MacBook Air (early 2015)

Those things, now that Apple no longer provides updates to macOS for Intel Macs, are getting really inexpensive by now.

My latest purchase was an 11" MacBook Air (early 2015) with an Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. The thing cost me €150 and came in good condition. There is a scratch on the clam shell, nothing I do care about. 
When I ordered the device, the one thing I cared about was the 8GB of RAM. I do not actually care about the amount of storage that came with it for two reasons, both of those later in this post. The other thing some people might be bothered by is the Intel Core i5, rather than a Intel Core i7. My understanding is that the i7s used in this machine were just i5s which could run of a higher clock speed, correct me if I am wrong. And here, the i5 actually plays into my use case of the device, lower CPU clock speed means longer battery life. So, for my use case, the i5 was a good thing.

There was a lot of typing "use case" in the previous section. Here is what I intend to use the thing for: travel. Hours of battery operations with tasks such as text-processing or displaying PDF-documents. With the speed of my typing, the entire computer might just to to sleep between the hits on the keyboard. And as for reading, maybe an e-Ink display would suit me better...

Those Intel-Apples are getting pretty inexpensive by now, but by no means those are cheap computers. The build-quality is exceptional, at least in this generation; the one with the good keyboards. The screen is what it is, good enough for me though. Me needing reading glasses by now, I wonder if "Retina Displays" would make any severe difference to me.

Apple is phasing out the support for Intel Macs, hence their low prices on the 2nd-hand market. Is this a bad thing? Yes and No!
Over the last few years, I did secure a few bargain Intel Macs of my likings, knowing that Linux can be installed on those very easily. My (presently) preferred flavour is Linux-Mint Cinnamon. Very easy to install, very easy to deal with. Disclaimer: my experience with Linux dates from 1993 onwards, with SLS and Slackware. And even before that I was using 386BSD. So, my definition of easy might differ from yours.
Installing Linux-Mint Cinnamon exhibit only a single simple to overcome hurdle: the lack of a WiFi-driver. I overcame this by using a generic USB-WiFi-dongle, which got me online. Once the OS was up, I could install the required driver. Now Linux was up and running. HOWEVER, the facetime-camera did not work and I could not get it to work either. With the camera not working, the ambient light adjustment does not do anything While I could ignore the camera, the ambient light-thing was a real bummer!

So, I decided to re-install some macOS for the time being. There are some options to do that, depending on what is wanted: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/reinstall-macos-mchlp1599/mac

First time I tried Option-Command-R, every fell apart... now idea why.
I then tried Options-Shift-Command-R (finger acrobatics involved!), which worked (I don't recall which OS this ended up with).

Some time later, the first option worked, resulting in macOS Monterey.

One of my initial thoughts was to run Linux and macOS parallel, which dual boot, using the macOS home directory from Linux. While dual boot worked out for me, the using of the macOS home-directory from Linux did not.

There is another idea, which would work, but for the time being does not appear practical to me: partition the SSD into 3 parts. A first for macOS (APFS), a second for Linux (ext4) and a third for home (exFAT). I am pretty sure this would work, however, 128GB are pretty tight for such games.

Now to the elephant in the room, the jumping point (German: der springende Punkt) here is the use-case again. How much storage is actually needed? See above, some LibreOffice documents here and there, some PDFs here and there... not much space needed for those. Of course it is a different story should one consider photo-shoots in RAW or even videos. But, let's be honest, who would consider a MacBook Air for video editing?

As promised, there are 2 solutions to consider:

1. Upgrade the machine with a bigger SSD. No problem with the MB-A 2015. The back can be removed easily, just a few screws to remove and it pops right off. Apple uses a proprietary SSD socket, however, adapters (eg. from China) to regula M.2 from can be found for about €2. Not all M.2 SSDs will work, you will find information about this on the InterWeb.
2. Just of what you have, that's what I do. In addition to the internal SSD, I am using an old WD external USB3 spinny HDD. This external HDD serves 2 distinct purposes 1) external storage (dah) and 2) time-machine backups. The setup of such a disk is explained below.

Setting up the external USB3 disk is no magic either, however, at first, this might not be as obvious as it seems to the regular consumer.
My path was the following:

• using disk-utility to erase the NTFS partition
• reformat as APFS
• partition the external HDD into an APFS particion twice the size of the internal SSD
• format the remainder of the external HDD with exFAT 

Why exFAT for the second partition, you might ask. Simply said the two partitions will serve different purposes. The APFS partition will serve Time-Machine for backups.

The exFAT partition can be used as external data storage, which can be used with non-macOS computers, thereby allowing for very easy data transfer. Think of the photos or videos I mentioned above.

In my case, we are looking at 

• 128 GB internal SSD
• 256 GB Time-Machine storage
• 768 GB shared/scrap/data/video/photo/etc space

Will the external drive connected all times? Of course not. When out and about, 128GB seems more than enough. Once back at the bed, connect the drive, backups will start, move the data about. All good! To be honest, I don't think that I would need any more storage than that in a daily task situation.

Concluding: get one of this Intel MacBooks now that they are soooo cheap. Don't get any of the ones with the bad butterfly keyboards! (older is better in this respect, DO THE RESEARCH). 

Review you use-case. What to you actually need when using your ultra-portable computer.

As a final tip: When you are already in your MacBook, apply fresh thermal paste to the CPU. Do that in the manner you found thermal compound in there. Apple left out parts of exposed semiconductors for a reason.
After having applied fresh thermal paste to my MacBook Air 11" (early 2015), I have not heard of the fan since.

 

Phase 1 (nearly) completed

Previously, I mentioned the criteria of registering an RV in the Netherlands. Said process will reduce the taxes to be payed for the vehicle. However, the requirements of said conversion do not actually fit my needs, in particular the thing about the extended hight. Also, presently, I am traveling alone, so what the point of adding another seat in the living space, not even mentioning beds for at least 2 persons. At the end, it all did not make any sense to me, so, I decided to not got for the RV certification.

So, what did I go for? At first, I want to show the the actual vehicle, sitting on my front yard.

MB Vito - short version

In its original condition... internally:

the living area

some of the anchor points to use for tying down furniture (see below)

from the cab

through the back doors

Going on a trip requires some basic storage, independently of if one sleeps inside the vehicle or in a tent outside. Of course, you wish to keep your stuff in one place, in particular when hitting a curve ;-) My choice was to go for a side table having storage. In IKEA terms, that is a "Hol".
And here it is installed in the van:

the Hol, a side table with storage

strapped down, the case itself, the lid too independently

With this particular piece of furniture, I thought it was easiest to just tie it down, of course with IKEA gear Frakta.


The in-van bed, the next important thing to have. This way, I will be able to sleep where ever I park my van. When traveling on highways, those truck-stops are a pretty good choice. Of course you would not set a tent up there...
So, here is my solution: the IKEA "Fliken" futon (out of production).
Strapped down in my van:

Fliken, the "bed" position

Fliken, the "bed" position

Fliken, the "sit-up" position

Fliken, the "sit-up" position

Fliken, the "lounge chair" position, strapped down for traveling

Fliken, the "lounge chair" position, strapped down

with the futon (sun bleached cover)

with futon

Fliken is discontinued, hence, I figure that Lycksele could be a replacement for a one person sleaper.

Concerning mounting, again, the means of my choice comes from IKEA: ratchet Frakta. I figure those could be used on Lycksele equally.

Phase 1 of the camper conversions concludes with the installation of a black-out curtain between the cab and the living area. My choice of IKEA product is Werna.
I am not sure about the way of mounting the curtain(s) yet.
Here is a first test:

experimental fix

cab side view

With the black-out curtain issue solved, I consider phase 1 of the conversion completed.

For additional comfort, in particular when being on the road, phase 2 will be concerned with sound proofing of the vehicle.

Your Own Cloud Server - Owncloud on a Low Power Server

Modern everyday "computing" (referring to computer usage) is done on low power devices, such as smartphones and tablet PCs.
 Many of such devices and their applications (aka apps) depend on the availability of "the cloud".
"The cloud" brings its very own challenges and difficulties. Many cloud service, in particular the gratis ones, claim ownership of the data given to them. In addition to that kind of problem, the space offered by such services is usually rather limited. Of course ... one can get more, when paying some sort of subscription fee. Fair enough...

However, there is an alternative: running your very own cloud service.

Let's take some considerations to design a system for a private cloud service:

1. low energy consumption
2. high capacity
3. availability
4. data safety
5. low cost
6. available clients

With the present technology, I figure one cannot obtain all the wishes with using just a single computer. However, I believe that a simple system can be set up to fulfill all the requirements of the considerations. Actually, I did just that, for my very own personal cloud.

And here is how I did it, and what I used.

The Cloud Server Hardware
For serving the personal cloud, a computer is needed that runs essentially 24/7. The power consumption of which will finally dominate the energy bill for the system. Also, I wanted this particular server to be really silent, since I do not have the space for a dedicated server room.
My decision was to go for an GigaByte BRIX with a Celeron N2807. This device is passively cooled, very cheap and takes 2.5" HDDs. I decided to give the BRIX 4GB of RAM and a 500GB TOSHIBA HDD, making it a very quiet little box with a decent capacity.

The Cloud Server OS & Software
For the OS I decided to go with ubuntu server 14.04.1 LTS. Ubuntu is not my first choice when it comes to operation systems, in particular due to the built-in spyware (e.g. Zeitgeist), however, when it comes to hardware compatibility, ubuntu is the leader of the pack. Using a contemporary device as the BRIX therefore urges for the decision to use ubuntu. Also, I think that stuff like Zeitgeist is not present on the server edition of ubuntu (not sure though). To make life easy, I use webmin on the headless server,
Turning towards the cloud server. I am aware of only one server for which cloud clients exist for essentially every system available: owncloud.
The documentation available for ubuntu server and owncloud is good enough, so that I wont comment any further.

Availability
That's a topic that splits in 2 easily.

1. the server needs to run 24/7, we already had that topic....
2. the server needs to be reachable from anywhere

For the second point I would like to point towards dynamic DNS.  Should you have your very own domain, this will of course not affect you. I use a dynDNS called noip, which is for free under certain circumstances.

Data Safety
Now we are touching a topic that is not as easy as it sound. How safe do you want your data to be? How much of your data do you need to be really safe?
Since I can't answer any of questions alike for anyone else but me, I would like to share my very own approach to the problem.
In my home, a file-server backs up all data on a RAIDZ (Zetabyte FS RAID). For the purpose I run a 6 core AMD FX6100 based, 4 x 1TB HDD machine. This particular machine, running FreeNAS, was originally housing my cloud-server. However, AMD processors are known for being somewhat power hungry, hence, this server runs a few hours a week only.
For data safety, I backup of all my computers, including the BRIX, on this file-server. Such backups can be easily configured for the cloud-server, using webmin (NFS is your friend!).

The Costs
Finally, the last topic. The BRIX is the cheapest computer I ever bought... I believe. In average this thing runs on 5 to 8 Watts.

Clients
Owncloud.org offers clients for Windows, OS-X and Linux for free.  Further, paid apps are available to connect Android and IOS devices to owncloud severs. There are some 3rd party Android apps available for free...

Conclusion
Running your own cloud service is an easy thing, which comes essentially for free. Volume is not an issue any longer, add as much space as you need! The BRIX comes with a USB3 port, hence you can plug as much storage as your heart desires into the device...



BIOS photos (BRIX)
on demand, I shot some photos (literally) of the BIOS settings I believe being relevant (no particular order):

I hope, those help...


UPDATE:
Wolfram Webers found that his BRIXs wont boot using ubuntu. However, Wolfram made a successful attempt installing CentOS7. Actually, I might just give that a try too! Thanks Wolfram!


UPDATE:
Wolfram Webers wrote on google+:
It was grub, of course. And here's my solution that works at least for Debian 7.8:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="crashkernel=auto vconsole.keymap=de vconsole.font=latarcyrh eb-sun16 rhgb quiet"
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true

Again, thank you very Wolfram! I am sure that this help other who wish to build such a little own-cloud server.

Changing from NAS4free to FreeNAS

I am a great fan of NAS4Free. It houses my most precious data for a long time by now.
However, there is a problem with using TimeMachine with NAS4Free. Actually, I have no clue why...

Incidentally, I was playing with another distribution, quite similar to NAS4Free: FreeNAS. FreeNAS is a bit heavier than NAS4Free, although they share the same origin.
Unfortunately, FreeNAS is a tad to big to fit on the internal SSD of my Acer Easystore (Intel Atom based), which actually houses my precious data.

From another project, I had a box with an AMD FX-6100 processor, which was not doing a lot. So I decided to give it a shot, installed 4 HDDs and NAS4Free on a stick. To that time, I thought that my TimeMachine problem was originated in the lack of compute power of the humble Intel Atom. Well, I was wrong. Even 6 cores and 8GB RAM could not solve those problems.
However, the NAS with the AMD FX-6100 served perfectly in all other services.

My TM-backups were done, you will find that post on this blog, on a FreeNAS-based AMD-APU machine, which I called TimeVault. To the present day, this is a very reliable TimaCapsule subsitute.

However, I decided to give my bad-ass 6 core NAS a second chance concerning TimeMachine. So, I got myself an external 3TB HDD, to temporarily backup the data. It took for ages, with many failures, doing it via AFP and a regular Hackintosh. I discovered that using the Hackintosh, this backup was much faster, not failing at any stage, using NFS (which I had set up for my UNIX machines anyway). Lesson #1: use NFS even on a Mac/Hack!

Now, finally, today, I did the migration from NAS4Free to FreeNAS on the 6 core machine.
And this is was this post is all about!
Buying an HDD, backing up data and all that for just for the bin!
I booted a 1 year old CD version of FreeNAS and installed it.
As soon as the box was up, I could just use WebGui with "Storage" => "Auto Import Volume" to import my 4 ZFS formatted data disks. Everything was done automatically... the process even recognized my ZFS data pool settings! And of course, all my data was fine!

Finally I installed the most recent stable upgrade of FreeNAS.

Presently running it, TM finally seems to be happy backing up to the 6 core box.

DIY Time Vault (Time Capsule clone)

Apple's Time Machine is a nice piece of software, however, it also is know for failing regularly on both, Macintoshs and Hackintoshs.
Of course one would expect that the product works perfectly on its intended hardware, leaving the more underground Hackintoshs behind, however, it doesn't!

=> Wanna skip the motivational part? Just scroll to the Recommendation section.

So, what is the problem?
In pursue to solve the mystery, I experimented with various different file servers and server OS serving various different Hackintosh, since this is what is at my proposal.
At the beginning, the results seem inconclusive, however, I have the impression that by now, I got closer to the problem's solution.


The Servers

Let's have a closer look at the 3 file servers I was using during testing.

1. Low Power: Intel Atom single core, running NAS4Free, 4 HDD @ RAID-Z1
2. Moderate Power: AMD E-350 dual core, running FreeNAS, 2 HDD @ RAID-Z (mirror)
3. Moderate Power: AMD E-350 dual core, running FreeNAS, 2 HDD @ RAID-Z (stripe)
4. High Power: AMD FX-6100 six core, running NAS4Free, 4HDD @ RAID-Z1

Workstations

1. Core i5-3570K, Z77, overclocked, 8GB
2. Core i3-3225, H77, 8GB

Network

Everything is connected by Gigabit-Ethernet.

 
Experience

When one does encounter problems with Time Machine, usually, the workstation just freezes up. Maybe the mouse pointer will still react, but that's about it. During TM backups, the workstations seem to freeze up rather often, in particular when doing a fresh, first or initial backup, covering a large amount of data.

The Core i5-3570K struggled a bit in the beginning during writing backups to the Atom system. However, at some stage, the initial backup was successful, and backing up this particular workstation on the Atom server never had been a problem again.
The same workstation had no problems to store backups on any of the other server setups at any given time.

With the Core i3-3225, the experience was totally different. After many unsuccessful attempts, a backups was created successfully once on the Atom NAS. Incremental backups were OK, until a major change on the disk's data structure was introduced and backups failed ever since.
The same workstation failed to backup successfully on the AMD FX-6100, even when being the only client to that system. Even when running the FX-6100 at max specs, backups were still failing and the workstation was found in an oblivious state.
On the positive, backups to the AMD E-350 with a RAID-Z in stripe was immediately successful. This sort of backup-storage translates into the non-ZFS world as RAID-0, which is really fast, but not redundant (one disk goes bang and the data is gone). This server config gave some hope and also input to understand the TM-problem.
Now at the last option to discuss, the E-350 FreeNAS box was configured to RAID-Z(mirror), which is equivalent to RAID-1, i.e. mirroring disks. Such a config is somewhat slower than striped arrays, however, it give redundancy and therefore is a better safe-heaven for valuable data. Now, how did this perform as a TM backup server (Time Capsule)? Well, mixed results here! The backups stalled again, when the other workstation accessed the server during backup. However, the TM backup succeeded while the other workstation was totally disconnected from the file server.


Conclusions

When reflecting on the results, it seems that Apple's Time Machine needs a very prompt response from the file server (or Time Capsule, for good measures). However, there seems to be this other factor, being the processor (clock) of your OS-X host. The Core i5-3570K (3.4GHz + turbo) hardly ever had a problem to backup all it's data, while the Core i3-3225 (3.3GHz) had a hard time doing so.
All in all, I think, Time Machine is very much dependent on a quick reaction of the file server. Still I do not understand why the fastest machine, the AMD FX-6100, failed. However, I discovered, that in this particular FX-6100 setup, there might be a problem with the Gigabit-Ethernet.


Recommendation

When building a Time Capsule clone, the following can be done.
With an AMD E-350 dual core and a 1, 2 or 3TB drive, a fully functional Time Capsule clone can be built when running FreeNAS.
In the case that you wish to protect your valuable backups/data more reliably, you may want to consider using a file sever with mirrored disks. If one disk fails, the other still holds all the data. I figure that this is more secure than using Apple's Time Capsule, which employs one disk only.
Therefore, my personal recommendation is to build a relatively low power AMD E-350 system as a Time Capsule clone, running FreeNAS with 2 mirrored disks. I would call this a Time Vault.
Configuration of the FreeNAS-OS to operate as a server for Time Machine backups is pretty simple. In a usual way, set up your data storage structure, than add a share for AFP and set the "disk discovery" mode of said share to "Time Machine" and you're good to go.

deduplication experiment

Remember, I once built a "scratch NAS"? Well, scratch says it all. At one stage, the data will be destroyed. And this is exactly what I did today (after having stored the data safely in a RAIDZ-1).
Here comes the trick, I reconfigured FreeNAS to a ZFS mirrored array. Now we have same primitive data safety, however, the disk-space is now down to 1.8TB.
The experiment is the following, ZFS is set to compression and deduplication, while the server got 8GB of RAM only.
I wonder if 8GB for 2TB would be enough for home use, or is the rule really is to use 16GB for 1TB.
Will update on the outcome.

deduplication mystery

One of the great things about ZFS (Zeta File System, not zFS, the file system running on z/OS mainframes), as I thought, was de-duplication, i.e. not storing the same file twice.
On the single core 1.8GHz Atom system, the low power processor rendered this feature not feasible. OK, that was to be expected.
However, on the 6 core 3.3GHz build, I figured it would be achievable to run this option. Nope! I tried, before RTFM, and the performance was terrible!
Now that I did RTFM, the dedup-option seems ridiculous. Why? Very simple, it is said that you need at least 16GB of RAM for 1TB of storage when using dedup. I am running a small 3TB server (4 1TB disks in RAIDZ-1). The minimum RAM requirements for using dedub would therefore be 48GB. I believe that this is a little too much for a rather moderate NAS, wondering what they use at data centres.
The wildest server boards have 16 memory slots, taking it to the extremes, one may fill those with 16GB modules, ending at 256GB, which would allow for 16TB of deduplicated storage. For my taste, that's a bit over the moon.
Conclusion, as much as I have liked to employ the dedup-feature in my NAS, I will pass on this. My high performance NAS runs on 8GB only, which I believe is quite something for a mere storage device.

24 core cluster slaughtered (for the time being)

The HPC cluster I built some time ago consist(s/ed) of 4 ASUS MA58L LE motherboards, having 4GB of RAM and an AMD FX-6100 processor. With one head node and three worker node, this summed up to a total of 24 cores with 16GB of RAM, all linked up through Gigabit. Depending on the needs, i.e. OS, of the time, the workers were equipped with a 1TB HDD, the head node's storage was/is 1TB too.

As things develop, I wanted to secure my precious data, held on my tiny NAS, a bit better. I decided that a second RAIDZ-1 NAS would be in order.

Second RAIDZ-1? Yes indeed. My first RAIDZ-1 file server is based on an Acer easyStore, which came with windows home server, and now runs nas4free. The reason it runs this particular system is the built-in SSD, see earlier posts why. The easyStore is a really weak Intel Atom based server... nothing wrong with that, however, Sun's ZFS may be a bit of a challenge for this particular architecture.

Here is idea, use the 4 1TB disks in the former head node and add another 4GB to it. A 6 core processor, somewhat more powerful than an Atom, running disks in SATA3 and having 4 times more RAM, should make a certain difference. This will hopefully not only enable the "dedup"-option, but also render the "scrap-NAS" (see earlier post) superfluous.
Potentially, if things work out well, the disks of scrap-NAS will be inserted into the new 6 core device.

The next step would be, to build another head node for the HPC cluster, I figure.

Adding noise to the server room

 Friday, July 26, 2013

Adding noise to the server room

The last few days have seen me changing my entire IT, not in terms of the system, rather the location. A land line connection needed to be pulled for the phone (skype - land line DECT combi phone), the RED ethernet had to be rewired and finally an ethernet switch was made redundant.

All in all, I am still running the following system:

• smoothwall express with RED and GREEN connections, running a squid caching proxy
• my old WiFi-router as an wireless access point (WPA2 of course)
• the good ole ACER H340 running NAS4Free with a RAIDZ-1 ZFS pool using four 1TB disks, serving as a media server, a file server and a backup server
• an AMD E-350 system running FreeNAS with a RAID-0 scrap data storage with two 2 TB disks
• my good ole Buffalo NAS (1TB)

All storage devices are running NFS, SMB and AFP, expect for the Buffalo, which has nof NFS.
To me it is somewhat clear, the H340 is the main, safe, data storage. However, it happened today, one of the 4 HDDs stopped its service. We had a nice warm summer day, temps at about 27 centigrade. The HDDs in the H340 were running at about 50º centigrade, which is somewhat warm.
I shutdown the server, let it sit to cool for some while and fired it up again. The HHD was back, however, some data was potentially written when the HDD took a break. Luckily, I am running a ZFS pool, hence, the disk could be fixed, in ZFS this is called "clear". Everything is back to fine again.

The incident made me rethinking about the H340. There is a post on the internet somewhere, in which someone discloses a mod which changes the H340's case fan.
That seems to be exactly what I need to do, I figured. Indeed, the H340's regulated case fan sucks air out of the case. The fan is arrange such, that air is forced along the HDDs, before exiting the case. Well, that makes some sense :-s Drawing a regulated low amount of hot air along some disk drives...
In my scrap box, there still was this unregulated fan which came with the Antec water cooling used in my workstation. This thing is a real blower, however quite noisy, hence, I did not use it in my workstation PC. However, now that all my servers are in a dedicated noisy room, why not using it in the H340.
This noisy Antec fan is now doing service to blow cool air into the case, over the HHDs, with the following impact, on that same hot summer day (eve):

Temperatures before mod:

• CPU: 45º C (essentially independent of the ambient temp)
• HDDs: 47º - 50º C (during idle)

Temperature after mod:

• CPU:  24º C (essentially the ambient temp)
• HDDs: 29º - 36º C (during a ZFS pool scrub)

And here is the downside of it. A very quiet device device is now turned into a very noise but well cooled NAS.
Mind you, the H340 is a perfect machine for running NAS4Free! (see earlier post)

Scrap NAS

Monday, July 8, 2013

More IT (scrap NAS)

More IT going on at my home. Some time ago I experimented with proxmox virtualization (déja vue!) and virtualization clusters. At the time, I built a second AMD E-350 rig, which at some stage was converted into a scrap-NAS for data migration purposes. To do this, I grabbed a 2TB-USB2 storage device which was on sale, salvaged the HDD and dumped the rest. The actual HDD would have been more expensive at the time. I figure the USB3 marketing helped to get a cheap HDD (WD green series).
At some stage, I decided to buy a second 2TB-USB2 storage device, in order to salvage the HDD.
Both disks are now living happily next to one another in the same mITX case, alongside with the E-350 board.
This setup is now my new 4TB scrap-NAS, running FreeNAS w/ZFS (stripe) for increased performance.
In the course of experimentation, I played with noise, energy and compression levels provided by FreeNAS. My preliminary decision was to run at maximum energy saving, minimum noise level and lzb-compression. Although very appealing, zfs-dedup remained dis-engaged, remember, it is a scrap-NAS.

Acer Aspire H340 & NAS4Free

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Acer Aspire H340 & NAS4Free

Once again an off-topic post in the blog. Somehow the strange desire to share computing / IT topics occasionally took over.

Presently, I am rebuilding my IT, trying to catch up with recent technologies.

Years ago, I purchased an Acer Aspire easyStore H340. The neat little device came with 3 1TB HDDs and MS Windows Home Server. The latter, although doing its job, sucked. Finally, I decided to look for alternatives, in particular some with RAID redundancy and modern file-systems, such as ZFS.

The first alternative I found was "freeNAS". This product, along side some others, is supposed to run from flash drives or SSDs. This would helps to speed up boot and also preserves valuable HDD slots for volume data devices.
And here it comes, the H340 carries an onboard 256MB flash memory device, which is used for MS WHS recovery.
Early versions of FreeNAS were small enough to fit on this device. However, FreeNAS has evolved and grew somewhat larger.

The good new is, that there is some other product, which originates in FreeNAS and is still small enough... check out NAS4Free.

To install NAS4Free, I figure, there is only one option: equip the headless H340 with a head, i.e. a keyboard and a screen. I choose to obtain a PCIe-1x graphics card and use a USB keyboard for input.
Additionally, JP3 needs to be installed!!! Do not remove the jumper at any later stage... at least my H340 would not boot NAS4Free w/o it. Contrary to JP3, the graphics card can be removed, e.g. to reduce power consumption.

Here comes the tricky bit, the H340 needs some strange tweaks to get it to boot from USB sticks, USB CD drives etc. The CMOS setup is not that straight forward, but, it will get you there. The F12-key will help to select the boot device, if it has been recognized by the system.

To get up my system, I choose to boot the NAS4Free live CD with a USB CD-drive.
The option to install an embedded system w/o swap will install the OS on the H340's internal flash drive, just about... no room to spare, all done with a screen/kb attached.

Here comes the more fancy bit.
In such a setup, you would like to go for the most senior option of storage, which presently seems to be ZFS.
The configuration of ZFS is actually not very well documented, neither at SUN, nor at NAS4Free. So, here's what I did to get ZFS up and running on an H340.

1. install NAS4Free from a CD using a screen and keyboard attached
2. reboot after installation has finished, the console should offer a possibility to use DHCP now
3. note the IP-address given to the H340
4. using a remote computer, connect to the H340 using a webbrowser
5. go to the "disks" menu and "import" all disks
6. go to the "disks format" menu and format all HDDs with ZFS
7. go to the "disks zfs pools" menu and create a virtual device (I used single parity raid)
8. go to the "disks zfs pools management" menu and create a "pool"
9. go to the "disks zfs datasets" menu and create a dataset using your pool(s)
10. go to the "disks zfs volumes" menu and create a volume using your dataset(s)

The volume(s) should now be ready to use, i.e. assign to services. Under the "services" menu, one can activate various services such as NFS, CIFS/SMB, AFP etc. Assign those services to a mount point in your volume(s).

Update: It appears not to be necessary to use zfs volumes. It is advisable to mount the dataset. Additionally, it seems a good idea to use the "dedup" feature, although caution should be taken when removing a dataset, cf. advice given by nas4free.

You'll by now be running a rather robust ZFS NAS made of relatively cheap WHS hardware.
I figure it is pretty cool that NAS4Free still fits on the onboard flash drive of the H340.