[gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Howdy,

A friend donated a older PC to me the other day.  It's a fairly nice rig
despite its age.  Some specs for those interested but may not matter in
the end.  TL;DR, skip to next paragraph.  It's a Dell Inspiron 546.  AMD
9750 quad core CPU running at 2.4GHz.  It currently has 4GBs but
planning to upgrade to 8GBs, its max.  It has a ATI Radeon HD3200 video
card.  ATI is sort of new to me and it isn't very fast I'm sure but may
not matter since it may not be used much.  It has a WD 640GB hard drive,
blue color designation for usage.  That is more than enough space for
the OS.  It also has a Realtek ethernet card.  I did some googling, it
seems this is a Linux compatible system even tho it came with windoze. 
The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.  I haven't
measured the wattage it pulls now.  May do that later. 

I'm thinking of making a storage system out of it.  I think it is
referred to as a NFS.  It should be plenty fast enough to move data
around.  Only downside, not many spaces for hard drives.  I see only two
spaces for hard drives with one already taken.  There is a open area
that I could add a drive cage, I think.  May can fit two or three hard
drives in that.  There's also a 5 1/4 space too.  Another downside tho,
I'm thinking of going to SAS drives.  If I can afford that, it will be a
more dependable setup.  Of course, that means I have to add card(s) for
the controller(s).  It doesn't have a lot of expansion slots but may be
enough. Mobo is only SATA.

Another option, find another case.  If I recall correctly tho, some
puter makers don't use standard layouts for the mobo screw holes. 
Anyone know if Dell is a standard ATX or some other screw hole pattern? 
I could also have a open system with everything just mounted on the wall
in open air.  Would help a lot with cooling for sure.  It does open it
up for something hitting it directly tho.  I don't really like that idea
but it's a option. 

Of course, another option is to make this a media system and use those
little raspberry type thingys for the NFS.  Or, buy a used NFS off ebay,
kinda pricey last I looked.  Either of those would likely pull less
power.  I'm sure the little raspberry thingy would pull very little
power.  One may need to worry about what the drives pull more than the
raspberry thingy itself.  Heck, even fans can add up. 

I have another question related to LVM.  Let's say a system crashes and
dies.  Or I just move a drive, or drives, with LVM on it to another
system.  Does the system just recognize the drives and knows how to add
them or do I have to do that manually on the new system?  I've googled
in the past but never quite got how that works.  I've read it is doable
but not sure how. 

Would a small raspberry thingy be better in the long run from a light
bill point of view?  Can I use SAS drives with it?  Keep in mind, I plan
it to run 24/7.  My TV is almost always on, if I'm home which is a LOT
since I'm disabled. 

Some of this is me thinking out loud.  Some is trying to look for ideas,
opinions etc.  Of course, I got questions up there as well. 

Link to pics.  I hope it works.  There isn't really a good image hosting
site I can find.  All of them limit something or other.  One pic is a
side view of system, one shows the open space a drive cage may can fit
into, hard to see tho, and another is of the cage itself.  It's the only
cage I have but ebay has them too.

https://freeimage.host/a/dell-546.dBilt

What will I get into next?  May be back in the woods cutting trees again
before to long, health and weather allowing.  Always something but the
puter is a somewhat nice something.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 


P. S.  They said they replaced it because it was getting slow.  During
my inspection, I noticed the CPU cooler needed cleaning.  It was about
stopped up with dust.  The rest of the system tho is clean.  We all know
how those CPU coolers are dust magnets, video cards too.  It looks like
they would make them so they wouldn't plug up with dust but I guess if
they could, they would have by now.  I blew out the dust with my
portable air tank and it runs much faster than it did the first time I
booted it.  I rescued some pictures off of it for them.  I opened LOo as
a test.  It took a while the first time.  After cleaning, opened up in
just a few seconds.  Much faster.  Sometimes I like getting a dusty
rig.  ROFL 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[bobwxc]

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在 2020/12/19 下午9:02, Dale 写道:
> Howdy,
>
> A friend donated a older PC to me the other day.  It's a fairly nice rig
> despite its age.  Some specs for those interested but may not matter in
> the end.  TL;DR, skip to next paragraph.  It's a Dell Inspiron 546.  AMD
> 9750 quad core CPU running at 2.4GHz.  It currently has 4GBs but
> planning to upgrade to 8GBs, its max.  It has a ATI Radeon HD3200 video
> card.  ATI is sort of new to me and it isn't very fast I'm sure but may
> not matter since it may not be used much.  It has a WD 640GB hard drive,
> blue color designation for usage.  That is more than enough space for
> the OS.  It also has a Realtek ethernet card.  I did some googling, it
> seems this is a Linux compatible system even tho it came with windoze.
> The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
> is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
> some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.  I haven't
> measured the wattage it pulls now.  May do that later.
> ...
Hi,
I think the system is enough for a basic NFS.
The CPU support x64 and 8Gib memory is enough. The graph card is ATI Radeon
HD3200 seems support UVD hardware decode for 1080p h264 video, a little poor
for a media system.

But the cpu power is 125W, will cost much electricity for a 24h home 
system.
Using a raspberry-pi may save power, but come with poor performance, 
also it is
said that the new raspberry-pi-4 has a decent performance.

If you want to get a good NFS, please pay high attention to the power 
supply, it is
very important for hard disks. Power fluctuation may destroy your disk. 
That is
also raspberry's weakness, it generally can't provide a stable power for 
the disks.

I am not very familiar with LVM, let other people answer the question. 
But I also
recommend that you can have a look about "btrfs" and "zfs".

Best regards.

-- 
bobwxc



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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, Dale wrote:
>A friend donated a older PC to me the other day.  It's a fairly nice rig
>despite its age.  Some specs for those interested but may not matter in
>the end.  TL;DR, skip to next paragraph.  It's a Dell Inspiron 546.  AMD
>9750 quad core CPU running at 2.4GHz.  It currently has 4GBs but

Meh. I'm running an Athlon II X2 250, 65W TDP, i.e. same CPU family
(0x10/16), running at 3.0 GHz with 4GiB DDR3 RAM ... After (again)
over 10 years, I'd like to upgrade again a bit, Ryzen 5000 4-8core
w/32GiB RAM like ;)

[..]
>The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
>is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
>some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.  I haven't
>measured the wattage it pulls now.  May do that later. 

Beware: I use a lot of disks and I tried running it with then 8 (or 9? 
or 10? Lots!) HDDs with a 500W (or even 550W) PSU. System wouldn't
reliably boot up. Replaced with a 650W PSU and it's running since
(which is, those 10+ years now :) Currently I have a SSD and 7 HDDs
(and 2 DVD[1]) ;)

Typical spinning rust drives are (or at least were) specced to take up
to about 30W while spinning up, ~10-12W-ish on access, ~5-7W-ish while
idle. For me, that then was ~240-300W alone for all the drives at
power-on. Too much obviously for the 500W PSU along with all the rest
of the box also starting ;)

I've got a nice Seasonic PSU from Corsair (TX650 v2) (the v1 was some
other stuff), only drawback is that it has gotten a bit clogged up
with dust and gotten loud and there's no easy way to clean it out (at
least without taking it apart) *sigh*...

>I'm thinking of making a storage system out of it.  I think it is
>referred to as a NFS.

Nope. NFS is "Network File System". You mean "NAS" = "Network Attached
Storage" ;)

>It should be plenty fast enough to move data around.  Only downside,
>not many spaces for hard drives.

Also, that Phenom X6 w/ 125W TDP is plenty powerhungry, even at idle
(ISTR 50W-ish, while modern stuff can take only 20-10W for the system,
aside from the HDDs in both cases).

>I see only two spaces for hard drives with one already taken.  There
>is a open area that I could add a drive cage, I think.  May can fit
>two or three hard drives in that.  There's also a 5 1/4 space too. 
>Another downside tho, I'm thinking of going to SAS drives.  If I can
>afford that, it will be a more dependable setup.  Of course, that
>means I have to add card(s) for the controller(s).  It doesn't have a
>lot of expansion slots but may be enough. Mobo is only SATA.
>
>Another option, find another case.  If I recall correctly tho, some
>puter makers don't use standard layouts for the mobo screw holes. 
>Anyone know if Dell is a standard ATX or some other screw hole pattern? 

No idea, but I'd go for a different case. And probably, depending on
budget vs. power-consumption (cost) for a different CPU+MoBo+RAM,
something like a AMD Ryzen 3 3200G or maybe a x86 Celeron/Pentium/i3...

HTH,
-dnh

[1] too lazy even to unplug the older one

-- 
Actually, NT is more like LSD with all the good effects filtered out.
                                                     -- Andrew Maddox

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

David Haller wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, Dale wrote:
>> A friend donated a older PC to me the other day.  It's a fairly nice rig
>> despite its age.  Some specs for those interested but may not matter in
>> the end.  TL;DR, skip to next paragraph.  It's a Dell Inspiron 546.  AMD
>> 9750 quad core CPU running at 2.4GHz.  It currently has 4GBs but
> Meh. I'm running an Athlon II X2 250, 65W TDP, i.e. same CPU family
> (0x10/16), running at 3.0 GHz with 4GiB DDR3 RAM ... After (again)
> over 10 years, I'd like to upgrade again a bit, Ryzen 5000 4-8core
> w/32GiB RAM like ;)
>
> [..]
>> The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
>> is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
>> some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.  I haven't
>> measured the wattage it pulls now.  May do that later. 
> Beware: I use a lot of disks and I tried running it with then 8 (or 9? 
> or 10? Lots!) HDDs with a 500W (or even 550W) PSU. System wouldn't
> reliably boot up. Replaced with a 650W PSU and it's running since
> (which is, those 10+ years now :) Currently I have a SSD and 7 HDDs
> (and 2 DVD[1]) ;)
>
> Typical spinning rust drives are (or at least were) specced to take up
> to about 30W while spinning up, ~10-12W-ish on access, ~5-7W-ish while
> idle. For me, that then was ~240-300W alone for all the drives at
> power-on. Too much obviously for the 500W PSU along with all the rest
> of the box also starting ;)
>
> I've got a nice Seasonic PSU from Corsair (TX650 v2) (the v1 was some
> other stuff), only drawback is that it has gotten a bit clogged up
> with dust and gotten loud and there's no easy way to clean it out (at
> least without taking it apart) *sigh*...

That's something to keep in mind.  I know start up is when drives put a
load on a power supply.  I might add, right at the time the power supply
is trying to get its stuff in gear.  For my main system, I think I have
a 600 watt, maybe 650.  I've got several drives in it tho.  According to
the UPS, it only has a 190 watt load and that includes the puter,
monitor and some other odds and ends.  Still, at start up, that power
supply needs to be able to handle that surge and at the worst time it
can have it at that.  A 300 watt power supply with that number of drives
could lead to problems if it would boot at all.


>> I'm thinking of making a storage system out of it.  I think it is
>> referred to as a NFS.
> Nope. NFS is "Network File System". You mean "NAS" = "Network Attached
> Storage" ;)

I thought that wasn't right.  Later on, I figured it out.  It was just
one letter but it was a big difference.  :/


>> It should be plenty fast enough to move data around.  Only downside,
>> not many spaces for hard drives.
> Also, that Phenom X6 w/ 125W TDP is plenty powerhungry, even at idle
> (ISTR 50W-ish, while modern stuff can take only 20-10W for the system,
> aside from the HDDs in both cases).

That's one reason I was thinking about those Raspberry thingys.  I've
read some of the new ones have more features and more processing power. 
Keep in mind, I'll only be playing videos from it or saving videos to it
or making backups.  Of course, with the upcoming fiber connected
internet, saving videos can take up some bandwidth.  It's rated at
200MBs/sec.  I doubt it will be quite that speed but still, SATA isn't
that fast either.  ;-)  One thing, I want to be able to expand which is
why I want to build instead of buy.  The recent Dell is a start at least. 


>> I see only two spaces for hard drives with one already taken.  There
>> is a open area that I could add a drive cage, I think.  May can fit
>> two or three hard drives in that.  There's also a 5 1/4 space too. 
>> Another downside tho, I'm thinking of going to SAS drives.  If I can
>> afford that, it will be a more dependable setup.  Of course, that
>> means I have to add card(s) for the controller(s).  It doesn't have a
>> lot of expansion slots but may be enough. Mobo is only SATA.
>>
>> Another option, find another case.  If I recall correctly tho, some
>> puter makers don't use standard layouts for the mobo screw holes. 
>> Anyone know if Dell is a standard ATX or some other screw hole pattern? 
> No idea, but I'd go for a different case. And probably, depending on
> budget vs. power-consumption (cost) for a different CPU+MoBo+RAM,
> something like a AMD Ryzen 3 3200G or maybe a x86 Celeron/Pentium/i3...
>
> HTH,
> -dnh
>
> [1] too lazy even to unplug the older one
>

I need to boot it up, let it sit for 30 minutes or so, try to catch it
at idle, and see how much it pulls.  Of course, it may do better with
Linux.  Windoze can be bloated at times.  :-p

Thanks for the info.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[antlists]

On 19/12/2020 16:51, David Haller wrote:
>> The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
>> is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
>> some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.  I haven't
>> measured the wattage it pulls now.  May do that later.

> Beware: I use a lot of disks and I tried running it with then 8 (or 9?
> or 10? Lots!) HDDs with a 500W (or even 550W) PSU. System wouldn't
> reliably boot up. Replaced with a 650W PSU and it's running since
> (which is, those 10+ years now:)  Currently I have a SSD and 7 HDDs
> (and 2 DVD[1]);)

Bear in mind I'm talking about a computer the size of a washing 
machines, and an 800MB drive the size of a tower case...

Back in the old days, you could configure the system so the drive would 
wait a certain number of seconds after power-on before actually powering up.

So you'd work out what power you had spare above normal operation to 
spin up your drives, and avoid overloading the system.

That useful feature has probably been lost in the name of progress... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, antlists wrote:
>On 19/12/2020 16:51, David Haller wrote:
>> Beware: I use a lot of disks and I tried running it with then 8 (or 9?
>> or 10? Lots!) HDDs with a 500W (or even 550W) PSU. System wouldn't
>> reliably boot up. Replaced with a 650W PSU and it's running since
>> (which is, those 10+ years now:)  Currently I have a SSD and 7 HDDs
>> (and 2 DVD[1]);)
>
>Bear in mind I'm talking about a computer the size of a washing machines, and
>an 800MB drive the size of a tower case...
>
>Back in the old days, you could configure the system so the drive would wait
>a certain number of seconds after power-on before actually powering up.
>
>So you'd work out what power you had spare above normal operation to spin up
>your drives, and avoid overloading the system.
>
>That useful feature has probably been lost in the name of progress... :-)

Called "staggered spinup" (or something alike).

In servers, it's still there, but not in run-of-the-mill desktops like
mine... Sadly so in my case, I could and would have used that...

-dnh, the MoBo though is quite a fine piece with 8 SATA + 2 eSATA
    ports onboard :) I'm gonna miss eSATA in newer HW :( Hot-plug
    almost like USB but full SATA feature set and speed (e.g. SMART).

-- 
It takes a million monkeys at typewriters to write Shakespeare, but
only a dozen monkeys at computers to run Network Solutions.
                                               -- Patrick Delahanty

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[antlists]

On 19/12/2020 18:49, David Haller wrote:
> -dnh, the MoBo though is quite a fine piece with 8 SATA + 2 eSATA
>      ports onboard:)  I'm gonna miss eSATA in newer HW:(  Hot-plug
>      almost like USB but full SATA feature set and speed (e.g. SMART).

Buy add-in sata cards. The ones I've been looking at are two-port cards, 
with two internal and two external (jumper-selected) connectors.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, antlists wrote:
>On 19/12/2020 18:49, David Haller wrote:
>> -dnh, the MoBo though is quite a fine piece with 8 SATA + 2 eSATA
>>      ports onboard:)  I'm gonna miss eSATA in newer HW:(  Hot-plug
>>      almost like USB but full SATA feature set and speed (e.g. SMART).
>
>Buy add-in sata cards. The ones I've been looking at are two-port cards, with
>two internal and two external (jumper-selected) connectors.

I already got one. Yes, I'd pitch MoBo w/many SATA vs. MoBo w/fewer
SATA plus AddIn, but PCI(e) slots are also limited and >=2 port cards
get expensive rather quick, say a card with >= 4 internal and
_extra_[0] 1-2 eSATA ... So, I'll rather have a MoBo with lots of SATA
+ addin than MoBo plus tons of addin cards...

My MoBo has the AMD 710 "Southbridge" with 6 int. SATA2/3G [1] ports,
a MV9128 with 2 int. SATA3/6G ports and a JMB362 with 2 ext. eSATA2/3G
ports. Try to find _anything_ even remotely resembling that (with any
SATA rev) ;) My guess is, with most MoBos you'd need two 4-port addin
cards even for that. And my MoBo was not even expensive, just ~80 EUR
in 04/2010. BTW: GA-770TA-UD3, hosting a AMD Athlon II X2 250 for then
~65 EUR :) Still running as champs :))

Again: find me a MoBo + Addin Card(s) Combo with: >= 9 internal SATA
ports, >=1 eSATA ports (dedicated, not switched with one of the
internal ones!). An IDE port would be a nice extra.

Were it not for gentoo and large stuff needing 6+ hours to compile,
the occasional reencoding of a video[3], and some fucking websites
which take ages to load (which was one reason for me to update 10
years ago from my then Athlon 500[2])... *ELIDED* those *ELIDED*
webdevs *ELIDED* - sideways - *ELIDED* that *ELIDED* *ELIDED* so
called webpages that gobble CPU as if there's no tomorrow! And
*ELIDED* I know, I built webpages that (besides larger pictures) load
snappy over a 4kB/56kBit/s modem in fractions of a second (no wonder,
being typically <0.5KB in size and no JS or other crud, there's a lot
you can fit in 1 KB :).

What was I saying, ahh, yes: ... I'd not even consider upgrading.

Well, more RAM would be nice by now, what with those *ELIDED* browsers
and *ELIDED* Java-Apps gobbling RAM as if there's TiBs of it for
free... *ARGHHHH*&&RAS*()#@*{!@_)(@I*CONNECTION RESET BY BEER*

-dnh

[0] i.e. working in parallel to the internal ports

[1] SATA2 was still normal then

[2] yep, the original, slowest Athlon ever sold, sufficed for me for
    many many years, along with an even older Matrox Mystique (the
    original 150MHz RAMDAC but as the beefy 4MB SGRAM version)

[3] BTW: it's astonishing how inefficient some streamed videos are
    encoded, just today I crunched down one from 2.9GiB to about
    639MiB. Albeit, I scaled down from 720p to 576p, but do the maths.

    I regularly get to <50% of the size of the original without any
    scaling, and all without any visible loss (x264 with crf=23:nr=750,
    that codec-internal noise reduction alone can get you ~10% less
    size ;) Well, it's what you get when you don't know about codecs
    or you just run HW-encoders at defaults, I guess...

-- 
"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare.  I came out of it dead broke,
without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of
UNIX."  "Well, that's something," Avi says.  "Normally those two are
mutually exclusive."                    --Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Wols Lists]

On 19/12/20 21:31, David Haller wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, antlists wrote:
>> On 19/12/2020 18:49, David Haller wrote:
>>> -dnh, the MoBo though is quite a fine piece with 8 SATA + 2 eSATA
>>>      ports onboard:)  I'm gonna miss eSATA in newer HW:(  Hot-plug
>>>      almost like USB but full SATA feature set and speed (e.g. SMART).
>>
>> Buy add-in sata cards. The ones I've been looking at are two-port cards, with
>> two internal and two external (jumper-selected) connectors.
> 
> I already got one. Yes, I'd pitch MoBo w/many SATA vs. MoBo w/fewer
> SATA plus AddIn, but PCI(e) slots are also limited and >=2 port cards
> get expensive rather quick, say a card with >= 4 internal and
> _extra_[0] 1-2 eSATA ... So, I'll rather have a MoBo with lots of SATA
> + addin than MoBo plus tons of addin cards...

Well, I feel as frustrated as you with my new setup. My new mobo
wouldn't boot so I took it to the shop saying "I think it needs a BIOS
update". They replaced the mobo, and fortunately offered me the old one
back before chucking it. I discovered it was still under warranty, sent
it back to Gigabyte, and it came back fixed with a BIOS update!!!

The replacement mobo (which they charged me twice what I'd paid for the
original) was spec'd as having "plenty of onboard SATA". I think the old
Gigabyte mobo had at least 6. The new one has 6, of which two collide
with the graphics cards or NVMe. Seeing as I'm planning on running
multi-seat, I need two graphics cards ... :-(
> 
> 
> Were it not for gentoo and large stuff needing 6+ hours to compile,
> the occasional reencoding of a video[3], and some fucking websites
> which take ages to load (which was one reason for me to update 10
> years ago from my then Athlon 500[2])... *ELIDED* those *ELIDED*
> webdevs *ELIDED* - sideways - *ELIDED* that *ELIDED* *ELIDED* so
> called webpages that gobble CPU as if there's no tomorrow! And
> *ELIDED* I know, I built webpages that (besides larger pictures) load
> snappy over a 4kB/56kBit/s modem in fractions of a second (no wonder,
> being typically <0.5KB in size and no JS or other crud, there's a lot
> you can fit in 1 KB :).
> 
> What was I saying, ahh, yes: ... I'd not even consider upgrading.
> 
> Well, more RAM would be nice by now, what with those *ELIDED* browsers
> and *ELIDED* Java-Apps gobbling RAM as if there's TiBs of it for
> free... *ARGHHHH*&&RAS*()#@*{!@_)(@I*CONNECTION RESET BY BEER*

Smile ...
> 
> -dnh
> 
> [0] i.e. working in parallel to the internal ports
> 
> [1] SATA2 was still normal then
> 
> [2] yep, the original, slowest Athlon ever sold, sufficed for me for
>     many many years, along with an even older Matrox Mystique (the
>     original 150MHz RAMDAC but as the beefy 4MB SGRAM version)

I ran that same Matrox - loved it - with an Athlon 1400  - tbird - and
that lasted me ages and ages. The chip ran at 1050 because the mobo was
a 100MHz bus but the chip wanted 133MHz. I think that machine had 758MB
ram - 3x256MB sticks because that's the max it would take. And because
its replacement had "issues" (still does) I compiled everything on the
slow machine before installing it on the fast one ...
> 
> [3] BTW: it's astonishing how inefficient some streamed videos are
>     encoded, just today I crunched down one from 2.9GiB to about
>     639MiB. Albeit, I scaled down from 720p to 576p, but do the maths.
> 
>     I regularly get to <50% of the size of the original without any
>     scaling, and all without any visible loss (x264 with crf=23:nr=750,
>     that codec-internal noise reduction alone can get you ~10% less
>     size ;) Well, it's what you get when you don't know about codecs
>     or you just run HW-encoders at defaults, I guess...
> 
Oh - and if your original is mpeg2, you might find you've deleted entire
streams of stuff you're not interested in.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 07:02:23 -0600, Dale wrote:

> I have another question related to LVM.  Let's say a system crashes and
> dies.  Or I just move a drive, or drives, with LVM on it to another
> system.  Does the system just recognize the drives and knows how to add
> them or do I have to do that manually on the new system? 

It should just work if you move all the PVs in the volume group. One
thing to watch out for is if the destination system is already using LVM,
the volume groups must be named differently. That's why I always use
unique VG names based on the hostname.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

An atheist is someone who feels he has no invisible means of support.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 07:02:23 -0600, Dale wrote:
>
>> I have another question related to LVM.  Let's say a system crashes and
>> dies.  Or I just move a drive, or drives, with LVM on it to another
>> system.  Does the system just recognize the drives and knows how to add
>> them or do I have to do that manually on the new system? 
> It should just work if you move all the PVs in the volume group. One
> thing to watch out for is if the destination system is already using LVM,
> the volume groups must be named differently. That's why I always use
> unique VG names based on the hostname.
>
>


Ahhh, so it stores the info on the drive so that it knows what it is. 
Neato!!  I was thinking it was in /etc/lvm/ or something.  I've wondered
about that for a while now. 

Naming them based on hostname is also a good idea.  I don't have mine
named that way but if I ever redo them, I will.  It could save me some
problems down the road. 

Thanks much!

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 11:32:21 -0600, Dale wrote:

> Naming them based on hostname is also a good idea.  I don't have mine
> named that way but if I ever redo them, I will.  It could save me some
> problems down the road. 

Renaming them now is trivial, man vgrename. Doing it after the system has
died can be less so.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"There are no stupid questions, just too many inquisitive idiots."

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 11:32:21 -0600, Dale wrote:
>
>> Naming them based on hostname is also a good idea.  I don't have mine
>> named that way but if I ever redo them, I will.  It could save me some
>> problems down the road. 
> Renaming them now is trivial, man vgrename. Doing it after the system has
> died can be less so.
>
>


I didn't know that.  It seems every time I learn something about LVM, it
just gets better.  You wouldn't have some examples handy by any chance
would you? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 11:54:58 -0600, Dale wrote:

> >> Naming them based on hostname is also a good idea.  I don't have mine
> >> named that way but if I ever redo them, I will.  It could save me
> >> some problems down the road.   
> > Renaming them now is trivial, man vgrename. Doing it after the system
> > has died can be less so.

> I didn't know that.  It seems every time I learn something about LVM, it
> just gets better.  You wouldn't have some examples handy by any chance
> would you? 

Not really, it's been a while since I needed to do it, but if you are
mounting by LABEL in fstab, it's just a matter of running vgrename to
give it a new name. If you are mounting by /dev/mapper nodes, you'll need
to edit fstab too.

You'll also need to change your kernel options if root is on the VG you
renamed.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

One-seventh of life is spent on Monday.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 11:54:58 -0600, Dale wrote:
>
>>>> Naming them based on hostname is also a good idea.  I don't have mine
>>>> named that way but if I ever redo them, I will.  It could save me
>>>> some problems down the road.   
>>> Renaming them now is trivial, man vgrename. Doing it after the system
>>> has died can be less so.
>> I didn't know that.  It seems every time I learn something about LVM, it
>> just gets better.  You wouldn't have some examples handy by any chance
>> would you? 
> Not really, it's been a while since I needed to do it, but if you are
> mounting by LABEL in fstab, it's just a matter of running vgrename to
> give it a new name. If you are mounting by /dev/mapper nodes, you'll need
> to edit fstab too.
>
> You'll also need to change your kernel options if root is on the VG you
> renamed.
>
>


I think I get the idea but examples help make it more clear.  I quite
often find myself googling for examples of something.  Once I look at
examples, hopefully with some nice comments, then I can usually figure
how to make something work like I want, even if it is different from the
examples.  Sadly, I couldn't get that with some video players recently. 
I literally copy and pasted the config and the mouse doesn't control
anything.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  :/  At least the keyboard
keys work.

I do use LABELS so I'm good there.  Most everything is in LVM but / and
/boot is not.  You know me and the init thingys.  Bad enough to deal
with what I got.  lol 

On the other topic.  I found this. 

https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/node/node-804/black/

I found them on Ebay, brand new even, at around $100.  That thing is
NIFTY.  Lots of hard drives and doesn't cost a arm and a leg, plus maybe
a head as well.  Some of those cases get expensive quick and hold a lot
fewer drives. 

Still like the raspberry type thingys power wise tho.  It would need a
really good power supply tho. 

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :_) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[antlists]

On 19/12/2020 17:32, Dale wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 07:02:23 -0600, Dale wrote:
>>
>>> I have another question related to LVM.  Let's say a system crashes and
>>> dies.  Or I just move a drive, or drives, with LVM on it to another
>>> system.  Does the system just recognize the drives and knows how to add
>>> them or do I have to do that manually on the new system?
>> It should just work if you move all the PVs in the volume group. One
>> thing to watch out for is if the destination system is already using LVM,
>> the volume groups must be named differently. That's why I always use
>> unique VG names based on the hostname.
>>
> 
> Ahhh, so it stores the info on the drive so that it knows what it is.
> Neato!!  I was thinking it was in /etc/lvm/ or something.  I've wondered
> about that for a while now.

mdadm version 0 stored its information in mdadm.conf. That was a mistake 
- it had the downside you couldn't boot from the array, it was wide open 
to errors, arrays were regularly trashed because things had got 
confused, etc etc. Sticking all the necessary information in a 
superblock is now considered must-do good practice.
> 
> Naming them based on hostname is also a good idea.  I don't have mine
> named that way but if I ever redo them, I will.  It could save me some
> problems down the road.
> 
Again, that's now the default for mdadm - not necessarily the user name, 
but the internal array name is something like "tigger:0", to quote one 
of mine - array 0 created on tigger.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

antlists wrote:
> On 19/12/2020 17:32, Dale wrote:
>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>> On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 07:02:23 -0600, Dale wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have another question related to LVM.  Let's say a system crashes
>>>> and
>>>> dies.  Or I just move a drive, or drives, with LVM on it to another
>>>> system.  Does the system just recognize the drives and knows how to
>>>> add
>>>> them or do I have to do that manually on the new system?
>>> It should just work if you move all the PVs in the volume group. One
>>> thing to watch out for is if the destination system is already using
>>> LVM,
>>> the volume groups must be named differently. That's why I always use
>>> unique VG names based on the hostname.
>>>
>>
>> Ahhh, so it stores the info on the drive so that it knows what it is.
>> Neato!!  I was thinking it was in /etc/lvm/ or something.  I've wondered
>> about that for a while now.
>
> mdadm version 0 stored its information in mdadm.conf. That was a
> mistake - it had the downside you couldn't boot from the array, it was
> wide open to errors, arrays were regularly trashed because things had
> got confused, etc etc. Sticking all the necessary information in a
> superblock is now considered must-do good practice.
>>
>> Naming them based on hostname is also a good idea.  I don't have mine
>> named that way but if I ever redo them, I will.  It could save me some
>> problems down the road.
>>
> Again, that's now the default for mdadm - not necessarily the user
> name, but the internal array name is something like "tigger:0", to
> quote one of mine - array 0 created on tigger.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>


Right now, this is mine:


root@fireball / # vgs
VG            #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize    VFree 
Home2        2   1   0 wz--n-  <12.74t      0
OS               1   3   0 wz--n- <124.46g <35.46g
backup        1   1   0 wz--n-  698.63g      0
root@fireball / #


I'm assuming it would be best to have them named like this:


root@fireball / # vgs
VG            #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize    VFree 
fb-Home2        2   1   0 wz--n-  <12.74t      0
fb-OS               1   3   0 wz--n- <124.46g <35.46g
fb-backup        1   1   0 wz--n-  698.63g      0
root@fireball / #


The added fb would be short for fireball.  If this rig suddenly blew a
gasket and I stuck the drives in a new system, it would make them
different at least.  Once moved and stable, Neil says I can rename it to
something else to match the new system.  It sounds like a good idea
since right now, I could move those drives to a system that has the same
names which would cause issues.  As a matter of fact, the reason for
Home2 is because I already had a Home group in a previous move.  I guess
we are talking about the same thing.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 07:02:23AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
> Howdy,
>
> A friend donated a older PC to me the other day.  It's a fairly nice rig
> despite its age.

It may be adequate enough for demanding desktop tasks, but you want it to
sit around 24/7 and serve files. To me, that looks like overkill.

> 9750 quad core CPU running at 2.4GHz.  It currently has 4GBs but
> planning to upgrade to 8GBs, its max.  It has a ATI Radeon HD3200 video
> card.

If you just want to use it as a file server, think of removing the video
card. This will save considerable power.

> The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
> is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
> some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.

Even if a drive draws up to 30 W, this leaves room for about six drives plus
100 W for CPU and the board. This is just peak power at boot, so even if it
reaches 300 W, the PSU should be fine (as long as it is not a cheap Chinese
firecracker). The certified PSU efficiencies apply within 20..80 %, so a PSU
rated for 400 W will be considerable less efficient (which also means
produces more heat) below 80 W of power draw. My PC idles at 30 W with one
HDD and an i5-4590 (65 W CPU, but at idle, they're basically all the same
these days). And even that value disappointed me when I build the PC 6 years
ago. The board needs to be properly designed, too.

> I'm thinking of making a storage system out of it.  I think it is
> referred to as a NFS.  It should be plenty fast enough to move data
> around.

Gigabit Ethernet maxes out at 117 MB/s. So even without RAID, every
not-too-old HDD can max that out.

> Only downside, not many spaces for hard drives.  I see only two
> spaces for hard drives with one already taken.  There is a open area
> that I could add a drive cage, I think.  May can fit two or three hard
> drives in that.  There's also a 5 1/4 space too.  Another downside tho,
> I'm thinking of going to SAS drives.  If I can afford that, it will be a
> more dependable setup.

You often mention your sometimes tight budget. From that perspective, I
can't quite follow that thought. The cheapest SAS cards I can find in a
local price search engine start at 70 €, whereas the cheapest 4×SATA card
can be had for 21 €. Looking at 4 TB WD drives as an example, the cheapest
SAS drive started at 145 €, but a WD RED NAS drive (intended for
uninterrupted operation) at 93 €. So just the SAS premium will set you back
as much as an entire entry-level PC.

> Another option, find another case.  If I recall correctly tho, some
> puter makers don't use standard layouts for the mobo screw holes. 

Well, if you buy from a well-known brand, I don't think you will have any
problem there (even if it is their cheapest model).

> I could also have a open system with everything just mounted on the wall
> in open air.

I don't think that's a good idea. I remember you talking of lousy power
utility reliability, and from what I heard over the years of the general
standards of US rural power cabling (of course I'm no expert or even just
savvy), I'd be worried of interference. I'd also be concerned about damage
through physical contact (i.e. you bump into it, or something falls against
it).

> Of course, another option is to make this a media system and use those
> little raspberry type thingys for the NFS.

I am running raspi as a low-level server (pi-hole, Nextcloud, contacts and
calendar server). It's a model 3B with a quadcore SoC and 1 Gig of ram,
currently running raspbian (I am currently examining arch). For what you
want, it is not powerful enough. Even the gen 4 does not suffice. It has
gigabit ethernet (the 3 only has 100 Mb), but has no SATA connectors. So you
either need a SATA bridge or are limited to USB enclosures. It has two
USB-3-Sockets. Either way, you need a separate power supply for 3,5″ drives.
On [0], the Pi 4 is benchmarked and reaches 363 Mb/s over USB. That is a
third of Gigabit speed. Not counting overhead for filesystems.

> Or, buy a used NFS off ebay, kinda pricey last I looked.

I built a NAS in a for-purpose cubic case [1] a few years ago. The system
was costly, maybe even unnecessarily high, because I went with a niche
Mini-ITX form factor, ZFS (for redundancy), thus ECC RAM, thus a server
board that supports ECC. On the other hand, that board supports staggerd
spin-up. At idle that system slurps around 50 Watts with a 300 W gold PSU.
It has four WD RED 6 TB drives and a small SSD for the system.

It is actually the last Gentoo system that I run and maintain. :'-( System
upgrades puts some heat stress on the drives because they sit right atop the
CPU due to the crammed dimensions, but since it's a server, the package
count is hugely reduced compared to a desktop. And since I don't keep it
running 24/7, I usually do upgrades right after bootup.

My case is quite cheaply-made, with sharp edges here and there and some
design flaws. An adequate, high-quality alternative might be [2].

A tailored-to-the-use-case device might be your best option. You may not be
able to use that hand-me-down machine at all, but I think it is unsuitable
for 24/7 storage anyway. When I built my NAS, I was considering an HP
Microserver, which has the same general specs as my system, but comes in a
one-stop package including an optimised mainboard (think of HDD cabling).

> Either of those would likely pull less power.  I'm sure the little
> raspberry thingy would pull very little power.

That indeed. But 3.5″ disks would need their own power supply anyway.

> Heck, even fans can add up. 

For the raspi itself you would need no fans. But there are dedicated
external enclosures that have no mainboard and OS themselves, they are just
multibay enclosures that are connected to a host, usually through eSATA or
USB. For an example see [3]. However, I don't have any knowledge about their
suitability for a storage server.

Yet another alternative is an actual off-the-shelf NAS such as synology or
qnap. They don't run our preferred Linux and some even are mentioned in the
news due to security vulnerabilities in their admin interfaces. But they are
very efficient in their use of space and power. You can install applications
into them, some even do containers, but I'm not sure about youtube-dl and
friends.

> Would a small raspberry thingy be better in the long run from a light
> bill point of view?

Definitely, but it cannot handle what you intend to do (hook up multiple
3,5″ drives).

> Keep in mind, I plan it to run 24/7.  My TV is almost always on, if I'm
> home which is a LOT since I'm disabled. 

AFAIK, electricity is dirt cheap in the US. Here in bureaucratic Germany, we
pay between 25 and 30 €ct per kWh. But what also comes to my mind: Power
consumption is not just about what you pay. If you consume less, then
somewhere in the world there will also be less pollution. This is the hidden
cost that is not written on the price tag. If the majority of people thought
that way, it would really make a difference.


[0] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-4-specs-benchmarks
[1] https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/ipc/storage-cases/sc-4100
[2] https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/chassis/tower/721/SC721TQ-250B2
[3] https://skinflint.co.uk/silverstone-towerstor-ts431u-v2-sst-ts431u-v2-71128-a1706726.html?hloc=uk

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

It is becoming more and more complicated to lead a simple life.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 07:02:23AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> A friend donated a older PC to me the other day.  It's a fairly nice rig
>> despite its age.
> It may be adequate enough for demanding desktop tasks, but you want it to
> sit around 24/7 and serve files. To me, that looks like overkill.

It will be used to store videos on and that's how I watch TV and my TV
is playing whenever I'm home.  I even sleep with the TV on.  That puts
it in pretty much 24/7 running time.  I might add, I currently use my
puter for that and it runs 24/7 and about the only time I power off is
when the power fails.  I sometimes go 6 months or more without a
reboot.  Even as I type, if I left home and cut off the TVs, my puter
needs to keep running.  I have youtube-dl downloading videos.  I found a
gold mine and I'm digging away.  :-D


>
>> 9750 quad core CPU running at 2.4GHz.  It currently has 4GBs but
>> planning to upgrade to 8GBs, its max.  It has a ATI Radeon HD3200 video
>> card.
> If you just want to use it as a file server, think of removing the video
> card. This will save considerable power.

It would be a good idea but it's a built in mobo video system.  If it
was a card, I'd likely do just that for the reason you give. 


>> The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
>> is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
>> some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.
> Even if a drive draws up to 30 W, this leaves room for about six drives plus
> 100 W for CPU and the board. This is just peak power at boot, so even if it
> reaches 300 W, the PSU should be fine (as long as it is not a cheap Chinese
> firecracker). The certified PSU efficiencies apply within 20..80 %, so a PSU
> rated for 400 W will be considerable less efficient (which also means
> produces more heat) below 80 W of power draw. My PC idles at 30 W with one
> HDD and an i5-4590 (65 W CPU, but at idle, they're basically all the same
> these days). And even that value disappointed me when I build the PC 6 years
> ago. The board needs to be properly designed, too.

I like to leave a lot of extra room when picking the wattage.  My
current rig draws well under 200 watts and that includes monitor and
some other stuff.  I figure the rig itself pulls around 100 watts, or
maybe a little less, idle.  Still, it has something around 600 watts for
the power supply.  Age gets them but never lost one due to being
overloaded.  I'm not aware of ever losing a hard drive due to bad power
either.  I've had them suffer from bit rot tho, platters go bad I
guess.  I'd rather over do it than under do it. Of course, a 1500 watt
power supply for my rig would be way over kill.  I tend to aim at around
30 to 40% or so but sometimes because of a good deal or a better unit, I
may go a little higher.  I just try not to go to extremes. lol


>> I'm thinking of making a storage system out of it.  I think it is
>> referred to as a NFS.  It should be plenty fast enough to move data
>> around.
> Gigabit Ethernet maxes out at 117 MB/s. So even without RAID, every
> not-too-old HDD can max that out.

That's my thinking.  The network connection is likely to be the
bottleneck.  I've read several articles about building a NAS or buying
one.  That's one point most all of them make.  The network is usually
going to limit speed not the CPU, hard drive etc.  Speaking of, given
the upcoming internet upgrade and it's speed, I got to get a new network
card for my puter.  I currently have a old 100Mb card, I think it is Mb
instead of MB.  Either way, it's slow and likely to limit my internet
speed.  Plan to find a GB one.  My router is already fast enough.  I
bought it a year or two ago I think.


>> Only downside, not many spaces for hard drives.  I see only two
>> spaces for hard drives with one already taken.  There is a open area
>> that I could add a drive cage, I think.  May can fit two or three hard
>> drives in that.  There's also a 5 1/4 space too.  Another downside tho,
>> I'm thinking of going to SAS drives.  If I can afford that, it will be a
>> more dependable setup.
> You often mention your sometimes tight budget. From that perspective, I
> can't quite follow that thought. The cheapest SAS cards I can find in a
> local price search engine start at 70 €, whereas the cheapest 4×SATA card
> can be had for 21 €. Looking at 4 TB WD drives as an example, the cheapest
> SAS drive started at 145 €, but a WD RED NAS drive (intended for
> uninterrupted operation) at 93 €. So just the SAS premium will set you back
> as much as an entire entry-level PC.

I just found a IBM ServeRaid M1015 card for like $40.00 shipping and
all.  It claims this:  "Connects to up to 16 SAS or SATA drives".  Given
the number of drives and the price, that's good bang for buck there. 
You may want to make note of that for the future.  Maybe you can find a
good deal.  It has some good reviews.  I also found some good deals on
SAS drives, new even.  Some I found are pulls where they upgrade but
never used the drives.  If the price is right, I'm good with that. 

Add in the case I posted in another reply, it's a good start. 


>> Another option, find another case.  If I recall correctly tho, some
>> puter makers don't use standard layouts for the mobo screw holes. 
> Well, if you buy from a well-known brand, I don't think you will have any
> problem there (even if it is their cheapest model).
>
>> I could also have a open system with everything just mounted on the wall
>> in open air.
> I don't think that's a good idea. I remember you talking of lousy power
> utility reliability, and from what I heard over the years of the general
> standards of US rural power cabling (of course I'm no expert or even just
> savvy), I'd be worried of interference. I'd also be concerned about damage
> through physical contact (i.e. you bump into it, or something falls against
> it).

I have UPSs on everything I can.  Even my TVs have a UPS.  I like the
surge protection they have plus it takes care of those power blinks. 
That said, they ran new power lines from the sub-station several years
back.  My power situation is hugely better now.  I'm more likely to have
power go out from a tree breaking a line than I am anything else. 
Still, I wouldn't dare run without a UPS.  I also have quite a bit of
surge protection too.  One in breaker box, one at wall plug, more in the
UPS and whatever is in the puters power supply as well.  I was looking
at the transformer on the pole a few weeks ago, I think it has some sort
of surge protection too.  Sort of like a old timey spark gap but they do
help.  I'm also just a few hundred feet down from a MOV type protector
too.  They look like small transformers but was told they are like
MOVs.  I think they call them something else but same thing.  Just
really heavy duty and designed for high voltages. 


>> Of course, another option is to make this a media system and use those
>> little raspberry type thingys for the NFS.
> I am running raspi as a low-level server (pi-hole, Nextcloud, contacts and
> calendar server). It's a model 3B with a quadcore SoC and 1 Gig of ram,
> currently running raspbian (I am currently examining arch). For what you
> want, it is not powerful enough. Even the gen 4 does not suffice. It has
> gigabit ethernet (the 3 only has 100 Mb), but has no SATA connectors. So you
> either need a SATA bridge or are limited to USB enclosures. It has two
> USB-3-Sockets. Either way, you need a separate power supply for 3,5″ drives.
> On [0], the Pi 4 is benchmarked and reaches 363 Mb/s over USB. That is a
> third of Gigabit speed. Not counting overhead for filesystems.

That's one negative for those.  If they had a full speed SATA support
built in or as a add-on, then it would be better.  From what I've read,
you have to use the USB which is fairly fast but still limited when you
have several drives going at once.  I wish they would just jump up to
SAS myself.  That would make a lot of people happy I bet.  You make a
good point tho.


>> Or, buy a used NFS off ebay, kinda pricey last I looked.
> I built a NAS in a for-purpose cubic case [1] a few years ago. The system
> was costly, maybe even unnecessarily high, because I went with a niche
> Mini-ITX form factor, ZFS (for redundancy), thus ECC RAM, thus a server
> board that supports ECC. On the other hand, that board supports staggerd
> spin-up. At idle that system slurps around 50 Watts with a 300 W gold PSU.
> It has four WD RED 6 TB drives and a small SSD for the system.
>
> It is actually the last Gentoo system that I run and maintain. :'-( System
> upgrades puts some heat stress on the drives because they sit right atop the
> CPU due to the crammed dimensions, but since it's a server, the package
> count is hugely reduced compared to a desktop. And since I don't keep it
> running 24/7, I usually do upgrades right after bootup.
>
> My case is quite cheaply-made, with sharp edges here and there and some
> design flaws. An adequate, high-quality alternative might be [2].
>
> A tailored-to-the-use-case device might be your best option. You may not be
> able to use that hand-me-down machine at all, but I think it is unsuitable
> for 24/7 storage anyway. When I built my NAS, I was considering an HP
> Microserver, which has the same general specs as my system, but comes in a
> one-stop package including an optimised mainboard (think of HDD cabling).
>

You may want to look on Ebay for a Fractal Node 804, maybe Amazon too. 
You're in Europe it seems but I can get them new here for around $100. 
It holds 8 or 10 drives and looks to have great cooling.  It may be
something you want to look at for future needs.  They also make smaller
versions as well if that is to big.  I usually don't skimp on cases.  I
get what I need and then some and lots of fans.  I bought a Cooler
Master HAF-932 years ago.  As long as mobos fit in it, I'll use it for
any future builds.  It has great cooling and quite a bit of hard drive
spaces.  Looks pretty good too.  I'm not into the LEDs and all that
stuff.  Just function, no glitzy stuff required. 


>> Either of those would likely pull less power.  I'm sure the little
>> raspberry thingy would pull very little power.
> That indeed. But 3.5″ disks would need their own power supply anyway.
>
>> Heck, even fans can add up. 
> For the raspi itself you would need no fans. But there are dedicated
> external enclosures that have no mainboard and OS themselves, they are just
> multibay enclosures that are connected to a host, usually through eSATA or
> USB. For an example see [3]. However, I don't have any knowledge about their
> suitability for a storage server.
>
> Yet another alternative is an actual off-the-shelf NAS such as synology or
> qnap. They don't run our preferred Linux and some even are mentioned in the
> news due to security vulnerabilities in their admin interfaces. But they are
> very efficient in their use of space and power. You can install applications
> into them, some even do containers, but I'm not sure about youtube-dl and
> friends.

I've looked at some of them, even used ones, and they get pricey pretty
quick.  Plus some can't be modified or anything or even add more drives
to them either.  If it's designed for four drives, four drives is the
end of the line.  Parts can get interesting too.  Most seem to be more
about RAID as well.  I likely need to jump into RAID but I just do
backups.  Then hope for the best.  Weighing positives and negatives gets
rough.  ;-)


>> Would a small raspberry thingy be better in the long run from a light
>> bill point of view?
> Definitely, but it cannot handle what you intend to do (hook up multiple
> 3,5″ drives).
>
>> Keep in mind, I plan it to run 24/7.  My TV is almost always on, if I'm
>> home which is a LOT since I'm disabled. 
> AFAIK, electricity is dirt cheap in the US. Here in bureaucratic Germany, we
> pay between 25 and 30 €ct per kWh. But what also comes to my mind: Power
> consumption is not just about what you pay. If you consume less, then
> somewhere in the world there will also be less pollution. This is the hidden
> cost that is not written on the price tag. If the majority of people thought
> that way, it would really make a difference.
>
>
> [0] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-4-specs-benchmarks
> [1] https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/ipc/storage-cases/sc-4100
> [2] https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/chassis/tower/721/SC721TQ-250B2
> [3] https://skinflint.co.uk/silverstone-towerstor-ts431u-v2-sst-ts431u-v2-71128-a1706726.html?hloc=uk
>

Where I live, we have some of the cheapest energy there is.  We get
power from TVA but I think there is a nuclear plant a ways off.  I saw
it on a map one day.  I didn't know it was there but it had a little dot
on the map a couple hundred miles away.  Still, it's takes a lot of
heating and cooling here.  Poor insulation, if there is any.  Plan to
work on that at some point.  Still tho, I try to consider power needs
because it does add up.  Plus, heat and electronics isn't good.  Cooler
the better, within limits of course.

Thanks for all the info and links. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 09:01:21PM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> > If you just want to use it as a file server, think of removing the video
> > card. This will save considerable power.
> 
> It would be a good idea but it's a built in mobo video system.  If it
> was a card, I'd likely do just that for the reason you give. 

Ah, I see.

> I just found a IBM ServeRaid M1015 card for like $40.00 shipping and
> all.  It claims this:  "Connects to up to 16 SAS or SATA drives".  Given
> the number of drives and the price, that's good bang for buck there. 

Take not on wether it allows you to address the drives individually or if it
only does its RAID thingy. For my own personal purposes, I'd never use
anything that trust my data to a single hardware component. I've heard
stories of raid cards that if they break, you need an identical replacement
or the data is kaputt. For that reason I only ever used software RAID which
makes me independent of the hardware underneath.

> You may want to make note of that for the future.  Maybe you can find a
> good deal.  It has some good reviews.  I also found some good deals on
> SAS drives, new even.  Some I found are pulls where they upgrade but
> never used the drives.  If the price is right, I'm good with that. 

Sounds like a plan.

> You may want to look on Ebay for a Fractal Node 804, maybe Amazon too. 

I was making suggestions for you, I am not looking myself. ;-) (Although
sometimes I wonder whether I should go for a 6-bay system, because I am at
around 80 % use of capacity now, and though shalt not go over that on ZFS.
But I have loads of DVDs that I can still convert to more efficient
compression, giving me back 100s of GB. That's a chore for the upcoming
holidays.
When I was planning the build, I think I also looked at the Node 304. But it
was too big for my taste (I like it small and compact) and had no hot swap.
I admit I never had any use for hotswapping yet, but it's nice to have and
to see the idividual HDD leds do their stuff. :)

> I bought a Cooler Master HAF-932 years ago.  As long as mobos fit in it,
> I'll use it for any future builds.  It has great cooling and quite a bit
> of hard drive spaces.

My main PC case was chosen maxed out from the start for what I wanted to do
with it: one system SSD, one data HDD, one ODD (mainly to watch and store
video DVDs), one HDD hotswap bay (for old and external drives and for
backups), space for a not-too-big GPU. It's been running fine for over 6
years now. Only downside: you get either well made cases, or compact cases.
It seems both in one case is not available. My case is made from thin
sheets, which makes the system louder to my ears than necessary.

> Looks pretty good too.  I'm not into the LEDs and
> all that stuff.  Just function, no glitzy stuff required. 

Design is quite important for me. I don't want glossy surfaces, or
aggressive gamer designs. I like black boxes. Go ask my ThinkPad or my Eizo
monitor. :)

> I likely need to jump into RAID but I just do backups.  Then hope for the
> best.  Weighing positives and negatives gets rough.  ;-)

A bit OT now, going into the backup subject.

I don't backup the NAS. People say RAID is not a backup. What they mean is
backup from accidental deletion or malware attacks. To me, it is a backup,
but from hardware defects. I use RaidZ2 (ZFS-speek for RAID 6), so any two
of the four drives may fail without loss of data. But with four drives, this
gives me a space efficiency of only 50 %, hence the thought of going 6-bay.

The most regular "backup" I do is a unison sync of ~ and some other folders
between PC and laptop. It is very fast and allows me to have everything that
is important be up-to-date without much effort. But I've never backed up my
teensie raspi (remember, it contains my PIM server) or my whole laptop ever
since it got an upgrade to a 2 TB SSD. (My PC's data drive is only 1 TB.)

Before I built my NAS, my largest drive was an external 3 TB USB drive. It
was my main video storage (naturally w/o backup). Since I built the NAS,
I've never used it again. So a few weeks ago, I repurposed it as my main
backup drive. It's at least 6 years old, but only has ~280 hours on the
meter. In the past, I only (semi-regularly) backed up my main PC via
rsnapshot to an old 1 TB disk sitting permanently in the swap bay.

I've always wanted to try out borg backup. Thanks to that, I now have a
backup of my system, home and data partitions of my main PC *and* my laptop,
plus the entire raspi. But due to to borg's deduplication magic, the 3 TB
drive is only about half filled, even though it contains several weekly
snapshots already, amounting to almost 7 TB across hosts.

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

Someone who hears butterflies laughing knows what clouds taste like.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 09:01:21PM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>
>
>> I just found a IBM ServeRaid M1015 card for like $40.00 shipping and
>> all.  It claims this:  "Connects to up to 16 SAS or SATA drives".  Given
>> the number of drives and the price, that's good bang for buck there. 
> Take not on wether it allows you to address the drives individually or if it
> only does its RAID thingy. For my own personal purposes, I'd never use
> anything that trust my data to a single hardware component. I've heard
> stories of raid cards that if they break, you need an identical replacement
> or the data is kaputt. For that reason I only ever used software RAID which
> makes me independent of the hardware underneath.

I've read that too.  If I do RAID, it will be software.  I'd mix up WD,
Seagate etc too.  If I can't mix brand, I'd certainly want different
batches of drives.  It isn't much but it is something.  I read once
where there is a company that does that for you.  You tell them what
number of drives you need and how they will be set up and they pick them
so that they are different brands and/or batches.  We have all read
about bad batches and I suspect at one time or another, every maker has
had one. 

I have some things that are backed up on a external backup drive that is
usually in my safe.  Some things tho, such as family pictures, that I
can not replace, those I also backup to DVDs or next time, Blu-rays.  I
found a good deal on a Blu-ray burner only to find out it is difficult
to create Blu-ray movies.  I don't think Linux has software to do that
like Devede or something.  I haven't found one anyway.


>> You may want to make note of that for the future.  Maybe you can find a
>> good deal.  It has some good reviews.  I also found some good deals on
>> SAS drives, new even.  Some I found are pulls where they upgrade but
>> never used the drives.  If the price is right, I'm good with that. 
> Sounds like a plan.
>
>> You may want to look on Ebay for a Fractal Node 804, maybe Amazon too. 
> I was making suggestions for you, I am not looking myself. ;-) (Although
> sometimes I wonder whether I should go for a 6-bay system, because I am at
> around 80 % use of capacity now, and though shalt not go over that on ZFS.
> But I have loads of DVDs that I can still convert to more efficient
> compression, giving me back 100s of GB. That's a chore for the upcoming
> holidays.
> When I was planning the build, I think I also looked at the Node 304. But it
> was too big for my taste (I like it small and compact) and had no hot swap.
> I admit I never had any use for hotswapping yet, but it's nice to have and
> to see the idividual HDD leds do their stuff. :)

I only saw pics of it but the thing looks awesome and price here isn't
bad at all.  I just had to share.  ;-)  One never knows when it may come
in handy either for you or someone else googling for this. 


>> I bought a Cooler Master HAF-932 years ago.  As long as mobos fit in it,
>> I'll use it for any future builds.  It has great cooling and quite a bit
>> of hard drive spaces.
> My main PC case was chosen maxed out from the start for what I wanted to do
> with it: one system SSD, one data HDD, one ODD (mainly to watch and store
> video DVDs), one HDD hotswap bay (for old and external drives and for
> backups), space for a not-too-big GPU. It's been running fine for over 6
> years now. Only downside: you get either well made cases, or compact cases.
> It seems both in one case is not available. My case is made from thin
> sheets, which makes the system louder to my ears than necessary.
>

My first rig was fairly large.  It was noisy tho.  Those 80mm fans were
loud when I was doing updates and compiling stuff.  That old CPU was
pumping out heat too.  When I built a new rig, I wanted something
better.  The HAF-932 is certainly that.  I thought I'd never fill that
thing up with drives but as it sits right now, I have one empty 3.5" bay
left.  I could use the 5.25" bays but those require longer cables. 

I try to plan for the future.  Thing is, my crystal ball is broke.  I
still try tho.  lol

>> Looks pretty good too.  I'm not into the LEDs and
>> all that stuff.  Just function, no glitzy stuff required. 
> Design is quite important for me. I don't want glossy surfaces, or
> aggressive gamer designs. I like black boxes. Go ask my ThinkPad or my Eizo
> monitor. :)
>
>> I likely need to jump into RAID but I just do backups.  Then hope for the
>> best.  Weighing positives and negatives gets rough.  ;-)
> A bit OT now, going into the backup subject.
>
> I don't backup the NAS. People say RAID is not a backup. What they mean is
> backup from accidental deletion or malware attacks. To me, it is a backup,
> but from hardware defects. I use RaidZ2 (ZFS-speek for RAID 6), so any two
> of the four drives may fail without loss of data. But with four drives, this
> gives me a space efficiency of only 50 %, hence the thought of going 6-bay.
>
> The most regular "backup" I do is a unison sync of ~ and some other folders
> between PC and laptop. It is very fast and allows me to have everything that
> is important be up-to-date without much effort. But I've never backed up my
> teensie raspi (remember, it contains my PIM server) or my whole laptop ever
> since it got an upgrade to a 2 TB SSD. (My PC's data drive is only 1 TB.)
>
> Before I built my NAS, my largest drive was an external 3 TB USB drive. It
> was my main video storage (naturally w/o backup). Since I built the NAS,
> I've never used it again. So a few weeks ago, I repurposed it as my main
> backup drive. It's at least 6 years old, but only has ~280 hours on the
> meter. In the past, I only (semi-regularly) backed up my main PC via
> rsnapshot to an old 1 TB disk sitting permanently in the swap bay.
>
> I've always wanted to try out borg backup. Thanks to that, I now have a
> backup of my system, home and data partitions of my main PC *and* my laptop,
> plus the entire raspi. But due to to borg's deduplication magic, the 3 TB
> drive is only about half filled, even though it contains several weekly
> snapshots already, amounting to almost 7 TB across hosts.
>


I've seen it said that RAID isn't a backup too.  In a way, it isn't.  In
the case of a house fire or some major disaster, tornado for example,
you could lose the whole puter.  In that case, backups need to be
somewhere else outside the danger area.  RAID can play a part in a lot
of situations but it isn't a cure all either.  Even if I had RAID, I'd
still want a backup somewhere. 

I should use a backup program, snapshot or something here.  I'm not real
sure why I don't other than spending time to figure out how to do it. 
It's likely easy enough but still . . .

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[antlists]

On 20/12/2020 01:06, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Looking at 4 TB WD drives as an example, the cheapest
> SAS drive started at 145 €, but a WD RED NAS drive (intended for
> uninterrupted operation) at 93 €.

BEWARE OF WD REDS !!!

They *U*S*E*D* to have a good reputation. They are STILL marketed as 
NAS/RAID drives but are pretty much guaranteed to dump your raid into an 
unrecoverable mess once something goes wrong.

They've recently been moved over to shingle technology. Which means 
delays in response time of maybe TEN minutes if you overload them and 
they have to start a garbage collect.

If you don't want shingled drives, you need a Red Pro, Seagate Ironwolf, 
or a Toshiba I think it's N300.

If you don't care about conventional/shingled, get something cheaper - a 
Blue, or Barracuda, or whatever.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1473 bytes --]

Am Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 10:03:14AM +0000 schrieb antlists:
> On 20/12/2020 01:06, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > Looking at 4 TB WD drives as an example, the cheapest
> > SAS drive started at 145 €, but a WD RED NAS drive (intended for
> > uninterrupted operation) at 93 €.
> 
> BEWARE OF WD REDS !!!
> 
> They *U*S*E*D* to have a good reputation. They are STILL marketed as
> NAS/RAID drives but are pretty much guaranteed to dump your raid into an
> unrecoverable mess once something goes wrong.

I am aware of the problem and that we (actually through Dale) had this topic
on this list. I built my NAS in 2017, IIRC, and back then there were no EFAX
drives around. First I only bought two drives -- from two different
retailers in order to minimise risk of batch failure. One year, when space
became scarce, I filled the remaining two slots.

I'm not really a WD fanboy in any way, but if I bought HDDs (which doesn't
happen often to begin with) I always chose WD, because their model lines
were easy to grasp through the colour codes.

There is a saying in German tech culture: "Entweder sie geht oder sie geht
nicht." (either it works or it doesn't). The pun is on the pronunciation of
"sie geht" (it works), which sounds exactly like Seagate. → "Either Seagate
or Seagate... not."

-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

Why marry?  Leasing is so much easier!

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Mark Knecht]

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On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 6:21 AM Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de> wrote:
<SNIP>
> There is a saying in German tech culture: "Entweder sie geht oder sie geht
> nicht." (either it works or it doesn't). The pun is on the pronunciation
of
> "sie geht" (it works), which sounds exactly like Seagate. → "Either
Seagate
> or Seagate... not."
<SNIP>

I'm saving this one for the novel I write one day...

sie geht...nicht

Cheers,
Mark

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[antlists]

On 20/12/2020 13:20, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> There is a saying in German tech culture: "Entweder sie geht oder sie geht
> nicht." (either it works or it doesn't). The pun is on the pronunciation of
> "sie geht" (it works), which sounds exactly like Seagate. → "Either Seagate
> or Seagate... not."

:-)

I'm of German descent (and speak some German), so while I wouldn't have 
thought of that pun, it's good :-)

Ich gehe Ironwolf.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Howdy,

Somewhat related.  I googled and it appears I can hook a NAS to my
router and share it there.  The router is 1GB, it has yellow ports.  Is
it true that I can hook a NAS to the router?  I'd assume it can be
shared with anything connected to the router, even my cell phone if
needed. 

Also, I'm looking at a new network card for my PC.  With the new much
faster internet coming soon, I need a faster network card.  Router is
ready, puter isn't.  I found this, sorry for the caps but copy and
paste.  INTEL GIGABIT DUAL PORT NETWORK ADAPTER PCIe 424RR i350 1GB.  I
found a site that talks about NAS and network cards.  According to the
article, this should be a very reliable card and just works.  It has two
ports.  I know I need one to hook to the router.  Would that second port
cause me any grief?  Result in conflicts or something?  I been using
Realtek but article claims these are better.  Anyone have thoughts on
this?  Have one and can share their experience?

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[William Kenworthy]

On 21/12/20 8:20 am, Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> Somewhat related.  I googled and it appears I can hook a NAS to my
> router and share it there.  The router is 1GB, it has yellow ports.  Is
> it true that I can hook a NAS to the router?  I'd assume it can be
> shared with anything connected to the router, even my cell phone if
> needed. 
>
> Also, I'm looking at a new network card for my PC.  With the new much
> faster internet coming soon, I need a faster network card.  Router is
> ready, puter isn't.  I found this, sorry for the caps but copy and
> paste.  INTEL GIGABIT DUAL PORT NETWORK ADAPTER PCIe 424RR i350 1GB.  I
> found a site that talks about NAS and network cards.  According to the
> article, this should be a very reliable card and just works.  It has two
> ports.  I know I need one to hook to the router.  Would that second port
> cause me any grief?  Result in conflicts or something?  I been using
> Realtek but article claims these are better.  Anyone have thoughts on
> this?  Have one and can share their experience?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-) 
>
Something to look into before going the traditional raid/nfs route:
moosefs or lizardfs.  I am using arm based odroid HC2's and over the
softraid based nfs I was using there are considerable power savings
(especially if you take into the account redundancy) as it takes a
number of these low power arm systems to match the power requirements of
an older desktop), better data protection (actual, not theoretical for
2x raid 4 disk 10's replaced by a single 5x hc2's using the same disks
with mfs :) and the ease of mounting it into the filesystem.  Downside
is needing a fast network for best performance but an NFS will need that
anyway for similar reasons.

BillK

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

William Kenworthy wrote:
> On 21/12/20 8:20 am, Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> Somewhat related.  I googled and it appears I can hook a NAS to my
>> router and share it there.  The router is 1GB, it has yellow ports.  Is
>> it true that I can hook a NAS to the router?  I'd assume it can be
>> shared with anything connected to the router, even my cell phone if
>> needed. 
>>
>> Also, I'm looking at a new network card for my PC.  With the new much
>> faster internet coming soon, I need a faster network card.  Router is
>> ready, puter isn't.  I found this, sorry for the caps but copy and
>> paste.  INTEL GIGABIT DUAL PORT NETWORK ADAPTER PCIe 424RR i350 1GB.  I
>> found a site that talks about NAS and network cards.  According to the
>> article, this should be a very reliable card and just works.  It has two
>> ports.  I know I need one to hook to the router.  Would that second port
>> cause me any grief?  Result in conflicts or something?  I been using
>> Realtek but article claims these are better.  Anyone have thoughts on
>> this?  Have one and can share their experience?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-) 
>>
> Something to look into before going the traditional raid/nfs route:
> moosefs or lizardfs.  I am using arm based odroid HC2's and over the
> softraid based nfs I was using there are considerable power savings
> (especially if you take into the account redundancy) as it takes a
> number of these low power arm systems to match the power requirements of
> an older desktop), better data protection (actual, not theoretical for
> 2x raid 4 disk 10's replaced by a single 5x hc2's using the same disks
> with mfs :) and the ease of mounting it into the filesystem.  Downside
> is needing a fast network for best performance but an NFS will need that
> anyway for similar reasons.
>
> BillK


I was reading somewhere about FreeNAS OS that is commonly used on a NAS
and it uses ZFS.  It sounded a lot like a LVM or BTRFS, (sp?), type file
system.  I can't find ZFS in the kernel so it seems it is only used with
that OS/software.  I'm not sure if it uses anything else for file
systems either.  While I have seen moosefs and lizardfs mentioned on
this list, I have no idea how it works or anything.  If I use FreeNAS, I
may not have many options.

At this point, I don't know if I will use Gentoo or something that is
made just for NAS setups or even something else that is binary based
like Arch, some *buntu or something.  The downside of Gentoo, I may not
update very often.  We know how Gentoo is when going months or more
without updating.  I have kinda picked a case so far.  The rest is still
being thought about. 

In a way, I have several things going on.  My backup drive is getting
full, super fast internet is coming soon, I need to upgrade my network
card for that plus I want to get something more advanced and expandable
for file storage, mostly videos.  I also wouldn't mind having a media
center type box as well.  I thought about buying some sort of used game
station type box for a media box.  I've heard those can be networked and
used to watch videos on TV with and perform pretty well.  I also want to
get back to work on building a speaker system for my TV as well.  I put
that on back burner when I got busy with tree cutting and then along
comes the bug. 

At the moment, I'm planning to get a network card.  I need that for the
faster internet but I'll also need it for the NAS as well.  If I can
connect that to my router, that alone will help a lot.  I can then
connect something to the router and access the NAS, even on wi-fi. I
like that idea and it appears to be the way it is done. 

I'll look into them but it mostly depends on what I use for a OS on the
NAS. 

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3492 bytes --]

Am Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 03:19:08AM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> > Something to look into before going the traditional raid/nfs route:
> > moosefs or lizardfs.  I am using arm based odroid HC2's and over the
> > softraid based nfs I was using there are considerable power savings
> > (especially if you take into the account redundancy) as it takes a
> > number of these low power arm systems to match the power requirements of
> > an older desktop), better data protection (actual, not theoretical for
> > 2x raid 4 disk 10's replaced by a single 5x hc2's using the same disks
> > with mfs :) and the ease of mounting it into the filesystem.  Downside
> > is needing a fast network for best performance but an NFS will need that
> > anyway for similar reasons.
> >
> > BillK
> 
> 
> I was reading somewhere about FreeNAS OS that is commonly used on a NAS
> and it uses ZFS.  It sounded a lot like a LVM or BTRFS, (sp?), type file
> system.

ZFS combines LVM/RAID and the filesystem into one software. So you don't
need to set up two separate layers (RAID and filesystem).

> I can't find ZFS in the kernel so it seems it is only used with
> that OS/software.

IIRC, ZFS uses a licence that is not compatible with the kernel's. That's
why ZFS on Linux (ZoL) cannot be integrated into the kernel. Instead, you
build an external kernel module (available in portage), which isn't always
compatible to the newest kernel out there.

> I'm not sure if it uses anything else for file systems either.  While I
> have seen moosefs and lizardfs mentioned on this list, I have no idea how
> it works or anything.  If I use FreeNAS, I may not have many options.

FreeNAS is openbsd based. It uses the BSD-variant of ZFS natively.

> At this point, I don't know if I will use Gentoo or something that is
> made just for NAS setups or even something else that is binary based
> like Arch, some *buntu or something.  The downside of Gentoo, I may not
> update very often.  We know how Gentoo is when going months or more
> without updating.  I have kinda picked a case so far.  The rest is still
> being thought about. 

Yeah, a pure server should be left alone unless something is broken. My
NAS sits in the corner, unused and switched off for many weeks in a row. So
when I do switch it on, I usually do an eix-sync right away.

> I also wouldn't mind having a media center type box as well.  I thought
> about buying some sort of used game station type box for a media box. 

I was flirting with the idea as well. But since I don't have a TV or any
good living room speakers at the mo, I just won't have any real use for it
right now. My favourite candidate is a ZBox Nano CI329. It is passively
cooled and looks nice. It has two ethernet ports, which makes it ideal as a
network server and firewall, HDMI for the TV, a 2,5″ internal bay and a
hidden mSata slot under the mainboard (to reach it you have to break the
warranty seal, b/c the ZBox can be bought as a barebone or as a Windows box,
which has its bloatware preinstalled on a small mSata SSD). Its power
consumption is very low, rivalling that of a Raspberry. Sadly, they ditched
the infrared port which previous generations had. Because they are ideal
media players for the living room.

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Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

Love often dies from those small foibles that once were so charming.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 03:19:08AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>
>>> Something to look into before going the traditional raid/nfs route:
>>> moosefs or lizardfs.  I am using arm based odroid HC2's and over the
>>> softraid based nfs I was using there are considerable power savings
>>> (especially if you take into the account redundancy) as it takes a
>>> number of these low power arm systems to match the power requirements of
>>> an older desktop), better data protection (actual, not theoretical for
>>> 2x raid 4 disk 10's replaced by a single 5x hc2's using the same disks
>>> with mfs :) and the ease of mounting it into the filesystem.  Downside
>>> is needing a fast network for best performance but an NFS will need that
>>> anyway for similar reasons.
>>>
>>> BillK
>>
>> I was reading somewhere about FreeNAS OS that is commonly used on a NAS
>> and it uses ZFS.  It sounded a lot like a LVM or BTRFS, (sp?), type file
>> system.
> ZFS combines LVM/RAID and the filesystem into one software. So you don't
> need to set up two separate layers (RAID and filesystem).

Hmmm.  I'm not planing to use RAID so that could change things.  I may
use some other OS/software.  I'm not real quick to use Gentoo since it
likely won't be updated very often.  I may research and see what else is
easy to install, will do what I want software wise and be OK with not
being updated very often.  I read once where a guy built a file
server/NAS and stuck it in a closet.  He used it all the time but just
never thought to go to the closet and do anything to it.  I think he was
moving and was cleaning out the closet and realized how long it had been
sitting there untouched.  He said it was dusty and had a uptime of over
5 years without a single update either.  I may not be that bad but going
a year or so is certainly likely.  Gentoo will not be happy with that. 

Just have to wait and see I guess. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2355 bytes --]

Am Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 06:20:28PM -0600 schrieb Dale:
> Howdy,
> 
> Somewhat related.  I googled and it appears I can hook a NAS to my
> router and share it there.  The router is 1GB, it has yellow ports.  Is
> it true that I can hook a NAS to the router?

Maybe they meant that the router itself has NAS features. This is common for
not-too-simple models. You can hook up an external drive and the router has
the ability to share it in the network via samba or ftp or some such.

> I'd assume it can be shared with anything connected to the router, even my
> cell phone if needed. 

If there is a client on the phone that can access it, sure. After all, it's
just a server using a certain protocol.

> Also, I'm looking at a new network card for my PC.  With the new much
> faster internet coming soon, I need a faster network card.

Your PC isn't that old, AFAIR. The times of mainboards that only have 100
ethernet should be a thing of the past.

> Router is ready, puter isn't.  I found this, sorry for the caps but copy
> and paste.  INTEL GIGABIT DUAL PORT NETWORK ADAPTER PCIe 424RR i350 1GB. 
> I found a site that talks about NAS and network cards.  According to the
> article, this should be a very reliable card and just works.  It has two
> ports.  I know I need one to hook to the router.  Would that second port
> cause me any grief?  Result in conflicts or something?

I have a network card for a second port in my PC. Never needed it yet, but
it's nice to have. I usually use the onboard network to connect to my
router. When I removed the GPU for a while, the PCI ids of the network cards
shifted by one, so I had to adjust dhcp setup. So much for enp3s0 being
always the same.

> I been using Realtek but article claims these are better.

Intel cards do more stuff in hardware, relieving the CPU of some load.
Realteks rely on your CPU to do that. That's why they're not very popuplar
among network experts. But that is only relevant if you do heavy network
stuff like routing, switching and whatnot for other devices. Both my PC's
network ports are realteks and they also just work and give me full gigabit
bandwidth.

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 06:20:28PM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> Somewhat related.  I googled and it appears I can hook a NAS to my
>> router and share it there.  The router is 1GB, it has yellow ports.  Is
>> it true that I can hook a NAS to the router?
> Maybe they meant that the router itself has NAS features. This is common for
> not-too-simple models. You can hook up an external drive and the router has
> the ability to share it in the network via samba or ftp or some such.
>

That's what it looked like in the picture.  It said to plug the NAS into
a ethernet port and it would be shared.  It makes sense but I didn't
know that until I read it.  I guess it is like my printer.  Whether
hooked up wireless or with a ethernet port, it is shared with anything
hooked to the router.  If all that works like I think, yeppie!


>> I'd assume it can be shared with anything connected to the router, even my
>> cell phone if needed. 
> If there is a client on the phone that can access it, sure. After all, it's
> just a server using a certain protocol.
>
>> Also, I'm looking at a new network card for my PC.  With the new much
>> faster internet coming soon, I need a faster network card.
> Your PC isn't that old, AFAIR. The times of mainboards that only have 100
> ethernet should be a thing of the past.

Computer isn't to old but the on board ethernet was flaky last I tried
it.  I disabled it and used the network card from my old system, which
had the same problem of a not so stable on mobo network.  It's a 100MB
version.  I think it is a large B.  Since it is a old card, I want to
upgrade to a faster one.  Until now, I never needed one.  I never had
anything fast enough to need what I have now actually.  ;-)


>> Router is ready, puter isn't.  I found this, sorry for the caps but copy
>> and paste.  INTEL GIGABIT DUAL PORT NETWORK ADAPTER PCIe 424RR i350 1GB. 
>> I found a site that talks about NAS and network cards.  According to the
>> article, this should be a very reliable card and just works.  It has two
>> ports.  I know I need one to hook to the router.  Would that second port
>> cause me any grief?  Result in conflicts or something?
> I have a network card for a second port in my PC. Never needed it yet, but
> it's nice to have. I usually use the onboard network to connect to my
> router. When I removed the GPU for a while, the PCI ids of the network cards
> shifted by one, so I had to adjust dhcp setup. So much for enp3s0 being
> always the same.
>
>> I been using Realtek but article claims these are better.
> Intel cards do more stuff in hardware, relieving the CPU of some load.
> Realteks rely on your CPU to do that. That's why they're not very popuplar
> among network experts. But that is only relevant if you do heavy network
> stuff like routing, switching and whatnot for other devices. Both my PC's
> network ports are realteks and they also just work and give me full gigabit
> bandwidth.
>


I wasn't aware of that.  Reminds me of those old winmodems.  I'll likely
get the Intel one.  If needed, I can just not use the 2nd port I guess
and not enable it until I do need it, if ever.  Price isn't to bad. 

I'm still waiting on a time frame of when the new internet will get
here.  It may be months, maybe even a year but right now, we don't know
since the people putting it out here don't know either.  The sooner the
better in my book tho. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[antlists]

On 21/12/2020 12:53, Dale wrote:
>>> Somewhat related.  I googled and it appears I can hook a NAS to my
>>> router and share it there.  The router is 1GB, it has yellow ports.  Is
>>> it true that I can hook a NAS to the router?

I think my router has 4 yellow and 1 red port. The yellow ports are, i 
guess, just ordinary switch/hub ports. The red port, I know, is the wan 
port so I guess it's firewalled and all that stuff. I know I'm not 
supposed to connect a yellow port to the internet wall-box, and I guess 
doing so might well not even work ...

>> Maybe they meant that the router itself has NAS features. This is common for
>> not-too-simple models. You can hook up an external drive and the router has
>> the ability to share it in the network via samba or ftp or some such.
>>
> That's what it looked like in the picture.  It said to plug the NAS into
> a ethernet port and it would be shared.  It makes sense but I didn't
> know that until I read it.  I guess it is like my printer.  Whether
> hooked up wireless or with a ethernet port, it is shared with anything
> hooked to the router.  If all that works like I think, yeppie!
> 
You're confusing an external drive, and a NAS. Two completely different 
things. My router has a USB port, to which I can connect an external 
drive. That *should* then appear on my network as a NAS drive. In other 
words, all the NAS smarts are in the router.

You're talking about plugging a NAS into an ethernet port, where all the 
NAS smarts are in the NAS, and that should work with ANY hub/switch/router.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

antlists wrote:
> On 21/12/2020 12:53, Dale wrote:
>>>> Somewhat related.  I googled and it appears I can hook a NAS to my
>>>> router and share it there.  The router is 1GB, it has yellow
>>>> ports.  Is
>>>> it true that I can hook a NAS to the router?
>
> I think my router has 4 yellow and 1 red port. The yellow ports are, i
> guess, just ordinary switch/hub ports. The red port, I know, is the
> wan port so I guess it's firewalled and all that stuff. I know I'm not
> supposed to connect a yellow port to the internet wall-box, and I
> guess doing so might well not even work ...
>
>>> Maybe they meant that the router itself has NAS features. This is
>>> common for
>>> not-too-simple models. You can hook up an external drive and the
>>> router has
>>> the ability to share it in the network via samba or ftp or some such.
>>>
>> That's what it looked like in the picture.  It said to plug the NAS into
>> a ethernet port and it would be shared.  It makes sense but I didn't
>> know that until I read it.  I guess it is like my printer.  Whether
>> hooked up wireless or with a ethernet port, it is shared with anything
>> hooked to the router.  If all that works like I think, yeppie!
>>
> You're confusing an external drive, and a NAS. Two completely
> different things. My router has a USB port, to which I can connect an
> external drive. That *should* then appear on my network as a NAS
> drive. In other words, all the NAS smarts are in the router.
>
> You're talking about plugging a NAS into an ethernet port, where all
> the NAS smarts are in the NAS, and that should work with ANY
> hub/switch/router.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>


Sorry for the delay.  AT&T decided that the other day was as good a time
as any to let the DSL go down for a few days.  AT&T made a huge mistake
letting the whole community out here sit for days without service.  With
the new much faster and economical service coming, anyone who might have
stayed with AT&T is now ready to switch.  Bad thing is, almost every one
out here depends on the internet to watch the weather and we had some
storms come through overnight with no way to know what was coming.  I
just hid under the covers.  Way to go AT&T.  You got a nice shovel, keep
digging.  ROFL 

My router has yellow connectors for routing and a blue connector going
to the internet/WAN/whatever.  My modem is similar except it is green
for the telephone line.  If I recall correctly all of those are supposed
to be GB connectors, not that the modem could ever do that over the
internet but it can between devices hooked to it.  I disabled the wi-fi
and such on the modem, not enough range anyway.  Step away 30 feet or
so, no signal. 

My router also has two USB plugs for sharing external hard drives or USB
sticks.  I'm not talking about that because I don't like hooking a drive
up over USB.  It never works well for some reason.  According to the
link below, I hook the NAS up to the router via ethernet and it is
available for all devices connected to the router.  I'd guess that I can
also make it accessible to the internet to but I doubt I'll do that.  If
it is set that way by default, I'll google and find out how to disable
that. Linky:

https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=137552

I have a TP-Link router but figure it will work the same.  I don't think
I was to clear on the connection in earlier message.  It was in my brain
but didn't make it to the keyboard.  lol 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S. Now to catch up on all the emails.  O_O

Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1041 bytes --]

Am Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 10:38:33AM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> My router also has two USB plugs for sharing external hard drives or USB
> sticks.  I'm not talking about that because I don't like hooking a drive
> up over USB.  It never works well for some reason.  According to the
> link below, I hook the NAS up to the router via ethernet and it is
> available for all devices connected to the router.  I'd guess that I can
> also make it accessible to the internet to but I doubt I'll do that.  If
> it is set that way by default, I'll google and find out how to disable
> that. Linky:

For a typical router that hides your home net from the outside via NAT,
you’d have to set up port forwarding in order to reach anything on the
inside. I run nginx on my raspi for Nextcloud and PIM syncserver, and I
make them available that way.

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

You can’t use “beef stew” as a password.
It isn’t stroganoff.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 10:38:33AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>
>> My router also has two USB plugs for sharing external hard drives or USB
>> sticks.  I'm not talking about that because I don't like hooking a drive
>> up over USB.  It never works well for some reason.  According to the
>> link below, I hook the NAS up to the router via ethernet and it is
>> available for all devices connected to the router.  I'd guess that I can
>> also make it accessible to the internet to but I doubt I'll do that.  If
>> it is set that way by default, I'll google and find out how to disable
>> that. Linky:
> For a typical router that hides your home net from the outside via NAT,
> you’d have to set up port forwarding in order to reach anything on the
> inside. I run nginx on my raspi for Nextcloud and PIM syncserver, and I
> make them available that way.
>


So it defaults to not being accessible from the internet.  Good to
know.  I figured it would be the default. 

Now to get around to doing all this.  Still paying on my new mattress
and friends.  It sleeps good now but be better when it is paid for.  :/

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S.  Like the little sayings in the sig.  They funny and sometimes
require some thinking.  :-D