Koolkiwi Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Not sure if this is already known (I couldn't find any reference in a forum search), but... I was playing around with my new P5B-E based SATA unRAID setup, and noticed that although I bought the cheapest PCI-e video card I could find, it's heatsink was still very hot after the server had been powered up for a while. I figured that since the video card is not actually needed for day-to-day use of a media server, it seemed like a waste of power (considering the power efficency of unRAID with disk spin-down in effect). So, I disabled the "Stop on error" setting in the BIOS, and completely removed the Video card and keyboard. Booted up, and everything came up fine. Telnet'd in and copied the syslog over the flash drive to view, and no errors are even logged. So now I have an unRAID server that consists of just a motherboard and (currently) up to 7 attached SATA drives with absolutely no card slots used (until I add Promise SATA TX4 cards to expand the drive count beyond 7). The only things plugged in are the power cord and the ethernet cable. This thing should be power efficient enough to for me to justify leaving it switced on 24/7. Only downside I can think of is if I have some catastrophic failure that can't be fixed by telnet, then I would need to plug the video card back in to get the console back up. But in the meantime, the video card sitting on the shelf is saving power and heat generation. Next step is to see if Wake-on-LAN will work for remote startup? Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 What if you set up serial console support and a null modem connector to another machine. On the flip side, many of the supermicro boards support video/bios redirection via serial port. Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted April 20, 2007 Share Posted April 20, 2007 What if you set up serial console support and a null modem connector to another machine. On the flip side, many of the supermicro boards support video/bios redirection via serial port. Yes, if you could configure the bios via serial port then you don't need on-board video, or video card. I wasn't aware of any m/b's that could do that... Quote Link to comment
fgunnars Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 HI, Did you get wake-on-lan working? /F Quote Link to comment
flambot Posted May 17, 2007 Share Posted May 17, 2007 I have used the same MB as Koolkiwi - followed the same route with video card - now I'm close to having the system setup I have no need for the card. I also don't like the idea of extra things running that cause the electricity meter to race around even faster. I'd like to know more about auto startup/shutdown if it's possible (I read some posts about this but a conclusion was never finalised I don't think). Also, I'd like to know more about this WOL side. I assume that allows the system to go into some type of sleep mode (thereby using less power) and then wake up when it gets a signal. (Still not sure I want the server on 24/7). Quote Link to comment
Koolkiwi Posted May 17, 2007 Author Share Posted May 17, 2007 HI, Did you get wake-on-lan working? /F I only looked into this briefly, with no success, then gave up as I didn't have the time. If I recall correctly, what I did was something like this (I should have documented it at the time): ethtool eth0 This will show you the current 'Wake-on' status, which I think needs to be 'g' for wake up on magic packet. So if your Wake-on is showing as 'd' (for example), you would need to change to 'g' via something like: ethtool -s eth0 wol g The first issue, is that this is apparently reset on start-up, so you would need to add this to the start-up script. I think where I got to was I sucessfully set the interface to 'g' Wake-on mode, but was unable to get the PC to power up with a magic packet using it's NIC address. Not sure if the problem was at the linux end, or if it is a motherboard / BIOS setting issue (eg. I don't recall finding any specific BIOS setting related to WOL, only wake on PCI or PCI-e event etc.). However, if I google the P5B-E, I seem to find plenty of references to it supporting WOL? I would certainly like to progress this if anyone has any ideas / advice or has just simply succeeded with a WOL unRAID setup, as it would be great to be able to fire up the unRAID server from the Home Theater, without having to wander through to a back room to manually Power Up. Quote Link to comment
flambot Posted May 18, 2007 Share Posted May 18, 2007 However, if I google the P5B-E, I seem to find plenty of references to it supporting WOL? I would certainly like to progress this if anyone has any ideas / advice or has just simply succeeded with a WOL unRAID setup, as it would be great to be able to fire up the unRAID server from the Home Theater, without having to wander through to a back room to manually Power Up. So...are you saying the server can be in a powered down state and you can wake it up by a signal over the network? If so, does that mean UNraid is powered down, or does it have to re-start? If a re-start, then it would take sometime (say 30-120 secs) for it to get to a usable state from S/ware boot. I might see if yelling "Wake Up" works... As far as power consumption goes, I'm going to check current drain with a clip-on amp-meter - both for spun down/up scenarios. (Hopefully I'll get a chance over the weekend). Quote Link to comment
cmhardwick Posted May 18, 2007 Share Posted May 18, 2007 have you checked the BIOS to make sure WOL is on there? There is usually a setting there as well. (guess you'll have to load the vid card again hehehe) Quote Link to comment
Koolkiwi Posted May 18, 2007 Author Share Posted May 18, 2007 have you checked the BIOS to make sure WOL is on there? There is usually a setting there as well. (guess you'll have to load the vid card again hehehe) Thanks, but as already noted in my post above: Not sure if the problem was at the linux end, or if it is a motherboard / BIOS setting issue (eg. I don't recall finding any specific BIOS setting related to WOL, only wake on PCI or PCI-e event etc.). Quote Link to comment
flambot Posted May 19, 2007 Share Posted May 19, 2007 have you checked the BIOS to make sure WOL is on there? There is usually a setting there as well. (guess you'll have to load the vid card again hehehe) Thanks, but as already noted in my post above: Not sure if the problem was at the linux end, or if it is a motherboard / BIOS setting issue (eg. I don't recall finding any specific BIOS setting related to WOL, only wake on PCI or PCI-e event etc.). I was looking at this. There is a setting for "Power on by External Modem" - the closet thing IMO. Machine has to off in Soft-Off mode. Not sure if mine is or not (Tried power switch push for less than 4 sec) . Anyway, fired some magic-packets at it and nothing happened. I'm not surprised! Is it the OS, the BIOS/MB, or the LAN connection that reads these packets? I know my LAN connection is hot because the light is on on the router/switch even when the server is off. The lights usually go out when my puter is turned off. Also, there is a light on in the LAN connection - I read somewhere if that is the case we should be hot to trot. Doesn't seem so Oh well...back to ripping Quote Link to comment
limetech Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 Someone else mentioned there might be a bug in 4.0 with WOL - we'll be checking into that. Quote Link to comment
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