New storage box

B

bjamm

Gawd
2FA
Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Messages
583
Im finally getting around to building my box for mostly network storage and to stream stuff throughout the house. Just looking for opinions on this setup. Speed isnt too important, just would like fast transfers moving file from one pc to another maybe. Swapping parts around to build this second pc. Whats a good linux distro to install onto this box?

Thermaltake Armor - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811133021
2 ICages for now - To fit my hard drive needs for now.
500 Watt Ultra Xfinity PS - XLT-XF500
ASUS A8-SLI Deluxe - because it has 8 onboard SATA which can be configured in RAID. (4 in RAID5, 4 more in RAID0/1/JSOB) Figure this was the cheapest way to get what I needed for now.
2gb Corsair DDR3200 RAM
BFG 6800GT PCI-E
3x300gb Seagate 7200.9 SATA
2x250gb Maxtor drives SATA

Once I get my tax return i'll probably sell them all and replace with 6-8 500gb 7200.10's. Just waiting on the 7200.10s to get to the $125 shipped area, shouldnt be too much longer.I figured I'll upgrade to a good PCI-X Card when I get more than 8 drives and need the speed. Also considering upgrading to gigabit, but for now Im upgrading all my cables to Cat6 and networked through a Linksys WRT54gs and Netgear 8port switch.


This basically was my main pc. Now i'll be "upgrading" my main rig to the following

Intel Core2 Duo E4300 & ECS Mobo (combo from frys for $150)
1gb ram DDR3200
Antec 480W NeoPower
BFG 5700 AGP 8x - "Hence the "Upgrading"" Since im downgrading back to AGP for this mobo. But I guess it doesnt matter, all my gaming is now done on xbox 360 and the big screen.
Seagate 320gb 7200.10 SATA

Anyways just thought i'd post and get some opinions on this setup..
 
I like Debian for most anything. Easy package management, and things work like I like them to.

I suggest Linux Software Raid over bios-implemented software raid; then you can move to a different machine/controller/whatever without rebuilding the array.
 
BJamm
I have the same case with a WD 80G for Debian Testing and
4 500 Seagate sata's in some nice lcd hotswap trays.

I have been also using debian for about 3yrs now.
I downloaded the NETINSTALL of stable ver 3.1
and did a very bare bones install

Once up and converted the OS to testing, Upgraded and installed
ssh, webmin and samba

My Disks I am leaving in a non raid.
2 500 Gigs are mounted in samba
Rsync will run at night to copy drives sda and sdb to sdc and sdd
Since its not mission critical data as like an office might be I dont need the
data mirrored the second it hits the disk.

Im basically looking at $250 for a 500Gig disk thats mirrored. ( $125/500Gigs each)
If the OS takes a dump its on the 80G
If one of the 500 craps out its on the backup from last night.

Less headaches this way.
 
Installing debian now. :) Only took 45min to download the full dvd on my FIOS :)

I actually have 3x300gb and 2x250gb in there. (One 250gb will be the boot disk for now.) I think i'll leave them all as single drives for now, and setup raid later on when I replace them with 500gb, since I dont feel like transfering all the files around to setup a clean raid install

Whats the best way to setup the hard drives or transfer files over to UNIX setup, all my drives are NTFS and maybe 50% full. Im not too proficient with linux but I can usually get done what I need to..even if it takes me a few tries
 
I installed samba and webmin but it can be tricky inside webmin to do all the perms and mount points.

The easy way...

Unless you did a FULL install from dvd you should add a couple programs to the box.

on debian install proftpd - @ command line enter: apt-get install proftpd
you should install ssh also @ command line enter: apt-get install ssh
then you can download winscp from the Net, make a profile for your boxes ip/uid
Winscp is a drop and drag client and its also secure.
If you dont know you can also install Putty for windows and have your secure ssh client
from windows to the box.
M
 
Well its been installing since 4am and its now 1pm. Alot of it was formatting the disk, but still the "extracting files" part is taking forever. Is it normal for it to take this long? I just want the box to get up and running. It shouldnt take 12+ hours to install!
 
Flip through the consoles (Alt+F1-4) and see if there's any errors.
 
Ah, yes. Assuming that second screen was still printing out new stuff, it's working as expected. I usually do a netinstall, which is a little more complicated, but at least prints progress indicators by default. It's normal to get a long "I'm doing something" message when installing from media. I don't know why they don't give some indication that something really is happening, but there you have it.
 
Well I know its working, it was on about 50% when I posted its now on 61%. (5-10% per hour) Im just not used to it taking over a hour or two to install a full OS. Its installing off a DVDR so I still dont see how its taking so long but i guess we shall see.
 
I'd avoid the high end CPU. You don't need it. Get server quality motherboard and ram instead. Get a lian li server case. Cases that need multiple 100 dollar cages will cost more. Bigger drives are better than smaller ones. I'd also get a sata raid card and then use whatever OS you find easiest.
 
Why get a SATA RAID card when you can just do a linux software raid with mdadm? Here's what I think you should do.

Put all your drives in Supermicro 5in3 drive cages. Get a beefier power supply. Something like the Seasonic S12-650W. If you just want a huge dump to put everything, then build your software RAID 5 from 250GB segments. If you'd like take the extra 50GB segments on the 300GB drives and mirror them or whatever. Then when you buy your new 500GB drives, put them into more 250GB segments and just add them onto your RAID 5. Build it all with mdadm and you can resize the array as much as you'd like. It takes a long time to resize a big RAID5 array, but that's the cool thing....you can resize the array while it's live. Using mdadm you just tell it how much of the array's bandwith you want to reserve to resizing. Your server will be up the entire time.

If you need more SATA ports then just buy relatively inexpensive SATA cards. My favorite under *nix is the promise SATA300 TX4, which is like $75 for 4 ports. There are also companies making SATA cards for single lane PCI-E, so that is another expansion root in the future.

Have fun with your file server.
 
I didn't know you could expand a software raid 5 array using mdadm. right now i have my raid 5 server running on windows 2003 server edition. I'm gonna have to look into this. too bad im still a linux noob messed around wih ubuntu but that's about it.

Does anyone one have anymore info on setting up mdadm does it come equiped with most linux distros or will I have to install it. is there a gui or is it all command based. Also is there one single gui that will allow one to manage a mdadm array and smb as well. right now i run samba but thats on the side of my modded xbox running xbmc.
 
well now I did get errors, what do these mean?

These are on initial install.

IMG_0179.jpg
 
general said:
I'd avoid the high end CPU. You don't need it. Get server quality motherboard and ram instead. Get a lian li server case. Cases that need multiple 100 dollar cages will cost more. Bigger drives are better than smaller ones. I'd also get a sata raid card and then use whatever OS you find easiest.
Click to expand...


I already had the AMD 3500 and mobo. I upgraded my main rig to the Duo2core. Plus I already bought the case last week. I bought Icages from Thermaltake for $15 each. Will let me install maybe 12 hard drives for less than $50 bucks.
 
I will get an extra SATA Raid card when I have more than 8 drives. Since my mobo has enough onboard SATA i dont think its worth spending the cash because I dont need the extreme speed it provides. Its basically not going to have more than 3-4 users on it at a time. Most times only 1 when Im watching a movie or transfering new stuff to the file server.
 
bjamm said:
well now I did get errors, what do these mean?

These are on initial install.

http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n155/bjamm/IMG_0179.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

How many IDE controllers do you have on your machine? Have you rebooted yet? (I hope not...) What's "fdisk -l" show from the console?

Hit Alt-F2 and hit enter to get a console. Then try "mkinitrd".
Click to expand...
 
bjamm said:
Once I get my tax return i'll probably sell them all and replace with 6-8 500gb 7200.10's. Just waiting on the 7200.10s to get to the $125 shipped area, shouldnt be too much longer.I figured I'll upgrade to a good PCI-X Card when I get more than 8 drives and need the speed. Also considering upgrading to gigabit, but for now Im upgrading all my cables to Cat6 and networked through a Linksys WRT54gs and Netgear 8port switch.
Click to expand...


are there any motherboard which has PCI-X slots, excluding server boards?

thanks
 
There's this, but if you're looking to save money look at eBay for dual pentium 3 motherboards. They're pretty cheap - you can usually get a board, 2 chips, and a gig or so of memory for around $200.
 
this is cool, but its very expensive..

Dual P3 boards would be a better option then..
 
cornfield said:
I didn't know you could expand a software raid 5 array using mdadm. right now i have my raid 5 server running on windows 2003 server edition. I'm gonna have to look into this. too bad im still a linux noob messed around wih ubuntu but that's about it.

Does anyone one have anymore info on setting up mdadm does it come equiped with most linux distros or will I have to install it. is there a gui or is it all command based. Also is there one single gui that will allow one to manage a mdadm array and smb as well. right now i run samba but thats on the side of my modded xbox running xbmc.
Click to expand...


http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2002/12/05/RAID.html
 
unhappy_mage said:
How many IDE controllers do you have on your machine? Have you rebooted yet? (I hope not...) What's "fdisk -l" show from the console?

Hit Alt-F2 and hit enter to get a console. Then try "mkinitrd".
Click to expand...



I have two IDE controllers (onboard) but only one hooked up. The primary has a 250gb and DVD Burner hooked up. I have my bootup 250gb SATA hooked up on the NVIDIA Sata and the 300gb Seagates hooked up on the other SATA Controller.

Im installing to 250gb sata which is ide9 in the setup. I did reboot when I know I probably shouldn't have. Is there anyway to run this install from the hdd instead of CD so it speeds up? I guess I'll let it run again through th einstall and try that. I installed everythign with default values, and I have no idea why im getting errors.

Do you happen to have aim and could possibly help me get this running tomorrow if you dont mind? bjamm2 on aim/yahoo. Or post here, either way works, aim is just a bit faster :)

Appreciate it mage
 
If you do reinstall from scratch, I suggest you use the 2.6 kernel - type "linux26" at the boot prompt. It's got better sata support.

You should be able to boot the DVD, go to the console and fix things, but that's kind of difficult. Reinstalling is probably easier.

I can't get on AIM - something is screwy with my network, no matter which router I use or which machine I use I can't get on. Post questions and I'll try to respond in a timely manner.
 
Well I wish I would have known about the linux26 command :) I reinstalled with that and it took all of 5min to run through the initial setup instead of 15hours. Huge difference.

Now its running through and installing all the packages. I'll doesnt seem as I have any problems now but I unplugged all of my hdd excep tthe boot disk, so I might need help setting up the drives but we'll see when it finishes.
 
Did you *install* the gui? :p If not, run "apt-cache search xorg" and do "apt-get install X" where X is something like xorg-xserver-something. Normally I'd dig it up for you myself, but I just gave blood and I'm gonna go get something to eat ;)

You can change things so the GUI comes up on startup; do "update-rc.d gdm defaults" (or something like that, run update-rc.d by itself to see the command syntax) and it'll start the Gnome display manager on startup. It may be "xdm" or "kdm" depending on which desktop environment you installed; gdm for Gnome, xdm for no DE, and kdm for KDE.

HTH
 
Yeah, I installed KDE and Gnome (using KDE)

But im still trying to figure out how to install all my programs/drivers :)

I can "run" firefox but I dont know what the equivalent to "Program Files" is, i thought it was /bin but its giving me access denied errors?
 
bjamm said:
But im still trying to figure out how to install all my programs/drivers :)
Click to expand...

apt-get install "the program you want to install"

also useful:

apt-cache search "something you are looking for"

and I believe that gnome comes stock with synaptic a GUI based package manager with a "reasonable" interface.

From my little experience with linux, I would venture to guess that most programs that are not distributed via the package manager (you may have to add more repositories for certain programs) are often available as source in <program-name>.tar.gz or .tgz or similar form. You'd unpack that (tar xvf or similar) and then usually do a cd <programdir> followed by ./configure and then make and make install.
 
What drivers, specifically? It's pretty hardware-specific how one goes about doing that.

Generally /usr/bin is where things go, but you probably don't want to copy stuff there manually; use the package manager to install things. KDE has a nice frontend to apt; I forget what it's called but it's probably under System or Utilities on the K menu.
 
mainly I need to install my sound drivers, video and gigabit ethernet drivers.

Onboard sound/gigabit for Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo and a Nvidia 6800GT graphics card.

I downloaded the linux versions but im lost how to install them. I only know basic commands for linux but never done driver install and such.

Thanks for the help
 
It seems the "snd-intel8x0" module is what you'll need for audio, and if you can download ethernet is probably working :confused:. Video is a little more tricky; if you really want accelerated video you can get the driver from nVidia. Otherwise stick with the nv driver. You should be able to find how to get the sound module working with your card; if you can't let me know and I'll do some digging for a good resource.
 
k I think I have everything kind of setup, however the sound still did not install.

Whats the best way to install the sound (I have the drivers, just dont know how to install them?)

Also I mounted my hard drives. Is it going to be better to convert them to linux partitions or leave them as NTFS?

Whats the best way to setup an FTP, as well as sharing folders over the network?
 
bjamm said:
Whats the best way to install the sound (I have the drivers, just dont know how to install them?)
Click to expand...
ALSA - Debian Wiki. Cliffs: run 'alsaconf' and then set up dmix so more than one app can use the sound card.
bjamm said:
Also I mounted my hard drives. Is it going to be better to convert them to linux partitions or leave them as NTFS?
Click to expand...
Converting to Linux if you've got the room to shuffle stuff around is probably a good idea. Ext3 is fine, or give XFS a try if you have a battery backup on your machine.
bjamm said:
Whats the best way to setup an FTP, as well as sharing folders over the network?
Click to expand...
Vsftpd server Configuration in Debian. For network shares, you probably want to use Samba; look at /etc/samba/smb.conf and the The Official Samba-3 HOWTO. If smb.conf isn't there, you probably need to install samba. "apt-get install samba" should do everything you need.

Lastly, don't forget to run "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" every once in a while to make sure your system gets security patches and so forth. Things generally don't break with updates; Debian tries to be stable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top