# Server for both Tivo streaming and NAS



## PaulPW (Nov 14, 2007)

This has kind of been partly answered in other threads, but not exactly - please forgive if I missed an answer elsewhere...

I'm wanting to set up a "cheap" PC on my home network to act both as:

a media server to my TiVo S3 (via TiVo Desktop or Galleon, etc.) and
as a file server for my other PCs (for central media, document & back-up storage)
This new PC could possibly run a Linux OS for improved security over Windows (although I have no experience using Linux yet! ) and would be left on all the time, connected directly to my router.
Additionally, I would like for this new PC to incorporate RAID 1 or 5 (for on-the-fly protection against HD failure), ideally with SATA drives.

Any suggestions on feasible ways of doing this? What hardware, OS & server software would work best?
I have looked into NAS devices with RAID such as HP MediaVault, but of course these don't allow for TiVo media server software to be installed.
So, to put it another way, how do I configure a PC to act as a NAS (with RAID) and also running a TiVo media server?

Comments much appreciated - Cheers!


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

I won't suggest hardware as I'm a bit ignorant on the topic of late, but I will tell you that I have a crappy Pentium 4 2.53Ghz Win2k box with 768MB of RAM acting as a media server to my Tivo, my D-Link DSM520 as well as a file server for my other machines in the house. Running anything else on the box is painfully slow and it takes a bit for files to transfer back and forth between the PC and TivoHD but as you'll read elsewhere this is a common issue regardless of your PC's speed. 

I haven't gone the Raid route yet... I'm simply using an external USB 2.0 500GB drive which I have shared off the PC. I am considering archiving all my DVDs to disk once someone comes up with a way to still use the DVD menus. Once that happens, I'll likely revisit the raid question. Presently I don't keep much on that drive that I'd be concerned about losing.


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

BrianAZ said:


> I am considering archiving all my DVDs to disk once someone comes up with a way to still use the DVD menus.


convert the dvds to iso files and then mount the iso to a virtual dvd drive using daemon tools.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

wgw said:


> convert the dvds to iso files and then mount the iso to a virtual dvd drive using daemon tools.


How will I interface with the menus via my TV? Is there some hardware (Tivo, media player, etc) that will connect to my shared virtual DVD drive(s) on my computer?


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## wgw (May 16, 2007)

OP, Use any old PC and any old NAS or attached storage and point Tivo Desktop to the external drive. Or get a cheap internal raid 5 card for the PC for starters. I use the FastTrak TX4310 in my computers. I got the bulk version at Zipzoomfly. Comes with everything but the box.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

You may want to look into the new windows home server products. Check them out here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx From what I understand, adding storage is a breeze ( http://dwelzel.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C3DEC8CBC1375998!494.entry ), and given your inexperience with linux, this might be a good option.

I really dont know much about WHS yet, but I have read that there is actually an add-in called "Tivo Publisher" http://durfee.net/software/2007/07/tivo-publisher-for-whs.html that works very well.
It installs as a service which is going to be almost necessary for your application.

As far as I know there isnt any tivo server software (i.e. tivo desktop/tivo publisher) for Linux.

There is a 120 day trial of home server on microsofts website if you are interested in trying it out on a spare pc.


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## bonnie_raitt (Sep 14, 2001)

Depending on your storage requirements, it might be easier to use a normal PC running XP. If you only use it for media server and refrain from browsing the web much and installing all the software you come across, it will be pretty stable.

I would put 2 drives in it, a 80-200 Gig drive for the OS and a 750 or 1000 gig drive for media. I would then attach the same size (750 or 1000 Gig) drive externally via USB 2, firewire, or esata. Then using a program like Syncback (free backup software) you can sync the drives each night. This will get you a reliable storage system at a low cost.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

adessmith said:


> As far as I know there isnt any tivo server software (i.e. tivo desktop/tivo publisher) for Linux.


Hello? pyTivo, which incidentally works much better than Tivo Desktop. I believe Galleon would also be suitable.

Samba (which comes standard with most Linux distros nowadays) can be used for the NAS side. You can also share via ftp, sftp, NFS, etc., whatever.

All of this _will_ be faster and more stable than using Windows as a server, for almost any given hardware. I won't comment on ease of use, since I find Linux easier to use than Windows, but that seems to be a minority opinion.


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## jbernardis (Oct 22, 2003)

You can try FreeNAS.org. I don't know much about this package myself, but I saw it reviewed on DL.TV and it looked pretty cool. Not sure how you'd get galleon on it, but it would definitely meet your NAS needs. You'd probably have to run tivo desktop or galleon on one of your client machines.


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## PaulPW (Nov 14, 2007)

Many thanks for the great suggestions :up:. Broadens my options... and gives me more research to do!  weighing up relative cost, complexity, stability etc.. Whatever I end up trying out I'll report results back to this thread.
Please post any other ideas or if you have this kind of set up running (combined NAS/file-server and TiVo server with RAID or disk back-up, preferably in one box).


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## DougJohnson (Dec 12, 2006)

PaulPW said:


> Please post any other ideas or if you have this kind of set up running (combined NAS/file-server and TiVo server with RAID or disk back-up, preferably in one box).


I am running a Shuttle system with an AMD 2800 Sempron processor, 512 MB RAM, 250 GB and 500 GB harddrives with Windows Server 2003. The system (less the drives and server license) cost me $250 in December last year. It is solid as a rock and plenty fast enough for a home network.

It runs TiVo Desktop, Galleon, and serves as the home NAS. I just ordered another 512 MB RAM because TiVo Beacon has memory leaks. Backup is done manually to a desktop on the network because I like having my backups on different systems from the primary storage. Eventually, I plan to do backups to a web hosting service.

-- Doug


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> Hello? pyTivo, which incidentally works much better than Tivo Desktop. I believe Galleon would also be suitable.


Yep. Galleon works great. It took a little bit of doing to get 2.4.1 working under Debian Linux, and a bit more work to get 2.5.1 working. Due to my own incompetence I also had to re-do the work when I loaded 2.5.2, but having done the work once, it only took a few minutes to duplicate it. It seems I'll never learn to be thorough about documenting and backing up my installation procedures. That said, most of the work getting 2.5.x working was involved in being able to run either 2.4.1 or 2.5.x at a moment's whim.



wmcbrine said:


> All of this _will_ be faster and more stable than using Windows as a server, for almost any given hardware.


No kidding! Well, it will only be just as fast for some operations, but it's far, far more stable and as fast or faster otherwise. Qualitatively I would say TTG / TTCB are about the same speed-wise under either platform, but I believe the bottleneck there is the TiVo's processor, not the HME server. I haven't done any detailed benchmarks, but my general impression is there isn't any great difference in speed between the two for TTG and TTCB. The other applications are another matter. Galleon under Linux blows TiVo Desktop away for speed on Photons, music, etc, and that is with Linux running on a much slower system all the way around.

I never could get TiVo Desktop to work on one of my XP machines. I did get it to work on the XP file server, but it neither performs nearly as well nor has most of the features of Galleon under Linux.



wmcbrine said:


> I won't comment on ease of use, since I find Linux easier to use than Windows, but that seems to be a minority opinion.


'Not among people who actually need to make use of their OS. Also not among those who have encountered installation problems on both platforms. The only way I was likely to have been able to get TiVo Desktop to run on the one XP machine was to re-load the OS, losing all the applications on the machine. With similar problems on the Linux machine, all it took was some simple troubleshooting and some suggestions from a couple of people on this forum.

Getting back to the OP's question, I am shortly intending to purchase a Norco DS-1240 RAID shelf with 6 drives and a RocketRaid 2322 controller to provide roughly 5 TB of fault tolerant drive space. I'll be running Galleon under Debian Linux for the HME features, plus SAMBA so the Windows based PCs on the LAN can access the files. It will also be running as a local DNS and NTP server.


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## CJTE (Nov 6, 2007)

lrhorer, you sound much more like a linux fanboy than a general supporter...

Personally Ive got everything from an eMachine 566i to a Compaq SR1850NX to a couple home brews... I prefer Intel but both my home brews and one of my Compaqs is AMD, they work well. That being said, all of these machines at one point in time, and some still do, run Windows XP Professional. Ive been using Windows since 3.1, hated the conversion to 95, and actually went Mac (started at 7.2.2) for a couple years (long story short, I had become 'unathorized' to access windows machines until further notice, which came out to be about 5 years later). I now run OSX 10.3.9, 10.3.9 server, 10.4 on an external HD, considering 10.4/10.5 the OSx86 way, and Windows 2000 server. All but one of my machines are licensed, and if it ever came down to it, I have an unopened XP Pro OEM license in my filling cabinet.
Ive tried SuSe, RedHat, Fedora, Debian 3, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. The problem with all these OS's is that somewhere along the line, you literally have to re-write the OS in order to make it work for you. Learning how to do this could literally take hours. Aside of driver-modding (which I've only had to do about 3 times), this issue doesnt occur on a Windows _XP_ box. For the most part, thanks to SP2, XP Pro works right out of the box... I'll be the first to admit that it becomes unstable after alot of 3rd party software, but, as a core operating system... It runs well.

I need a coke


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

CJTE said:


> lrhorer, you sound much more like a linux fanboy than a general supporter...


Actually, I'm a TiVo fanboy, which is the focus of this forum. Of course if TiVo should ever decide to run their UI under Linux then maybe... Oh, wait! They *DO* run under Linux. Hmm, I wonder why?



CJTE said:


> Personally Ive got everything from an eMachine 566i to a Compaq SR1850NX to a couple home brews...


I've written software for, developed hardware for, and manged over a dozen different platforms since the 1970s including IBM 360/370s, PDP 11s, 2nd generation core memory based minis, 3rd generation Array Processors, RISC based servers and high end workstations, you name it. Of all the Operating Systems with which I have dealt, Windows ranks about 5th or 6th worst.



CJTE said:


> I prefer Intel but both my home brews and one of my Compaqs is AMD, they work well.


The hardware is not highly relevant to this discussion, but I am also forced to manage more than 20 different hardware platforms, from Dell laptops to HP 9000 Superdome Servers. My roommate even has a bottom rung Dell desktop running Windows XP Home Edition which she asks me to fix once in a while, and which I maintain on the LAN. The OSes run the gamut from XP Pro to Windows 2003 Server, Debian Sarge, Xandros, Red Hat, and HP-UX 11i. I even still manage a couple of machines running OS/2 Warp and one RISC based HP c-240 workstation running HP-UX 10.20.



CJTE said:


> ...All but one of my machines are licensed, and if it ever came down to it, I have an unopened XP Pro OEM license in my filling cabinet.


OK, good for you. I fail to see what your honesty, laudable as it most certainly is, has to do with the issue at hand.



CJTE said:


> Ive tried SuSe, RedHat, Fedora, Debian 3, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. The problem with all these OS's is that somewhere along the line, you literally have to re-write the OS


Having written an OS or two, and having done device driver development for a couple of Linux machines, I assure you and everyone else nothing of the sort is required to run any version of Unix I have ever met, and that includes the various distros of Linux. One should know a bit about the Kernel and how the distro in question handles its configuration, but there is plenty of documentation on such things laying around the internet. Re-compiling the OS is not rewriting the OS, and all the current distros of which I am aware do a pretty good job of compiling the OS for the most common devices out there. Since most drivers are now loadable modules, re-compiling the OS is a lot less common now than a couple of years ago, but even so, recompiling the OS is not difficult.



CJTE said:


> in order to make it work for you. Learning how to do this could literally take hours.


If you know someone who can re-write an OS in a matter of hours starting from scratch, please let me know. I want to hire them. Depending on the machine in question, any time I am forced to re-install Windows XP, it generally takes me between 2 weeks and 2 months to get all the software back up fully and properly operational. Just loading and configuring the OS typically takes me 2 to 3 days. Generally speaking the OS usually goes unstable about 6 - 8 months later, although I have had it happen quite a few times before I was even done loading all the software. The instability is often irretrievable, and the user must typically simply live with it until it gets to be too much to bear, or until they can afford to have their system taken completely offline for a couple of days. Windows Server is considerably less prone to stability problems, although a Windows 2003 server I turned up just six weeks ago went completely unstable after operating only a week.

By contrast the *nix desktop systems do indeed typically take a bit longer to load and bring online (although not always - I loaded up an HP-UX workstation last year starting form scratch and I was done in less than 6 hours), but once functional they are much more stable. I have never had a *nix system become irretrievably unstable.



CJTE said:


> For the most part, thanks to SP2, XP Pro works right out of the box...


Hardly. It generally takes me at least a day to get rid of all the crap which should never have been there in the first place and at least another to set up the UI for all the users. Even on the machines in my house, trying to get all the users set up so they can use the things they need without being able to corrupt the system or other's files is a real challenge.



CJTE said:


> I'll be the first to admit that it becomes unstable after alot of 3rd party software, but, as a core operating system... It runs well.


So it works fine as long as one doesn't actually need to run any applications?

That's great - and by the way we're talking about 3rd party appications, here.

To the OP: My personal advice is definitely go with the Linux solution if you are at all familiar with computer software, file systems, and basic computer operations. If reading a computer manual doesn't daunt you and you are at ease working at the command line, then Linux will be a challenge for you, but a rewarding one and not an overwhelming one. I suggest you go to one or two of the Linux support websites and read through the how-to manuals. Some people prefer the commercial distributions like Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, or Xandros, while others like me prefer the free distros like Debian or Ubuntu. There are pros and cons for both, so read up and ask questions. I definitely prefer the aptitude (Debian) based distros, but RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) does have some advantages, among them the fact some software is only delivered using RPM. (Even so, it is quite possible to convert an RPM package to a Debian package and install from there.) You might start with the link below and like I said, don't be afraid to ask questions.

http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html


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## CJTE (Nov 6, 2007)

Haha.
Wow. I dont even know where to begin, but im going to keep this very short.

Based on your post, we've clearly determined it takes someone with "more than average" computer skills to run a nix box. Which is why you run your box's your way, and your roomie runs XP Home.

And, I do apologize for my word kludge. You don't have to re-write the operating system, but without precise instructions, the "average" user wouldn't be able to re-compile the kernel. I beleive you and I will see eye to eye on this, as based on your history I assume that you've done many years of support, just as I have, although I probably have less years in the field than you.

Now, in regards to your windows problems... It took me 6 hours to install XP Pro retail on my Dell Inspiron 3000. And after some software tweaks it ran to my satisfaction (sometimes out performing my eMachines). If supporting your windows systems is causing you trouble, that sounds like a business proposal to me and I'd be more than happy to meet your needs


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

CJTE said:


> You don't have to re-write the operating system, but without precise instructions, the "average" user wouldn't be able to re-compile the kernel.


Good thing the average user won't need to. God, how long has it been since I did that? The last time was to add support for Tivo-style partition tables, so I could mount a Tivo drive directly; that was years ago, and it had been years before that.

Seriously, have you looked at a modern distro lately? I run Ubuntu Linux. It's _easier_ to install than Windows. Really.


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## Carsten (Feb 5, 2007)

wmcbrine said:


> Good thing the average user won't need to. God, how long has it been since I did that? The last time was to add support for Tivo-style partition tables, so I could mount a Tivo drive directly; that was years ago, and it had been years before that.
> 
> Seriously, have you looked at a modern distro lately? *I run Ubuntu Linux. It's easier to install than Windows. Really*.


+1 to that. Installs alot faster too .

I have only worked w/ Ubuntu 6/7 Server edition, but installed quickly with only minor issues, but thanks to Google I was able to resolve it quickly.

Other than that, I have installed VMWare Server on that Ubuntu machine and havent rebooted it in months. Works Great! BTW, its a POS Centrino 1.6 Ghz with 768 MB RAM and a 120 GB hdd.

EDIT:

Forgot to mention the NSLU2. Great cheap device that can run pyTivo on it. I havent installed pyTivo on it, but I read it works, and works well.


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## Carsten (Feb 5, 2007)

Update to my previous post:

Just for the hell of it I fixed my NSLU2 (firmware issue I had, donno why). Install the Unslung firmware (6.8 Beta to be exact) and installed all the required librarys (ffmpeg/python) and then installed the pyTivo and configured it.

Quicky copied an HD movie to the NSLU2 and then started playing it from my S3. Works great, was able to trasnfer an HD movie in real time. Not to bad.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

CJTE said:


> Based on your post, we've clearly determined it takes someone with "more than average" computer skills to run a nix box.


No, but it is suggested they have at least slightly better than average skills if they are going to administer one. Many of my *nix users have far below average computer skills, and they do just fine. Of course they are no less quick to call me or one of my colleagues when something goes wrong. It just happens less often with their *nix machines than with their Windows machines, and it's often much easier to fix. More to the point, the OP's post suggested he is quite possibly in the category of being above average. It seems clear he is willing to try, and that's 95% of the battle.



CJTE said:


> Which is why you run your box's your way, and your roomie runs XP Home.


I run most of my boxes the way my users and my employer demand, or in some cases in the way required by the applications they run. In five cases it is the way required by the U.S. Military. The few which are my personal systems I run whatever way is most efficient or effective as the case may be. That's why some of of my own are running Windows XP Pro. The rest of the ones I own personally including two servers are running the Sarge distro of Debian Linux. (I do need to upgrade to Etch one of these weekends.)

Mostly she just whines about her computer not working and uses one of mine. I try to ignore her as much as possible, but that's another matter.



CJTE said:


> but without precise instructions, the "average" user wouldn't be able to re-compile the kernel.


I dispute that. As some of the other posters have suggested, I think maybe it has been a while since you have looked at the Linux distros. There have been significant strides even in the last six months, and even as of the Woody release of Debian (two releases prior to the current stable release), recompiling the kernel is exceedingly easy. Deciding which libraries to include does require a bit of understanding, but the user can always simply allow the default if they are unsure of any particular function. Even so, the descriptions in the help text are pretty clear, if fairly brief. The main point is, however, that most drivers are in loadable modules and so do not require a recompile at all to install. Between that and the fact most of the distros are quite good at figuring out the basic hardware configuration on most PCs, installing and configuring Linux is now quite easy.



CJTE said:


> Now, in regards to your windows problems... It took me 6 hours to install XP Pro retail on my Dell Inspiron 3000.


With how many users and how many custom applications per user? How many applications total? Reboot time alone exceeds 6 hours on most of my machines. None of them has fewer than 5 users, and every user has a custom desktop with custom applications and custom drive mappings. The total number of applications varies, of course, but this machine, for example, has 165 applications installed. It went unstable about 4 or 5 months ago. The all-in-one network printer and Nero Recode no longer work, and the machine must be rebooted before and after using the VPN connection. It frequently hangs during shutdown. I couldn't get either TiVo Desktop or Galleon working properly on it. One of the other Windows machines is even sicker than this one. Only one of my personal Windows machines is healthy at this time.



CJTE said:


> If supporting your windows systems is causing you trouble


"Trouble" is a relative term. I came here looking for work. My point is just the Windows machines usually generate a great deal more of it for me than the *nix machines.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Carsten said:


> Quicky copied an HD movie to the NSLU2 and then started playing it from my S3. Works great, was able to trasnfer an HD movie in real time. Not to bad.


Very cool. Have you by any chance tried Galleon? If so, how do you compare it to pyTiVo? I've been thinking of trying pyTiVo, but I really like all of Galleon's features. Your post seems to indicate a transfer from the PC to the TiVo may be faster under pyTiVo, however. I can't transfer most HD content in real time under Galleon. MRV, yes, but TTCB, no.


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## Carsten (Feb 5, 2007)

Double Post.


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## Carsten (Feb 5, 2007)

lrhorer said:


> Very cool. Have you by any chance tried Galleon? If so, how do you compare it to pyTiVo? I've been thinking of trying pyTiVo, but I really like all of Galleon's features. Your post seems to indicate a transfer from the PC to the TiVo may be faster under pyTiVo, however. I can't transfer most HD content in real time under Galleon. MRV, yes, but TTCB, no.


Erm... I've transfered HD from TivoDesktop (Vista) to S3 and played it real time. Performance seems the same. But, I do have to point out that I had a crappy HD movie (1hr & 30mins and File size 4.6GB according to Tivo). I also noticed that it isnt every stable. Constantly see exceptions showing up when running pyTivo.py inactively. I'm sure its just simple configurations that are wrong. I'll play more with it to see if I can get it stable.

Galleon, no, I have tried it. Thought that was a HME application? If so it has to be fairly slow eh?


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## nyspy (Nov 28, 2007)

CentOS 5, Samba, and pyTivo. Enough said.


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## PaulS (Sep 16, 2002)

lrhorer said:


> Very cool. Have you by any chance tried Galleon? If so, how do you compare it to pyTiVo? I've been thinking of trying pyTiVo, but I really like all of Galleon's features. Your post seems to indicate a transfer from the PC to the TiVo may be faster under pyTiVo, however. I can't transfer most HD content in real time under Galleon. MRV, yes, but TTCB, no.


I've used Galleon in the past, and have cut over to using pyTivo. Galleon indeed has more features (weather, mail, movies, etc), but for audio/video transfers pyTiVo is the way to go. Galleon's basically feature frozen at this point in time, while there is currently LOTS of active development going on with pyTiVo. Check it out...


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## PaulPW (Nov 14, 2007)

lrhorer pinned me correctly - I am _fairly _tech savvy . I started on PCs pre-Windows, so mastered the DOS command line and batch files. I've been Linux-curious for a while now - TiVo could finally make me take the plunge! 

The NSLU2 looks v. cool, but I've already bought a PC to be my server box (a Black Friday bare bones system from tigerdirect for $100[after mail in rebates]. Now I just have to screw it together and add some drives.

A few more questions. I've googled these but not come up with any solid info:

Looking at the Ubuntu website I'm confused which version is best suited to this use. Should I go with the server version? Any downsides to that? Keeping in mind I want to do software RAID and run pyTiVo.
Will I need to install SAMBA on my WinXP PCs to access files on the server? Any other options?
As an alternative to Ubuntu I've been looking into FreeNAS (which is BSD)but as far as I can tell there's no way to run a TiVo server, as jbernardis said. FreeNAS does uPNP for streaming to DLNA media devices, but I don't think TiVo is uPNP capable, correct? 
Is there another media server I can run under Ubuntu at the _same time_ as pyTiVo to serve files to uPNP DLNA devices such as my PS3? (under WinXP I can use MediaPlayer 11 to do this).
Thanks to all for the continued great advice - it's really helping me out (and hopefully some others too).


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

PaulPW said:


> lrhorer pinned me correctly - I am _fairly _tech savvy . I started on PCs pre-Windows, so mastered the DOS command line and batch files.


Then you're not likely to have many serious problems with Linux.



PaulPW said:


> A few more questions. I've googled these but not come up with any solid info:
> 
> Looking at the Ubuntu website I'm confused which version is best suited to this use. Should I go with the server version? Any downsides to that? Keeping in mind I want to do software RAID and run pyTiVo.




I'm not very familiar with Ubuntu. It is Debian (apptitude) based, but it essentially prohibits logging in as root. My understanding is all root operations are handled using sudo. Other than that I suspect the server version is the one for you. Perhaps one of the Ubuntu users can lend more advice than I.



PaulPW said:


> [*]Will I need to install SAMBA on my WinXP PCs to access files on the server?


No. Server Message Block is the basis for Windows networking. It's at the root of file and printer sharing, Domain management, and of Exchange Server's features. SAMBA is the Linux implementation of SMB. Installing the SAMBA client on a Linux workstation allows it to access printers and drive shares on any Windows workstation or server which has network sharing enabled. Installing and configuring the SAMBA server allows any Windows workstation to access the resources on the Linux system. The Linux system can then even work as a Windows Domain Server. Once the SAMBA server is installed and configured, you map drives from a Windows PC the same as you would from a windows peer or a domain server.



PaulPW said:


> Any other options?


Lots. That's the great thing about Linux. I suggest you get started reading here:
http://us3.samba.org/samba/



PaulPW said:


> [*]As an alternative to Ubuntu I've been looking into FreeNAS (which is BSD)but as far as I can tell there's no way to run a TiVo server, as jbernardis said. FreeNAS does uPNP for streaming to DLNA media devices, but I don't think TiVo is uPNP capable, correct?


'Not to my knowledge. My personal recommendation is Debian, but Ubuntu may serve you well.



PaulPW said:


> [*]Is there another media server I can run under Ubuntu at the _same time_ as pyTiVo to serve files to uPNP DLNA devices such as my PS3?


I would think so. There surely could be conflicts, but otherwise it should work. The onlu UPNP server I have investigated under Linux is TwonkyMedia. I haven't actually used it, because I haven't yet purchased the UPNP device I am considering getting, but TwonkyMedia looks like it has the goods. There's a 30 day free trial download available.
http://www.twonkyvision.de/


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

PaulS said:


> I've used Galleon in the past, and have cut over to using pyTivo. Galleon indeed has more features (weather, mail, movies, etc), but for audio/video transfers pyTiVo is the way to go. Galleon's basically feature frozen at this point in time, while there is currently LOTS of active development going on with pyTiVo. Check it out...


I did. I'm not knocking pyTiVo, but it only handles transfers to the TiVo from the PC. Galleon handles transfers both ways and the user can initiate downloads from any TiVo at the UI of any other TiVo. Since I'm running a headless server, that's a real plus (and would be even if I weren't). My tests show Galleon and pyTiVo have substantially identical network transfer speeds.


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## justintime (Aug 14, 2002)

PaulPW said:


> Looking at the Ubuntu website I'm confused which version is best suited to this use. Should I go with the server version? Any downsides to that? Keeping in mind I want to do software RAID and run pyTiVo.


Ubuntu Server is mostly just a smaller subset of packages than Ubuntu Workstation. Below is my personal opinion on the two versions:

Ubuntu Server: No nonsense, no gui installation of Ubuntu. Meant for servers that will likely not even have a monitor hooked to them. Doesn't include all the extras of workstation, and therefore installs, boots, and updates faster.

Ubuntu Workstation: Meant for the desktop system - comes with full gui tools, etc. Everything comes with eye-candy, full hardware support, etc.

You can always upgrade Server to workstation by issuing 'sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop'. I've never tried to revert a workstation install to server.

While Linux in general seems to be heading the way of GUI everything (which it has to in order to get those Windows folks to convert), I tell anyone interested in Linux to try and do things via the command line and text files. Each distro has it's own gui for things, but they all basically use the same text files. Anyone can click around a GUI and find an answer by trial and error, but you will truly gain an understanding for what you are changing and why if you do it via text editors and the command line.

If I were you (and I was about 10 years ago), this is the perfect oppurtunity to learn Linux. My first Linux project was to setup an ipchains firewall using Redhat Linux 5.0. My 486 33Mhz only had 105MB hard drive, so I couldn't install all the GUI's. I was forced to learn the operating system without GUI's - it took me about a month to get the firewall going, but I was much the better for it. I quit using Windows 6 months later ;-)

Good luck!


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## leeherman (Nov 5, 2007)

I'm currently using an old PIII 1 gHz with 512 mbytes of memory and a smallish hard drive.

The PC is connected to my router, which also has my Buffalo Terastation Live 2tbyte connected. The Terastation is configured for RAID 5, which gives me 1.5 tbytes of usable storage. 

The PC is using WinXP and Tivo Desktop v2.5. I've yet to get PyTivo or Galleon configured properly but will eventually get around to that. 

The only problem I encountered was TTG not wanting to write to the NAS, so I connected a USB drive. I can copy the files from the USB to the NAS and Tivo Desktop will pick them up, and I suspect there's a way for it to write to the NAS too and I just don't see it.

Regards

LH


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## tlc (May 30, 2002)

All this stuff is a matter of personal preference. I'm running Kubuntu and pyTivo on and old 900MHz P3. I'm using software RAID-1. This is working fine for uses the OP mentioned.

Kubuntu runs Samba (Windows networking) to serve media files to my other computers, Sonos, hacked XBox, etc. (Samba is Windows networking, so you won't install Samba on your Windows boxes.) I run wizd for an obscure networked DVD player. There are many UPNP AV servers.

I only recently added pyTivo. Near the end of the pyTivo thread, there's a revelation. With a change to the ffmpeg options, pyTivo can convert other formats to mpeg2 without changing resolution. It's undocumented, but Tivo HD & S3 can handle mpeg2 in any resolution (well maybe not 1080p) and do the scaling itself. This makes the conversion easier on the server and my 900MHz P3 converts mpeg4/whatever files to mpeg2 and serves it at faster than real time.

If you want to get a feel for Linux, Kubuntu and many other distros have Live CDs that let you run off of the CD (not touching your hard-drive) to try it out. Or you might have an older PC to try Linux on.

Kubuntu and Ubuntu are very popular right now due to ease of use. (Kubuntu uses KDE, Ubuntu uses Gnome.) For a newbie, I would recommend using the desktop versions not the server, because the graphical tools will be a help.

I prefer software RAID because if your hw RAID card dies you might not be able to recover without the exact same model. Performance is good enough. 

I originally thought I'd change to RAID-5 when I started to outgrow my RAID-1, but disk prices have dropped so far, I'll just run a larger RAID-1 because of the simplicity. (I'm not into keeping all my DVDs on disk, so I don't need terrabytes. My video files are more transient.)


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## wombat94 (Nov 18, 2007)

Windows Home Server is certainly overkill for JUST Tivo file sharing and NAS, but it can do so much more as well.

I have a WHS box running with pyTivo and I am please as can be. I've started working on a WHS add-in that will allow for control of pyTivo running as a service and to try to put a GUI on the editing of pyTifo config files.

I also plan to include a Metadata editor to allow for easy creation of metadata files in your video shares. 

Ultimately, I also want to include an integrated tool to schedule downloads from your Tivos to the WHS shares to automatically offload content from the Tivos - but this may take a while.

There is another integrated Tivo server for WHS, but I like pyTivo better and it seems to have more dynamic development going on right now.

Ted


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## kira13 (Jan 23, 2007)

I just got a MediaSmart server (HP's Windows Home Server box) and would like to store my offloaded TiVo shows on it instead of on my regular computer. From reading various threads in several fora, I know that some people have run TiVo Desktop under WHS, and there is a WHS add-in called TiVo Publisher. I have also seen references to the possible use of pyTivo or tivo.net or Galleon, although I'm not sure if all of those work on WHS.

What I can't seem to find out is whether any of these solutions will work for me. What I need is to set up an autotransfer the way I currently do in TiVo Desktop 2.5.1 on my regular computer. It's not clear to me from anything I've read whether a) TiVo Desktop actually works properly on WHS, or b) TiVo Publisher allows transfers from the TiVo to the WHS, let alone autotransfers, or c) if any of the other programs I mentioned would do this and run well on WHS.

1. Anyone know the answer(s) to the above? (wombat94's proposed solution looks promising, but doesn't exist yet, right?)

2. In case I'm missing a completely different way of getting what I want, here is why I need autotransfers: I have a season pass for "The Daily Show" on my S3. My husband watches the show and deletes it once he's done. By that time, using autotransfer, it is already safely on my hard drive, but if I couldn't autotransfer it, he would practically always be deleting it before I ever get a chance to transfer it manually because he wakes up a lot earlier than I do and watches TV soon after he wakes up. 

Changing his behavior is not an option (I've tried to work out some system for shows we both want to watch and he still deletes them immediately after he watches them), and my waking up earlier than he does is also not an option. Also, it's not just a question of my somehow watching them before him (like the night they record) because they need to be transferred to my hard drive so I can edit them and put them on DVD.

Ultimately, what I need is for these shows to go on a hard drive after they are recorded and before he watches them. If one of the programs that works on WHS can do this in some other way than autotransfer, then please let me know.

Thanks,
Kira


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

kira13 said:


> I have also seen references to the possible use of pyTivo or tivo.net or Galleon, although I'm not sure if all of those work on WHS.


Galleon should. 'No guarantees.



kira13 said:


> What I need is to set up an autotransfer the way I currently do in TiVo Desktop 2.5.1 on my regular computer.


Galleon's ToGo plug-in allows automated downloads.



kira13 said:


> c) if any of the other programs I mentioned would do this and run well on WHS.


Why don't you give Galleon a shot and see?  The main downside to using any Windows platform (even server or WHS) is that any ordinary app - which Galleon and TiVo desktop both are - must be run by a user. Ordinarily this means someone has to be logged in to the computer. It's one of the top 5 reasons I chose to put Galleon on a Linux platform.



kira13 said:


> 2. In case I'm missing a completely different way of getting what I want, here is why I need autotransfers: I have a season pass for "The Daily Show" on my S3. My husband watches the show and deletes it once he's done.


Well, if you are a little diligent about keeping the drive from being completely full, you'll be able to undelete the shows. Adding a fairly large external hard drive will help.



kira13 said:


> Changing his behavior is not an option


Hit him hard enough and often enough with a rolling pin and he'll change. That, or just make him sleep on the back lawn until he stops, and he'll come around in just a few days.


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## kira13 (Jan 23, 2007)

lrhorer said:


> Galleon should. 'No guarantees.
> 
> Galleon's ToGo plug-in allows automated downloads.
> 
> Why don't you give Galleon a shot and see? The main downside to using any Windows platform (even server or WHS) is that any ordinary app - which Galleon and TiVo desktop both are - must be run by a user. Ordinarily this means someone has to be logged in to the computer. It's one of the top 5 reasons I chose to put Galleon on a Linux platform.


Okay, I'll give Galleon a try, although since I'm new to WHS I'm not sure how to run a standard application on it. I was leaning towards the TiVo Publisher add-in for that reason, but really couldn't tell if it does TiVo-to-WHS transfers or only WHS-to-TiVo.

Anything I need to know to install it on WHS?



lrhorer said:


> Well, if you are a little diligent about keeping the drive from being completely full, you'll be able to undelete the shows. Adding a fairly large external hard drive will help.


We already have a 750GB internal drive, so space hasn't been a problem yet. My remembering to check for the deleted shows is, though. 



lrhorer said:


> Hit him hard enough and often enough with a rolling pin and he'll change. That, or just make him sleep on the back lawn until he stops, and he'll come around in just a few days.


Oh, yeah, that'd work _great_. Then he'll throw me out and have the two TiVos all to himself.  (And yeah, I do have the "Daily Shows" recording on the 2nd TiVo, but it's only an S2 and the way it has to be hooked up, the picture quality isn't nearly as good. And I'm about to unsubscribe it as well.)


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## Alphi (Dec 11, 2004)

PaulPW said:


> This has kind of been partly answered in other threads, but not exactly - please forgive if I missed an answer elsewhere...
> 
> I'm wanting to set up a "cheap" PC on my home network to act both as:
> 
> ...


For what it's worth, I've been playing with both Galleon under Linux (specifically, Ubuntu Server, but with the GUI installed), as well as Tivo Desktop Plus (paid for, thank you) on a Windows XP machine.

Just so you understand, my background (professionally, as well as a hobby) is primarily Windows. I just started tinkering with Linux in the last year.

Here's my feeling with regards to your two requirements, for each setup:

Windows/TiVo Desktop
--------------------
Pros:

Very easy to set up sharing between other machines
TiVo Desktop easy to set-up and use
TiVo Desktop Plus even allowed me to drag other video files into the "download" folder, which showed up automatically when browsed from my TiVo. Note: certain types (such as DIVX AVI files) had to be converted while streaming to the TiVo, which did take longer than expected
Cons:

Requires more powerful machine (+ memory) than Linux
More costly to buy the OS (since Linux is free and Windows is not)
You should keep up-to-date on Windows security updates

Ubuntu/Galleon
--------------
Pros:

OS is free to download/use
The OS hardware requirements are minimal - I'm running all this on a 1.5GHz AMD Athlon XP machine with just 512MB of memory 
IMHO OS is easy to use
IMHO Galleon is fairly easy to install (the only problem I had was that Ubuntu came with one Java virtual machine already installed, and Galleon required another, and Galleon didn't work until I uninstalled the first one)
Using SAMBA for sharing is fairly easy, provided you're comfortable with a text editor and are willing to google the internet for answers to your questions
As mentioned before, Galleon also offers additional plug-ins (run actually on your Tivo) for things like weather, traffic, music (for browsing music on your network), podcasting, etc.
You can even enable the "ToGo" plug-in for Galleon that allows you to, from the Tivo, select programs (from any TiVo on your network) to copy to the Galleon machine
Cons:

Galleon doesn't (or at least if it does, I've not found it) support a way to copy other video files to stream to the TiVo

Note: I'm just hearing things about pyTivo, and I'm looking into it. However, there are a few things I've heard about it (but not yet confirmed) that are making me hesitant to change over:

No support for the music, weather, traffic, etc. plug-ins like Galleon
No support for a plug-in to allow "pushing" a show from the TiVos to the pyTivo server


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

kira13 said:


> Changing his behavior is not an option


Back when we we first married, my wife would always screw up the VCR. She would remove the tape from it, or not rewind, or leave it positioned such that the next recording would wipe out one of mine, or ... etc etc etc.

The answer was blindingly simple: his-and-her VCRs. It "saved our marriage". 

We have since carried this idea over to TiVos.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Alphi said:


> Note: I'm just hearing things about pyTivo, and I'm looking into it. However, there are a few things I've heard about it (but not yet confirmed) that are making me hesitant to change over:
> 
> No support for the music, weather, traffic, etc. plug-ins like Galleon


There is a music plugin.


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## Alphi (Dec 11, 2004)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> Back when we we first married, my wife would always screw up the VCR. She would remove the tape from it, or not rewind, or leave it positioned such that the next recording would wipe out one of mine, or ... etc etc etc.
> 
> The answer was blindingly simple: his-and-her VCRs. It "saved our marriage".
> 
> We have since carried this idea over to TiVos.


Heh, when we moved to a new house this spring, I decided it was time to splurge and finally retire the old Series1 TiVo, and instead buy TWO Series2 TiVos (one 180 hour DT, one HUMAX 80 hour with DVD writing capability), and we do essentially the same as you talk about - the 180 DT TiVo is for my shows (and the kids' shows too), and the 80 HUMAX/DVD is for hers.


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## wombat94 (Nov 18, 2007)

kira13 said:


> I just got a MediaSmart server (HP's Windows Home Server box) and would like to store my offloaded TiVo shows on it instead of on my regular computer. From reading various threads in several fora, I know that some people have run TiVo Desktop under WHS, and there is a WHS add-in called TiVo Publisher. I have also seen references to the possible use of pyTivo or tivo.net or Galleon, although I'm not sure if all of those work on WHS.
> 
> What I can't seem to find out is whether any of these solutions will work for me. What I need is to set up an autotransfer the way I currently do in TiVo Desktop 2.5.1 on my regular computer. It's not clear to me from anything I've read whether a) TiVo Desktop actually works properly on WHS, or b) TiVo Publisher allows transfers from the TiVo to the WHS, let alone autotransfers, or c) if any of the other programs I mentioned would do this and run well on WHS.
> 
> ...


Kira,

pyTivo on WHS works very well - and can be installed as a service so the issues of needing to be logged in are not a problem.

There is not a WHS-native client for auto downloading of Tivo content yet. Someone has just posted skeletal source code on the WHS developer forums at Microsoft that supposedly will do downloads from the Tivo via the Tivo's web interface. It should be able to be automated from there.

My current solution to the problem is to have Tivo Desktop installed on another PC in the house (we have several that are up and running 24x7). I have an Auto Transfer of the series set up on that PC, and then a batch job that moves any of those .Tivo files over to a share on the WHS server periodically (I have it going daily).

pyTivo is running on the server and shares out the Tivo Files.

I'm still playing with ways to automatically generate the Metadata for the .Tivo files that pyTivo needs and whether I want to get Video Redo involved to have the commercials automatically cut out.

I'll keep you updated. WHS is a very robust platform and I expect that in the next few months there will be a packaged solution that will have auto download/metadata/commercial cut and serve back to TIvo all ready for WHS.

My vote (and what I am working on) is to make pyTivo easy to install and configure on WHS to handle the trip back to the Tivo for video/music/photos

Ted


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Alphi said:


> Galleon doesn't (or at least if it does, I've not found it) support a way to copy other video files to stream to the TiVo


Well, first of all, the Tivo does recognize .mpg files, so if the video is in .mpg format, it works just fine. Secondly, there is support for a CLI based transcoding routine. One must select the "Convert video" box and specify the conversion program.


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## kira13 (Jan 23, 2007)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> Back when we we first married, my wife would always screw up the VCR. She would remove the tape from it, or not rewind, or leave it positioned such that the next recording would wipe out one of mine, or ... etc etc etc.
> 
> The answer was blindingly simple: his-and-her VCRs. It "saved our marriage".
> 
> We have since carried this idea over to TiVos.


We essentially have that right now. But mine is only an S2. I want _my _shows in HD as well.

And besides, we very rarely fight over the TiVo. Mostly, we watch two completely different sets of shows, so I don't care if he deletes his and he doesn't care if I delete mine. I only care about "The Daily Show" (or "A Daily Show" as it's called now during the strike) because I'm putting it on DVD for a friend who can't afford cable any more.


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## kira13 (Jan 23, 2007)

wombat94 said:


> Kira,
> 
> pyTivo on WHS works very well - and can be installed as a service so the issues of needing to be logged in are not a problem.
> 
> There is not a WHS-native client for auto downloading of Tivo content yet. Someone has just posted skeletal source code on the WHS developer forums at Microsoft that supposedly will do downloads from the Tivo via the Tivo's web interface. It should be able to be automated from there.


I'll keep this in mind while I'm looking around. Thanks.



wombat94 said:


> My current solution to the problem is to have Tivo Desktop installed on another PC in the house (we have several that are up and running 24x7). I have an Auto Transfer of the series set up on that PC, and then a batch job that moves any of those .Tivo files over to a share on the WHS server periodically (I have it going daily).


Actually, one of the big reasons we got the server in the first place was to avoid having any other of our 4 computers (we each have a desktop and a laptop) running 24/7. My husband has already been turning his two off every day, but I find that if I don't keep both of mine running constantly, data I need turns out to be on whichever one I'm not using. So I'm hoping to have the server be the only computer in the house that stays on all the time, and everything that might be needed from either of my computers will be on it.



wombat94 said:


> I'm still playing with ways to automatically generate the Metadata for the .Tivo files that pyTivo needs and whether I want to get Video Redo involved to have the commercials automatically cut out.
> 
> I'll keep you updated. WHS is a very robust platform and I expect that in the next few months there will be a packaged solution that will have auto download/metadata/commercial cut and serve back to TIvo all ready for WHS.


This is what I'm hoping for (minus the automatic commercial cut, since I prefer to do that manually, but presumably that would be a choice). Thanks for keeping us updated.



wombat94 said:


> My vote (and what I am working on) is to make pyTivo easy to install and configure on WHS to handle the trip back to the Tivo for video/music/photos
> 
> Ted


I think that's what most of the people using TiVo Publisher are doing as well.


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## bmcmahon (Jan 21, 2004)

lrhorer said:


> Why don't you give Galleon a shot and see? The main downside to using any Windows platform (even server or WHS) is that any ordinary app - which Galleon and TiVo desktop both are - must be run by a user. Ordinarily this means someone has to be logged in to the computer. It's one of the top 5 reasons I chose to put Galleon on a Linux platform.


I was just browsing free addins available for Windows Home Server and noticed an add in for running any Windows Home Server application as a service. Thought you might be interested. Check out http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/windows-home-server-add-ins/

Brian


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

bmcmahon said:


> I was just browsing free addins available for Windows Home Server and noticed an add in for running any Windows Home Server application as a service. Thought you might be interested. Check out http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/windows-home-server-add-ins/
> 
> Brian


Well, I'm not running WHS, so it's not really of interest to me. Some of the other thread participants may, of course. My servers are running Linux, and running any Linux application as a service is trivially easy. Also, the apps of which we were speaking aren't WHS applications. Unless the installer can handle regular Windows apps, it won't help. The description seems to suggest it only handles WHS apps.


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## hokiethang (Apr 22, 2004)

I've recently been working on the media server idea myself.

I currently have my Xbox, PS3, iTunes and Tivo capable of watching video and playing music that's stored on my server.

I'm using ushare (http://ushare.geexbox.org/), for the UPNP/DLNA serving (xbox and ps3). It basically required libupnp 1.6.3 to get it working on my xbox. It's a free alternative to the twonkymedia server, it just takes a little work to get it running, but it works just fine.

I'm using mt-daapd for the itunes music sharing, so my computers can share my music collection easily.

And then pyTivo to stream the video and music files to my tivos.


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