Andrew, A Direct Answer Please.

[Fifer]

Hi Fifer
Hopefully you will find some time to have a play. In the meantime, in answer to some of the questions your raised: OMV is extremely well supported and updated very regularly, so that really take care of the Debian platform being fully updated. VBR is really a package of abcde (tagger) + cdparanoia (ripper) + LMS. So keeping VBR up to date is really just about keeping these packages up to date. That is easily done at the command line. As for Bliss/Transmission/Subsonic these can be easily installed at the command line or in some cases there may be Portainer containers already available for them. Portainer has many other containers you may wish install alongside. There are a number of Transmission and Subsonic alternatives for example. The beauty of installing these under Portainer is that you can just turn them on and off as you wish with a simple click of their radio buttons.

All sounds good Sean. We're a bit busy preparing to move house right now, but this just jumped to the top of my tech to-do list!

[Serge]

I appreciate the talks about alternatives, but would really like VB to just issue an update to (somewhat) latest versions…..

But question: anybody experience with SnakeOil?

[SeanMiddleton]

Having now built a number of OMV servers with LMS (8.2), Transmission etc working perfectly I have now put together a Raspbery Pi 4 (4GB) OMV server running LMS and Transmission and also acting as a NAS. It has almost 100,000 tracks and has a 8TB HDD attached. It works fine. I can install Subsonic/Bliss and much more if needed but havent done so thus far. For me the need for a new Vortexbox has evapourated. The OMV solution is much superior.

[Fifer]

Having now built a number of OMV servers with LMS (8.2), Transmission etc working perfectly I have now put together a Raspbery Pi 4 (4GB) OMV server running LMS and Transmission and also acting as a NAS. It has almost 100,000 tracks and has a 8TB HDD attached. It works fine. I can install Subsonic/Bliss and much more if needed but havent done so thus far. For me the need for a new Vortexbox has evapourated. The OMV solution is much superior.

Apologies for bumping this old thread. The house move and other life events meant this was on the back burner for me through 2022. However, a 4GB Pi 4, case and SATA SSD are ordered and on the way to my new home. I'm reading Sean's excellent Word write-up and I'm raring to get going. Expect more questions ...

[SeanMiddleton]

Apologies for bumping this old thread. The house move and other life events meant this was on the back burner for me through 2022. However, a 4GB Pi 4, case and SATA SSD are ordered and on the way to my new home. I'm reading Sean's excellent Word write-up and I'm raring to get going. Expect more questions ...

Hi Fifer

PLeased to hear youre gonna go for it. I guess I've built about 12 OMV/LMS/NAS boxes now (few for myself as backups and rest for mmates). They all work fine. I've used RPi's, VIM3, Beelink U59 NUC's, ODROID N2+, ODROID H3+ and various ASROCK celeron based motehrboards. Beelink U59 NUC's are excellent value and work well (need to frig the 12v SATA supply but easy enough). My favourite tho is the ODROIDS. In particular the new ODROID H3+. This is a beauty; 2 SATA ports, very low power and runs like a dream. For example, streaming 2 HD movies and a 96/24 track on LMS and its CPU load is less than 4% !! if u email me I'll send a couple of pics ([email protected]). Use OMV VORTEX as the email subject so I spot it.

[Transporter]

This thread was started over a year ago now without a single post from Andrew. I have to give kudos to Andrew for the Vortexbox idea, work put in, and previous support. But over a year without even a response, no available updates, and VB2.5 being what like 10 Fedora versions behind (either EOL or getting close). Granted I am a DIY guy, but I have pointed many people to Vortexbox and Small Green Computer. A family member now has Tidal (and I do also) and wants to use it but the Vortexbox Server I built them is running 2.3 or 2.4. So before I build a 2.5 VBS, so they can use LMS 8.2, it would be good to know if 2.6 VBS might possibly be coming because VBS updates require a full OS rebuild? Of course there are other server operating systems that LMS runs on, but I have always enjoyed that VBS is ripped music centric.

Comments please Andrew?

[Fifer]

Hi Fifer

PLeased to hear youre gonna go for it. I guess I've built about 12 OMV/LMS/NAS boxes now (few for myself as backups and rest for mmates). They all work fine. I've used RPi's, VIM3, Beelink U59 NUC's, ODROID N2+, ODROID H3+ and various ASROCK celeron based motehrboards. Beelink U59 NUC's are excellent value and work well (need to frig the 12v SATA supply but easy enough). My favourite tho is the ODROIDS. In particular the new ODROID H3+. This is a beauty; 2 SATA ports, very low power and runs like a dream. For example, streaming 2 HD movies and a 96/24 track on LMS and its CPU load is less than 4% !! if u email me I'll send a couple of pics ([email protected]). Use OMV VORTEX as the email subject so I spot it.

Another five weeks of stop/start progress and I can report success - thanks to advice and encouragement from SeanMiddleton , I now have OMV6 installed with LMS running perfectly in Docker on a Raspberry Pi 4. The process took longer than I should as real life meant I could only dedicate short periods of time and my own impatience led to a number of wrong turns and dead ends. If anyone else wants to follow Sean's excellent instructions, follow them and the recommended Tech Dad videos religiously and don't be tempted to think you know better (as I did), stop watching and press ahead missing the odd important step or two. You'll only end up having to backtrack.

One final issue I had which I don't think was covered in the video (although I may have missed it) was that LMS wasn't restarting after a reboot. After a bit of poking around, I found the restart policy for the LMS container in Portainer was set incorrectly.

It was a fun (if at times slightly frustrating) process and I've learned a lot - my Linux rooky status is now officially elevated to rooky+. The main thing though, is that I have a robust, futureproof, up to date and flexible music server which lives in a box orders of magnitude smaller that my HP Microserver and uses much less power too. Cheers Sean - couldn't have done it without your trail-blazing.

[lawrence2357]

Another five weeks of stop/start progress and I can report success - thanks to advice and encouragement from SeanMiddleton , I now have OMV6 installed with LMS running perfectly in Docker on a Raspberry Pi 4. The process took longer than I should as real life meant I could only dedicate short periods of time and my own impatience led to a number of wrong turns and dead ends. If anyone else wants to follow Sean's excellent instructions, follow them and the recommended Tech Dad videos religiously and don't be tempted to think you know better (as I did), stop watching and press ahead missing the odd important step or two. You'll only end up having to backtrack.

One final issue I had which I don't think was covered in the video (although I may have missed it) was that LMS wasn't restarting after a reboot. After a bit of poking around, I found the restart policy for the LMS container in Portainer was set incorrectly.

It was a fun (if at times slightly frustrating) process and I've learned a lot - my Linux rooky status is now officially elevated to rooky+. The main thing though, is that I have a robust, futureproof, up to date and flexible music server which lives in a box orders of magnitude smaller that my HP Microserver and uses much less power too. Cheers Sean - couldn't have done it without your trail-blazing.

Great write up. From what you've learnt, do you think it could be used as a ripper too if I install on my old Vortexbox (Zen)?

[Fifer]

Great write up. From what you've learnt, do you think it could be used as a ripper too if I install on my old Vortexbox (Zen)?

Thanks Lawrence. I haven't tried to install a ripper yet, but it certainly looks possible. From Sean's document "For CD ripping I always do that standalone using EAC/Mp3Tag but if you want to add this function into OMV you can just install the ‘abcde’ app."

[Transporter]

Great write up. From what you've learnt, do you think it could be used as a ripper too if I install on my old Vortexbox (Zen)?

My thought is that if you are going to move over to OMV, why not pick one of the better current supported ripping programs? Plus it allows you to keep the music server as just that without need for an optical drive. just a thought and suggestion. Sean uses EAC and I use dBpowerAmp. I like dBPA because it has online help getting cover art plus the ability to search for dupes and repair tagging with some of the available add-on modules.It also checks the accuracy of your rip against a database of other rips of the same CD letting the user know if they should keep the rip or try to get a better one. And of course Fifer's suggestion of adding a ripping program and have OMV handler run it works to if one wants an all in one solution. The only thing that I think one might miss is the Vortexbox auto-ripping. I'm not sure, but I would think one would have to start the ripping program each time just not insert a CD.

[SeanMiddleton]

My thought is that if you are going to move over to OMV, why not pick one of the better current supported ripping programs? Plus it allows you to keep the music server as just that without need for an optical drive. just a thought and suggestion. Sean uses EAC and I use dBpowerAmp. I like dBPA because it has online help getting cover art plus the ability to search for dupes and repair tagging with some of the available add-on modules.It also checks the accuracy of your rip against a database of other rips of the same CD letting the user know if they should keep the rip or try to get a better one. And of course Fifer's suggestion of adding a ripping program and have OMV handler run it works to if one wants an all in one solution. The only thing that I think one might miss is the Vortexbox auto-ripping. I'm not sure, but I would think one would have to start the ripping program each time just not insert a CD.

Here is an interesting link to a project using a Docker container for CD ripping software. I much prefer to manual rip/tag but for anyone using OMV and also wanting CD ripping then this article may be of great interest. :

https://github.com/rix1337/docker-ripper

[lawrence2357]

I'm off work for a couple of days if the kids allow it I might find the time to try all this on an old Vortexbox of mine.

And I do want an autoripper I need to rip about 2000 discs while other responsibilities keep me busy pretty much all my waking hours, so the idea of starting a program or selecting which metadata for each disc is best is a non starter. It's a choice between having a suboptimally tagged ripped music collection or none.