Author Topic: General NAS Questions  (Read 6884 times)

twodogs

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General NAS Questions
« on: January 11, 2012, 09:33:14 pm »
Found a Synology 207+ on Craigslist at a price I couldn't refuse. Don't know much about these, and I'm wondering what to do with it. My current system has two internal drives - 80G for LMCE, and 1.5T for media. Every movie I have is ripped to the big drive and its not yet 1/5th full, so I'm not hurting for storage space. Saving energy is important to me, and the NAS runs at about 17 watts - not bad even if I decide to leave it running 24/7. My system is starting to get enough complexity that I should think about a backup strategy. My movies are copied onto an old IDE drive, but that's the sum of my backups. The NAS is not speed demon - 3MB/s is the best file transfer I've seen, even though all the hardware is gigabit capable. Tweaking might get this to 15MB/s, but the forums say that's about as good as it gets. Here's what I'm considering.

  • Put a smallish drive in the NAS and set it to automatically backup LMCE (maybe rsync?). Then I'd continue to make manual media backups by occasionally connecting the IDE drive to the core.
  • Take the big 1.5T drive out of the core and install in the NAS. Turn on the NAS to watch movies, then turn it off. This might save energy, as well as wear/tear on the big drive. Then perhaps I could schedule it to come on by itself once a week and make a backup of LMCE (not sure if it could do this)
  • Something else I haven't thought of yet?

Any ideas are appreciated.

Twodogs


« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 03:52:20 am by twodogs »
http://greenrenovation.wordpress.com/home-automation/
system:
ASUS P5N7A-VM
integrated GeForce 9300
E5200 processor
Fusion 5 lite HDTV card
2G RAM
SYBA SY-PCI15001 6-port serial card
Denon AVR 3805
LG 42" Plasma
Gyration GYR3101
Cisco SPA3102 analog telephone adapter
Cisco 7971G IP phone/orbiter

mathieu

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Re: Best use for a NAS?
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2012, 05:58:10 pm »
Hi twodog,
Have been thinking of such thing to.
THE simplest way imho to make a releable backup of THE system drive is to make an image of it.
You could use clonezilla for that purpuse. There is a clonezilla live cd and also a clonezilla server.
Maybe installing clonezilla on a partition in the lmce core and put it on top of grub menu before lmce. That way when you reboot, the core machine will automaticaly start clonezilla and some backup script you added to the proces of booting. How this is done in practice  i am not sure. .....

Regards
Mathieu

purps

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Re: Best use for a NAS?
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2012, 08:18:24 pm »
Having a clonezilla backup happen every time you reset is going to kill so much disk space, and you'll get loads of nearly identical images. Just do it with the disk whenever you are about to do something significant to the system, like upgrade for example.

FYI if you use clonezilla, and you have an ext4 file system, you need to use expert mode and use the "-q2" option (leave everything else as default, although there is a fsck option which I use). If you ever need to restore, then again use expert mode, and use the "dd" option (again leave everything else as default).

As for backing up media etc, I would recommend "cp -u". The "-u" means "update only", so it will only copy across new stuff. You could set this up as a cron job to run in middle of the night, for example. Furthermore, make sure the paths you use go via the "public" folder in /home, as LMCE has a sophisticated method of mounting/unmounting drives; you may be disappointed if you try to use a different path, (via /mnt for example).

Cheers,
Matt.
1004 RC :: looking good :: upgraded 01/04/2013
my setup :: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/User:Purps

twodogs

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Re: Best use for a NAS?
« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2012, 08:47:14 pm »
Is this wishful thinking or is it possible (or even easy)?
  • All video stored on NAS
  • NAS normally off
  • Select "Video" on LMCE orbiter
  • NAS wakes on LAN and plays movie
  • After movie is over, the NAS times out and turns itself off
http://greenrenovation.wordpress.com/home-automation/
system:
ASUS P5N7A-VM
integrated GeForce 9300
E5200 processor
Fusion 5 lite HDTV card
2G RAM
SYBA SY-PCI15001 6-port serial card
Denon AVR 3805
LG 42" Plasma
Gyration GYR3101
Cisco SPA3102 analog telephone adapter
Cisco 7971G IP phone/orbiter

tschak909

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2012, 04:13:40 am »
First, see if you can make the NAS _do_ this in the first place, without LinuxMCE.

-Thom

twodogs

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2012, 06:30:56 am »
Will do. I also set up a FreeNAS box in addition to my Synology, so I'll have a go at each of them. Another issue I noticed tonight is that I can't log into the NAS from my laptop. When I enter 192.168.80.132:80 into Firefox on my desktop (LMCE internal net) I get right in. Trying this on my laptop doesn't work. The wireless router (WRT54) is on the external net, but I have the LinuxMCE firewall disabled (the router's firewall is on). See attached picture. Maybe this is a permissions issue?



« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 06:34:26 am by twodogs »
http://greenrenovation.wordpress.com/home-automation/
system:
ASUS P5N7A-VM
integrated GeForce 9300
E5200 processor
Fusion 5 lite HDTV card
2G RAM
SYBA SY-PCI15001 6-port serial card
Denon AVR 3805
LG 42" Plasma
Gyration GYR3101
Cisco SPA3102 analog telephone adapter
Cisco 7971G IP phone/orbiter

toppot

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2012, 11:05:24 am »
Maybe this is a permissions issue?


No, it's not. Please remember that from the outside (where your laptop is) the whole infrastructure behind the hybrid (actually core) is considered all to be 1 IP - that is the "external" IP on your core (192.168.1.x, could be 3 or 2 or whatever in the end you assigned)... This is what NATing does for you.

You can now go 3 routes, each with pros and cons:

1. Move your wireless AP (WRT54G) to the internal network (like the Gb switch) - remember to disable DHCP on the wireless router, and remember to set its own IP to be in the 192.168.80.xx range - and connect one of the LAN ports to this network, NOT the WAN port. This will make it an Access Point, rather than a router... Downside, all you wireless stuff will now be in the domain of LMCE, and access to internet is routed through the core - so lets hope it is stable!

2. Allow the core to route traffic between the 2 subnets (the external and internal on the core) - not recommended for most use.

3. The easy and controllable one. Allow port forwarding through the core, with port mapping. You should forward i.e. port 12080 from the cores external IP (could be 192.168.1.3) to the internal IP 192.168.80.132 - BUT ON PORT 80!! now you can from the outside access the LMCE web interface on port 80 by typing 192.168.1.3 (port 80 is given), and if this is your external IP on the core, you should get the LMCE web interface. If your type 192.168.1.3:12080 you should get to the NAS.. The downside here could be that from the INSIDE of the LMCE network the best way to communicate with the NAS is via 192.168.80.132 - i.e. there is a risk of confusion...

Unless you have other specific reasons (like I do), and granted your core is running stable - I would go for option 1.

(there is actually a fourth option with 2 discrete wireless networks, where you would choose between the 2 when you log on to WiFi - this can have some major benefits and ease of use for the rest of the household and guests)

-Tony

klovell

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2012, 02:59:38 pm »
(there is actually a fourth option with 2 discrete wireless networks, where you would choose between the 2 when you log on to WiFi - this can have some major benefits and ease of use for the rest of the household and guests)

-Tony

Make sure the two AP's are not physically next to each other in the house and that they're on different channels, especially if they're of the same make.

Also, In regards to powering off the nas every time it's not in use.  Have you considered the additional wear and tear you'll be subjecting the drives to by powering them on and off over and over again?  I just started using freenas a couple months ago but if it's like any other server it's not really intended to be powered off on regular intervals.  also, it could just be because of the amount of space/drives I have, but waiting for that thing to boot just to watch a movie or listen to music will likely get old very quickly.  Not trying to talk you out of it or rain on your parade but those were my initial concerns after I read your post.

twodogs

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2012, 04:58:05 pm »
Very helpful replies. I had never messed with port forwarding, but it only took about a minute to set up - works great.
http://greenrenovation.wordpress.com/home-automation/
system:
ASUS P5N7A-VM
integrated GeForce 9300
E5200 processor
Fusion 5 lite HDTV card
2G RAM
SYBA SY-PCI15001 6-port serial card
Denon AVR 3805
LG 42" Plasma
Gyration GYR3101
Cisco SPA3102 analog telephone adapter
Cisco 7971G IP phone/orbiter

tschak909

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2012, 05:38:45 pm »
What you are asking about wake-on-play, is possible through LinuxMCE, you will have to engineer a solution.

Remember, LinuxMCE is just a messaging bus.

So the media plugin can be modified, for example, to send an On message to the target disk device (which IS in the device tree.), it will have to be derived from the path, but it is possible.

This On message could be intepreted by your custom DCE device (added to its device template), and when it is switched on, it would send a WOL packet, and the media plugin would be modified to wait for the device to report an event saying it's ready. This event would be intercepted by the media plugin, which would then let the media play.

It would require:

(1) a custom NAS, with software that can talk to your DCE device.
(2) a custom DCE device acting as the mediator for your NAS, as a replacement for the File Server template.
(3) changes to the media plugin to intercept and act upon events generated by your custom File Server device in response to changes in your NAS.

-Thom

twodogs

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2012, 08:11:36 pm »
Thom, very interesting to know that this is feasible. Klovell, I hear what your are saying about the on/off cycling and the boot time. I guess it depends upon frequency of use. We sometimes go a week or more without watching a movie on LMCE so cycling would not be a terrible problem for us. Leaving the freenas box on 24/7 would increase my automation system energy use by over 50%

LMCE box - 70 watts (idle)
Network equipment - 18 watts
Synology NAS - 17 watts (idle)
FreeNAS box - 53 watts (idle)

As for boot time, I came up with an idea that might make this more bearable, or even fun. When "video" is selected, the NAS boot sequence would be initiated. During the boot interval, a "short" would begin to play. Cartoons, Three Stooges, SNL digital shorts, etc. could be stored on the LMCE machine and picked at random. Hmmm.

A different energy-efficient use for the FreeNAS box might be to install two drives (non-raid), and have it boot once per week to rsync from NAS drive A to NAS drive B, then rsync from LMCE to NAS drive A. That would give me the latest and next-to-latest backups of my LMCE setup (a little like Apple's time machine).
« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 08:15:10 pm by twodogs »
http://greenrenovation.wordpress.com/home-automation/
system:
ASUS P5N7A-VM
integrated GeForce 9300
E5200 processor
Fusion 5 lite HDTV card
2G RAM
SYBA SY-PCI15001 6-port serial card
Denon AVR 3805
LG 42" Plasma
Gyration GYR3101
Cisco SPA3102 analog telephone adapter
Cisco 7971G IP phone/orbiter

klovell

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Re: General NAS Questions
« Reply #11 on: January 20, 2012, 02:43:59 am »
Thom, very interesting to know that this is feasible. Klovell, I hear what your are saying about the on/off cycling and the boot time. I guess it depends upon frequency of use. We sometimes go a week or more without watching a movie on LMCE so cycling would not be a terrible problem for us. Leaving the freenas box on 24/7 would increase my automation system energy use by over 50%

LMCE box - 70 watts (idle)
Network equipment - 18 watts
Synology NAS - 17 watts (idle)
FreeNAS box - 53 watts (idle)

As for boot time, I came up with an idea that might make this more bearable, or even fun. When "video" is selected, the NAS boot sequence would be initiated. During the boot interval, a "short" would begin to play. Cartoons, Three Stooges, SNL digital shorts, etc. could be stored on the LMCE machine and picked at random. Hmmm.

A different energy-efficient use for the FreeNAS box might be to install two drives (non-raid), and have it boot once per week to rsync from NAS drive A to NAS drive B, then rsync from LMCE to NAS drive A. That would give me the latest and next-to-latest backups of my LMCE setup (a little like Apple's time machine).

I love the short Idea.  Put the selected video in a cue to play after the short... Very interesting.  That would look cool as hell if you have an actual theater also. 

I'm probably the only one that doesn't monitor or care to monitor my power consumption... sorry mother nature.  To help with the boot times look into putting Freenas to sleep vs shutting it down.  I can't say if it's supported out the box but I'm sure you can add power management.  Also, in case you haven't noticed, in Freenas there is an option to spin down the drives.  I don't use it nor have I in the past but if you're going to power off the box anyway it might be an option for you.  Depending on your motherboard the drives are probably your biggest power draw so that would be a nice balance between power consumption vs availability.  Just throwing out ideas incase you're interested...