The almost perfect NAS + Joggler setup....

[binarysmacker]

Hey everyone,

Ive been heavily experimenting recently on getting my whole entire HTPC and Music system set up to be the most seamless and best experience it can be and I think I may have found a very nice solution which a lot of people may be interested in, however there is one little small problem which is where, I hope, someone here can help out.

Little backstory:*******

I have a PC that runs windows and is my server for the whole house and also the HTPC in the main room. It has all our rips on it, photos and music. It also boots to XMBC and automatically sleeps after inactivity.
I have 2 apple TVs in the other rooms that run XMBC and automatically wake the server PC (Ill call it NAS from now on) when XMBC loads and all the media is accessible and everythings great on that front.
I have one Joggler with SqueezePlay OS and also Squeezeslave on the main HTPC / NAS in the other room. I bought a Duet Controller to act as the remote for the headless squeezeslave on the HTPC. (I know you can also use apps, but nothing can beat a dedicated remote with tactile buttons). I USED to have LMS on the NAS.....

LMS on the NAS was "Almost" perfect....the only problem (but quite a big one) was that when the NAS is sleeping and I hit "My Music" or anything on the Joggler, the Joggler / Squeezeplay will send a WOL signal to the NAS and it wakes up.. so far so good. However it is a bit flakey. Sometimes it would instantly connect. Other times it would spin for a little bit saying "connecting" for a bit then it would connect. Other times it would spin "connecting" for a long time, other times it would keep failing and ask to if I wanted to switch or try a different library (Also true on the duet remote). It is annoying and I need it to be a much more seamless setup. It is the last piece of the puzzle really. Everything in the house is ethernet gigabit so its no problem on that end. Once everything is on and stable however its perfect!

I thought maybe if I get a small SSD for the NAS for the OS and XBMC and LMS it would make it resume from sleep instantly (it only takes a few seconds now though however with regular HDD) and maybe it might make LMS more responsive and prevent the problem I have described. However im not going to just go and buy an SSD and hope it works without some outside advice or perhaps trying something else.

So then I thought about maybe just for the music ill get a USB HDD plug it into the joggler and run LMS from the Joggler (as its basically always on - never a problem with waiting to connect to it). Thats not bad BUT I just really don't like that idea as I have a full set up server box / main HTPC with all the storage and everything set up and it seems just a waste to do this technique.

********

THEN, I found the almost near perfect solution.....

The Joggler now runs LMS so its always connected and on, however the music on the NAS is mounted ONTO the joggler, but with a difference. Instead of using the built in the mounting ability of SqueezePlay OS, I set up the mount myself in a certain way.
This is what happens.
When the particular folder is accessed on the joggler, that I have set to be my mount point, it first automatically pings the NAS to see if its awake, if its not awake it then sends a WOL signal and wakes the NAS, after 6 seconds it then pings again to make sure it alive, once confirmed it then goes ahead and mounts the folder. Once that its mounted, after 10 minutes of inactivity in that directory and its files, it unmounts itself.

This works perfectly. in SSH on the joggler...
If I do CD /mnts/music and the server is not already awake, its just a 6 second delay and then after 6 seconds the directory loads and I can see everything as if it was local. Once its awake I can go in and out as if it was local. If its unmounted but the server is still awake, I can still CD into it as if it was local, it sees the server is still awake so doesn't need to wait 6 seconds and instantly remounts it.

I was thinking great! So I put the NAS to sleep. I went over to the Joggler hit my music and saw all the artists instantly which is great. Since the Joggler has LMS now, I can effectively browse my collection "offline" and once I hit a song it should only then, fire up the NAS.
So I browsed around checking its all there and working, I selected a song......and the NAS WOKE UP!
But then....a little spinner beside the song I selected just kept spinning, longer than the 6 seconds, I doubled checked and the NAS was on and through SSH I checked and the mount had taken place and everything was accessible, just the joggler was still trying to load it as if it couldn't see the file. It then would pop up "Error, cannot play this file". Sometimes the error popped up instantly sometimes not for a long time.

But if I was to back out the menu and go in and out a few times after a few tries and song selections (by this time the NAS it well awake and the mount had taken and all working) it would then realise it COULD see the files and start playing and everything would then be running smoothly.

I left it for a bit and the NAS did indeed go to sleep. I then decide to wake the NAS myself first before selecting a song so its ready to be mounted instantly on request, and sure thing, it works. So it seems like squeezeplay doesn't handle waiting very well. A few times the joggler seemed to crash as in the webpage became unresponsive and squeezeplay on the joggler wouldn't be able to find its own server and splash up the "connecting" spinner. This only happens later on as if the mounting and confusing has caused a network issue. But I think if the loading problem is sorted, maybe just some better handling and waiting when selecting the file if its not available straight way, then it would sort that other problem out.

So this is where I hope someone can help me. I have no idea where to start. Is squeezeplay compiled or is it just all perl? Because if it is then if I knew the file that handled loading of music I could have a see myself but I dont know this side of things.

If anyone wants to know how I set up the WOL and mount when requested side of things let me know and ill post how I set it up.

Thanks
Matthew

[binarysmacker]

So I just realised I made a silly mistake. Its not SqueezePlay that needs the tweaks, its LMS that needs them. As LMS does the file requesting, not SqueezePlay.....Unless squeezeplay also has some timeout settings etc?