home server

[darkod]

Those disks are mainly targeted for windows, I wouldn't waste my time with them. But for reference, after plugging in a stick you can check all existing disks and partitions (including not mounted ones) with:
cat /proc/partitions

After knowing the partition of the stick you can mount it and use that mount point to copy or execute files.

Most audio works fine but if your isn't I would start by checking the chipset and then googling how to make it work on ubuntu. Usually the audio is PCI too and you can list all PCI / PCI-X devices with:
lspci

That gives modem, manufacturer, chipset (which sometimes has nothing to do with manufacturer name), etc.

PS. I might be wrong but isn't the HDMI only for video? Or it transfers audio too?

[RobertKH]

If I understand right, the HDMI cable is for both audio and video. Same sort if setup for my blu-ray player. One cord for audio and video. According to the gigabyte manual I need to enable audio out on some sort of bios setting that I can't find. The disk that came with the mobo says it has the audio drivers or whatever. I'll play with it tomorrow and see what I can do. I'll try listing the chipsets as you stated above. I've mounted the USB bootable drive, but I keep getting errors when it try's to run a .exe file. Something about archiver ran into a problem. Maybe I should try to open it with something else? Any ideas? Thanks for the help!

[darkod]

You can't run the .exe on linux, that's a windows program. You could only use the disk if it has linux drivers included which I doubt.

Enabling audio options in bios is another thing, check the manual of the board. It should be on the cd or you can find it on Gigabyte website.

[RobertKH]

Ok so I can't seem to get the audio to work. No big deal for right now. However I am having quite the issue with setting up mdadm raid1. When I created the array one drive disappeard, which I would expect, however it only lists one drive in the array. Is that normal? Currently I have deleted the array and will rebuild shortly. I do have a question about it. Do I have to have my boot drive on the array? Currently I have my boot drive on a smaller HDD (320gb) and I want to build the array from my 2 1TB drives that are attached. I was using the mdadm cheat sheet that I found here http://www.ducea.com/2009/03/08/mdadm-cheat-sheet/ however I seem to be running into a problem. I thought I read somewhere that I needed to create logical volumes first, but I can't seem to be able to find that in any of the mdadm tutorials. Does anyone have a good build link? The end result should be 1 array (probably /dev/md0) with the 2 1TB drives.

I also have another question in relation to the array. Can i move my documents, video, and photo folders to be on the array? I assume that they have to stay on the drive with the /boot on it, but I am not really sure the limitations.

Another problem I am having is sharing via FTP. I can access my drives from my Win7 laptop no problem, however I want to have complete access to all the folders and drives. I have run some RDP stuff, however with windows RDP i end up with the blank desktop unless I use vino, which is incredibly slow.

Hopefully I can get this array stuff done then work on OpenVPN.

Thanks for all the help here guys. I appreciate it.

[darkod]

mdadm SW raid arrays are assembled by the OS so there should be no disks disappearing. When you run fdisk or parted you should still see all disks, sda, sdb, sdc, etc a d on top of them you should also see the md0, md1, etc devices you have.

When you say /boot do you mean only a /boot partition or the whole / partition? Because there is a big difference.

Yes, you can put /home as separate partition/md device on the raid, but take into account that if you put files that are accessed regularly you won't be able to put the big disks to sleep. If they only hold data that is not accessed regularly, you can put them to sleep after inactivity of 15mins or 30mins or similar. It's up to you.

What is the exact purpose of sharing through FTP? You want to do it from outside the local network? For inside the local network you would simply use samba shares for access from windows machines.

To start with make sure no disks go missing. If it does, check the cables for loose connections, and SMART data for errors/failures of the disk itself.

[RobertKH]

When I say disappeared I mean from the dock. It still appears in gparted and disks utility. I would expect this to be normal behavior as in RAID1 it is simply a mirror and isn't directly written to. Am I correct?

As far as FTP goes I would like to enable outside my network access, however it's mainly for my iPhone. I have created an FTP server from my Mac that allows file browsing and would like the same from my phone. That way if I need to move a file I can simply download it to my phone and head out. Does this make sense or would OpenVPN be a better solution?

[RobertKH]

As far as the /boot I don't mean moving the actual /boot as that will stay on my 320g 2.5" drive. I just mean moving those folders in the home directory for ease of organization. No big deal, I can simply make these same folder types in my raid array.

Remember this is just a simple NAS for all the photos and videos of my kids and all our adventures. It doesn't need to be over complicated. Lol. Thanks for your support.

[darkod]

If you plan all of your family to have access, I wouldn't use your Photos, Videos, Music, etc folders inside your Home folder. They are limited only to your user.

I would create folders/shares on the data md device and use the data there. In that case you might as well leave root and Home within it on the small hdd.

Yeah, now that you have SW raid you use the /dev/md0 device, not the disks direclty. To be exact, you use the mount point where md0 is mounted, not even the md0 directly.

It shouldn't be a problem configuring FTP, but you definitely need secure FTP. Expect instant stealing of your data if you allow unsecure FTP access from the internet. You can find plenty of tutorials on google about secure ftp server. I believe most would use something like vsftp or proftp, etc.

[RobertKH]

Well I said I would post some photos, so here is a link to them. https://plus.google.com/photos/10367...96037058982113
I am still working on the RAID. I'm also working on setting up the mail server to let me know if a drive is failing. This tutorial is helping... some ( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1185134 ). I also need to figure out how to set up my icloud account, but I think that I have gmail working via this link http://www.jacmoe.dk/how-to-send-ema...ux-or-mac-os-x
Darkod - I did install vsftp earlier, I just can't seem to figure it out. Any ideas of any tutorials for it?
Thanks again for all your help. I am progressing slowly but surely. It doesn't help that my wife is only 8 weeks away from giving birth to my second daughter. Things couldn't be too much more hectic around here lately.

[RobertKH]

Ok so here is the problem I am running into with creating my array. Maybe I just need to start from scratch, but I don't actually know how to do this. When I type in mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb2 I wind up with this problem

root@server-box:/home/server# mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdd1
mdadm: /dev/sda1 appears to be part of a raid array:
level=raid0 devices=0 ctime=Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969
mdadm: partition table exists on /dev/sda1 but will be lost or
meaningless after creating array
mdadm: Note: this array has metadata at the start and
may not be suitable as a boot device. If you plan to
store '/boot' on this device please ensure that
your boot-loader understands md/v1.x metadata, or use
--metadata=0.90
mdadm: /dev/sdd1 appears to be part of a raid array:
level=raid0 devices=0 ctime=Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969
mdadm: partition table exists on /dev/sdd1 but will be lost or
meaningless after creating array
mdadm: size set to 976629568K
Continue creating array? y
mdadm: Defaulting to version 1.2 metadata
mdadm: array /dev/md0 started.

However now both of my 1TB drives have disappeard from the taskbar (or whatever it's called in Ubuntu)
Do I just have to put them back on manually? Did I really lose them and have to start over again? If it says that /dev/sdd1 is already in an array with 0 devices how can that be?