home server

[RobertKH]

So I have a question on expanding my drives (already). If i am running RAID1 on my 2 1TB drives and I wanted to add another 2TB drive to the array, would that work? I understand the commands and all that, but would my system know enough to take one of the 1TB (the mirror) and then move all the data to the 2TB? Or would I have to set up 2 seperate partitions on the 2TB drive in order to set it up that way? Does this make sense?

[darkod]

If you simply add it to the existing raid1 array, you don't gain anything, except a third disk on top of the two already there.

What is the idea of adding the 2TB disk, what do you want to end up with?

Making raid from disks with different sizes is tricky, it depends what you want to achieve.

If you want to end up with 2TB of usable space instead of the 1TB you have now, the only way I see that is making a 2TB raid0 device from the two 1TB disks first, then use that raid device as physical partition for raid, and make a raid1 device with it and the 2TB disk.

But you will have to move the data first since making the new raid0 array will destroy all data on it.

[RobertKH]

So I am having a problem setting up OpenVPN. I can't seem to copy the .crt file or the .key file anywhere. I tried to copy it to a local storage so I can move it over my network, but that didnt work. I then tried to copy it to some sort of a thumb drive but that didn't work either. Any ideas here? I keep getting permission denied no matter where I try to copy it.

[RobertKH]

Darkod, I think that I will just say screw it and leave the setup as it is. I will be adding a 320gb to the box itself just for my itunes media as I made both of my pc's share the .itl file. I didn't really want to have to mess with raids over raids. Doesn't really sound like that much fun to me. Thanks for pointing that out.

[darkod]

For copying the keys I suppose you need sudo rights. If you are doing it in terminal put sudo in front of the command.

If you want to do it in the Nautilus GUI don't open it the standard way, open it from terminal with:

gksu nautilus

That will open it with sudo rights and you should be able to copy where you want it. Remember, in linux almost all system files/operations are protected. That's what makes it extremely secure.

[RobertKH]

Nautilus was still telling me that I didn't have permissions....odd. However I got it to work using:
sudo cp /etc/openvpn/server.key /500gb/openvpn stuff
Seemed to work just fine. The only problem that I've run into now is on the windows side of things. Well, windows and iOS. I think I need to do my windows pc before I can do the iOS. Openvpn says that in order to get the phone to connect I need a .opvn file but I can really figure out how to do that. I'll do some more testing tonight, but if anyone has any ideas.....

[RobertKH]

So I just bought a SSD to run my OS on. However I can't seem to find a good tutorial on how to do so. Any ideas? I know I can't use dd because you have to have equal drive sizes whereas I am moving from a 320 down to a 120 ssd just for boot and response speeds. I am freshly installing ubuntu 12.10 on it right now, however I am not sure if I have copied all the right files here. I will be moving things around in a minute and post on the outcome.

I did copy my fstab file, my mdadm file and quite a few other random config files in order to try and retain what I have so far. I just need to run the initramfs. Wish me luck.

[RobertKH]

Crap... that didn't work as planned. I did copy over my config files however after installing the SSD and unplugging the original boot drive it keeps hanging on boot and then tells me that /boot is unavailable or something like that. I did an update to initramfs, but what am I missing? I also am having a problem with samba. I copied my config file, however it won't let me share any of the already shared drives unless I run nautilus or something. I changed the owner to my username while in nautilus rather than root, but that didn't seem to help. I'm going to bed and I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

[darkod]

You seem quite bored these days, aren't you? You can't seem to settle down.

Lets see. If you installed 12.10 clean on the ssd there should be no issue booting it at least. You can deal with the config files, samba, etc, later, first thing is that it boots fine.

Depending how you instaleld it, all should be on the ssd, i don't get it why would it look for /boot on the other disk. What can happen is if the bootloader is on the other disk so it can't boot without it, but that is easily solved.

Can you boot into live mode and post the /etc/fstab from the ssd?

Also, did you already add the array to the new OS or not yet? Be careful, don't --create it again, that will destroy the data. Never run mdadm --create on existing array if you want to keep the data.

And don't rush in changing ownership and permissions, I don't think it has something to do with that.

[RobertKH]

You are right, never a dull moment in my life.

The clean install not only boots, but will mount my array as well as my 500gb. However for some reason it hangs when I am booting unless it keep the drives unplugged. Luckily they are just on trays so it makes it easier. I will copy the fstab here later tonight when I get home. I did rush in and change ownership to server rather than root already, however that still didn't fix it so maybe we can figure something else out.

Wait... when you say in Live mode, should I be doing it from the install disk or stick? Or just on the server itself?