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Thread: Home Server Chit Chat

  1. #33
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    A bit unusual maybe but at the moment I use my N54L as an ordinary desktop.

    Bought it to use as a server but circumstances changed and I'm using it as a temporary desktop.

    Doubled the RAM using EBay and added a USB soundcard (a couple of quid from Amazon) and running Mint 16 with cinnamon surprisingly well. Perfect for web browsing and office stuff and the onboard graphics even ran Flightgear 2.6 at very good frame rates with all shaders turned off.

    Now upgraded to Flightgear 2.8 and it's struggling so I might add a graphics card.

    Will use it as a server as intended when I get a new desktop built.

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    HEXUS.social member Agent's Avatar
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    So I've been playing with Open Media Vault.

    At the heart of it, it's quite nice, but even now it's just not user friendly enough. Setting up a share should be quite simple, but many people on their forums, myself included, have had to jump between menus, check permissions, assign permissions, SSH in to check the CHMOD.....this is stupid. If I can't create a share though the GUI and have it sort out the permissions itself, then that's quite a bad UI for a home NAS system. It should literally be a few clicks without the need to jump from menu to menu and assign things manually. I understand that it's Debian so that SSH might be needed every now and again, I really don't have an issue with this, but it just feels like so many *nix developers fail at UI design that I get frustrated every time I try something based on it. Even the "Apply" button appears at the furthest point possible away from where my mouse is probably going to be...Ugh.

    Reading some of the stories of people upgrading from 0.4 to 0.5 is also a little worrying: Remove all plugins, custom scripts to reset things, wait for new versions of the plugin.....some released with bugs that can cause problems.

    I really wanted to get back into something *nix based and just have a play....but it pains me to say this....just going with something based on Windows (maybe server) is easier and probably the route I'm going to take.
    Setting up shares, Plex Media Server, sync folders, and a million other programs within a few clicks. Updating any of them is easy - even the OS pretty much takes care of itself.

    Wasn't the route I was expecting really!
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Well I've got an N36L and an N54L, the difference in power is slight

    The N54L is a standard home server running WHS2011, the N36L is currently unused but I think I'm going to get it set up as some sort of hosting/source control machine probably running via a VM, possibly hosting TFS. Might just sell it though as space in the room isn't great


    The N54L currently is upgraded to 4GB RAM, has 2x3tb, 2x2tb and a 500gb OS drive but I'll be switching that out at some point when funds allow for 8gb of ram 4x2.5" drives in the top bay and to replace the disk drives with 4x4tb WD Red drives then get a new 2 port SAS card as the performance on the drives on the built in one isn't that great and it would hopefully help offload some processing from the CPU, should be pretty nice if I can get a decent dual raid10 setup going (and probably run the OS from an internal USB stick)
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...
    You might check out Zentyal, it's basically Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS with a WebUI attached (or you could install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and install the latest stable (3.2) Zentyal WebUI from the Zentyal PPA, either way works). It doesn't come with media server integration but Plex can take care of that. Otherwise it's quite the capable remote management tool, it even integrates with the APT package manager. Also, turning on filesystem acls for your share storage volume(s) is a good idea, it'll make fixing ACLs easier through the Windows ACL editor easier.
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    I tend to do these things the hard way, but is this the sort of thing you were looking for: http://www.maketecheasier.com/easy-s...etup-with-kde/

    Most things can be done from the KDE desktop. I don't get how people can put up with gnome when KDE is just so damned useful and slick. KDE is an install option for the enterprise grade Centos though it will try and fob you off with gnome by default.

    As for Unix coders not getting UI design, I think that is just *most* coders don't get UI design.

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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Agent, from what you said regarding issues with OMV and what you want to have, it does sound as if Xpenology is the way forward for you. It does everything you require and has a very low memory/ CPU overhead.
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Gnome 3 is pretty dire on a desktop, but probably OK on a tablet/touch screen. Gnome 2 was OK, and personally I found it more intuitive than KDE, The later versions of KDE seem to be going the same way as G3. I now use xfce as a good simple interface, although I do 90% of the basic admin tasks via the command line , usually via SSH.

    There is always webmin, which is getting better and is fast enough over a LAN.
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
    As for Unix coders not getting UI design, I think that is just *most* coders don't get UI design.
    It's not that, either. They simply value UI designs which better serves *them* more, since it's what they're going to use. User friendly is different things to different levels of competence.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Quote Originally Posted by Bluecube View Post
    Agent, from what you said regarding issues with OMV and what you want to have, it does sound as if Xpenology is the way forward for you. It does everything you require and has a very low memory/ CPU overhead.
    Not so sure of that, he is complaining OMV wasn't too strait forward....my first look at the Xpenology forum and I see that Microservers need their mac address hex edited in a config file......not what I would call strait forward
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    They don't need to have their MAC address edited. It's advised that you do but not strictly necessary. And if you root around in the Xpenology forums, you'll find a Windows app which will do it with a couple of clicks rather than having to fish out a hex editor.
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    N54L
    2x 3TB WD Red's
    1x Stock 250GB
    8GB teamgroup (2x4GB) 1600 non-ECC memory
    1x USB Hauppauge WinTV Duet (Dual freeview tuner)

    Setup:
    Running esxi 5.5 using the internal USB port. Since its currently in testing before I make the decision of the best way of doing what I want question at the end. I have a Ubunutu 12.04LTS installation running mythtv with the usb twin tuner passed through. Mythweb is also installed however the configuration is a pain as I would prefer for it to be on a separate virtual machine with website hosting/testing as a mythweb.xxx.xxx subdomain. HOwever atleast the tv tuner is working fine and its mythweb is suitable for the local network for the time being.
    The other virtual machine is windows server 2012 essentials which shall be running as a file server among a couple other duties.

    Now the question. Currently contemplating a HP smartarray P410 and the upgrade of another 2 x 3TB WD Red's to have as a RAID 5 storage only for the windows server virtual machine whilst picking up some other drives in a icydock in the 5.25" bay. However due to HP new locking out of support downloads Im not too sure I could get hold of the downloads and to update the card to the latest version. And if its worth/possible passing an array through to the virtual machine using Raw device mapping as Ive read you can slightly hack it to pass through individual disks if not any other ideas.

    Oh since its not currently setup fully (thanks to work and uni) I have it powered off. After turning the plug on and turning it on the HP emblem is displayed in RED for a few seconds however it continues to boot fine and is blue after the couple of seconds on boot for the rest of its uptime.

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  20. #44
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    You can still get the latest firmware (http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/sit...token#Firmware) from the HP website, don't think they've kicked their new support policy in as yet (but when they do you can pretty much guarantee that the used price of their kit will drop) so you should be fine with that. You can happily pass through an array on a supported controller as an RDM, you just need to have a VMFS volume to hold the pointer file through which the SCSI commands are sent to the LUN.

    As for the red emblem - I seem to recall that was fixed with a BIOS update (or maybe it was caused when you put an unofficial BIOS on the device, I forget)

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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Quote Originally Posted by Splash View Post
    You can still get the latest firmware (http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/sit...token#Firmware) from the HP website, don't think they've kicked their new support policy in as yet (but when they do you can pretty much guarantee that the used price of their kit will drop) so you should be fine with that. You can happily pass through an array on a supported controller as an RDM, you just need to have a VMFS volume to hold the pointer file through which the SCSI commands are sent to the LUN.

    As for the red emblem - I seem to recall that was fixed with a BIOS update (or maybe it was caused when you put an unofficial BIOS on the device, I forget)
    Cheers, you've slightly lost me on the last bit for passing through using RDM though so I'll have to have a read deeper into that.
    EDIT ah so that shouldnt be a problem as there will still be another drive acting as the OS datastore. That will be of the VMFS forimat and the pointer will be held on there for the passed through array which will be used as storage only.


    As for the red emblem its running the latest official HP BIOS, well latest as of a month or so back when they fixed the windows 8 and 2012 installation NIC issues. Haven't checked for a newer one since then.
    Last edited by Lazy148; 18-02-2014 at 09:23 PM.

  23. #46
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Quote Originally Posted by aidanjt View Post
    It's not that, either. They simply value UI designs which better serves *them* more, since it's what they're going to use. User friendly is different things to different levels of competence.
    There are clear guidelines on how to write GUI code. Most coders have never read any of them. They know how to do tree browsers, and tabbed panels. At that point things become an exercise in "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail".

    Hence my suggestion of Centos to get a stable Linux that can pretty much maintain itself with an occasional "yum update" (or set a service to do that for you). KDE on top of that should help set up most of the fiddly bits, and I think they get the usability balance right (though you can get carried away with the toys).

  24. #47
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Quote Originally Posted by Lazy148 View Post
    Cheers, you've slightly lost me on the last bit for passing through using RDM though so I'll have to have a read deeper into that.
    EDIT ah so that shouldnt be a problem as there will still be another drive acting as the OS datastore. That will be of the VMFS forimat and the pointer will be held on there for the passed through array which will be used as storage only.
    Yep - for a decent guide as to how to do this you could do worse than take a look at http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/...rage-for-esxi/ - it's actually pretty easy (especially if you only have to pesent a single volume which is hardware RAID protected). The pointer file will say that it's the same size as the raw LUN that it points to, but it only actually takes up a few kb on your vmfs datastore.

    As for your red light issue: not sure what else to suggest, as I only have an N36l and an N40l and neither of them exhibit this behaviour - if it's just cosmetic I'd not worry too much about it.

  25. #48
    HEXUS.social member Agent's Avatar
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    Re: Home Server Chit Chat

    Cool - some awesome replies. Thanks everyone

    Quote Originally Posted by aidanjt View Post
    You might check out Zentyal, it's basically Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS with a WebUI attached (or you could install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and install the latest stable (3.2) Zentyal WebUI from the Zentyal PPA, either way works). It doesn't come with media server integration but Plex can take care of that. Otherwise it's quite the capable remote management tool, it even integrates with the APT package manager. Also, turning on filesystem acls for your share storage volume(s) is a good idea, it'll make fixing ACLs easier through the Windows ACL editor easier.
    That defo looks interesting. I'll fire it up in a VM next week and see what it's like. It's probably quite bad, but now I'm weighing everything in my head up against a Windows install. I've been swearing I would learn something *nix based for a long time, more so since I've picked up coding more.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bluecube View Post
    Agent, from what you said regarding issues with OMV and what you want to have, it does sound as if Xpenology is the way forward for you. It does everything you require and has a very low memory/ CPU overhead.
    Thanks - another one I'll take a look at

    Quote Originally Posted by aidanjt View Post
    It's not that, either. They simply value UI designs which better serves *them* more, since it's what they're going to use. User friendly is different things to different levels of competence.
    I think it's a bit of both in all honesty. I'm guilty of it myself in systems I've made (mostly web stuff) - I've made it to serve me and not others. This has been blatantly obvious when people have emailed me "What the hell does it mean when it says to change the CSV file to ANSI before upload?", on a system I never intended to go further than my desktop

    The most obvious stuff I keep coming across is just lack of basic HID linkage. I don't have OMV in a VM right now, but there was one particular example where I needed to move my mouse over the entire horizontal length of my screen to hit an "apply" button that was separate from everything else in the UI. And then back to said UI area. Barmy.

    I think I'm just getting cranky as I get older to be honest. Basic UI principles are *super* easy compared to learning to actually code.

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    Not so sure of that, he is complaining OMV wasn't too strait forward....my first look at the Xpenology forum and I see that Microservers need their mac address hex edited in a config file......not what I would call strait forward
    Looking back, it wasn't too bad, but it's not just going to be me using it. I don't mind using SSH where needed, but other people in the house certainly won't be doing that. It's more of a case that *everything* should have been doable through a few clicks without needing to worry about permissions, ACLs and groups. Sure, give the option for this, but setting up a basic share should be a case of selecting a folder and assigning a group / user.
    In all seriousness, it was easier to share a folder in Windows 98. I'm not saying I couldn't work it out, I'm saying I shouldn't have to. Explaining the procedure to a house-mate just left him with a blank look - and he's computer literate.

    Anyway, plenty to play around with for a bit. Maybe I'll ESXi it.....Windows....*nix....I'll let you know
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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