Here i go again, Linux what flavour? - Page 9

LeperousDust · 02-11-2007, 19:22

Right i'm writing this down for myself because i've got a little log kept here now it seems:

Looking into a streaming media server for all the movies and mp3's that will be kept on here, so far i'm impressed with: GNU MP3/Media
I may look into SageTV or MythTV for recording too at a later date.

I'm still baffled but working on how i go about setting up my LVM2, but i've got enough time because my raid array is still being built. Currently on track still with 110mins to go at 26xxxK/sec

Also going to mess with the mdadm config file so it can email me upon problems and at least try and auto resolve simple problems

Printer works fine, but i can't seem to make it was to default to greyscale unless instructed by the windows drivers. Not really a mjor problem, when i install the printers on the local machines i just set them to default greyscale, easy enough.

Haven't tested the backup script yet, nor have i posted the exclude list that i'm not sure about, but it seems to be OK. I'll do that now

//Edit: It's excluding
/proc/ - i don't think i need this?
/sys/ - i might want this?
/tmp/ - obviously not
/var/cache - again obviously not
/dev/ - now i'm not sure about this i don't want an infinite loop because mount points are here but i still think theres stuff in there that i would want?
/var/tmp/ - nope not needed

Basically i want to backup as much as possible as i've got tonnes of spare room

//Edit2: Heres my current understanding about LVM2:
When i've set up this raid array it will be at md0
i need to creat a VG (volume group) and then add my PV (physical volumes, or raid arrays) to this
now i creat a LV (logical volume) which act like partitions on the VG, but in my case i'd probably just set it to fill the VG
now i'm set for the future if i need to remove/add/replace/grow/extend/whatever with regard to my storage no? I think i've got my head around it...

//Edit3: I'd also like to be able to VNC in, i've got RealVNC installed on my Vista laptop, but i'm getting an authentication error everytime i try and connect? I've checked th option in system -> preference -> Remote Desktop i've set it up so users have basically full control, but a password is required, any reason this isn't working? I think this may actually be a bug (there is an almost identical problem on the forums).

Oh and 1 hour to go

LeperousDust · 03-11-2007, 17:48

Right time for a little update: That all went swimmingly last night, i mounted it and saw 1040 Gb, which is a little short since sudo is still taking 5% i'll trim that down to 1% when i get round to that. It's unmounted at present, and i'm going to start playing around with LVM2 and see how that goes.

I've managed to get my BackupOS partition on my other samsung drive working find and auto mounting, after my auto login, and at 2:00 every night i have a backup of what i think are the important files i need to protect, although i'm still a little unsure of that so far, the backup folder is only ~50Mb which seems a little too small

.

LeperousDust · 03-11-2007, 18:09

I've just stumbled accross what could have saved me a LOAD of time, the "alternate ubuntu CD" has a GUI for RAID partitioning and LVM etc... I'm thinking of wiping the RAID stuff i've set up so far, downloading the CD and running the GUI (my little comfort zone away from the terminal

)

LeperousDust · 17-11-2007, 03:30

Right i'm back, and i'm still having tonnes of trouble setting this thing up... Not happy again now things have seemingly ground to a halt.

I do like webmin its great.

I've got RealVNC connecting as long as I don’t use a password - not ideal

Printing works, but it’s not great, no warnings about out of paper, or printer off like within windows to windows, also its pretty bloody slow from my vista machine (takes about 2-3 minutes to spool one page of text). Hey at least it works. But I can't default it to greyscale but leave a user-end option to change to colour.

RAID with mdadm is just a nightmare at present, every time I boot ubuntu up the hard disks are given different positions under dev, so even though I may have made my RAID5 array it won’t work because its pointing at the wrong disks every other boot up. Btw the boot up can be DOG SLOW a fair amount of the time (I mean 5 minutes plus?) I guess this might be problems related to md0 and lost drives though.

Also one of my drives keeps just totally disappearing off the fdisk -l list, so I can only see 3 of 4 drives, but it’s still connected and has power and working but linux has lost it, what’s going on there too?

Finally when I thought I had it all together, I used fdisk to make a partition all seemed to work, I wrote it (with -w) checked it was there under /dev/md0p1 and it was, but mkfs.vfat /dev/md0p1 is unable to be found or whatever, so what was going on there? That was when the RAID array was working. I feel i'm close but frustratingly far away.

Sorry there’s loads there and not much is good news but that’s the way things are at present. Causing me what I think should be unnecessary headaches...

Oh one last final thing, actually setting tasks with cron doesn’t seem to have worked either, how do I set a task so every day at 3am the computer just shuts itself off? I'm sure I’ve done that right but the computer remains on in the morning when I get up when it shouldn’t be....

Cheers
/Annoyed/depressed/tired Alex

Mark · 17-11-2007, 12:09

I've only had drives move when I've physically unplugged them. Given that drives are disappearing as well I'd suggest hardware as the first place to check. Is the disappearing drive always the same one? Is it connected to the onboard controller or an add-in one? How is the controller configured. My system has a RAID/AHCI option and I've found that using 'disabled' or AHCI works but if I use RAID - even though I don't have a RAID array on that controller - the system won't even boot. I might have to select JBOD but as I don't need RAID anyway I changed it to AHCI from disabled last night as in theory I'll get better performance (don't even try changing this after installing Windows - it'll BSOD). Anyway, use 'dmesg' to work out what hardware Linux has found. You might find clues there.

If it's not that, it might be a problem with udev configuration and I really don't envy anyone trying to fix that (though I've done some basic changes).

For printing, not sure why it's that slow. XP doesn't have that problem at all so I'm going to have to lay the blame for that firmly on Vista and it's well-documented networking oddities. The driver limitations I know about and I warned you of those so there's nowt I can do.

Finally, why are you using VFAT on a mdadm RAID array? You won't be able to dual-boot the array with Windows so why use a Windows filesystem? Use a native Linux filesystem like ext3 instead. It'll be far more efficient and a lot less likely to randomly break.

LeperousDust · 17-11-2007, 13:58

If i want other windows computers to write/read to/from it over a network it has to be something they can play nice with right? There isn't anything over that vfat i can use is there? I'd rather use ext3 but i have to fanny about installing drivers on the windows machines to get them to play nice and i'm not even sure how well that would go...

I'll take a look a dmseg, but it's staying off atm

I thought the drive might be dodgy, but it's connected to the motherboard controller, and because its in its out hard drive cage i can still see its got power (so no power connecter problem) and that it may occasionally flash for activity...

Printer is annoying but i'll deal with.

Any idea of a boot time of three years? I think i'm squarely blaming it on a broken md0 atm, as it may check it?

Mark · 17-11-2007, 14:07

Common mistake that one. Windows doesn't really care what's at the other end of a network connection so long as it speaks the right 'language' (which is what samba is for). I use ext3 and xfs on my server, and have used reiserfs in the past. All work fine.

LeperousDust · 17-11-2007, 14:43

:| You're joking me,

Dammit! xt3 or xfs it is then, read some nice little things about xfs not sure if its worth me bothering though?

Dr. Z · 18-11-2007, 20:31

How did you make the mdadm config file?

LeperousDust · 24-11-2007, 01:54

Right so in the light of this i'm gonna give this a another stab tomorrow, can't believe i still dont' have a functioning mass storage RAID array working yet, its p***ing me off no end now.

I think i have some kinda of intermittent hardware fault?
Ubuntu keeps naming all the drives differently and its causing no end of hassle, i've nuked the mdadm.conf file now so its empty again, that was causing the slow boot ups and lock ups it seems. Becuase drives where going missing i guess...

I've not got a clue what i'm looking for, and dmesg give me a lot, so i'm about to upoad and link to the text files in a bit.
dmesg
fstab (for my auto mounting drives) i've had to use PUID here instead of /dev/*** because that was proving unreliable
mdadm empty don't know why im linking

fdisk -l this is now acting weird when it wasn't before, how can it not see at least two mounted drives, one being BackupOS which is available and working, and the other bing the main frigging filesystem drive???

Can anyone shed any light, im having the usual dog of a time, and this is why i steer clear

It's enjoyable when its working but getting there is a frequent nightmare kicking and screaming...

02-11-2007, 19:22	#81
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	Right i'm writing this down for myself because i've got a little log kept here now it seems: Looking into a streaming media server for all the movies and mp3's that will be kept on here, so far i'm impressed with: GNU MP3/Media I may look into SageTV or MythTV for recording too at a later date. I'm still baffled but working on how i go about setting up my LVM2, but i've got enough time because my raid array is still being built. Currently on track still with 110mins to go at 26xxxK/sec Also going to mess with the mdadm config file so it can email me upon problems and at least try and auto resolve simple problems Printer works fine, but i can't seem to make it was to default to greyscale unless instructed by the windows drivers. Not really a mjor problem, when i install the printers on the local machines i just set them to default greyscale, easy enough. Haven't tested the backup script yet, nor have i posted the exclude list that i'm not sure about, but it seems to be OK. I'll do that now //Edit: It's excluding /proc/ - i don't think i need this? /sys/ - i might want this? /tmp/ - obviously not /var/cache - again obviously not /dev/ - now i'm not sure about this i don't want an infinite loop because mount points are here but i still think theres stuff in there that i would want? /var/tmp/ - nope not needed Basically i want to backup as much as possible as i've got tonnes of spare room //Edit2: Heres my current understanding about LVM2: When i've set up this raid array it will be at md0 i need to creat a VG (volume group) and then add my PV (physical volumes, or raid arrays) to this now i creat a LV (logical volume) which act like partitions on the VG, but in my case i'd probably just set it to fill the VG now i'm set for the future if i need to remove/add/replace/grow/extend/whatever with regard to my storage no? I think i've got my head around it... //Edit3: I'd also like to be able to VNC in, i've got RealVNC installed on my Vista laptop, but i'm getting an authentication error everytime i try and connect? I've checked th option in system -> preference -> Remote Desktop i've set it up so users have basically full control, but a password is required, any reason this isn't working? I think this may actually be a bug (there is an almost identical problem on the forums). Oh and 1 hour to go __________________ Last edited by LeperousDust; 02-11-2007 at 20:43.

03-11-2007, 17:48	#82
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	Right time for a little update: That all went swimmingly last night, i mounted it and saw 1040 Gb, which is a little short since sudo is still taking 5% i'll trim that down to 1% when i get round to that. It's unmounted at present, and i'm going to start playing around with LVM2 and see how that goes. I've managed to get my BackupOS partition on my other samsung drive working find and auto mounting, after my auto login, and at 2:00 every night i have a backup of what i think are the important files i need to protect, although i'm still a little unsure of that so far, the backup folder is only ~50Mb which seems a little too small . __________________

03-11-2007, 18:09	#83
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	I've just stumbled accross what could have saved me a LOAD of time, the "alternate ubuntu CD" has a GUI for RAID partitioning and LVM etc... I'm thinking of wiping the RAID stuff i've set up so far, downloading the CD and running the GUI (my little comfort zone away from the terminal ) __________________

17-11-2007, 03:30	#84
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	Right i'm back, and i'm still having tonnes of trouble setting this thing up... Not happy again now things have seemingly ground to a halt. I do like webmin its great. I've got RealVNC connecting as long as I don’t use a password - not ideal Printing works, but it’s not great, no warnings about out of paper, or printer off like within windows to windows, also its pretty bloody slow from my vista machine (takes about 2-3 minutes to spool one page of text). Hey at least it works. But I can't default it to greyscale but leave a user-end option to change to colour. RAID with mdadm is just a nightmare at present, every time I boot ubuntu up the hard disks are given different positions under dev, so even though I may have made my RAID5 array it won’t work because its pointing at the wrong disks every other boot up. Btw the boot up can be DOG SLOW a fair amount of the time (I mean 5 minutes plus?) I guess this might be problems related to md0 and lost drives though. Also one of my drives keeps just totally disappearing off the fdisk -l list, so I can only see 3 of 4 drives, but it’s still connected and has power and working but linux has lost it, what’s going on there too? Finally when I thought I had it all together, I used fdisk to make a partition all seemed to work, I wrote it (with -w) checked it was there under /dev/md0p1 and it was, but mkfs.vfat /dev/md0p1 is unable to be found or whatever, so what was going on there? That was when the RAID array was working. I feel i'm close but frustratingly far away. Sorry there’s loads there and not much is good news but that’s the way things are at present. Causing me what I think should be unnecessary headaches... Oh one last final thing, actually setting tasks with cron doesn’t seem to have worked either, how do I set a task so every day at 3am the computer just shuts itself off? I'm sure I’ve done that right but the computer remains on in the morning when I get up when it shouldn’t be.... Cheers /Annoyed/depressed/tired Alex __________________

17-11-2007, 13:58	#86
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	If i want other windows computers to write/read to/from it over a network it has to be something they can play nice with right? There isn't anything over that vfat i can use is there? I'd rather use ext3 but i have to fanny about installing drivers on the windows machines to get them to play nice and i'm not even sure how well that would go... I'll take a look a dmseg, but it's staying off atm I thought the drive might be dodgy, but it's connected to the motherboard controller, and because its in its out hard drive cage i can still see its got power (so no power connecter problem) and that it may occasionally flash for activity... Printer is annoying but i'll deal with. Any idea of a boot time of three years? I think i'm squarely blaming it on a broken md0 atm, as it may check it? __________________

17-11-2007, 12:09	#85
Mark Screaming Orgasm Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Newbury Posts: 15,194	I've only had drives move when I've physically unplugged them. Given that drives are disappearing as well I'd suggest hardware as the first place to check. Is the disappearing drive always the same one? Is it connected to the onboard controller or an add-in one? How is the controller configured. My system has a RAID/AHCI option and I've found that using 'disabled' or AHCI works but if I use RAID - even though I don't have a RAID array on that controller - the system won't even boot. I might have to select JBOD but as I don't need RAID anyway I changed it to AHCI from disabled last night as in theory I'll get better performance (don't even try changing this after installing Windows - it'll BSOD). Anyway, use 'dmesg' to work out what hardware Linux has found. You might find clues there. If it's not that, it might be a problem with udev configuration and I really don't envy anyone trying to fix that (though I've done some basic changes). For printing, not sure why it's that slow. XP doesn't have that problem at all so I'm going to have to lay the blame for that firmly on Vista and it's well-documented networking oddities. The driver limitations I know about and I warned you of those so there's nowt I can do. Finally, why are you using VFAT on a mdadm RAID array? You won't be able to dual-boot the array with Windows so why use a Windows filesystem? Use a native Linux filesystem like ext3 instead. It'll be far more efficient and a lot less likely to randomly break.

17-11-2007, 14:07	#87
Mark Screaming Orgasm Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Newbury Posts: 15,194	Common mistake that one. Windows doesn't really care what's at the other end of a network connection so long as it speaks the right 'language' (which is what samba is for). I use ext3 and xfs on my server, and have used reiserfs in the past. All work fine.

17-11-2007, 14:43	#88
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	:\| You're joking me, Dammit! xt3 or xfs it is then, read some nice little things about xfs not sure if its worth me bothering though? __________________

18-11-2007, 20:31	#89
Dr. Z I'm going for a scuttle... Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 2,021	How did you make the mdadm config file? __________________

24-11-2007, 01:54	#90
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	Right so in the light of this i'm gonna give this a another stab tomorrow, can't believe i still dont' have a functioning mass storage RAID array working yet, its p*ing me off no end now. I think i have some kinda of intermittent hardware fault? Ubuntu keeps naming all the drives differently and its causing no end of hassle, i've nuked the mdadm.conf file now so its empty again, that was causing the slow boot ups and lock ups it seems. Becuase drives where going missing i guess... I've not got a clue what i'm looking for, and dmesg give me a lot, so i'm about to upoad and link to the text files in a bit. dmesg fstab (for my auto mounting drives) i've had to use PUID here instead of /dev/* because that was proving unreliable mdadm empty don't know why im linking fdisk -l this is now acting weird when it wasn't before, how can it not see at least two mounted drives, one being BackupOS which is available and working, and the other bing the main frigging filesystem drive??? Can anyone shed any light, im having the usual dog of a time, and this is why i steer clear It's enjoyable when its working but getting there is a frequent nightmare kicking and screaming... __________________ Last edited by LeperousDust; 24-11-2007 at 01:58.