Even if there are many ready-to-go NAS solutions I decided to build myself one and having the HTPC on the same machine. Here is mainly what I wanted:

• low powered system (64-bit microprocessor)
• used as a media server (stream movies/music)
• to be used sometimes as a HTPC, so I wanted HDMI (for HD video)
• ZFS file system with all its goodies
• gigabit ethernet interface to take advantage of the network bandwidth
• nice chassis with four hot-swappable 3.5″ SATA HDD (I am using just two HDD right now because the motherboard has only 3 SATA)

My NAS/HTPC specs are here:

• Chenbro ES34069 chassis
• Zotac ION-ITX-A Wi-Fi Dual Core 1.6GHz motherboard
• 2 GB Kingston DDR2 800MHz RAM
• 2 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1.0 TB
• 1x Toshiba 2.5″ HDD 100 GB (for OS)

I choosed FreeBSD as operating system, because I am more familiar with it than with Solaris. I recompiled mplayer with vdpau support (for HD video).

Here are the steps:

• download the latest mplayer snapshot from their website
• download these two files (ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/include/vdpau/) and put them in /usr/include/vdpau (create that directory)
• ./configure –disable-x264-lavc –disable-x264 -–enable-vdpau
• gmake
• gmake install
• check to see if you have vdpau support with: “mplayer -vo help“. If you see something like: “vdpau VDPAU with X11” then everything is ok.

Some additional steps/configs:

• add zfs_enable=”YES” in /etc/rc.conf
• add  the following in /boot/loader.conf:

vm.kmem_size_max=”1024M”

vm.kmem_size=”1024M”

vfs.zfs.arc_max=”100M”

• zpool create storage mirror ad4 ad10
• zfs create storage/archives
• zfs create storage/backups
• install samba, duplicity, rsnapshots, rsync, unison, ushare, …

Right now, everything is working very well, I am very happy with the setup, but I still didn’t manage to have sound over HDMI, so, a temporary solution will be to connect an additional speaker system to it.

I don’t need any fancy remote control, I have a logitech wifi keyboard/mouse, because I like to be able to read the news in the morning (during cofee time) using google reader

The total power consumption is about 35W idle / 45W load which is pretty good, I think.

1. download Intel C/C++ and Fortran Compilers from their website. They are free for non-commercial use
2. unpack and start the installer
3. at some point I received:

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Step no: 4 of 7 | Installation configuration - Missing Critical Pre-requisite
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following required for installation commands are missing:
libstdc++.so.5 (library)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Finish with prerequisites and back to Critical Pre-requisites dialog
[default]
2. Back to Pre-requisite summary dialog
 
h. Help
b. Back to the previous menu
q. Quit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please type a selection or press "Enter" to accept default choice [1]:

4. let’s stop the installer and install the necessary packages

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vaio:/home/ionut # zypper install libstdc++33
 
vaio:/home/ionut # whereis libstdc++.so.5
libstdc++.so: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.5 /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6
 
vaio:/home/ionut # zypper install libstdc++33-32bit
 
vaio:/home/ionut # zypper install binutils-32bit binutils-devel

5. let’s run again the installer, now we have all packages installed

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[...skip...]
Step no: 4 of 7 | Installation configuration - Missing Optional Pre-requisite
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is one or more optional unresolved issues. It is highly recommended to fix
it all before you continue the installation. You can fix it without exiting from
the installation and re-check. Or you can quit from the installation, fix it and
run the installation again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Missing optional pre-requisite
-- cannot determine operating system type
-- system glibc or kernel version not supported or not detectable
-- binutils version not supported or not detectable
------------------------------------------------------------
1. Skip missing optional pre-requisites [default]
2. Show the detailed info about issue(s)
3. Re-check the pre-requisites
 
h. Help
b. Back to the previous menu
q. Quit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please type a selection or press "Enter" to accept default choice [1]:

5. accept default choice and press Enter
6. Intel compiler is installed, do the same for the other compiler
7. enjoy

The course covered the Introduction to MPI and Advanced MPI.  MPI (Message Passing Interface) is the de facto standard for parallel programming. I have also some experience with PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) my Master Thesis was based on that, and I learnt a lot about OpenMP, so I wanted to extend my knowledge for Parallel Programming with MPI.

The course introduced the concepts and terminology of High Performance Computing (HPC).  After an detailed look at point-to-point and collective communication, we learnt some more advanced topics: Cartesian topologies, MPI derived data types, user-defined binary operators, groups and communicators. We also had a lot of practical exercises to solve.  It was a great course.