NASLite Network Attached Storage

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Task-specific simplicity with low hardware requirements.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:20 am 
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Well it's going to be hard to sell without any security at all but maybe some smaller businesses will go for it and it does transfer very fast. I have purchased some gig Ethernet cards and will be doing some benchmarks and post them on my site for a bit. I have been testing freenas a little more thinking maybe I missed something with there users and groups but I fail to see where this even works. I will keep on it here. It's very interesting to me to do this kind of stuff even at my age.


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 Post subject: Naslite vs. freenas
PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 2:19 pm 
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The way i'm running Clark Connect Community 4.0 right now is in the gateway mode. That way it is in lieu of my ipcop since CC in gateway mode provides it's own firewall/routing services. It also adds a lot of possible server services and you can create users. So it's impressive too but seems a different solution than freenas or naslite addresses if what you want is sheer storage as in racks of nas drives on raid and whatnot, they seem better at that. . I saw a thread here on Naslite where someone included CC in the nas group they were going to test out before they decided which way to go. So i gave Clark Connect a go also and CC Community 4 is interesting.

I didn't answer your question Kodiak about could you take a nas drive after a crash, put in your XP box and access the data since i thought someone better qualified on here or freenas might answer that. My guess is the answer is more no than yes. I know i read in freenas where someone tried an experiment formatting the freenas nas drives with their Fat 32 option hoping to be able to do what you asked. The results of his experiment were that it scrambled some of the transfers so he went back to the default bsd file system.

And in using the freenas bsd files in a nas system that crashed., i'm guessing no if you put it in your xp box. to access the data The linux file system used by Naslite, well maybe you could put it in a linux box and try to access it, but would that work in XP...i'll let someone else answer that. And if it were a crashed nas raid system that would seem to complicate things even more. But your quest is probably one many would like to be able to do. Good luck with your benchmarks.

And give linux a try...:)


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 4:46 pm 
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I have tried many different distros out there and found the learning curve to be way to high but for a solution for someone on a budget who only surfs and emails thats all they need and why give MS anymore then you have to. If your a gamer forget it. Make all my programs work and I would switch in a second.

I'm going to store several files on my Naslite box and see if I can put it in a enclosure and get the files on an xp box and the same with freenas. I have several boxes laying around to use for labsims.


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 Post subject: Naslite vs. freenas
PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 4:59 pm 
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There is a forum thread on this link and this is what the guy says about xp being able to read linux ext2 files: First the link is>>

http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-55650.html

And on it cweb says "There is a Windows driver which can access ext2 now, apparently. I haven't tried it "

I use XP so little i wouldn't know Kodiak or know where you'd get/access the driver cweb mentions. Maybe somebody else knows. From what cweb said i'd guess without the driver you couldn't access your Naslite ext files if you put the nas drive in your xp box but surely somebody else has tried this experiment and soon you will too apparently. Good luck and if you succeed that might be a plus for Naslite..


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 5:05 pm 
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Is this what your speaking of.

http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs


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 Post subject: Naslite vs. freenas
PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 6:56 pm 
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I hadn't seen that Kodiak but it looks interesting. Especially since it also works with legacy windows and i have quite a few drives with Me still on them, from my days before i switched to linux, so maybe i'll give it a try in Me first on one of those drives i have that os on, copy a few files to a nas drive, pull it, slave it and see what happens in windows. I don't plan to set up any raid drives in Naslite right now so that might be worth a try. Thanks for the link, new to me, in the past year i hardly run windows.

But, you first!...:)


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 7:52 pm 
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I will give t a go tomorrow and report back. I would believe this would be of interest to all.


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 10:59 pm 
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
One small problem, NL2 is EXT3, not EXT2. I know that you can leave it EXT2 if you want and not apply the journal to the FS. There are utils if I recall that can read EXT3 if it is hung off of a windows machine, can't recall the name though.

As far as the RAID being readable, If it is RAID1 it is very likely. RAID1 is the only RAID supported by NL2.03 anyway. If it is RAID0 or any of the other RAID implementations you would need a very special piece of software that a company in Texas makes just for data recovery of RAID arrays. All these levels are only supported by NL using supported hardware RAID cards. Sorry I don't remember the name. ALWAYS NUMBER THE DRIVES AND KEEP TRACK OF WHERE THEY ARE IN THE ARRAY STACK. It is vital information needed to allow the software to reassemble the blocks.

Hope this helps and look forward to your further posts on the subject.

Mike


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 Post subject: Naslite vs. freenas
PostPosted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 12:11 am 
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Fortunately the program in Kodiak's link says it can also read ext3. It says 'Explore2fs is a GUI explorer tool for accessing ext2 and ext3 filesystems. It runs under all versions of Windows and can read almost any ext2 and ext3 filesystem." So that aspect of it should be good to go in Naslite 2.03.

I haven't tried it so can't say and it will probably be a while before i get a round tuit. Since i have a test box with two nics, still testing Clark Connect and just set up the loose box with Monowall, Monowall not being a nas, but yet another embedded solution for a firewall/router, at the moment i have it running via the cd version with the required floppy in the drive...i can see why many prefer the usb version of Naslite.. Your response about raid should help clarify things for Kodiak.


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 7:06 am 
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Yet another fire wall you might try if you allready havent is Smoothwall. It is free and works very well. Thanks for the info on the app being able to read EXT3 FS' , I figured there was more than a few apps to do that in windows.

Mike


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 4:07 pm 
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Tested the ap and it works great. I was able to export items from the Naslite box to my winxp machine with little effort.


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 10:11 pm 
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One of the things server elements touts about Naslite is portability. I know people have said it not being important in the past but think about the freedom you have with the data drives in the event of a system failure or whatever, where you'll be forced to retrieve data from a Naslite disk. In addition to being able to use the drives unchanged in another Naslite machine, you can also do so on winxp, osx, unix of many kinds and obviously linux. The same is true for hardware RAID arrays as built by the native RAID BIOS. It's all a single volume to the host OS.

What I'm saying is, the idea of Naslite and the way it handles storage is pretty bulletproof and most versatile. I don't think one can compare the way Freenas handles storage to Naslite. Wait till your machine takes a crap and try recovering your prized bits and bytes. Freenas will drop you flat on your a** before you can mumble "free". 8)

Merry Christmas everyone (Happy Holidays where the previous is inappropriate) :)


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 10:23 pm 
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I have yet to test Freenas with the software I found but I will and report back. Soon I will also run the benchmarks with gig lan. I'm having a great deal of trouble setting my system back up with Naslite when I shut it down and change the config and try to save it. Not sure what it is and I have changed about everything. I'll keep plunging along though.


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PostPosted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 11:33 pm 
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Ran several files onto freenas and pulled the drive and used the software I found to access it and it was a no go. It wouldn't even see the drive. Did see it in computer management but not with the software. Not good. I like the idea of being able to recover my data if that old pc I'm using decides to give it up for good. Not sure there's any reason to do any further tests as Naslite will be the software I will use. Only issue is it will be a hard sell without security from malicious personnel. Thats to bad to since it's such a good idea.


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 Post subject: Naslite vs. freenas
PostPosted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:57 pm 
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Mikeiver1, what you said about trying Smoothwall, yes it was the first of the embedded linux firewall/router solutions i tried over a year ago and for me the easiest to set up...but i moved on to Ipcop and stayed with that the past year. I notice that Smoothwall just came out with version 3 so it should be good for anyone to try. Or, pound for pound, a good router also works, for those who prefer something a little smaller....:)

My recent try of Monowall is related to Naslite in that it gave me the chance to try booting it with the same boot options as Naslite to see what that was like. It has images such that you can boot it via hard drive, cdrom, or usb and i tried all three. I hadn't tried a usb boot before but with one of my newer pc's the usb boot option for that worked. As with freenas, i guess i still prefer the hard drive boot option and tony says on the forum that will be coming soon for Naslite. But i can see why some like the usb option, having tried it now. Btw, Monowall also seems a good firewall/router solution as is Clark Connect if you want apache, mail server or something more than just a firewall/router yet still being less complex than setting up a server..

Meanwhile , Explore2fs seems a worthwile program now that Kodiak has tried it with Naslite. And, thank god for open source while we trial all these things, including the free version of Naslite.. I'd be more broke than i am if i had to pay for everything in linux i ran a trial of, and if i did, i just wouldn't try most of them. Then, once you know what you want, some are worth paying for, and fortunately some of these i mention offer an open source version also..

I noticed somewhere in all this that someone mentioned Xandros Server for using as a nas and other things. I looked it up since i've used Xandros 3.0, 3.02 & 4 by now among my other linux distros. But, oops, it cost a little less than $500 for use on one computer, and me not being a corporate user, i think not, but you can run a free trial of it if you want for 30 days...:)


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