Is this possible?

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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Hi. 1st time post here!

I have been googling to find an answer for these questions but to no avail!
I thought this would be a good place to come to.
I am fairly new to linux but am ltrying to learn! I have a need and just want to know if what I want is possible (and within the grasp of a simpleton such as myself)?

I have Ryzen 2600, 1660ti, 2x2TB WD RED, 250GB Crucial SSD, 16GB DDR4 and want to create a server for:

1a. Steam in home game streaming to HTPC, laptops and Rasp Pi’s around the house.

2a. Steam cache for other PC’s to download games and updates faster.

3a. Torrent download/upload (no I am not a pirate!).

4a. (Future potential) as a dedicated streaming PC.

5a. (Future potential) as a video ingest/rendering server.

6a. ZFS in Strped vdevs (RAID 0) to use all 4TB of HDD. Nothing critical to be stored on these drives so reduncency is not needed. Anything needed to keep will be moved to NAS.

I understand this is a lot, however I understand that this spec should be capable (and perform well) with all these uses individually and I do not expect it will need to do any of these tasks at the same time (although if there is overlap it should still operate pretty well).

I have made some assumptions on OS config:

1b. Use a lightweight linux server OS to operate steam cache, torrent backend, ZFS file system.

2b. The linux server to run a Windows VM (for steam in home streaming).

Things I don’t know:

1c. Can the windows VM use the ZFS (steam cache) like it would a local drive?

2c. Is VFS the right file type to use? Using freenas for years it seems great but I do not know how this translates to other OS or this type of use case!

3c. How can I idle this machine? I presume it is easy enough to schedule it to power up overnight to run steam updates/torrents. However I want it to stay idle and lowest power consumption untill it is needed for game streaming or rendering (e.g can I use WOL) so it doesn’t run full tilt all day?

Again I am not asking for you guys/gals to waste a load of time giving me every solution for every query (I am happy to put in the work!). I just want to understand if this is reasonably obtainable or if I should give up on this all in one solution and run several smaller lower powered solutions (e.g refurb laptops) to get what I need?

Appreciate any of your replies!

sdj

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Expand on this a bit. Is this for one person at a time?

This is easy since there are lots of options, although the best option depends on what operating system you choose in the end. Transmission is widely used. https://transmissionbt.com/

Streaming to twitch or similar? Streaming movies and tv shows to your devices?

The question here is if the ingest/rendering can be done on a Linux OS.

Yep, sounds good.

You need to pass through the video card so the windows VM can play games, this means that the host will be headless unless you put in a second card. Some motherboards do not play well with passthrough, look into the IOMMU groups for you motherboard.

Not with lancache, that is speeding up downloads only. Although you can use iscsi to parition off some of that 4tb and let the windows VM use it as a local drive. SMB might work as well, but it would be slower.

AFAIK, ryzen idle power consumption is pretty good. Turning off hard drives after an idle period is fairly easy in Linux.

Overall, the hardware looks fine, although you may want a dedicated second SSD to boot the window VM off of as the emulated disks have a layer of performance penalty.

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Thanks TheCakeIsNaOH

Sorry… I would answer each of your queries seperatley (with quotes) but do not know how. Although I am reasonably tech savvy I am not tech social savvy (I don’t even know how to send an emoji on my phone!!!)… not only is this my first time on this forum… it is my first time on any forum, so I apologise if I do not have the correct etiquette or knowledge!

Steam cache would be 1 user at a time. If it could do 2 would be great but I understand that the host system is running the game as if it were local so I presume their is not a way around this??

Basicly I want to remove the RX570 from HTPC because movie/TV/Netflix image is horrible. I think because this GPU (or HDMI output standard) is older (… ancient!). I had far better image quality from a 2200G APU than I do now. I also want to go back to my passive cooled HDPLEX case for HTPC (bit of an audiophile nerd & case can not cool dGPU!). Although it is occasional, I still want the ability to play games at high fidelity and not be limited by the 3200G currently in this system.

Potential streaming would be to twitch (or similair) to offset this task from my main PC to another.

I thought this may be a problem. Within UEFI/BIOS I have the option in north bridge configuration ‘Enable/disable IOMMU Support’ I assume all I need to do is enable (… just seems too easy!).

I would guess it would be better to keep the 250GB Crucial SSD for Windows VM and buy a cheap, used 60-120GB SSD for linux server?

Again, many thanks. Cannot believe the quick response and great introduction to a linux community!!

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Just highlight some text and a quote button will pop up
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A quote looks like this after you click the quote button-

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If you want to notify someone, you can put a @ in front of their name. @sdj It also makes it clickable to bring you to the person’s profile.

This forum uses discourse, which has other nice features that you can look up, such as polls, spoilers, lists, code formatting, etc

Not to worry, it is ok to not use quotes. I just personally like to use them, more then most other people here do.

Steam cache or Steam streaming?

Like the AMD RX 570 from 2017? The picture quality for video should be identical to that of a 2200G or any other graphics card since maybe 2014 if not longer.

This might be a configuration issue or a hardware issue.

This is a good reason for game streaming.

I am not into streaming, so I may be incorrect, but for a lot of capture devices, they do not have linux drivers, so you may need to pass them through to a windows VM. And not all of these devices work to passthrough.

That is correct. It is just that sometimes the groups of PCIe devices that show up after you enable IOMMU are not good for passthrough. This is because you have to pass through every device in a group to one VM ( with the exception of PCIE bridges most of the time).

Sometimes the groups can be fixed with the ACS kernel patch.

Sounds fine.

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Sorry for late reply, been busy with other projects!
I really do appreciatte the help you’re giving.

I want to have both… I want to stream games to other PC’s (2 at the same would be great but 1 is fine) in the house so I don’t need to download or have dGPU (except this server).

As far as gaming goes I have been through my list of Steam games and found that all the games we (family) play are GOLD or higher on Proton DB so I now don’t think I need the windows VM.

From what I can work out ZFS and windows are not compatible, therefeore would need SMB share and the Windows VM would run games via network rather than as a local drive so performance would be poor.

However, my job requires that I benchmark certain (Windows only) games on new PC’s running Windows. The problem I have is when I go to do a benchmarking day (e.g. recently, Rainbow 6 Siege) I have a 100gb update to download on every PC I have to test, this results in losing an entire day just downloading updates from Steam to each PC on test.

I believe this is something to do with HDMI 2.1. I think the mobo (ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac) although not marketed as HDMI 2.1 does actually (unofficially) support it, allowing HDR 4K. I assume given the age (and from what I understand is basicaly an overclocked RX470) the RX570 does not officially or unofficially support 2.1!

Video playback on RX570 is blocky (don’t know a better way to describe!), gaming is great and no problem.

I have tried to configure RX570 but to no avail (2200G was easy to config), HDMI 2.1 is the only reasonable conclusion I can find.

So I don’t think I now need to worry about this if I run a Linux OS to stream games and steam cache others (even if caching Windows games also).

So with more research I feel I need to refine:

NEED:

  1. Steam Cache to speed up downloads/updates to test Windows PC’s
  2. In home Steam streaming to Linux based PC’s in home (HTPC in Living room, Main PC, Rasp Pi (x2 bedrooms), guests.
  3. Privacy focused torrent downloader. Nothing (by my morale compass) nefarious (i.e I own physical copies of the media already).

HARDWARE:
CPU: RYZEN 2600
GPU: Nvidia 1660Ti
RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) 3000MHz
STORAGE: 2x2TB WD RED RAID0 (ZFS)

MY DUMB THOUGHTS (IN THEORY MIGHT WORK!):

  1. Linux distro to run game streaming and steam cache (to serve linux & Windows) in one (ZFS FS).
  2. VM (Possibly Tails) to run Torrent download/seeding.

I have google fu’d as much as I can.;
I can find top 10 distro’s for PRIVACY, or TORRENT, or GAMING.
It seems I have a fairly unique use. Where should I start?
My use is a bit of a mix. I want security, I want Torrent, I want in home streaming, I want cache for other PC’s.

I would love to build a custom distro but I do not have the skill required. I have cosidered Ubuntu/Ubuuntu Server. It seems Ubuntu desktop is too bloated. I do not need office utilities or any extras… but I understand Ubuntu is a great start point due to commununity (for a noob such as myself).

I wouuld prefer to build something from
scratch but may be beyond my skill.

Would like to get advise on where to staart???

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My thought is a a gaming PC at core (Steam OS/POP OS) + VM/Docker for torrent (Tails,) Steam cache via Docker.

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Now this is the perfect use case for the cache.

iSCSI performance is not that bad AFAIK.

Ah, video only. I have no idea since I have no HDR devices. Your theory about HDMI might be correct.

Steam cache is probably going to be on docker on the distro, but overall yah.

It is not hard to remove stuff from it to strip it down. And bloated is really really relative, it may be an order of magnitude less disk usage than say a windows 10 install with office.

It may be bloating if you are trying to stuff 40 VMs onto single machine.

For linux, this is just a matter of configuration and making sure you update. Don’t pick a distro from this, rather look at some hardening guides for the distro you do pick.

Ubuntu is a great choice, it is the supported distro for steam.

Any distro that has docker, ubuntu included.

Ubuntu 20.04 (it will be out in a week, although there are betas available). It has great support for Steam, it has great support for ZFS, it has docker, there are lots of guides available.

For scratching your itch to build things, try shell scripting.

Then do things in VMs or docker.

This video might help-

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Thanks… You have been amazing help.

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This vid was a great choice for a NOOB like me. Too much anxiety choosing a distro… I think I’ll go for a UBUNTU as a jumping off point as seems is easiest… I can always change… thanks Linux & thasnks TheCakeIsNaOH

Amazing help… thanks

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