said before, this may not be entirely new, but it just saved my ass – I had already been screwing around with floppy disks

This can be particularily helpful if you have an old laptop with a broken optical drive. If the HDD is PATA, you will probably need an adapter to write on it, but these things are readily available for small bucks.

I hope this blog post helps someone in a similar situation someday!

*unetinst seems to be a bit picky about the disks it accepts. If you can’t select the disk in question, just run it over any other spare disk (an usb flash drive comes to mind) and simply copy all of the generated files to your disk.

AsRock ION-330-HT-BD running XBMC (+Silent mod)

The ASRock ION-330-HT-(BD) is a really nice option if you search for a cheap system for XBMC. Its about ~280€ without BluRay and about 100€ more with a BluRay-drive.

I got the version with Bluray drive, as you can see in the title (for about 370€ at Amazon). I really haven’t tried BluRay playback up to now, because i have no Bluray-Disc lying around right now. I am really content with the performance of the system, and a minimal ubuntu install and the following automatic XBMC install (with this shellscript: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xci/) worked like a charm.

The noise the system produces is a problem though. The case-fan is no problem at the automatic setting, but the CPU-Fan is making a very high-pitched noise. You won’t hear it when you play a movie or music, but when the system is idle, it can be quite iritating.
This is why i decided to take some measures against this problem. I read in different forums about replacing the thermal pads with Arctic Silver 5, but in my opinion, this is too much work (and also voids the warranty).

So i decided to use a ZALMAN Fanmate 2 fan controller for slowing down the CPU-Fan. I set it on the highest level (11,1V) and voilà, the high-pitched noise is gone (and i doubt it has much effect on the airflow). To compensate for it anyways, I undervolted CPU, RAM, and Chipset.
After i completed the installation (about 10 minutes of work), it was time for some stress-testing:
I tried to push the system to its limit by running mprime in a ssh session while playing back 1080p H.264 content.
To my surprise, I didn’t even get any skipped frames! (the 59 skipped frames are from fast-forwarding, as the network can’t deliver the content fast enough during 16x FF). VDPAU is REALLY taking a lot of load away from the processor!

The temperatures did get quite high, but nothing too troubling (since the system will never be under that much load [normal CPU usage while playing back H.264 1080p content: 10-20%). I think the cooling will suffice in the summer, since the maximal specified temperature for the ATOM is at about 82°C and the room temperature will be about 15°C higher. I would be pretty near the maximum, but remember the system will never be at full load (~80% of the CPU-Load are from mprime).

Some other nice features of the system are: power-on from OFF state with IR-Remote, Audio output via HDMI – Only 3 cables required for installation (HDMI, LAN, power), streaming from Samba,NFS,DLNA and about anything you can think about, internet radio playback (just put the playlist files in a folder and you are set), and last but not least: No warranty sticker bullshit!

A newer, beefier version with a intel core cpu (and 3D-playback, allegedly) will be released soon, but i did not see the need for it (more power? what for?) as i won’t have a 3D-screen for a loooooong time

I am quite happy with my new, HD-capable XBMC box. If there are any questions left open, or if you would like to point out alternatives, please feel free to leave a comment.

Moved from Torrentflux-b4rt to wtorrent

…and the installation was a major pain in the ass.
So if you plan to install wtorrent, the following pages will help you a lot:
http://robert.penz.name/82/howto-install-rtorrent-and-wtorrent-within-an-ubuntu-hardy-ve/
– the included init script seems to have kind of a bug though, failed to detect the session path with me every time, fixed it by hard-coding the session path into the script (Mr. Quick-and-Dirty is my second name).
http://www.wtorrent-project.org/trac/wiki/wTorrentInstall
- the wtorrent installation instructions (not particularily helpful though)
http://filesharefreak.com/tutorials/how-to-svn-rtorrent-wtorrent-rtorrent-webui/
- Another installation guide
http://flipsidereality.com/blog/linux/rtorrent-with-wtorrent-on-debian-etch-complete-howto/
- Complete Guide if you plan to install it on a brand new box (etch installation instructions included)

So, now it’s time for some testing & fine-tuning