Custom File Server OS

[chemikalguy]

Would you be willing to share one of the custom OSes that you compiled yourself - the ones that include webmin and samba? I'd try that myself, but I am new with the linux 'black screen' and wouldn't have any clue where to start. Then on top of that, you throw in the fact that Cobalts are a unique beast unto themselves.

Anyway, I have a Raq4i that I tried to put RaqCop on, but the LCD only showed the current transfer rates for the NIC, and never gave me the IP address as mentioned in the instructions. I didn't do much with it. I'll keep working with it when I have some time.

As far as the XTRs go, it seems an awful waste for me to use RaqCop on them, as they hold four drives, and would be (in my opinion) better suited to making a file server out of at least one. I might try to put RaqCop on one, but the instructions have you use either a 10gig or 20gig drive for the disk image, which also seems kind of a waste with so many larger drives out there.

Anyway, if you can help a brother out, I'd really appreciate it!   

Thanks!

Scot

[Davesworld]

Yeah don't use an XTR for anything but a file server. All I have done was use Strongbolt 1.x which is really an installer for Centos 4 with Bluequartz lopped onto it and with full lcd functionality and an attempt at a Cobalt kernel at least. Their installer also checks the rom version and updates to 2.10.3-ext3 if needed. In fact the installer is what they actually charge for. The OS itself is Centos. I do post custom kernels for Centos 4. x in our Extras folder. I'm running 2.6.30.5 on mine at the moment and it is there. Jeff Walter has been insanely busy lately so I have made updates of his patch up to kernel 2.6.30. His last one was 2.6.27. 2.6.28 saw a lot of things moved to other locations in the kernel tree so that one took a bit of work, 2.6.29 and 30 did not move anything relevant to the Cobalt patch so it was trivial.

I'm also in the process of trying to make a Cobalt operable version of OpenFiler. For whatever reason they did not use the GCC 4 compiler but rather GCC 3. I can certainly chroot into an IPCop 1.4.x build environment and build a custom Openfiler kernel there. A kernel compiled with a newer compiler just doesn't want to start on Openfiler if I remember correctly.

[chemikalguy]

Oooh! Oooh! I've read openfiler is great.    I haven't used it personally, but I've used freeNAS, and people say they're similar. I really like freeNAS. It's light weight, powerful, and will run on an insanely old system. If openfiler is anything like that, it should be awesome on a cobalt.

Now I'm all excited. I'm extremely busy with a baby at home, but I want to stay up late working on this. I'll check out the 'extras' folder. I'll have to figure out which one I need, and how to use it, but it's the work that makes it fun when everything comes together. Thanks alot for your help.

Scott

[chemikalguy]

Okay, so I downloaded 'kernel-2.6.30-5-cobalt.tar'. So if I read this txt file correctly, I'm supposed to start the machine and then drop this into the system at the root folder andthen unzip it? Is that it?

Is webmin in the repository, or do I have to add it manually? I tried to install webmin on the Strongbolt system, but the repository didn't include webmin, and I had no idea how to add it via SSH.

Keep me posted if you ever decide to make a system that includes openfiler. I'd like to give that a try.

Thanks!

Scott

[Davesworld]

Okay, so I downloaded 'kernel-2.6.30-5-cobalt.tar'. So if I read this txt file correctly, I'm supposed to start the machine and then drop this into the system at the root folder andthen unzip it? Is that it?

Yes, you got it.

Is webmin in the repository, or do I have to add it manually? I tried to install webmin on the Strongbolt system, but the repository didn't include webmin, and I had no idea how to add it via SSH.

You have to download it manually. What I did was sftp into it and copy the rpm to the /tmp folder and issue rpm -ivh webmin*

Keep me posted if you ever decide to make a system that includes openfiler. I'd like to give that a try.



Thanks!

Scott

I compiled a kernel for it using an older gcc since Openfiler using gcc 3.4. Not sure exactly why they do not use gcc4. I'll test openfiler on a raq xtr in the next few days.

[chemikalguy]

Okay, I have a silly Linux question. How do I set the folder permissions on the root folder so that I can upload the files? I tried to do it using SSH, but get an access denied message. 
I connected using SSH logged in as admin, which should have root privelages, right? Or, do I need to do a sudo root?

[Davesworld]

Best bet is to use SFTP. It uses ssh but you can use it with any KDE file manager including Dolphin. You can even save a SFTP address to the places tab. In a file manager type root@sftp://xtr's.ip/ and you will be prompted for your root password. Don't forget the / at the end. In Dolphin, the entire root folder tree for your unit will show up as if it were a local folder tree. If using Windows, download winscp. You should never have to change permissions on any folder to accomplish this.

I often sftp using one tab and having my local system in another. Simply copy the tarball, click on the sftp tab and in the XTR's root directory paste it. Then you can ssh in and cd / and then tar -xvzf the file. I usually issue the command ls and then highlight the tarball listed and then middle click it just after the tar -xvzf , hit enter and you're done. Before rebooting, ensure that you have both the System.map and bzipped vmlinux. I versioned them so I use links to allow the rom to see a Sytem.map and vmlinux.bz2. Make sure you have /lib/modules/2.6.30.5-cobalt there. I only embed just enough drivers to get it to boot in the kernel image, the rest I have as modules. I added a two port Intel E1000 card to the pci and am transferring over gigabit to my XTR, works great.

[chemikalguy]

Using winscp worked like a charm. One of the things, I think, that was messing me up was that it was making me enter the root password twice, so I kept thinking that I was typing it wrong the first time, and trying a different password.

Anyway, where do I get the Sytem.map, vmlinux.bz2, and /lib/modules/2.6.30.5-cobalt? I looked around in the downloads section and didn't see them.

I checked my /lib/modules folder and have:

2.6.16-xtr
2.6.9-42.0.10.EL
2.6.9-89.11.EL
2.6.9-89.9.EL
Kabi-4.0-0 in there.

I will hold off on running the tar command until I know I'm not going to kill something if I don't have those other files yet.

I did get webmin installed and working. For the most part, it looks good.

[Davesworld]

Everything is in the tarball. The purpose of untarring it from the / directory is so everything lands in the right folders.

[Davesworld]

BTW, Openfiler is made using Conary Rpath and my attempts so far at making it boot on a Cobalt have not been successful. The system itself is compiled using GCC 3.4 and is 686 only. I may try to make a kernel that is only PIII and try it that way. The kernel I distribute for centos is set to run on any Cobalt, 3000 or 5000 series. The packaging system uses packages called change sets rather than rpm, debian or good ole tgz. The web gui is very basic but one feature I do like is the nic bonding right there in the gui. Of course not all nics can be bonded I believe.

I will try a bit more in my free time but webmin and centos work so well it's tough to beat if you want to tweak things. I actually add a user account and assign the folder that I export over NFS and Samba share the same permissions I have locally. I also set Samba so it maintains the permissions dave users over my XP box and do not squash root. I'll try iscsi sometime but I have never used it.

[chemikalguy]

Thanks. I have it up and running, and will try to get the permissions set up so that I can get to the share I created. I created a share and tried to access it, but it just keeps prompting me for my password. I also created a user, and it does the same with that user. I changed the folders security settings to zero, hoping that would help. I'll keep playing.

No big deal on Openfiler. I've just heard good things about it. I think it's the GUI that most people like anyway. I assume that it just runs Samba in the background anyway.

I was surprised that the Strongbolt web interface still works with Webmin installed. I figured that it wouldn't work anymore.

edit:

I got it running! I ended up having to go to the webmin site and look at their instructions on how to set up samba via webmin. There were a couple of minor things I hadn't done. Minor, until you want it to work - then it's not so minor.

So, now for the tough question: Since I have this thing running on a 20GB drive, would it be easier for me to just slap in a bigger drive and reinstall the whole thing, and repeat these steps, or should I attempt to image the drive and drop it onto a larger one? If I do that, I only need to expand one partition, right? The system partitions and swap don't need to change, do they?

[Davesworld]

I would simply get three 500GB Hitachi drives and put them in the other three bays and set them to use Raid 5. It tried it with four 500GB drives and installing Strongbolt, it didn't like booting the big drive. There is a way to actually use four 500GB IDE drives but it's clunky. Each tray if given an IDE cable with two ports will run both. Notice how with four drives you see hde in the first bay, hdg, in the second and so on. You could attach a ribbon and power Y cord to the first bay, hook the drive you boot from on the master of a dual cable and run a 500GB as the secondary which would show up as hdf.

Hot swapping does not work with the XTR units these days anyway as the drive ruler Cobalt driver is broken now so Jeff comments it out so you can't try to compile it. That's all it really did, the Highpoint HPT370 chips on the ruler board run off the as shipped kernel hpt366 driver anyway so you just can't hot swap the trays.

I also found that Sata to IDE converters work on the XTR as well. I have on my experimental XTR that I don't use day to day not only a dual drive from one tray with a two connector ribbon, but one of the two drives is a SATA drive with converter.

Seems like a lot of trouble but why not squeeze out the most capacity you can get with these 1U units? I'll try a 2TB drive and converter and report back when I get one.