Spacing it out

We've managed to fill up all of the hard drive space I put in the NAS (Jerry) Thankfully it hasn't been too critical and we have been able to continue as normal basically without noticing that we can't store anything more on there.

However this is something that does need to be fixed. So I bought some more hard drives. I'm using Western Digital Greens from ebay with the head park adjusted with WDIDLE3 to extend their life. I know these are not ideal drives for use in a NAS, but they are cheap and the RAID 6 configuration means that I have time for a new drive to arrive if one dies.

Here I am setting the head park idle time to reduce the number of head parks which can wear out these green drives quite quickly as the default time is very short. It makes sense when you think they are designed for absolute minimum power consumption, but it can be a problem.

I don't have a computer set up as a test bench for doing stuff like this so I have to pull some cables out of my normal use desktop.It's not too bad to have to do. But all the same having the space for a dedicated machine with swappable drive bays for this sort of thing would be nice.

Make sure you label your CD's!!! I had a dozen or so un-labeled disks I had to go through to find my boot CD. They have now all been labeled and put in a sensible spot.

The new drives are in. This means that I just need to expand the array and it will all be done, right? Not quite. Turns out that you can't expand an array using a p400 RAID controller if the battery backup for the cache is busted. Thankfully these parts can be had for only a few dollars from ebay.

The replacement part.

Drag the whole mess out.

Apparently orange = bad.

And here we have it. The new part in and all ready to go. It was a pretty simple replacement however there were one or two parts that had to be jiggled the right way to come free.

Here we are, expanding the array. Unfortunately I think the whole data set has to go through the cache on the card which is only 256 mb or thereabouts. The array is approximately doubling to about 4.5 tb which is a lot to have to shift through 256 mb. I'm expecting this should be finished copying by the end of the weekend but that is pretty much a guess.

Once the RAID card has expanded the drive I think I will need to expand the filesystem so I will do a writeup on that because I will need to remember as well.

Cheers,
Rex

It can be better to pay first

Paying for a good tool or a part can be a bit offputting as the initial expense seems to be much higher. However cheaping out and getting something that might not work properly will most likely be more expensive in the long run.
I have had that idea highlighted for me while I was setting up a KVM switch so that I can run both the beaglebone (Mill) and the 386 (Lathe) through the same monitor.

These are the parts I tried to use. I got the keypad, kvm and an extra VGA cable from The Junktion for $5. All of them seem to work and are in good condition and would probably work in a more normal situation.

This is the KVM switch. It's better than the last ones I had because it gets all of it's power from the computers. However it's a bit different in that it needs a set of keys to be pressed on the keyboard to change the controlling computer. I don't use scroll lock much, particularly on these computers so that won't be a problem.

The stack of adapters. The fan I had wasn't working so this was going to be fine for a test. I do have an HDMI to VGA adapter somewhere that will let me have a fan and get video out; but I can't find it at the moment so I'll make do.

And here we have the rat's nest. I don't do a lot of cable management because I am changing things so often that having a strict management system would get more in the way then a mess like this. Regarding noise and crosstalk between the cables, anything back here with a signal is shielded and the only thing with significant power other than the mains cables is the drive to the stepper motors which is reasonably heavily shielded. So I don't think noise will be a problem and I certainly haven't had any issues yet.

With everything plugged in I powered it all on and... It... didn't work. It would display the screen from the 386 but I could not change it to display from the beaglebone. I think what has happenend is the KVM switch is expecting to be plugged into PS/2 ports (That's why it has them I guess) but I am plugging it through an adapter into an old style keyboard connector and that's it. No mice or keyboard from the Beaglebone.

I think this is causing it to run out of power and just not work properly.

To fix this I am doing what I should have done in the first place and buying a cheapy from ebay that is completely passive. From the picture of it's guts I saw it is very basic which will be perfect for this as then there is less chance it will not work.

So sometimes it pays to just buy the right thing in the first place. But for a hobby, while it can be frustrating and demoralizing it usually isn't too bad. In a business situation however it can cause major problems.

Cheers,
Rex

New NAS Server... Yay

My new server arrived. It is a HP Prolient DL 320S and has 12 drive bays in the front.

Unfortunately it only came with 3 drive caddies that will hold drives. There are 3 open spaces and the other 6 spaces are filled with blank things. Presumably to maintain proper airflow across all of the drives all the time. Unfortunately because of that they cannot be used for putting drives in. This means that for RAID 6  I need at least 4 Drives. Particularly if I want to keep my 2TB drive in there that I have at the moment I will need at least 6 more spaces for drives. So I need to get at least 2 more bays.

This is my precious. A 2TB SATA Hard Drive. This is really wat I have everything that I really don't want to lose on. As I said above I would like to move to a RAID 6 array for storage. However for now as long as I still have the space I can live with no redundency for now.

It boots !

It even has a GUI. Surely the first thing I have used in a while that has a GUI for system management stuff.

However the first problem I have found with the software I'm using. The GUI only shows support for Ext2. The 2TB drive has my data on it in an Ext4 partition. This is my only drive this big. Thankfully there is less than 1TB of data on it which means that I can use my external Hard Drive. Unfortunately it is currently also formatted Ext4.

So with the 2TB drive plugged into my only other computer that can plug into it, I have also connected my external drive and am reformatting the external drive.

This would be only a little bit dodgy. However apparently formatting a drive in Windows Vista takes a long time. It's been a few hours but it is still only at 20% so this will be sitting until tomorrow afternoon. Such is life.

But I have found a new home for the NAS. For now anyway.

It is on the floor but I don't think it will be a problem. It will probably be moving a fair few times yet so this won't be the last place it lives I dare say.

So the beginning for a very exciting project. But still a little way to go before I am happy with the way it is set up.

Cheers,
Rex

Big Changes in my serving

No I haven't re-built the kitchen. For the last 18 or so months I have been running a number of servers from this:

It doesn't look like much. And in terms of "real" professional servers it isn't. However it has been more than good enough for me. Unfortunately there are some things I am not really that happy about. Recently I have become very fond of Arch Linux and have been enjoying some of it's features more than the Debian that is installed on this server. I know Debian is probably better for servers, but I'm just doing this at home for fun. So I'll do what I want.

The other main thing I haven't been so happy about is storage.

This is what the case looked like after I opened it up for the 1st time in 18 months. Probably a record for one of my computers. As you can see, arranged across the bottom is my network storage array. A jumble of random drives that has very little rhyme or reason, other than I could get my hands on them for the right price.

What they look like out of the case.

This is going to be changing soon. I have bought a case on ebay that will hopefully work as a NAS box. This will be my next big server thing to do. Also depending on how I'm going, this jumble of random drives will probably be dispersed somewhat and the old 20GB drives either retired from server, or relegated to use as boot drives with regular backups. Probably boot disks.

Another thing I will be probably looking at is airflow. Mainly with regards to dust. The house I live in is not new and has had plenty of time to start producing dust. Also this house doesn't have a dedicated server room with filtered AC. Bummer. This however is nothing new and hopefully I can reduce the amount of dust in this case (and the new one) with some slightly (?) informed planning of case ventilation.

I haven't decided on what software I'm going to run on the NAS box yet. That will have to wait until I get it. But I am starting to realise that the hodge podge of HDDs and no actual backup is really, really quite bad. So I dare say that both of those things will change in the future, even if I keep them like this for now.

However if you do happen to have a bunch of reasonable sized HDDs burning a hole in your pocket I know a quiet place where they can go to stay.

Cheers,
Rex

Another project on the go

So after watching this Youtube video. My brother and I have decided to build him a computer based on the same principals as in the linked video. That is using slightly outdated top end or server hardware to build a computer on the cheap.

In this case the goal is to be able to run N3V Games' Trainz: A New Era with reasonable performance. The parts we have selected will allow us to meet the recommended specs for what could be the first time of any of this franchise.

We have only just begun procuring parts for this. But I am very excited about it and I am looking forward to assembling a computer that is more than just the best of the parts I have lying around the place. To find a list of the parts we're using follow this link to see the e-bay collection for the parts we have selected.

We have to wait for the parts to arrive however and there are still some descisions that can't be made until the parts arrive like PSU, case. But stay tuned because this build will enjoy exciting performance for an equally exciting price.

If you have any suggestions or questions please comment below with them so we can all benifit from the discussion.

Cheers,
Rex