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From: Bruce Stephens on 15 Aug 2008 17:45 Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> writes: [...] > All these NAS boxes have ethernet, all that I've looked at have some > degree of web configuration, I really can't imagine that any would > require a specific Windows-based app to get them started! Yeah, you'd have thought so. However, my impression is that they all do. Not a big deal, since most of us have access to a Windows or Mac box (or can borrow one), but it's an annoyance, especially since most of them seem to be Linux-based. All the ones I looked at had manuals and things downloadable, so it's possible to check before buying.
From: F8BOE on 15 Aug 2008 17:53 Daniel James wrote: > I've been meaning, for some time, to provide some sort of storage > server for the motley collection of computers -- some Windows and some > linux based -- that lurk around here. The primary requirement is that bla > > Sorry to ask so many questions in one post .... any thoughts or > comments on any of the above will be gratefully received. > > Cheers, > Daniel. FreeNAS
From: Bernard Peek on 15 Aug 2008 18:01 In message <VA.000014a8.20c3576c(a)nospam.aaisp.org>, Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> writes >> Have you considered recycling a laptop? > >Yes ... but I don't know of a laptop that can take two 750GB drives ... External caddies, USB2, done. -- Bernard Peek London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author.
From: Gordon Henderson on 16 Aug 2008 02:45 In article <VA.000014a8.20c3576c(a)nospam.aaisp.org>, Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> wrote: >In article news:<fkyMbbaRxapIFwSK(a)shrdlu.com>, Bernard Peek wrote: >> I acquired a mini-ITX board and put it into an old ATX case. There's a >> lot of fresh air inside the case but that's no real problem. It's got a >> whisper-quite 170W PSU and with an old disk makes a usable web-server. > >I've got a VIA EPIA M10000 board in a Morex Venus 6... er ... the one >before the current 669 model. It was built as a MythTV box but it actually >gets used as a spare linux desktop and occasional TV - I never found the >time to set up MySQL and MythTV on it. Nor could I ever work out why a PVR >application needs an industrial-strength RDBMS ... > >It certainly has the power to run a simple server apps ... but it really >struggles to rebuild its Gentoo system from source when there's been a >major upgrade. I think the initial build took about a week, and it can >take a day or two to update now even with a 3GHz P4 machine helping with >distcc. I don't think using a mini-ITX system as a distcc /server/ will >make much impact on compile times on other machines. I've built lots of stuff out of the VIA boards (including NAS boxes) - the trick is the do the actual compilation on a separate PC, the migrate it over... (But when I wur a lad, my 1st Linux box was a 66MHz AMD chip - ye gods it was slow compiling stuff compared to todays CPUs!) >The Venus case is bigger than I'd want for a server/NAS box, and there's a >good bit of fan noise -- from the PSU especially. If I go down the >mini-ITX route for the fileserver I'd want to use a fanless CPU in a >smaller case with one large slow fan ... and an external PSU brick. I've built a few NASes in a Venus case - http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10542 It has enough room inside and a nice big, but quiet fan at the back. I use Western Digital drives, and while they're not the fastest, they run very cool. Mobo's I use is usually the VIA CN1000's which have both IDE sockets and SATA, so I boot them off IDE flash (which then runs from ram), which then leaves all the SATA drives for storage. Eg: # df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ram0 124M 91M 34M 73% / tmpfs 245M 0 245M 0% /dev/shm /dev/md1 111G 66G 40G 63% /data /dev/md2 120G 41G 73G 37% /archive # uptime 07:36:33 up 396 days, 22:13, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 # cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid1] md1 : active raid1 sdb1[1] sda1[0] 117185984 blocks [2/2] [UU] md2 : active raid1 sdb2[1] sda2[0] 127009792 blocks [2/2] [UU] >> Have you considered recycling a laptop? > >Yes ... but I don't know of a laptop that can take two 750GB drives ... If it has a USB port, it'll take a Drobo... http://www.drobo.com/Products/Index.html Drobo box which can take up to 4 drives - USB connection, and the "share" box which sits under it with an Ethernet connection... Painless, but I don't think the share supports NFS, just sambaystuff... However the Drobo itself does support ext3 over USB, so use it as a "disk drive" to your own NAS platform rather than the drobo share - which might seem like overkill, but it's one advantage is that from initial turn-on it looks like a 2TB drive regardless of how many (or few) drives it physically has. So start with 2 x 750 drives and when these fill, just pop another in, and another and the box will manage the drives and you'll still see the same, original disk size - no need to resize partitions, or hope that you can resize the mirror/raid system and extend ext3 .... Personally, I'd go down the miniITX + drives route myself though, but the Drobo does seem like the solution for people who don't want to open the lid... Gordon
From: Bruce Stephens on 16 Aug 2008 06:49
Gordon Henderson <gordon+usenet(a)drogon.net> writes: [...] > I've built a few NASes in a Venus case - > > http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10542 > > It has enough room inside and a nice big, but quiet fan at the back. The web page says "2 x 40mm rear mounted cooling fans" which doesn't sound encouraging. I guess you just don't use those, relying on the rather larger looking PSU fan? [...] |