anm , I did a full research on Vortexbox and it does seems to be a pretty nice OS for a Media Server. It is also based in Linux (Fedora) and runs headless, just like Unraid and needs to be accessed via network. The OS is specially good for people who do not at all want to go in to command line to do any kind of configuration.
Vortexbox is a complete OS rather than an application (which I initially though it would be) so was hoping there would be some way to incorporate it with Unraid. Seems I was wrong, its all together an OS in itself and so can not be run on unraid as such.
The main feature of Vortexbox which I really liked is to be able automatically rip CDs, convert them to FLAC and store them on to the HDD, (and if instructed convert them to MP3ss as well), which is what I wanted on Unraid. My search began with...... to be able to find an application that can Autorip the CDs inserted to the desired location. I found few like the famous
ABCDE (A Better CD Encoder) specifically written for Ubuntu. Doesnt seem to run on UNraid ... Nobody tried. For windows there are loads of applications, but none is totally automated. If You can find one let me know. So I was stuck with Vortexbox. But I didnt want to run an altogether another server just for this feature.
This is how (for now I solved it)
Along with my Unraid, I also have
ESXi server running that I access from office for my office work (not that I do not have the same in office, but its an extra added adv plus one might agree you feel good working on your own server) ..... Anyway I use my
ESXi for all my lab experiments and so decided to give Vortexbox a try on ESXi for my Auto ripping needs without actually installing the OS on to a different machine. Before creating the machine on ESXi. I first tried it on my local desktop VMware machine.
I must say vortex box is a pretty impressive piece of Linux flavor, targeted to do just what it intends. A dedicated music server, with audio auto ripping feature, that gives straight access to your music collection on the network via their squeezebox server (which is what I have on my UNraid) OR just open the folder from network and play the music. Pretty nice interface. Below is what it looks like when accessed from a network PC.
Since it was on VMware the ripping did not work out of the box, but it should on a stand alone server. I had to do some command line tweaking, and few config file modifications to get this done. But once its done its a breeze.
Just popin the CD, and its ripped in FLAC and stored in the default FLAC folder on the server. If you want you can also choose to encode the FLACs in to MP3 and store then in the default MP3 server folder.
THis is how the ripping progress looks in case one wants to view it.
Another nice feature is that Vortexbox not only rips the tracks it also downloads the cover art and stores in the folder. Plus every song is ripped with proper track information downloaded via internet.
You then can run the inbuilt Squeeze Box server (that I have to manually install on my Unraid) from the home page itself. It would launch the SB Server page that I already have shared. You can then choose your desired application to play music.
Squeezebox also provides it own
Squeezesoft player that gets itself synced with the server and get all the information from the default folder (you need to have an account on squeezebox.com). You then just need to scan your library. Like shown below. Once the lib is scanned the player and the server remain in sync and you dont have to rescan or reconnect it again and all your song library, playlist, settings, even the position of the song remains same across system boots
Over all nice experience and definitely a worthy product.
I am pretty impressed by VBs performance on VM as well.
Last must have feature was to be able to rip the music and directly store it on Unraid, instead of storing it on the local VB HDD. This was not as easy as it sounds.
For some reason I was not able to achieve this. Maybe just maybe coz of VB running on VMWare. (But my objective was to run it on ESXi) so this was important. This involves quite a few command line changes, which didnt work for me .... so I had to find a different solution.
I use
AllWay Sync to sync few files from my regular desktop to Unraid (my Family snaps and digital photos as I need to keep a copy of the same on my regular desktop as well). I just add new snaps to my regular desktop and All Sync syncs it to Unraid automatically.
In this case I had to set up Allway sync to automatically copy the FLACs from VB HDD to Unraid HDD every time I rip a disk. The process runs in the background and is completely automated.
Now all I do is pop in my disk in to my regular desktop PC. VM Machine running VBox captures the disk and copies the FLACS on to Vbox disk, from there AllSync takes over and copies the same to my Unraid the moment it detects new files in the folder .........
All process works flawlessly and is completely automated ....so now I have decided to install the same on my ESXi, which would make it available 24x7. All I would need is to pop in the CD on my Host machine and all would be done itself ......
Will share more information once I install it on ESXi ......
Regards
Sammy
If anyone is interested in implementing VB can shoots questions ... hope this information helps someone ....
PS :::: There are few major drawbacks of VBox. You cannot add a hdd just like that, as you do on Unraid. You can though instruct VB to install 2 disks as RAID 0 at the time of VB installation, but if you need to add HDD, you need proper linux command line knowledge, or follow up articles online for the same. So its best to install VB with a big initial HDD like one 3TB and leave everything else. 3TB should be enough for just FLACs and MP3ss.
