Archive for the ‘Home grown NAS’ category

NAS #4:: New things to do with my Ubuntu Server

October 21st, 2009

I have been running VirtualBox for virtual guests going on 2 years or so. I mostly use them for trying out new software or for any other time that I want to create a distinct barrier from my physical PC and any potentially nefarious actions I might execute that could do harm.

I decided to kick my VirtualBox guests over to the NAS server and run VBox as a headless virtual option.

The easy part was the installation of VBox – a quick apt-get command had that squared away quickly enough. I then went down the path of moving my virtual disks, configuring new machines, and then registering all the bits together so that MACHINE X can access DISK Y, and so on.

I went the headless route as to allow RDP sessions directly to the NAS. I don’t run any desktop management on the server, so using the VBox (or any virt GUI) doesn’t do me any good. Eventually, moving to the VBox web controls will take place, but that tool isn’t as mature as just executing my own VBoxManage commands. Eventually, I will move to the web console as well.

Thus far, the performance is about as good as you would expect from a small-ish NAS server running a guest OS.

Soon, I’ll post my build and run scripts. Sometime….

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NAS #3 :: Reboots and forcing the disks to the correct shares

October 7th, 2009

One area of concern when dealing with USB disk drives is the association and assignment of the disk to a device name.If not properly aligned, this can cause havoc on your shares, permissions, and data.

When you expect /dev/sdb1 to be your 1 TB Western Digital drive but the mapping of the devices causes the /dev/sdb1 to be your 320 GB Seagate, what you end up with is data from disk A being presented to other disk shares. This can result in your BACKUP share showing up as an expected media or apps share.

In order to align this within my NAS and have some expected results, I need to move away from DEVICE IDs and use something more unique. Like the UUID for the disk itself

Within Ubuntu, the command blkid shows information about the disk devices. This includes the UUID, the label, and the type.Here’s some output:

@nasserver:~$ blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="7524d180-a105-4428-a56c-3128c73684a1"
/dev/sda2: UUID="15a4483b-373e-45c0-80ff-b1588c71bff5"
/dev/sda3: UUID="186C12564DB71A6D"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="BA1A9D7A1A9D347B" LABEL="1TB_DRIVE"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="0C229D2C229D1C30" LABEL="400GB_Testing" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdd1: UUID="88e94acd-5645-4f36-b291-5b74890f2c35" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sde1: UUID="BC5A275D5A271424" LABEL="500GB"

The changes that are necessary in the /etc/fstab file looks like this:

UUID=186C12564DB71A6D /media/virts  ntfs  suid,dev,defaults,umask=007,gid=46,exec,nls=utf8  0  0
UUID=BA1A9D7A1A9D347B /media/1tbroot ntfs  suid,dev,defaults,umask=007,gid=46,exec,nls=utf8  0  0
UUID=BC5A275D5A271424 /media/500GB ntfs  suid,dev,defaults,umask=007,gid=46,exec,nls=utf8  0  0
UUID=88e94acd-5645-4f36-b291-5b74890f2c35 /media/Music          ext3  relatime

What this leaves us with is the ability to reliably mount the correct UUID to the mount point each time. The Samba configuration can then make use of the mount point and the Windows share can be named whatever through the Samba configuration.

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NAS #2 – Getting Jinzora2 installed and running

September 20th, 2009

Through the course of getting my NAS squared away, the ability to queue and play music over my network was important. This includes handheld devices, laptops, and other networked computers.

I searched around and found Jinzora2 has pretty much everything I wanted.

  • Web based and clean interface
  • Random and dedicated playlist
  • Be able to serve up playlists for individuals
  • User specific settings and authentication
  • Upload capable

Jinzora gave me everything I wanted.

The setup, management, and usability of this web-based application are pretty slick. No issues in getting the application downloaded or installed. Also, the configuration was pretty straight forward. In all honesty, the only issue I encountered was when I didn’t RTFM and set my server as a jukebox… not what I wanted.

When setting Jinzora up as a jukebox, the system is going to attempt to connect to the MPD. If this doesn’t exist, then you get errors on the web interface revolving around fsocketopen failing. Since the port is not there for the app to connect, the errors occur. So – if you are not going to run the application on a server/workstation that isn’t going to natively play music, don’t enable the jukebox.

One thing I will be looking forward to is remote control of the jukebox – if I ever get a sound device and source situated on the server. I would love to remote control my jukebox with my G1 while hanging out by the bonfire.

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Home grown NAS – #1

September 13th, 2009

I setup an old laptop with Ubuntu 9.04 Server in order to connect my printer and some USB external drives as a NAS (sort of).

 

So far, I have:

  • Dell D600 laptop
  • 1.7 TB of total disk space
  • Webmin 1.48 installed
  • An HP F4180 – Wired and wireless: This is printer shows up as an available resource

So far, so good. Next things to work on – may include a reimage to the laptop:

  • Sleep for the USB drives
  • Better control through webmin for NTFS partitions (one drive just keeps flaking out)
  • Static drive mapping on NFS restart (the USB disks will sometimes mount out of order…this creates havoc for media vs. backups)
  • Printer drivers for my Vista boxes from the “NFS/NAS” server
  • Samba/NAS web interface for upload/download – secured for remote connections (i.e. DynDNS.org)

Eventually…

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