I’d be happy to provide them. What exactly would be best to capture? Connections I have currently?
I come here today with a copious amount of egg on my face. I finally decided that it has to be the motherboard since I have replaced everything and this thing wouldn’t post. I contacted the eBay seller and he was totally cool and told me to just box it up and return it. As I was setting it back to how it was shipped - removed the NVMe, put back the tiny RAM sticks, etc… I thought I might as well try it one last time.
SOB booted up.
So I started putting my stuff back one piece at a time and powering up to see where the failure was. The last thing I put back in was my new RAM. Black screen. WTF? Both sticks I bought were bad? That can’t be. So I double checked that I bought RAM that the motherboard supports.
DDR4? Check.
2666? Check.
Non-ECC… Shoot.
I bought the wrong damned RAM. I swear I am not totally stupid even though my posts most definitely portray me as the fool. I think I just was excited in the beginning about doing this build and moved too fast. Then I got frustrated quickly because I don’t get much time to myself and things didn’t go right from the start.
So I guess all I can be is a example of what not to do on your first build.
Thought I would post an update on this build. There is no excuse for the crawling pace of this build other than the fact I only get to work on it a little bit at a time. I’m still saving up for the 4 SATA drives I want to put in, but I have the thing up and running and testing it out.
I tried out OpenMediaVault (OMV) thinking that would be the the perfect OS since all I wanted was a dedicated emby box. Just an OS and emby installed and pretty much nothing else. Turns out that is not easily done because they prefer to use Docker and I don’t want to learn that. Yes I know I could have wget the Debian package and updated manually whenever necessary, but i wanted a native install.
Then I tried out TrueNAS Scale since they have emby in their repository/app store. However it required the installation be in a data pool and not the OS drive. I don’t have any other storage options, so TrueNAS wasn’t going to work for me.
I never considered Unraid because I don’t do paid licensing software if I can avoid it. I did pay for emby premiere just to support them, but I didn’t need any of it’s features. I don’t like the idea of running from a USB drive and I don’t like limitations on installs and etcetera.
Just in case anyone in the future sees this thread and has the level of ignorance I did of these OS’es - OMV, TrueNAS, and probably Unraid are all designed to be an appliance OS. Meaning that the OS partition/drive is meant to be pretty much left alone and programs will be installed elsewhere. Maybe that is obvious to many, but I had no idea. I get it now, but it is definitely not what I was looking for.
So I ended up using Ubuntu server with Webmin for remote administration. I’ve tested the server with emby and a small portion of my library mounted as samba shares and it is working beautifully. I’m haven’t been a Debian/Ubuntu user in many years (I prefer Arch/Manjaro), but once it is installed, it is pretty much set it and forget it.
The only thing left or me to do on this build other than the mass storage I want is to “church it up” a bit. I’ve got a low profile heatsink coming for the m.2 SSD and I’ll be looking for the best way to tie up the cables. I’ve got all new screws and standoffs coming from Fractal Design, so I’ll put those in once they arrive. It’ll be nice getting rid of the screws & standoffs that have buggered threads or are stripped out completely. Dealing with Fractal Design customer service is a lot like dealing with fast food teenage workers. They keep getting the order wrong to the point of comedy. They had me pay $11 shipping for the standoffs and enned up senting me everytihng EXCEPT the standoffs. Second time they sent zipties. Seriously. Finally I sent them a picture of what a standoff is and they sent me back pictures of what they are mailing me to prove they got it right this time!
I have a lot of spare parts because of my missteps in this build. I seriously have enough to build another computer and I will be planning that one soon. Matter of fact, I’ll probably start a new thread about that one. Thanks to all who chimed it with help and thanks to any who actually read off of this!