NASLite Network Attached Storage

I'm in startup mode, and having some problems.

Using a Dell XPS 266 (266 Mhz, 128 Meg) that was working fine with Windows 2000. Ultimately I want to install a SATA PCI controller, but for my initial setup I am experimenting with a 120 Gig drive that was already in the machine. Actually, this is more than an experiment because I need to use it to store data from a drive in another machine before moving that drive into the NAS system and reformatting. I don't know if it is relevant, but there is also a 6 Gig drive in the system that is the boot drive from the original setup. This system has been reliable in the past, so I was hoping it would be a good choice to turn into a NAS.

Anyway, I have been going through the setup of NASLite-CDD carefully. After formatting and sharing the 120gig drive, I started moving files over. I mapped the drive successfully, and then started using Explorer to copy. After the first time I ran into a problem, I tried Laplink, but still had problems. Meanwhile, I was still able to connect to NASLite via Telnet from the same computer as I was copying from, which made me even more perturbed. I've tried rebooting a couple of times and the same thing happens - after I start copying the connection dies.

This last time is even more alarming. The Telnet connection told me that there was already a login, so didn't allow me to login. The message on the directly connected monitor is the same.

At this point I have to resort to a hard reboot.

I hope that someone can give me some guidance on how to fix the problem as I'm very nervous about committing any data to the NASLite.

Thanks

Check NIC and cables. Make sure the NIC uses a unique IRQ. Do a hard reset if you need to and attempt to copy again. If you continue to have the problem, before rebooting, copy the syslog from the status pages and post it here so we can review.

Now I have a new problem. After rebooting, I noticed that the drive didn't complete its startup under NASLite, but instead was spending a long time at [BUSY]. Then I noticed your posting, so I decided to switch gears and check the IRQs.

I booted to Windows and ran the hardware manager, and discovered that IRQ10 was occupied by the Network Adapter and the USB controller. This doesn't seem to cause a problem in Windows (I have no USB devices), but I removed the conflict in any case by disabling USB in the BIOS. I also turned off ACPI in case the 10 minute timeout was a problem.

Then I rebooted to NASLite, but encountered the same problem with the drive being stuck at [BUSY]. I concluded that whatever issue had created problems earlier might have caused this so I'd try to fix within Windows. Still don't like the idea that NASLite can't cope though. Maybe I didn't wait long enough.

After reformatting the drive in Windows, I was able to reboot NASLite and reformat the drive. I tried again to copy files, but only managed a few minutes before the same kind of failure occurred. I wasn't able to get the system log at this point - the web page said it wasn't available. Before long the Telnet and HTTP connections both dropped.

I rebooted, and now it is back showing [BUSY] for the drive. I'll edit this message if it ever gets through to the next stage.

The [Busy] on boot is NASLite checking the content of the drive - it takes over an hour for my 1.5TB RAID5 array.

I think I tracked down the cause of the problems. There was a conflict for the IP address I'd set up - unfortunately the other device didn't show up in an address scan. All seems OK now, including copying files, Syslog finally available through HTTP.

The time taken for the system to scan the drives makes sense, but that makes it difficult to experiment if every reboot takes a long time.