NASLite Network Attached Storage

OK, so I could cart a monitor to my NL2 box and boot up with a dos diskette then run my raid monitoring utilty... but that kind of defeats the object of having this all attached via network to a small cubby hole under the stairs!

I would like to be able to do this from either the web interface or the telnet utility... I suppose that means the installation of compatible software somehow, but NL2 doesn't strike me as a system that makes installing extra software that easy?

I have a megaraid i4 - LSI these days...

Well, there is MegaRC/MegaMON as a utility to run in the background but is' very unstable and very likely to kill the box (it leaks memory). It should definitely kill the box within a week though.

The version 2 megaraid driver version did support the older lsi cards at one time ~2.4.26 but the newer version 2 megaraid e.g. megaraid_mbox megaraid_mm does not support the older generation cards which is a problem.

The newer version 2 megaraid driver does in fact work with the older megaraid boards like the Enterprise 1600 and i4. This driver represents the status of the raid containers and or disks in the /proc filesystem.

However you will need to edit the PCI id files to make it possible to use the older cards with the new driver. The good news is that the firmware/driver interface to the cards has remained pretty much the same.

Below is the output of a Dell Perc 4 port ata controller, whatsitsname.
It should infact be a Megaraid i4 in a Dell PE 600SC






So yes you could monitor your raid card without any special utilities if you use the megaraid2 driver. Both drivers are maintained in the current 2.4 and 2.6 series but without modifying the PCI id's the newer driver won't load for an older card.

The LSI 150-4 and 150-6 as well as the 300-8X all work with the megaraid2 driver.

The i4 never was a smashing succes and is very much considered legacy. Furthermore the performance is terrible. And I happen to have one such server with such a card. Joy.