Linux Server (NAS)

[oimi]

Hehe, I know what you mean. But the most expensive bit was the additional backup, which is cheaper than data recovery by professionals...

That's the price of my data!

I haven't moved yet, but I may start building this before I do. As I said it will be in the loft, so it would be nice to have pictures of this in it's planned position.. Who knows? Details will come on as the build progresses, what are you looking for in particular? Pictures mau be divulged! ;-)

I'll probably be back to ask for advice setting thuis baby up in terms of softRAID and all..

[peterb]

I haven't looked up the part numbers for your cabling, but do you already have a tool for connecting the RJ45 plugs to the cable?

[oimi]

I'd say so: 1 75075R CAB STRIPER PUNCHDOWN 0.79 0.91

[peterb]

I think that is for punching cable down into sockets - scans pages don't show a picture, but the crimp tools for RJ45 plugs are generally much more than that.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=4233 For plugs (and that is at the cheaper end of the market - lowest I have seen is about a fiver - pretty rubbishy - good ones can be £60 upwards)

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=10339 Professional tool - for sockets with insulation displacement connectors (idc)

[oimi]

Maybe I can take a picture to let you know what it looks like when I get that tool I mentioned...

[Maccer101]

I'm in the process of building a home file server I can't believe the money you want to spend on this project, for myself I bought a second hand Jetway mini itx Via mobo with a 2ghz CPU & 2xSata ports from ebay for £57, one stick of 1Gb 667mhz ram for £6, a 1TB hitachi HDD from scan for £70, a CF card and IDE convertor for £4 and am looking to put it in my old dell case with the dell PSU.

All in less than £140 (although I may buy a nice little Mini-ITX case with PSU)

I'm going to give FreeNAS a go (hence the CF card) but this setup would run a full blown Linux Distro (I tested the board with Ubuntu 8.10 at the weekend)

Once all set up I'm hoping to get between 20-30watts power usage, altought the Dell PSU may not be efficient enough at these low power draw amounts. You server will use the same cost of electricity a year than mine did to build!

[Singh400]

I'm in the process of building a home file server I can't believe the money you want to spend on this project, for myself I bought a second hand Jetway mini itx Via mobo with a 2ghz CPU & 2xSata ports from ebay for £57, one stick of 1Gb 667mhz ram for £6, a 1TB hitachi HDD from scan for £70, a CF card and IDE convertor for £4 and am looking to put it in my old dell case with the dell PSU.

All in less than £140 (although I may buy a nice little Mini-ITX case with PSU)

I'm going to give FreeNAS a go (hence the CF card) but this setup would run a full blown Linux Distro (I tested the board with Ubuntu 8.10 at the weekend)

Once all set up I'm hoping to get between 20-30watts power usage, altought the Dell PSU may not be efficient enough at these low power draw amounts. You server will use the same cost of electricity a year than mine did to build!

Fair enough but having only 2 SATA ports is very restrictive. It's hard to find low end motherboards with 6 SATA ports+. Hence why my home server is "over powered" if you like.

[peterb]

I'm in the process of building a home file server I can't believe the money you want to spend on this project, for myself I bought a second hand Jetway mini itx Via mobo with a 2ghz CPU & 2xSata ports from ebay for £57, one stick of 1Gb 667mhz ram for £6, a 1TB hitachi HDD from scan for £70, a CF card and IDE convertor for £4 and am looking to put it in my old dell case with the dell PSU.

All in less than £140 (although I may buy a nice little Mini-ITX case with PSU)

I'm going to give FreeNAS a go (hence the CF card) but this setup would run a full blown Linux Distro (I tested the board with Ubuntu 8.10 at the weekend)

Once all set up I'm hoping to get between 20-30watts power usage, altought the Dell PSU may not be efficient enough at these low power draw amounts. You server will use the same cost of electricity a year than mine did to build!

I used a low end Asus barebones system for mine - works like a charm, draws about 100W. Expansion is a bit limited, and so are the SATA paorts (it didn't have any - I use a card) but I used a separate card to add ports. I am tempted by an ITX system - but the lack of SATA ports (and space in the case is a big snag - unless you go extenal with SATA to USB interfaces.

[Maccer101]

maybe a fair point on the Sata ports but a AMD 740g board has 6 Satas and is about £40-45 couple it with a single core athlon/sempron one stick of budget ram and you have only spent £80

With mini itx you can go down the route of either a PCI Sata 150 card or external USB/Firewire disk, that said 2TB disks are working their way in and it won't be long until they are affordable.

If you have lots of money this mini itx NAs case would be sweeet

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=42

[peterb]

With mini itx you can go down the route of either a PCI Sata 150 card or external USB/Firewire disk, that said 2TB disks are working their way in and it won't be long until they are affordable.

If you have lots of money this mini itx NAs case would be sweeet

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=42

Oh dear - I feel a new project looming... (But that case is expensive)

Just had a look at this http://www.itx-warehouse.co.uk/Produ...?ProductID=833

However I fear we are going off topic...

[oimi]

Hello, I've built the file server.

Now it's software time, I'm going to install Debian and run a softwareRAID.

Can anyone please tell me:

1. If it is possible to install Debian in such a way that I may select when I wish, to load of a GUI version of Debian and all the rest of the time command-line?
2. If I use RAID 5, why is it that if if I wish to install larger drives in the future I will not benefit from the additional space provided by larger HDDs? I'm using 1 x 500GB HDD for the Operating system and programs. Seperate partitions will be created for image files of the operating systems of the Laptop, PC and File Server. I'm using 3 X 1TB HDDs for file storage [this configuration is also set up in an external backup solution].
3. I've burned the Debian installed to a DVD-R and inserted it into the new file server. I get up the menu and wish to manage one of the HDDs, regarding formatting and partition management. Can I deal with this using expert, graphical and other installation method options? I've had a look on the official website, but not had any luck finding out about this.

Thank you all so much for your help and interest! It's all becoming increasingly real now.

[peterb]

I haven't used debian, but if it is a typical distro, the solution would be to start it in command line and then when you want the gui, just type startx tio start the x server. Alternativekly you could cusomise the grub menu (the bootloader) to give two menu options - one gui, one CLI.

In (very) simple terms, an array is like a container written across the disks. If you increase the size of one disk, you don't increase the size of the container which is (if you like) an entity in itself. (That is a simplistic view)

[oimi]

I haven't used debian, but if it is a typical distro, the solution would be to start it in command line and then when you want the gui, just type startx tio start the x server. Alternativekly you could cusomise the grub menu (the bootloader) to give two menu options - one gui, one CLI.

In (very) simple terms, an array is like a container written across the disks. If you increase the size of one disk, you don't increase the size of the container which is (if you like) an entity in itself. (That is a simplistic view)

Hello Peter, the first option sounds best to me!

So what could I do to increase the size of the array when the time comes to expand the HDD size?

Thank you very much for your help!

I'm trying to install Debian using expert mode, but I'm having problems. I'm getting a message saying "There was a problem reading data from the CD-ROM. Please make sure it is in the drive. If retrying does not work, you should check the integrity of your CD-ROM. Failed to copy file from CD-ROM. Rety? <YES> <NO>".

I copied the ISO using a DVD-R at the slowest speed (2x) to ensure there were no copy errors. I found this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-81600.html and tried the instructions provided but had no luck. I hope someone has had similar experiences and has the solution!

[peterb]

Two ways to expand the array - one is to install the bigger drives, create the array, then clone the vitual drive that is the first array to the virtual drive that is the second. Alternatively do the same but with a backup if you are running out of ports. There may be other ways - with software raid you can raid partitions - but you need to read the details on mdadm pages - google mdadm and there is lots of info - I recommend you read that before you start the install. If you are\ planning to use LVM - read up about that too.

When you have downloaded the iso, have you checked the integrity (the md5 hash) against the published one? That will validate the download. Then once the DVD has been burned, if there is a validation option during the install process, use that to check that the burn is correct.

[oimi]

Yes, I plan to use one of the softRAIDs.

Hmmm, maybe creating a larger array wont be such a problem if I simply keep the clone on the external backup and transfer it back as if it were being copied from DVD.

I'll check the md5hash, but when I was writing the data to disc I did check the verification option and it was successful.

EDIT:

I used winMd5Sum to check the original ISO that I downloaded. The program claculated that the MD5 Sum was 78c786bb949a043c7ef1066dcc8622b3;compared to the MD5 Sum provided on the original site. This concludes that there is certainly a difference between the two. What's the next step then? Having checked the file again, I notice that the ISO is apparently reaches a file size of 383MB, but when opened using PowerISO, that size goes right up to 4463MB.

What do you think?

[oimi]

So I need to use both LVM and MDADM in conjunction?

I read about them on there relevant pages:

http://www.linuxmanpages.com/man8/mdadm.8.php
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/whatislvm.html