NASLite Network Attached Storage

As an on-going attempt to fix my NL2 x64 issues, I tried installing NL2 back to HDD, this time, a 2TB Western Digital Green.

Install went fine, and unlike the USB thread, boots fine from HDD.

NL2 can see all 2TB of the drive.

Add a 3TB drive, and I had to re-enter the licence key and the activation code. Once I added the 3TB drive, both of these codes were returned to zeros - this despite the fact that I had already entered the code, and activated with the unlock code...

So, no big deal - reenter and reboot. NL2 refuses to see the 3TB drive at all, and the HDT on the CD only sees the 3TB as a 700GB drive again - sound familiar?(rhetocial)

NL2 has some serious issues with respect to compatibily with 3TB or larger drives. My other test setup used a 2.5TB WD green drive, and NL2 picked that up OK, but once you get up to 3TB, NL2 just does not want to co-operate.

I would love to use NL2, but unless SE comes up with a bug-fix or other solution, I will have to look elsewhere, which would be a shame, as I love the simplicity of NL2.

Hi Graeme.

There's a few things that your describing, which really doesn't make sense from the functionality of NL.



I'm assuming from the above, you installed NL to the 2TB, entered license, unlock etc. Then added your 3TB drive and rebooted, then had to renter your license ID, unlock etc, and NL didn't see your 3TB drive.

Based on my assumption of the above. NASLite has no ability to reset the license ID *at all* from just booting, it has no ability to do this *what so ever*. Unlock's will only fail from changes in major hardware such as a motherboard or ethernet card, NASLite does not check hard drives against unlocks, it simply doesn't do that. Even when a unlock is bad, it's not reset. the old one is still there in the menu until you enter a new one and save the config. I think this was addressed somewhat in another thread.



This is another thing thats puzzling, The Hardware Detection tool, isn't NL, it's a module of the syslinux boatloader, Linux and NL never boot when you access that. HDT gets the low level information about your hardware from the BIOS, stage 2 boot loader etc, and reports what the hardware says. NL's kernel after the initial boot would query the drive its self to get the information about the drive and populate the device tree, this is not something passed on from the boatloader.



This is pretty basic functionality and obviously something core to the product, and with 3TB drives being in the 130.00 USD ranged, I would expect more posts and support emails, which to date we haven't gotten any. If I have some spare time i'll do some testing with large drives and report back to either escalate this or close it out on our end.


Thanks.

Hi folks.

I just thought I would try again, my NL2 with a different setup.

This board is Intel D525 miniITX board with 2GB RAM, 3TB WD Red drive.
This differs from the last experiment which was Gigabyte E350N board, and Seagate 3TB NAS drive(s).

Exact same issue.

BIOS on this Intel board sees the drive as 3000 GB, and interestingly enough, the format utility also seems to see about 3TB(but I did not write down the number, but it looked about right).

HDT sees only 750GB.

Install and activate NL2 and export disk-0 - 750GB available out of 3TB.

I remember installing NL2 to USB, and still had the same problems with my Seagates - I might now try again with the WD drive - something about large drives being used as boot and storage, that NL2 does NOT like. I don't seem to recall having these issues(of boot and storage on same drive) with drives 2TB or less.

EDIT: OK, installed NL2 to a USB flash drive, and am formatting the 3TB drive. Format says it has 22357 inode blocks to write, which is up on the 5300 or so it did when the boot was also on the 3TB. When the format completes, I will let you know what the capacity is.

EDIT: Right, NOW I have 2.7TB of data available on disk-0. Format complete and correct capacity showing now. As an experiment, I will now setup the exact same NL2 on a smaller HDD, using the boot/storage partition arrangement. I suspect that NL2 just does not like being installed in boot/storage configuration, with 3TB drives.

...an odd one...

Hi there again, everyone.

OK, got this machine on-line with the 2.7T drive, and booting from the USB flash drive.

I plan to add another one(3TB drive, maybe even 4TB) in the next few days.

Windoze 8.1(and probably 8 also), seems to INTENTLY hate any network PC names with spaces or dashes, so once I renamed NASL-1 to NASL1, Windoze could then see the server, and connect to it(but NOT with the name of NASL-1!)

EDIT: OK, all running happily now on the single 3TB. I have mapped the Disk-0 location to a drive letter on my mediaplayer PC, and am playing SPEED 2 as a test. All seems to be going well thus far.

Tomorrow, I will try again with the Gigabyte E350N boards, using the same concept(USB for the NL2, seperate from the storage drives), and see if I have the same problem.

While rebuilding my server tonight, the exact same issue has re-occured - the license has been reset to all zeros and NL2 is now in the locked state. Ralph mentioned in an earlier post:



However, I can confirm that this DOES happen - this is the 2nd time I have seen this now. I was unsure if it was something I did in the first instance, but this time, I know for a FACT that the system was unlocked and active with a 2TB boot drive and a 3TB storage drive(Disk-1). I then added two more 3TB drives, and the license was reset to all zeros when NL2 booted up. This issue has a workaround, as I just re-enter the license and unlock code for this machine, and it unlocked again, but I can confirm that this situation DOES happen.

EDIT: When this voiding of the license happens, it completely resets everything - IP address, workgroup, NAS name, gateway, mask etc.... All returned to default settings along with the license being set as zeros. Services are also reset to default, so they need to be reset to what is needed too.

Hi Graeme,

Are you sure you're saving the configuration before rebooting? If you don't, the configuration will be the default.

Also, this issue your describing seems to happen when your adding drives etc, do you have multiple configuration on multiple drives?

As I said in previous posts, NL has no ability to reset the configuration from just rebooting. There is an option under tools and utilities to reset the config to default, but that code is *NOT* called from the boot code at ALL.

Hi Ralph.

Yes, setup NL2 on 2TB drive, set IP address etc, admin password, enter license and unlock, save settings with option 9. Now add 1x 3TB drive formatted in Puppy. NL2 accepts and mounts this drive. The license and unlock are still intact at this stage.

Add two more 3TB drives, and at this point, the license returns to zeros, and NL2 is locked. All settings are now default. Network settings return to default. The admin password is still intact though, which is interesting.

I just re-enter the license and unlock code, and everything is up and running again.

NL shouldn't be installed on large drives like that for various reasons, install it to smaller drive or a USB key.

Okey dokey, I dug up another machine with totally different motherboard, and installed NL2 to a USB flash-drive. I then attempted to format the 3TB. This appeared to work, with 22500 inode blocks to format vs the 5500 odd that it wanted to when NL2 was booting from the 2TB drive with this 3TB as extra storage.

In the USB boot arrangement, the NL2 format utility sees and formats the whole 3TB. In my other E350N boards, the USB boot never starts - it just fails to even see the USB flash drive as a bootable device in the BIOS(despite the NL2 setup utility completing the install to USB just fine), so I had to use HDD booting on that board for my experiments.

I wonder if the flash-drive created in this machine, will boot on the E350N?
I will try it.

Turn USB3 off in the motherboard bios if the usb key doesn't support it.

Hello again.

E350N is USB2 only. I have a feeling that the E350N is being difficult in that respect.(USB booting)
I will have a little play around.

PROGRESS!!!

Still can't get NL2 to boot from the USB flash-drive no matter what I try - I suspect that the E350N board is to blame for this problem, after all my testing etc.

To get around this issue, what I did was put an old IDE CD-ROM drive back into service, along with a USB-IDE adaptor cable. The E350N boots OK off a USB CD-ROM drive, but it won't of the USB flash. I have tried changing all the settings in the BIOS for USB booting, but it insists on being difficult. Flash drive is selectable as boot device prior to installing NL2. After install, it just is not there to be selected anymore.

Ho-hum - who cares.

Using the USB CD-ROM, I could boot the CD that way, and install to the USB flash-drive, I just leave the system to boot from the CD-ROM, which works fine, and it picks up the flash-drive for all the settings.

The good news is that after setting up NL2 on the E350N and entering my license and unlock, I have just formatted the first of three 3TB drives, and this format was for 22357 inodes, and that jives with the 3TB capacity I would expect.(well, 2.7TB) I am formatting the other two now. All is well.