First time unRAID build

[ashura]

Brand new to unRAID (just found out about it two hours ago!) and I've assembled a parts list based off of a bit of reading. Some FYI beforehand:

 

1. I currently have an almost filled 1.5TB Seagate which is connected via eSATA to my Thinkpad x200.

2. I plan to directly connect my x200 to the unRAID box via CAT6.

 

 

Thoughts/cost reduction suggestions? Do I need to add another 2GB stick of RAM? And will the box's onboard gigabit NIC be good enough, or do I need to add a PCI-e Intel card? I'm thinking I'll set up the unRAID with the two Samsung drives, and then copy from the eSATA drive through the Thinkpad to the unRAID box, and once that's done add the Seagate to the unRAID box. Eventually I'll end up buying one more 1.5TB to add.

 

[detz]

Check out my thread a few below yours(http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4250.0) which some people gave some good advice.  Not sure if it matters but you should try and do dual-channel ram so instead of 1x2GB to 2x1GB or better yet just get the pair of 2x2GB.  I was going to go with the single core but I decided on the dual so it has room to run other stuff and I'm glad I did now.

 

Oh, and another thing(unrelated).  If you're upgrading the license order it before you get the hardware(it takes a couple days) so you're not sitting there [like me] with everything running waiting for the license key to come in.   

[ashura]

Thanks detz! After reviewing your thread, here's my revised cart:

 

 

Decided on the dual core as I know I'll be installing something for usenet downloads and also to leave some headroom for any future plans.

 

[prostuff1]

The Gigabyte boards are nice but just be away of the HPA issues that can pop up with them.  If your not sure what i am refurring to go some googling on "HPA gigabyte" and "host protected area."

[detz]

You might also want to consider a different case for future expansion.  As it sits your max HD's would be six which sounds like a lot but with one being parity, another cache that leaves only four(max) drives for storage.  Just something to think about, if you like the media style case go for it but make sure you're not going to be upset in 9 months when you're out of bays. :-)

[ashura]

prostuff1: Thanks for the heads up, I did a bit of googling and and read up on the issue. Seems as long as I disable it in BIOS before starting up the unRAID box I should be set.

 

detz: Nah, I wouldn't be upset. I'd just buy a new case. Seriously though, I don't see myself realistically using up all the bays by then and I can always cross that bridge when I come to it.

[PhilH]

Some Gigabyte boards you CANNOT disable the HPA function. Just a word of caution.

 

As long as the HPA is placed on a data drive & not your parity drive then all will be fine..

[ashura]

PhilH: Gotcha, thanks for the tip.

 

One Q about about this box. When booting I have to boot from the unRAID thumb drive right? Could I, in theory, shut down the box, boot pointing towards a non-unRAID drive (sitting outside of the box attached via a PCIe SATA card) with Windows and a few games on it, and game from it? How would Windows see the other drives attached to the box and used for unRAID? Would it screw them up in any way? When I'm done gaming I would shut down, disconnect the drive, and reboot while pointing to the unRAID thumb drive. Is this feasible?

[Joe L.]

PhilH: Gotcha, thanks for the tip.

 

One Q about about this box. When booting I have to boot from the unRAID thumb drive right? Could I, in theory, shut down the box, boot pointing towards a non-unRAID drive (sitting outside of the box attached via a PCIe SATA card) with Windows and a few games on it, and game from it? How would Windows see the other drives attached to the box and used for unRAID? Would it screw them up in any way? When I'm done gaming I would shut down, disconnect the drive, and reboot while pointing to the unRAID thumb drive. Is this feasible?

It is feasable... and I don't think you'd even need to disconnect the drives.

 

unRAID only uses the drives assigned to it.  It will not care about the additional internal or external drives.  all you would need to do is choose the boot device... either the unRAID flash drive, or the hard-disk with windows.

 

Windows should ignore all the unRAID disks, except perhaps the flash drive, as it has a FAT file-system on it.  To windows, all the other drives are "un-formatted" as it knows nothing about reiserfs file-systems.

 

Joe L.

[ashura]

Beautiful! Thanks for the confirmation. Can't wait to build this thing. 

[zhopudey]

Will you be connecting directly? Do let me know how that goes. I'm having no luck as you can read here - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4225.0

[ashura]

Yes, directly connecting. I'll be building thing on Saturday so I'll let you know how it goes.

[ashura]

Hrm, I've run into a problem. unRAID doesn't finish loading, hanging on this screen:

 

 

Here's a list of all the hardware currently inside the rig:

 

AMD X2 240 2.8GHz

Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2

4GB GeiiL Green Series DDR2

3x1.5TB (2x Samsung HD154UI, 1x Seagate ST31500341AS)

1x160GB (WD WD1600BEVS)

Gigabyte 4850 1GB (GV-R485MC-1GI)

Creative SB Audigy SE

Corsair 400W

Lian Li PC-C32B

Dell 2209WA

 

What's wrong? 

[Joe L.]

Hrm, I've run into a problem. unRAID doesn't finish loading, hanging on this screen:

 

 

Here's a list of all the hardware currently inside the rig:

 

AMD X2 240 2.8GHz

Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2

4GB GeiiL Green Series DDR2

3x1.5TB (2x Samsung HD154UI, 1x Seagate ST31500341AS)

1x160GB (WD WD1600BEVS)

Gigabyte 4850 1GB (GV-R485MC-1GI)

Creative SB Audigy SE

Corsair 400W

Lian Li PC-C32B

Dell 2209WA

 

What's wrong? 

Your hardware might need one or more boot codes in order to work properly.

See here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Boot_Codes

[BRiT]

Which version of unRaid is hanging? If its 4.4.x have you tried the 4.5b6?

[ashura]

I have not but no worries, tried the boot codes and it worked. Thanks Joe! I was able to log in with root.

 

My next problem was with my USB drive, I kept on seeing during the boot that the boot/config/network.cfg couldn't be found. Searching a bit in the forums led me to ditch my SanDisk Cruzer 1GB for my Corsair Survivor 8GB and it worked. The network settings that I manually put in displayed when I typed in ifconfig. (I plan to buy another small Corsair drive to replace the 8GB as I use that for other things)

 

I'm having another issue now though (sorry for all the headaches guys!), and this time its with directly connecting to the unRAID box with a CAT6 cable. I know an easy workaround is to get a router and gigabit switch but I'd rather exhaust any possibility that directly will work first. I have two adapters on my W7 laptop, one a wireless that I use to connect to the internet and the other an Intel Gigabit adapter which is connected straight to the unRAID's Realtek Gigabit adapter. I manually set the laptop gigabit adapter to IP 192.168.0.101 and netmask 255.255.255.0 with the other fields blank, and I changed the network.cfg file to:

 

# Generated network settings

USE_DHCP=no

IPADDR=192.168.0.102

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

GATEWAY=

 

But when I try to visit http://tower or http://192.168.0.102 to visit the web gui, I get a page cannot be found. Where did I screw up now?

 

Screenshot of the ifconfig:

 

 

[RobJ]

You are transmitting, but not receiving, everything is being dropped.  I suspect you need a crossover cable instead.  Gigabit routers and switches usually handle a straight or crossover cable without a problem, but I suspect one or both of your network NIC's do not.

[ashura]

Thanks Rob. I was under the apparently wrong impression that you can use any cat6 cable so long as both NICs are gigabit. Sucks as I was hoping to get everything set up today, but it is what it is. I'll place an order for one of theseand should get it sometime this week.

 

EDIT: Eurgh, okay. I'm giving in to my impatience and dropping by Best Buy to get one of these instead. It's a huge markup but I'm willing to pay for the convenience of getting everything done today.

[Joe L.]

Thanks Rob. I was under the apparently wrong impression that you can use any cat6 cable so long as both NICs are gigabit. Sucks as I was hoping to get everything set up today, but it is what it is. I'll place an order for one of theseand should get it sometime this week.

 

EDIT: Eurgh, okay. I'm giving in to my impatience and dropping by Best Buy to get one of these instead. It's a huge markup but I'm willing to pay for the convenience of getting everything done today.

Before you do anything... try a different cable... also make sure the cable you do use is seated properly.  Even brand new cables can be defective.

 

Joe L.

[ashura]

As far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with the cable. When I reboot into the Windows drive of the box, I can connect to my laptop and access files.

[ashura]

Same problem with the new crossover cable, can't access the web gui from the my laptop.

 

Here's another screenshot of ifconfig this time when using the xover cable:

 

[zhopudey]

I'm facing similar problems. Hope we both find a solution soon.

[bblue]

I'm having another issue now though (sorry for all the headaches guys!), and this time its with directly connecting to the unRAID box with a CAT6 cable. I know an easy workaround is to get a router and gigabit switch but I'd rather exhaust any possibility that directly will work first. I have two adapters on my W7 laptop, one a wireless that I use to connect to the internet and the other an Intel Gigabit adapter which is connected straight to the unRAID's Realtek Gigabit adapter. I manually set the laptop gigabit adapter to IP 192.168.0.101 and netmask 255.255.255.0 with the other fields blank, and I changed the network.cfg file to:

 

# Generated network settings

USE_DHCP=no

IPADDR=192.168.0.102

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

GATEWAY=

 

But when I try to visit http://tower or http://192.168.0.102 to visit the web gui, I get a page cannot be found. Where did I screw up now?

 

What is the interface on the win7 set to?  It needs to be an address in that same subnet (like 192.168.0.105), same netmask and no gateway set.  If you're not using a hub or switch between the two machines you'll need an 8 wire crossover cable.  (some generic cables only come with four wires connected through)

 

If you don't have a nameserver on the windows side, you'll need to make sure the lmhosts file has an entry for tower in it, else you'll have to address it by ip only.  For example, http://tower won't work without an lmhosts entry, but //tower should since it uses a different method of initial connect.

 

--Bill

[ashura]

What Win 7 is set to is right in the post you quoted. And I'm not sure whether or not my crossover cable is 8 wire. How can I verify?

 

And this is the first time I"m hearing about modifying an lmhosts file. Can you elaborate?

[bblue]

What Win 7 is set to is right in the post you quoted. And I'm not sure whether or not my crossover cable is 8 wire. How can I verify?

 

Just look at both end connectors.  You'll see 8 copper connections, and a colored wire inside the plastic going to them.  If there are 8 wires, you're ok (assuming the cable is actually good).  If there are only four connected to pins 1,2,3 and 6 on either end it won't work on Gigabyte ethernet.  Only 100Mb and lower.

 

And this is the first time I"m hearing about modifying an lmhosts file. Can you elaborate?

 

For example, when you connect to your ISP there is either an automatic or manually set group of parameters that include the ip address of at least one nameserver.  The nameserver's job is to convert a name, like lime-technology.com to a corresponding ip address so that you can connect to it.  Only registered domains and hosts worldwide are in this database.  So if you wanted to add a name that represented an ip address that didn't appear in nameservice, in windows you would add the name/ip address pair in the lmhosts file so your system would know what address you meant when that name was used.

 

Likewise, computers on a local network that don't have a local nameserver to resolve names must have entries in lmhosts (windows) or /etc/hosts (unix) to resolve to an ip address.  Any time you put in an http:// or ftp:// type name you would be using either nameservice or local lookup.  If you don't have this, you can only refer to the remote connection by address, not name.

 

Note that the special syntax used for the initial connection to an unRAID server, //tower, does not use nameservice as it is a NETBIOS name, not an internet style name.

 

--Bill