NASLite Network Attached Storage

Andy,

This is the way NASLite-2 works as far as the disk names.

Ah... that's not good. I've too many programs/PCs expecting their data to be on Disk-1.

GREAT product. A big THANK YOU to you and Ralph !

I'm a fan and big supporter of NASLite ... but I'm feeling a bit of frustration since upgrading to NASLite2 USB last night. Don't get me wrong, I love the upgrade and all of the new features, but here's why I am starting with a PM: several "annoyances"

1] The dynamic naming of disks: if a disk fails or needs to be moved around (airflow ... or whatever) which may require placing it on a different IDE cable ... etc. then the mount-point name could change.
2] Disk numbering starting at 0 (instead of 1 like NASLite1).
3] Using "Shares" instead of "Disks".

The three changes above cause me a major headache, because I have HUGE lists of mp3 files which I play from my WindowsMediaPlayer Library, and now NONE of the playlists work anymore. I fixed the first two problems by inserting a dummy 11 year old 1.6GB disk. Interestingly, this disk, which was rejected by MS-DOS, Caldera DOS, PQ PartitionMagic, and Win XP as a "failed" drive, formatted and mounted fine with NASLite. But I can't get around to fixing 3] to make the playlists work.

Is there a way for me to access the configuration files on the USB and change the names of the mount points (specifically item 3]) ? At the same time (in addition to the RO & RW options given) I would like to create an ADDITIONAL mount-point that goves READ-ONLY access to the storage volumes (like NASLite1 "Disks"). This is actually how WMP Library was accessing the mp3 files (preventing accidental deletion of music by the kids on their PC's WMP Libraries). Please tell me if (and how) I can edit the configuration files to allow for this.

Suggestion: Use "Disk-0" for the USB (or CD-ROM or HDD boot partition) device, the rest of the standard storage disks then start numbering from "Disk-1".

The items that you listed caused a LOT of discussion during beta testing. NASLite v1 can use 4 possible disks connected on 4 possible IDE ports. It is easy to articulate those as Disk-1 through Disk-4 without much of a problem, so naming a disk per the port it connect through was a good solution.

Now, let’s take a look at NASlite-2. NASlite-2 is capable of mounting multiple IDE, SATA, SCSI, USB and FireWire controllers and subsequently a large number of potential storage disks. The kurnel restriction is 128 volumes, so in theory, a NASLite-2 server can export 127 disks (128th is the system RAMDisk). That said, an elaborate naming scheme will be an absolute must in order to accommodate all interface types and all disk drives. That requires a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping during auto configuration.

The naming convention that you see (Disk-0 … Disk-N) is a derivative of devfs, and is already performed by the kernel. It makes not only common sense but also technical sense to use that approach rather than tying a number to a port. Especially when the port counts and combination are so numerous.

As far as Disks vs. Shares, NASlite-2 is capable of exporting remote disks hosted on remote NASlite servers. That, in the context of NASLite-2 is now a share and not a disk, so in order to be technically correct, the name is Shares and not Disks.

I understand your frustration and the reason for it, but in order to provide a better product the changes were necessary. There is a section in the manual that deals with that exact topic in anticipation of the confusion that may result.

I hope that you now understand the reason behind the changes. It was a tough but necessary call to make.

Tony:

Thanks for the speedy reply.

I should have said so in my original PM that I understand about the multi-tude of interfaces etc ... but your explanation about the 128 possible devices is also appreciated. And it gives me a better appreciation about the tough decisions being taken during development. (And I did now find the reference you made about the manual speaking to this topic on page 22 of the User Manual.)

Still ... I feel I'd like to get a little more control over my third issue (the Read-Only mount-point, and possibly re-naming it "Disks" for NASLite1 compatibility). This does not necessarily need to become a published solution for the average user, but I feel I am somewhat more sophisticated and (at my own risk) would like to play around with the configuration files. But the files on the USB stick don't seem to lend themselves to what I need to do (there's no /etc/fstab for example). Is there a way to incorporate something into "syslinux.cfg" to accomplish what I need ? Or how about adding an option in the "General Storage Option Menu" for a Read-Only Mountpoint (for use at least under SMB) ?

If you could help further on this backward compatibility (maybe in the next release ?) it would be appreciated. In the meantime I could temporarily step back to V1.5.

By-the-Way two more issues:

1] I am having frequent difficulty since upgrading last night to V2 (from V1.5) using Win XP Explorer when browsing "My Network Places/Entire Network/Microsoft Windows Network/WORKGROUP" ... I get the "Workgroup is not accessible. You might not have permission ..." error box. Rebooting the PC seems to cure the problem. This error pops up even while networked drives have no trouble browsing the folders on the NASLite2 server. Also the "Status on Network Storage" link works fine.

2] Why is the "Filesystem volume name" identical ("NASLite-SE000131") for my two (originally in V1.5 box) drives ? (Their UUIDs are different.) The "Filesystem volume name" for the extra "broken" drive (which I added and formatted this morning under V2) is "NASLite-SE000120".

We will consider such an option in a future release. One thing I can offer as advice: In the future, if possible, it's probably a good idea to build your play-lists against a mapped drive (PC) or an alias (MAC) rather than an explicit network path. That approach will avoid such problems.

The Volume Label of a disk is used by NASLite-2 to store some of the disk-specific options such as Export (RW/RO/--), SMART, etc. Same volume labels indicate same settings.

Hope that makes sense.

Great idea (mapping to a drive) ... something I should have done originally. That way if I map to "Shares" and a future version allows me to make "Shares" Read-Only (under SMB) the user has all of the disks that are exported there available to him. Apparently WinXP does not allow mapping an individual read-only drive (two levels below the NAS server) ... at least I can't map to "Disks\Disk-N" on V1.5 (which is what I am back to running for the moment for testing). I can, however, map to "Disks".

I am testing V1.5 due to the previously mentioned Network Permission errors on V2 ... and am finding it may be an XP Registry issue ... stale network mount-points are causing problems. If I find more helpful diagnostic info I will PM you or do it on the forums.

You can map to Disks/Disk-N or any other path in XP as follows:
1. Open Window Explorer
2. Go to "Tools/Map Network Drive..."
3. Use browse to map the path.

The problem with network browsing is caused by cached credentials on your XP machines. Microsoft likes caching things

THANKS ! That worked ... (Duh!) I had always used the "browsing the tree" method, rather than the "Tools\Map ..." you just suggested ...

Appreciate it.

Below is a discussion in PM regarding the same problem you are having. Pay particular attention to my comment pertaining to mapped network locations. I hope you find it helpful.

OK, looks like I'll have to make use of mapped drives which also means that I'll have to update all users PCs and programs at some point. Not a quick and easy solution...

By-the-Way two more issues:

1] I am having frequent difficulty since upgrading last night to V2 (from V1.5) using Win XP Explorer when browsing "My Network Places/Entire Network/Microsoft Windows Network/WORKGROUP" ... I get the "Workgroup is not accessible. You might not have permission ..." error box. Rebooting the PC seems to cure the problem. This error pops up even while networked drives have no trouble browsing the folders on the NASLite2 server. Also the "Status on Network Storage" link works fine.

Tony,

If udev is backported to the 2.4 kernel would you consider including it the next version of NASLite-2? It seems like a useful utility that only takes a small amount of space.

Thanks,
sanmaster

As is sounds like you have a number of PC's do you have a server on your network? I have a Windows server and "mount" the NASLite shares on it using DFS and point the PC's to that. That way if anything changes on the backend I only have to update DFS. I would think the same thing would be possible with a linux server (NFS?) but that is outside of my expertise.