Questions before making the leap


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I'm super close to jumping in and doing this. However like most I have a few questions and figured I might as well ask them since I've not seen them anywhere as of yet.

 

First a little background so you know where I am coming from because what I have so far works, but I want more protection.

 

Current setup

(2) DNS-323 NAS's sitting on a rack plugged into a Gigabit switch

PC's plugged into above mentioned Gigabit switch

I perform a manual backup of each NAS and store the drive on a shelf just in case I get hammered with a Virus, Power Surge or whatever else.

My DNS-323's are super quite even sitting in the room with me because they only spin up when I need them and often when I watch a movie I'm in the living room and can't hear them anyways.

 

Question time.

1. Are any of the drives spinning at any time when files are not being accessed? I'm going to guess NO because the OS lives on a USB stick.

 

2. With the DNS-323's I'm guessing the files are either EXT2 or EXT3 so would these drives mount and allow me to run some command lines to copy files to the unRAID drives? I'm pretty sure I can dig deep down into my memory banks and figure out the command lines from my old school linux days.

 

3. I was reading and from what I can tell there isn't an admin login/password setup when you login. Is that just on the console or is there one on the web interface? I'd really like to have the ability to lock down both somewhat to keep somebody from tinkering with my machine and my files.

 

4. When your at command line do you pretty much have normal access to the Linux OS so you could run cron and other scripts that you may choose to run? I have two websites and I'd love to be able to back them up with a cron script opposed to doing it manually via my windows machine. I'm guessing there maybe items missing in order to keep the OS minimized to load on the USB stick.

 

5. Is there a ton of writing going on the USB stick? If so how long are we expecting the USB stick to live before it needs replaced?

 

 

Kudos Time

I was reading around the forum and my initial response was this place rocks. I see so much useful information being shared, which really excites me about this project. I'm thinking with keeping it simple and picking up most of the mentioned hardware in the budget build because it seems to work and it appears to be thought out pretty well.

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Question time.

1. Are any of the drives spinning at any time when files are not being accessed? I'm going to guess NO because the OS lives on a USB stick.

 

As long as you use the spin down feature, which is configurable, then no drives should be spinning unless access is going on. When reading, only the container disk is running. When writing the parity+data disks are running, unless you use caching, then the cache disk is spinning.

 

2. With the DNS-323's I'm guessing the files are either EXT2 or EXT3 so would these drives mount and allow me to run some command lines to copy files to the unRAID drives? I'm pretty sure I can dig deep down into my memory banks and figure out the command lines from my old school linux days.

edit:

Mount where are how? See Joe's response below. If you can access the shell of the DNS-323's (sorry I'm not at all familiar with them) then you might be able to ftp or sftp or scp from there to the unraid array.

 

3. I was reading and from what I can tell there isn't an admin login/password setup when you login. Is that just on the console or is there one on the web interface? I'd really like to have the ability to lock down both somewhat to keep somebody from tinkering with my machine and my files.

 

Yes, there is an admin password as well as root login password you can set. You can also enable User Share privileges.

 

4. When your at command line do you pretty much have normal access to the Linux OS so you could run cron and other scripts that you may choose to run? I have two websites and I'd love to be able to back them up with a cron script opposed to doing it manually via my windows machine. I'm guessing there maybe items missing in order to keep the OS minimized to load on the USB stick.

 

Yes, there are a variety of things you can run including cron. The trick is making your changes permanent. I will not attempt to discuss this here. There are a variety of addons (i.e. BubbaRaid) and other tweaks you can make to update the filesystem so changes/scripts, etc. are persistent. These changes range from quite easy to somewhat difficult depending on what you are trying to do. Script based items are actually fairly easy to make.

 

5. Is there a ton of writing going on the USB stick? If so how long are we expecting the USB stick to live before it needs replaced?

 

No, there is not that much activity to the stick. Again, some people make changes that cause things to be written more often, but the default unRAID keeps most of the filesystem in RAM once it is running. Therefore very little or nothing is being written out to the USB stick. (I hope I am not wrong about that one, or I will start monitoring my stick more).

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Thanks for the quick reply. I guess the only stinger I have is doing the manual copy of the EXT files off the DNS-323 NAS. I was really praying that I could just drop one of the disks into the array which would not be protected obviously and copy the files over opposed to 

DNS-323 -----switch-----PC-----switch-----unRAID

 

Takes forever moving nearly 3TB of data ;) I guess thats just the way it is I suppose. LOL

 

For those who wonder what the Dlink DNS-323 is.

http://wiki.dns323.info/

 

From the looks of it, this system is pretty easy to deal with as long as you do some reading and take your time.

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If you can extract the physical disk from the NAS, and install it physically in the unRAID server you can mount the ext2 file-systems and copy their contents to disks assigned to the unRAID array.    The old disks will not be parity protected, and if you do decide at a later time to assign one to the unRAID array it will be cleared and re-formatted as unRAID uses a reiserfs file-system.

 

The ext3 drives will need to be mounted as ext2, as unRAID does not have an ext3 driver module.  In the same way, NTFS drives can have their contents accessed and copied to the unRAID protected array.

 

The unMENU add-on has the ability to simply click on a button or two to manage disks outside of the unRAID array.  It might make it easier if your linux command line skills are rusty.

 

In the same way, "mc" (midnight commander) is built into unRAID so you can use it to copy the files if your command line linux is not up to the task.  Just log in and type "mc"

 

unRAID is built on slackware, so you have available most of the utilities you are looking for including cron..  It runs in RAM as extracted each time you reboot from a file on the flash drive.  That is the complication discussed earlier.  You'll need to add some lines to a file on the flash drive (a tiny shell script) to perform those extra add-on tasks when you reboot.  That file is in the config folder and is named "go"

 

Joe L.

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Yes the drives are totally removable from the NAS I have.

 

Joe thank you very much for this information. Yes my Linux skills are a bit rusty so I will take a look at the Addon that you mentioned, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to actually knock off some of the rust. ;)

 

Slackware cool. I've used it uh.............. I think in 99 or so. LOL .. I think it was Redhat 97-98, Slackware 99-2002 then FreeBSD 2005-2009. I didn't use Linux a whole lot, but normally set it up as I needed it and used it as a File Server or to run a few cron scripts.

 

Thanks again for all of your info. I've seen the "go" file mentioned somewhere and now it makes since to what you both have mentioned about the ram.

 

I'll surely bookmark this thread as a Don't Forget since there is some valuable info I'm seeing posted by you guys.  ;D

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Yes the drives are totally removable from the NAS I have.

 

Joe thank you very much for this information. Yes my Linux skills are a bit rusty so I will take a look at the Addon that you mentioned, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to actually knock off some of the rust. ;)

 

Slackware cool. I've used it uh.............. I think in 99 or so. LOL .. I think it was Redhat 97-98, Slackware 99-2002 then FreeBSD 2005-2009. I didn't use Linux a whole lot, but normally set it up as I needed it and used it as a File Server or to run a few cron scripts.

 

Thanks again for all of your info. I've seen the "go" file mentioned somewhere and now it makes since to what you both have mentioned about the ram.

 

I'll surely bookmark this thread as a Don't Forget since there is some valuable info I'm seeing posted by you guys.  ;D

You'll probably want to bookmark this link:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unofficial_Documentation

It is a user-maintained wiki with TONS of useful hints and information.

 

unMENU was initially described here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2595.0  It derived from an attempt to explore way to improve the user-interface.  unRAID did not have a web-server we could extend easily, so I wrote one in "GNU Awk" a utility that existed in the unRAID distribution.  It has its limitations, but it is pretty decent for an "awk" script.  It is extensible and grew into a full plug-in system with lots of capabilities.

You can see in the screen shot an NTFS drive that is external to the array mounted so data could be migrated.

the newer 1.3 version is described here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5568.0  You can download if from the link on that page to google.code.

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Sad thing is I followed the howto build a USB flash drive and well I'm getting a "Boot Error" talk about feeling a bit stupid. LOL. I figured why not get into the thick of it some and see what future questions I have before committing to a new machine to run this.

 

Tried to create one on a Cruiser on two different machines and I'm pretty sure the Bios is setup correctly on the intended test machine I want to play on. I'm going to try and format it to Fat opposed to Fat32 and see if that makes a difference.

 

Its a P4 and from looking at the Bios it appears it should support it since there is a Boot USB option.

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Sad thing is I followed the howto build a USB flash drive and well I'm getting a "Boot Error" talk about feeling a bit stupid. LOL. I figured why not get into the thick of it some and see what future questions I have before committing to a new machine to run this.

 

Tried to create one on a Cruiser on two different machines and I'm pretty sure the Bios is setup correctly on the intended test machine I want to play on. I'm going to try and format it to Fat opposed to Fat32 and see if that makes a difference.

 

Its a P4 and from looking at the Bios it appears it should support it since there is a Boot USB option.

That usually indicates you've not selected the flash drive as the one to boot from.  (It will often be listed with the other hard disks)
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Plugging in directly to the mother board via a small cable

 

Freaky. I used a Sandisk Cruzer and I made sure the U3 software was gone.

Set it up on 3 different PC's. Tried Fat32 and regular FAT. All the same results of a "Boot Error"

 

I just tried a Lexar Jump Drive and it fired right up. Of course the Cruzer is a 2gig and the Lexar is a 1 gig drive so I technically loose the fun of having that extra gig, but at least I can get in and play a bit.

 

For the record I'm on a Intel D945GTP

version: 4.5.4

 

Logged into http://tower and blam I have access. ;)

 

My reason for wanting in so bad was so I can start reading up on:

Main

Users

Shares

Settings

Devices

 

I'm guessing the minimum configuration is 3 disks correct? 1 parity and 2 data drives

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Plugging in directly to the mother board via a small cable

 

Freaky. I used a Sandisk Cruzer and I made sure the U3 software was gone.

Set it up on 3 different PC's. Tried Fat32 and regular FAT. All the same results of a "Boot Error"

Did you try the HP formatting utility?  It will set the geometry of the flash drive so most BIOS will work.

I just tried a Lexar Jump Drive and it fired right up. Of course the Cruzer is a 2gig and the Lexar is a 1 gig drive so I technically loose the fun of having that extra gig, but at least I can get in and play a bit.

All you really need is 128Meg or so.  1Gig is plenty.

For the record I'm on a Intel D945GTP

Might check to see if there is a BIOS update available, sometimes that will enable the use of the larger flash drives.

version: 4.5.4

 

Logged into http://tower and blam I have access. ;)

 

My reason for wanting in so bad was so I can start reading up on:

Main

Users

Shares

Settings

Devices

 

I'm guessing the minimum configuration is 3 disks correct? 1 parity and 2 data drives

No, all you need is one data disk and no parity disk.  (Of course, it is not parity protected, but it can be shared on the LAN)

Minimum protected storage is one parity disk and one data disk.

 

Joe L.

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Thanks Joe.

 

I think I'll let this thread die since You've answered every question I can think of so far and well made the leap sorta speak. ;)

 

I do have some security concerns, but I'm sure they are addressed somewhere either in the wiki or in a thread.

 

I will give that HP tool a looksee to see if it solves my boot issues since I really wanted to use one of my Cruzer drives. You maybe right about the BIOS on the machine I was attempting to boot. Since I'm going to go with the recommended BioStar board I'm not going to tinker to much with this machine since well it's not the inteneded machine.

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