Audiolinux Server configurations, Software, Hardware, and Listening Impressions

[gsquared]

19 minutes ago, Dev said:

 

Bios boot error can occur sometimes if gpt is corrupted. Are you sure fdisk doesn't show any error ? If your 2nd disk contains the same stuff as the main stick, the easier thing to do to revive the main is to dd from the 2nd disk to the main one.

 

Maybe I'm running fsck wrong. The original (main) stick is /dev/sdb and there are /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2

 

I am running fsck /dev/sdb2

 

Here's a screenshot:

[austinpop]

13 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

The database is at: /var/roon/RoonServer/Database

Just copy it over to the new disk that would be the easiest method, or even copy over /var/roon/RoonServer

 

Excellent advice. Just copy over everything under /var/roon and you'll have retrieved all your Roon data. Then trash the old stick and get on with life. Life's too short to nurse an ailing USB stick, trust me.

 

😛

[gsquared]

20 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Excellent advice. Just copy over everything under /var/roon and you'll have retrieved all your Roon data. Then trash the old stick and get on with life. Life's too short to nurse an ailing USB stick, trust me.

 

😛

 

Yes I agree, that is excellent advice.

 

Thanks @LTG2010 for the simplest solution.

[hifi25nl]

New menu version 087 will introduce the option "isolated CPU cores". You can divide CPU cores in 2 sets: one for system process one for audio applications. This is the first step toward a complete separation of audio process from all the other.

 

 

 

 

The new script will change systemd audio service in a different version starting the application only in selected CPU cores: the service is renamed with the suffix "2"

 

 

In the Status menu you can check that all the threads are now running in the specified core(s)

 

[mourip]

1 hour ago, hifi25nl said:

New menu version 087 will introduce the option "isolated CPU cores". You can divide CPU cores in 2 sets: one for system process one for audio applications. This is the first step toward a complete separation of audio process from all the other.

 

 

 

 

The new script will change systemd audio service in a different version starting the application only in selected CPU cores: the service is renamed with the suffix "2"

 

 

In the Status menu you can check that all the threads are now running in the specified core(s)

 

 

Great. Have you discovered that doing this provides an increase in sound quality?

 

Do you think that this would be effective on an endpoint that has just two cores?

 

Is this only for actual cores or would it include hyper-threading also where 4 cores effectively show as 8?

[hifi25nl]

The script will disable hyper-threading after reboot with a kernel parameter. 

Yes it could work on 2 physical cores. 

 

It has been a long work, I have tested many ways to implement this. At last i have preferred a custom method more compatible with linux systemd  services and audiolinux menu system.

 

I am waiting for the results of user experimentation. I must find the time to listen myself...  

 

If you convert from PCM to DSD with hqplayer, I would isolate many cores, but for endpoint this is not necessary if the CPU is powerful enough.

[jkelly]

I have been using my desktop (4790k/1080Ti) as a server and want to switch to the NUC i7DNKE with AL.

I would like to run Roon server and HQPlayer Embedded.  

What can I expect with DSD upsampling - can I still achieve 512k?

[Bricki]

21 hours ago, gsquared said:

 

Yes I agree, that is excellent advice.

 

Thanks @LTG2010 for the simplest solution.

Sometimes I have had your issue and I have resolved it by simply going back into the BIOS and reselecting my USB stick as the primary boot device...it seems that sometimes if you go into the BIOS and make changes and then save them without your boot USB stick then the BIOS seems to automatically change your boot settings... Hopefully your USB stick isn't corrupted

[gsquared]

48 minutes ago, Bricki said:

Sometimes I have had your issue and I have resolved it by simply going back into the BIOS and reselecting my USB stick as the primary boot device...it seems that sometimes if you go into the BIOS and make changes and then save them without your boot USB stick then the BIOS seems to automatically change your boot settings... Hopefully your USB stick isn't corrupted

 

I just booted into BIOS with the working usb stick and I see under Boot Order UEFI the Boot Drive shows USB: SanDisk. When I restart with the original usb stick (the one containing my Roon DB) in BIOS it does not show the USB stick. Something is amiss with it. I think the only solution is to start over, then copy over my roon files to the new stick as suggested by @LTG2010 and @austinpop

[Bricki]

1 hour ago, gsquared said:

 

I just booted into BIOS with the working usb stick and I see under Boot Order UEFI the Boot Drive shows USB: SanDisk. When I restart with the original usb stick (the one containing my Roon DB) in BIOS it does not show the USB stick. Something is amiss with it. I think the only solution is to start over, then copy over my roon files to the new stick as suggested by @LTG2010 and @austinpop

Ok 🤔 sounds like your situation is a little more serious than mine was. I hope you can get it sorted soon 👍😁

[Middy]

Just to add to the oddness, i had two copys of headless tried for ages fiddling with bios.. didnt boot. A copy of the original DL worked ??? On the same USB

I burned the original DL file 3 times, the copy got picked up first time. 

The server original failed, its copy worked. How the original failed ??? Copy was a minute later.

Can you easily check the checksum?

If a file is corrupted do the checksums count match? Just wondering...

 

 

[gsquared]

@lmitche I'm working on setting up my Optane memory to hold my Roon DB. Do I need to first 'make filesystem' on the Optane drive (ie mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nvme0n1)?

[Bricki]

Ok I have divided the CPU in my sonicTransporter i5 into 2 sets using the new menu function...after reboot, I can see that I have 1 core in each set and Audiolinux is running as normal but when I select the menu option to enable roon server nothing happens and roon server won't run 🤔.... I have disabled the CPU core separation function and rebooted and roon server can now load as normal..

 

Has anyone else got the new function to work with roon server running?

 

[hifi25nl]

Try this: 

 

1) Enable isolated CPU cores

2) Reboot

3) Start roonserver in configuration menu.

4) If this stays forever on "Please wait..." type Control+C to exit menu

5) Type menu

6) Enable roonserver. You should see now roonserver2 in the final screen.

 

Is this working?

[hifi25nl]

However, if you wait a pair of minutes... roonserver will start. This is happening  sometime with the first service started. 

I will investigate... maybe is a systemd problem with the parameter CPUAffinity

[Bricki]

8 hours ago, hifi25nl said:

Try this: 

 

1) Enable isolated CPU cores

2) Reboot

3) Start roonserver in configuration menu.

4) If this stays forever on "Please wait..." type Control+C to exit menu

5) Type menu

6) Enable roonserver. You should see now roonserver2 in the final screen.

 

Is this working?

Ok thanks for this.

 

I will try this tonight when I get a chance 😁

 

Thanks

[lmitche]

15 hours ago, gsquared said:

@lmitche I'm working on setting up my Optane memory to hold my Roon DB. Do I need to first 'make filesystem' on the Optane drive (ie mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nvme0n1)?

Gsquared,

 

You need to setup the optane drive. I think I shared the partition sizes earlier. There are dozens of ways to do this.

 

Yes, any partition you don't copy from the AL image needs to be formatted.

 

I'm on my phone on vacation at fhe moment. Maybe someone else can provide the details in my absence as the details are at home.

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

[gsquared]

On 1/15/2019 at 11:30 AM, lmitche said:

Gsquared,

 

You need to setup the optane drive. I think I shared the partition sizes earlier. There are dozens of ways to do this.

 

Yes, any partition you don't copy from the AL image needs to be formatted.

 

I'm on my phone on vacation at fhe moment. Maybe someone else can provide the details in my absence as the details are at home.

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

 

Hope you are enjoying your vacation! I've been gone the past few days myself so I haven't had a chance to do anything with it, other than install the Optane stick into the NUC.

 

If anyone else can offer any help, I'd really appreciate it. By the way, I'm going to use the whole 32GB for Roon, so I will not need a separate partition for Roon and AL (unless there's some reason I will need to have it formatted that way).

 

Thanks!

 

Gary

[bobfa]

@hifi25nl Any ideas?

 

😕I am back working on bridging.  I have the 7i7 NUC in the Akasa case and I have the NUC network interface and a Microsoft USB network interface.  When setup without bridging the two interfaces seem ok:

 

NOTE that this is with both network cables connected to the router.

 

audiolinux@FairRoon ~]$ networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

  3 enp0s20f0u4      ether              routable    configured

 

 

But when I run the bridge script in the AudioLinux menu the bridge never comes up all the way.

 

SOOO 

 

I build a new USB stick with 0.9. updated the menu to 091 and tried again.  I get the following after I run the menu item to bridge the networks

 

 

 

networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

  3 enp0s20f0u4      ether              routable    configured

  4 bridge0          bridge             no-carrier  configuring

 

 

Now If I move the second network cable to only connect to my endpoint things look like this

 

networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

  3 enp0s20f0u4      ether              degraded    configuring

  4 bridge0          bridge             no-carrier  configuring

 

When I reboot I get this:

 

networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 bridge0          bridge             no-carrier  configuring

  3 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

 

The second adapter disappears.

 

I am stuck. I am going to reboot one more time and then try the older Apple USB to ethernet adapter.

 

 

 

Bob

 

 

 

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, bobfa said:

@hifi25nl Any ideas?

 

😕I am back working on bridging.  I have the 7i7 NUC in the Akasa case and I have the NUC network interface and a Microsoft USB network interface.  When setup without bridging the two interfaces seem ok:

 

NOTE that this is with both network cables connected to the router.

 

audiolinux@FairRoon ~]$ networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

  3 enp0s20f0u4      ether              routable    configured

 

 

But when I run the bridge script in the AudioLinux menu the bridge never comes up all the way.

 

SOOO 

 

I build a new USB stick with 0.9. updated the menu to 091 and tried again.  I get the following after I run the menu item to bridge the networks

 

 

 

networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

  3 enp0s20f0u4      ether              routable    configured

  4 bridge0          bridge             no-carrier  configuring

 

 

Now If I move the second network cable to only connect to my endpoint things look like this

 

networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

  3 enp0s20f0u4      ether              degraded    configuring

  4 bridge0          bridge             no-carrier  configuring

 

When I reboot I get this:

 

networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 bridge0          bridge             no-carrier  configuring

  3 enp0s31f6        ether              routable    configured

 

The second adapter disappears.

 

I am stuck. I am going to reboot one more time and then try the older Apple USB to ethernet adapter.

 

 

 

Bob

 

Bob,

 

Not sure why the 0.91 script didn't work. There was a bug in the 0.9 version (missing file) that Piero fixed.

 

Anyway, this is not that hard. You can just do it manually. You want to have the following files in /etc/systemd/network:

bridge0.netdev  bridge0.network  enp0s31f6.network  enp0s20f0u4.network

 

Contents of the files are:

 

bridge0.netdev

[NetDev]
Name=bridge0
Kind=bridge

 

bridge0.network

[Match]
Name=bridge0

[Network]
DHCP=yes
 

enp0s31f6.network

[Match]
Name=enp0s31f6

[Network]
Bridge=bridge0

 

enp0s20f0u4.network

[Match]
Name=enp0s20f0u4

[Network]
Bridge=bridge0

 

As root, edit/create the above files as root, then run:

systemctl restart systemd-networkd

 

[austinpop]

On my machine, after successful bridging, this is the output of networkctl:

 

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP
  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged
  2 bridge0          bridge             routable    configured
  3 eno1             ether              degraded    configured
  4 enp0s20f0u2      ether              degraded    configured

[bobfa]

I moved my best NUC back into the endpoint role.  I will setup my other NUC and try this again.  I may have missed something.  Piero creates something different.  I will grab them when I test.  

 

At least this is almost painless!

 

 

[austinpop]

14 minutes ago, bobfa said:

Piero creates something different.  

 

??

 

Not in my experience.

[bobfa]

I am getting:

 

networkctl

IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     

  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged

  2 eno1             ether              routable    configured

  3 enp0s20f0u3      ether              no-carrier  configuring

  4 wlp58s0          wlan               off         unmanaged

  5 bridge0          bridge             no-carrier  configuring

 

 

All of the files in systemd/network look good and were built with the 091 menu.  I restarted the networkd. I will reboot and check again

 

[austinpop]

What files are in /etc/systemd/network?