Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
On 11/10/2010 11:05 PM, Bill Broadley wrote: On 11/08/2010 07:33 PM, Rick Moen wrote: Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_...@wildintellect.com): Good Call, I did look a little at finding a drive case that was both eSata and usb. The drive case was the cheapest part by far but esata/usb isn't so common. I'm not sure if the board in between would still be an issue. If I happen to come upon a good deal on such a case I might try it. Anyone have an external eSata they could try to get SMART data on? All libata drivers support SMART -- which is what one would expect, given that libata leverages the kernel's SCSI layers. https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Libata_Feature_Table (The particular SATA interface, internal vs. eSATA, is not an issue.) While technically true, often eSATA is combined with a multidisk chassis and has a lame/broken chip that multiplexes a single SATA connection to multiple drives. Said lame/broken chip often hides the SMART data. I find is similarly frustrating when the RAID controller does the same thing. It's really really annoying to have to pull a failed drive to get it's model and serial number so you can RMA it. It's also worth mentioning while SMART is cool, I like the idea, and it sounds really useful. The studies that I've seen show SMART is useless for predicting failures. Sure you can get various interesting metrics but there's little relationship between any of the numbers it gives you and losing your entire disk in the near future. The largest of said studies was the Google paper which covered an impressive number of disks across all major brands. Good news, that particular case does pass it through so yay SMART data and HDDtemp. I think just knowing the temp on the drive is going to be useful(and I can test if keeping the fan on is worth it) and getting a report of how many bad sectors will give me a little piece of mind. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173043 I also no longer have to use a custom udev rule to get the drive mounted in the right spot. Downside being I'm not sure the eSata is hot-swappable so I'll have to take the system down anytime I want to hook the external up to something else. Thanks, Alex ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
Quoting Bill Broadley (b...@broadley.org): While technically true, often eSATA is combined with a multidisk chassis and has a lame/broken chip that multiplexes a single SATA connection to multiple drives. Said lame/broken chip often hides the SMART data. Yes, definitely don't buy those. I find is similarly frustrating when the RAID controller does the same thing. It's really really annoying to have to pull a failed drive to get it's model and serial number so you can RMA it. Well, sometimes there are compensating advantages to the RAID controller, and ways to query the latter to determine the model and S/N of the failed drive. Not that I'd recommend one, but my old firm VA Linux Systems sold a lot of Mylex RAID HBAs that met that description. The studies that I've seen show SMART is useless for predicting failures. That depends on what you mean by 'predicting failure'. You can use the SMART data to determine how many hours of online use the drive has had, and replace it before it approaches MTBF. You can also note the pattern of accumulating errors and reallocations, a sharp rise in which correlates well with some failure modes albeit not many others. (The Google paper notes this fact.) Frankly, my main concern is many HD manufacturers' tendency to make their drives lie when reporting such data. I have my hunches about which manufacturers and model lines are most guilty of this lying, but can't prove it. Alternatively, you can just RAID1 drive pairs, and deal with failures as they arise without particular worry in advance. ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
On 11/08/2010 07:33 PM, Rick Moen wrote: Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_...@wildintellect.com): Good Call, I did look a little at finding a drive case that was both eSata and usb. The drive case was the cheapest part by far but esata/usb isn't so common. I'm not sure if the board in between would still be an issue. If I happen to come upon a good deal on such a case I might try it. Anyone have an external eSata they could try to get SMART data on? All libata drivers support SMART -- which is what one would expect, given that libata leverages the kernel's SCSI layers. https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Libata_Feature_Table (The particular SATA interface, internal vs. eSATA, is not an issue.) While technically true, often eSATA is combined with a multidisk chassis and has a lame/broken chip that multiplexes a single SATA connection to multiple drives. Said lame/broken chip often hides the SMART data. I find is similarly frustrating when the RAID controller does the same thing. It's really really annoying to have to pull a failed drive to get it's model and serial number so you can RMA it. It's also worth mentioning while SMART is cool, I like the idea, and it sounds really useful. The studies that I've seen show SMART is useless for predicting failures. Sure you can get various interesting metrics but there's little relationship between any of the numbers it gives you and losing your entire disk in the near future. The largest of said studies was the Google paper which covered an impressive number of disks across all major brands. ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
On 09/26/2010 12:51 PM, Alex Mandel wrote: I finally have a small low power contraption on the way to begin my foray into a low power network server. Looking around at my options I'm not sure what distro to try on it first. Here are the requirements: SSH/SFTP/SCP Samba Print Server for Multi-OS (CUPS via Samba probably) Apache + mod_wsgi (Trac Django) Optional: Web interface to manage it FreeNas sounded intriguing but seems to only do the first 2 without a lot of arm twisting. So I started looking at Debian and Ubuntu but I can't seem to decide which version of those would give me the easiest setup. Anyone have and opinion about Debian testing and unstable for this purpose, I think Stable doesn't have new enough packages for my needs. Also anyone have an opinion on webmin or suggestions for something similar that would allow me to manage most of the sharing, printers and apache via a web interface? Thanks, Alex FYI I got a Zotac ZBox atom 330 with Nvidia Ion + SSD and an external 2 TB drive. Just wanted to follow up to let people know how it worked. The Zotac box is pretty nice, quiet and low power. My UPS is estimating about 13 W total usage including the external 2 TB Samsung Green Drive in a Rosewill case (fan switched on). I ended up going with 64 bit Ubuntu LTS for simplicity sake. While there are some ghosts printing from Vista/7 to a samba shared printer seems to be working most of the time, linux boxes are printing via cups. The big downside I realized today, you can't get any HD stats on an external USB drive(smartmontools). So I've got no health monitoring of the disk. I would say that given a decent NAS where you can pick the OS (not the strange hacked versions of Debian,etc) would be a winner over my setup for that feature alone. Of course I wasn't able to find such a NAS anywhere near my other requirements of low power and lower cost. Another thing to note, APC seems to be moving towards proprietary battery shapes. Which means down the line you'll have to pay $100 for a battery that you can normally get for $20 just because the connectors and shapes don't fit in the box. I managed to get an older model which has a nifty feature - master power control: when the master device is off, 3 other power ports get switched off too. Silly part is those can only be on the surge side, so no way to have it turn off my monitor automatically and also have my monitor on the battery side too. I have not tried installing web software for management of the box yet. Thanks, Alex ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_...@wildintellect.com): The big downside I realized today, you can't get any HD stats on an external USB drive(smartmontools). So I've got no health monitoring of the disk. Thanks for posting. Fascinating stuff. I realise you won't want to re-do the design -- which sounds terrific with that one proviso -- but I notice the Zotac box also has one eSATA port. It strikes me that that eSATA might be The Right Thing. What I'm hoping to find, as an eventual replacement for my 2001-era 2U server, is a good nettop box with a pair of eSATA connectors. ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
On 11/08/2010 05:18 PM, Rick Moen wrote: Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_...@wildintellect.com): The big downside I realized today, you can't get any HD stats on an external USB drive(smartmontools). So I've got no health monitoring of the disk. Thanks for posting. Fascinating stuff. I realise you won't want to re-do the design -- which sounds terrific with that one proviso -- but I notice the Zotac box also has one eSATA port. It strikes me that that eSATA might be The Right Thing. What I'm hoping to find, as an eventual replacement for my 2001-era 2U server, is a good nettop box with a pair of eSATA connectors. Good Call, I did look a little at finding a drive case that was both eSata and usb. The drive case was the cheapest part by far but esata/usb isn't so common. I'm not sure if the board in between would still be an issue. If I happen to come upon a good deal on such a case I might try it. Anyone have an external eSata they could try to get SMART data on? Thanks, Alex ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_...@wildintellect.com): Good Call, I did look a little at finding a drive case that was both eSata and usb. The drive case was the cheapest part by far but esata/usb isn't so common. I'm not sure if the board in between would still be an issue. If I happen to come upon a good deal on such a case I might try it. Anyone have an external eSata they could try to get SMART data on? All libata drivers support SMART -- which is what one would expect, given that libata leverages the kernel's SCSI layers. https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Libata_Feature_Table (The particular SATA interface, internal vs. eSATA, is not an issue.) For SATA drivers that aren't part of Jeff Garzik's libata collection, you would have to check the particulars of those drivers. But I expect most people would use libata drivers. ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
On 11/08/2010 07:33 PM, Rick Moen wrote: Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_...@wildintellect.com): Good Call, I did look a little at finding a drive case that was both eSata and usb. The drive case was the cheapest part by far but esata/usb isn't so common. I'm not sure if the board in between would still be an issue. If I happen to come upon a good deal on such a case I might try it. Anyone have an external eSata they could try to get SMART data on? All libata drivers support SMART -- which is what one would expect, given that libata leverages the kernel's SCSI layers. https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Libata_Feature_Table (The particular SATA interface, internal vs. eSATA, is not an issue.) For SATA drivers that aren't part of Jeff Garzik's libata collection, you would have to check the particulars of those drivers. But I expect most people would use libata drivers. Ha, turns out I did get a case with eSata, didn't realize it until I started shopping for another case and went That looks familiar... Just need to find a cable now to try it. I'll let you know how it goes. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173043 Alex ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_...@wildintellect.com): Ha, turns out I did get a case with eSata, didn't realize it until I started shopping for another case and went That looks familiar... Just need to find a cable now to try it. I'll let you know how it goes. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173043 I predict that you'll be happier with SATA than with USB for this deployment. USB entails an additional translation layer, which is why you lose things like SMART datastreams, whereas eSATA simply extends the native mass-storage bus. Also, you should find that external SATA is more reliable and has fewer sources of flakiness and has fewer speed limitations in real-world situations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_2.0#Transfer_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA#SATA_Revision_2.0_.28SATA_3_Gbit.2Fs.29 ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
On Sun, 26 Sep 2010, Alex Mandel wrote: I finally have a small low power contraption on the way to begin my foray into a low power network server. Looking around at my options I'm not sure what distro to try on it first. A big factor in small... can you operate in text mode for console admin? Or does the server have to support gui consoles? Especially since it sounds like you plan to web most of your admining which means no on-server gui requirements ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Which distro for file/print/web server
I believe I mentioned Openfiler, but I haven't put it into production though. It does support a iSCSI, so you could boot block based VMs from your network store. I wonder how well it does over the long run of upgrades and updates. http://www.openfiler.com/ Personally, I would just use Debian and LDAP and Samba. Debian systems just keep running. New security updates/upgrades usually respect your configuration. http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba__LDAP If you don't have that many users, just use the following. useradd --uid 1018 joe So that user ids are consistent and access controls are properly maintained. Here appears to be a cool tool. smbldap-tools https://gna.org/projects/smbldap-tools/ The migration tools for LDAP are pretty cool too! http://www.padl.com/OSS/MigrationTools.html And, I would put my partitions on LVM with Xen. Then, if a VM gets full (or a partition) use lvmextend and ext2resize and voila, you have more space. brian On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:51:18PM -0700, Alex Mandel wrote: I finally have a small low power contraption on the way to begin my foray into a low power network server. Looking around at my options I'm not sure what distro to try on it first. Here are the requirements: SSH/SFTP/SCP Samba Print Server for Multi-OS (CUPS via Samba probably) Apache + mod_wsgi (Trac Django) Optional: Web interface to manage it FreeNas sounded intriguing but seems to only do the first 2 without a lot of arm twisting. So I started looking at Debian and Ubuntu but I can't seem to decide which version of those would give me the easiest setup. Anyone have and opinion about Debian testing and unstable for this purpose, I think Stable doesn't have new enough packages for my needs. Also anyone have an opinion on webmin or suggestions for something similar that would allow me to manage most of the sharing, printers and apache via a web interface? Thanks, Alex FYI I got a Zotac ZBox atom 330 with Nvidia Ion + SSD and an external 2 TB drive. ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech -- Brian Lavender http://www.brie.com/brian/ There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. Professor C. A. R. Hoare The 1980 Turing award lecture ___ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
