MicroServer N36L/N40L/N54L - 6 Drive Edition


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Jens,

Can you please tell me how this sleep script of your should it work? When I press the sleep button the log states it goes to sleep, and immediately wakes after. In reality nothing happens. Does this need a specific simpleFeatures package (I'm using 0.9b)? Or am I missing something?

 

console says sh: error line 0 echo no such device or something like that

 

thx

Zoltan

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Now that I think about it, I seem to remember having seen this error message before. I think it's caused by an rc.d script - they are really a mess - and can be ignored. If you wanna debug stuff, you can start a script with "bash -xv nameofscript.sh" or edit the first line of the script to read "#!/bin/bash -xv".

 

The real question is: why is your system not powering down? And if it is powering down, why is it powering up immediately?

 

No idea what Clean_Powerdown is, but it might interfer with the powerdown method I use in the script:

				if [ "$powerDownInsteadOfSleep" = $yes ]
			then
				date >> /boot/logs/auto_s3_sleep.log

				[ -x /sbin/powerdown ] && /sbin/powerdown
				[ -x /usr/local/sbin/powerdown ] && /usr/local/sbin/powerdown 

				break;
			fi

 

Do you have /sbin/powerdown - and does it work as expected?

How about /usr/local/sbin/powerdown?

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Clean powerdown is a package from unmenu to stop the array in a controlled manner before reboot or shutdown. Even when I disabled the EM was the same. Checked the auto_s3_sleep script with -xv and it gave no error, detected the disks as idle when powered down.

 

However the error happens when I press the Sleep button. Is there another script which is called by the "Sleep" button from the Web GUI?

 

EDIT: Cool! I have it, it's the following:

"echo -n mem >/sys/power/state"

in SimpleFeatures include command.php

it says "bash: echo: write error: No such device"

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OK I think I managed to understand how this works. This script loops in an endless cycle and checks a few things including disk and network activity. If no activity is registered a counter starts from 45 and decreases by one each minute. Once it reaches zero a shutdown occurs. Right? :)

 

Edit: it works like a charm. Even WOL is working fine from my Mac with a widget. Thanks!

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Great - anything you needed to further customize? I have possibly forgotten some things as I did most of the setup a couple months ago. Which bwm-ng package did you use, I forgot to note an URL for that and would like to update my original post with anything missing.

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Thanks Neilto for reacquainting me with this thread  :)

 

I have finally gotten around to buying an UnRAID Plus licence so I can make use of all my 5 x 2TB Hitachi 5K3000 HDDs.  I'm planning to use the top bay to hold the 5th HDD plus a cache drive.  I was going to use the eSATA loop-back method to connect the 5th drive when someone over on OCAU suggested a PCIe SATA card instead.

 

I have found a SIL3132 based card on eBay which I think will do the trick :-

 

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/230714137688?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

 

The seller can provide a low-profile bracket by request but in his reply to my query mentioned SATA3.0.  Perhaps it's a different card, I'm awaiting clarification. 

 

The only thing I'm not sure about in the specs is this:-

 

? Support 1-lane(x1) PCI-Express with transfer rate 2.5 Gb/s

 

? Compliant with PCI-Express 1.0a specification

 

Does the 1st bullet point mean the card will only work in the PCIe x1 slot?  I've read somewhere that throughput is best if the card is in the x16 slot but I'm not sure if that is correct.

 

Also can anyone confirm if a 250GB 2.5" HDD out of a WD Passport case could be used as the cache drive?  From the case opening tutorials on YouTube it seems they have a standard SATA interface but I haven't tried opening mine yet.  I could just use the 250GB 3.5" that came with my N36L but that means buying a double stack bracket (i.e. Nexus DoubleTwin).  Using the 2.5" means I could mount it under the ODD bay and use a SATA hot swap caddy in the ODD bay for the 5th array drive.

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You can easily flash the BIOS of the server to support 6 disks, see Jens' guide on the previous page.

AFAIK PCI-E slots are backwards compatible so the x1 card should work fine in either the x4 or the x16 slot but this needs confirmation.

For the Passport - I've removed a WD Disk from a MyBook Essential (WD15EARX) and it worked just fine in unRAID, so I believe it would be the same with the Passport.

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Cant seem to be able to read the files Jens posted on how to flash the BIOS. Since I´m a complete noob when it comes to this I´m gonna need all the guides I can get :)

 

I know there are some guides on FW from early 2011 but I thought Id try and get the latest BIOS from "thebay"...

 

/Niklas

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I managed to get into the bios flash link from Jens guide earlier but now it has gone awol again.  It appears Jens is hosting the file on his own domain so perhaps the host server is down.  In any case I have flashed the BIOS using TheBays modified ROM with help from the AVF thread even though I was happily running the Russian hacked one before. 

 

One thing to note when running the actual BIOS flash is that it will terminate at the C:\ prompt; at this point it is safe to remove the USB stick you used for the flash.  After re-booting you will get the "-041" Rom version displayed as well as "The Bays" which indicates you have successfully flashed the BIOS (plus the SATA ports 5 & 6 will be visible in certain BIOS options, namely AHCI config and also Southbridge config under Chipset).

 

Don't forget you will need to change the BOOT order from the UNRAID USB stick to the BIOS update one before running the flash; you will need to change it back again post flash to boot into UnRAID.

 

Sorry if I'm telling anyone here how to suck eggs, just thought it might help the newbies  :)

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I grabbed one of the N40L when they went on sale with a free 2TB Hitachi drive.  Have been messing with it for the last couple days and it is a nice little bit of kit for sure.

 

Going to be doing some testing on it (4TB drive support and a few other things).  I am probably going to move my crashplan backup over to this little guy so it is not running on my main unRAID machine.

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I have been running 4 Hitachi 3TB drives now for a few months in a N40L. The 4 drives are in the cages. Have an extra controller in the PCI-e slot and am waiting now for the drives to come down in price. ProStuff please let us know how you get on with the 4TB tests, if I am not mistaken I read somewhere there might be a chip limitation for the 4TB size but I don't remember if that is N36L specific or not. If that is the case any chance to try a separate controller and see if that works as many of us use the Optical bay to run two 3.5" drives.

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I have been running 4 Hitachi 3TB drives now for a few months in a N40L. The 4 drives are in the cages. Have an extra controller in the PCI-e slot and am waiting now for the drives to come down in price. ProStuff please let us know how you get on with the 4TB tests, if I am not mistaken I read somewhere there might be a chip limitation for the 4TB size but I don't remember if that is N36L specific or not. If that is the case any chance to try a separate controller and see if that works as many of us use the Optical bay to run two 3.5" drives.

 

I will see what I can do.  We (Greenleaf) will be testing out the drive on all of the configurations that we can.  I have the microserver to test it on and I know it will be tested on a SASLP and a monoprice SIL3132, probably on a number of different boards.  I have an ECS board that I can test it one, along with an older Gigabyte board.

 

Testing on the different setups should commence in the next week or so but probably won't be finished for about a month (to make sure we covered all our bases) and you should see a post/blog entry on the Greenleaf web site.

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I was going to use the eSATA loop-back method to connect the 5th drive when someone over on OCAU suggested a PCIe SATA card instead.

 

I have found a SIL3132 based card on eBay which I think will do the trick :-

 

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/230714137688?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

 

The seller can provide a low-profile bracket by request but in his reply to my query mentioned SATA3.0.  Perhaps it's a different card, I'm awaiting clarification. 

 

Now the seller tells me the low-profile bracket won't fit this card (after I placed my order and paid), trying to organise a refund now  >:(

 

May have found another but won't place an order till the previous one gets sorted out.  I might have to get handy with the pliers and tin snips if I get stuck with the other one.  I'll post back once I have a working card, might be a while though (slow boats from China and all).

 

Also can anyone confirm if a 250GB 2.5" HDD out of a WD Passport case could be used as the cache drive?

 

Pulled the drive casing apart today but sadly mine has the USB connector directly on the PCB so be warned if you are thinking of doing the same.  Got it all back together but some of the clips got broken during disassembly so the casing's a bit loose now, at least it wasn't a brand new drive  ;D

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Quick question on the following - I have the Hacked BIOS on my N40L but which spot is 5 and what is 6 -

ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

ata4: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata5: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)

ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata6: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

 

I am trying to figure out why ata5 is only at 1.5gbps - is this the Esata drive as that might make sense as it is an old laptop sata drive.

 

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