NASLite Network Attached Storage

I'm probably tempting fate, but just finished testing the new setup, and switched over from the old Naslite USB server on Thursday. Everything seems to be working OK.
Thanks to everybody for their input

Congratulations!

(My NASLite is still a boring object. It boots. It serves. It zooms)

Zooms sounds good. I'll be happy with boring, booting, and serving.
I'll be testing mine out using Diskwriggler as per the post in the hardware section. I'll be interested to see how it performs, but i'm not going to start messing around with it if it's slower than everyone else.
Im also upgrading to a Gigabit switch i've had for ages, see if it makes any difference.

Well i spoke too soon. After a few weeks of running no problem, i tried to copy some files from it and got a file transfer error. Logged on and it was showing some disk errors.
I'm giving up on this rig, but i'm wondering what to get in it's place. I'd like to stick with RAID5 if possible, but the cards seem so expensive. The again i might be better off with a 1Tb drive. It would be enough space for now.

Any suggestions for hardware Mainboard, Raid card?

I've had success with Adaptec (2610SA); LSI (MegaRAID i4) and 3Ware (7500-8 and 8500-12) RAID cards in 32bit and 64bit PCI slots. As you can see in my sig, I use an Asus M2N32 WS Pro motherboard (Socket AM2) as it has 2 x PCI-X slots for the 64bit RAID cards (Adaptec and 3Ware above). I saw the LSI card (PATA) recently for $45 on eBay.

I've looked at the WS Pro board. Did you have any problems with shared IRQ's, which seems to be my problem.

Edit - i'm bidding on one now on ebay, so i'll find out soon enough!!

I did have problems - 2 x RAID cards, 1 x onboard NIC and 1 x PCI VGA work fine though - with *everything* else in BIOS switched off. It's a very nice board and AM2 X2 chips are nice and cheap at the moment....

Can you assign IRQ's manually for each device, how did you get around the IRQ problems?

I didn't have to resort to trying to set IRQ's manually. I just turned everything off in BIOS that I didn't need and there were enough IRQ's for my 3 cards and the onboard NIC.

Thanks Nick

I'm hoping it will be a bit easier for as i only have 1 PCI-X card, if i keep telling myself that i might start to believe it!!

Tony

Re my problems with the HDD version.

Spec.
DFI M855G Pentium mobile board with a 1.7Ghz CPU
2x256Mb Geil ram
LSI Megaraid PCI-X 8 port SATA Raid card
5x 500Gig Seagate hard drives in Raid 5
1x20Gig 2.5" boot hard drive.
Tagan 380w PSU

I am currently booting from a 2.5" laptop drive. I had problems with IRQ10 being shared by the RAID card and the onboard NIC.
I eventually tried an Intel NIC which seemed to cure it. The log didn't show any IRQ conflicts, but didn't list the NIC IRQ. The network info of the admin console didn't give an IRQ either (it did with the Netgear onboard and add-in NIC's) so ithere may still have been a conflict.
Everything seemed to be running OK, i had been serving my HTPC for 4-5 weeks, so i decided to make it the main server for the house. A day or so later i went to transfer some video files from the server to put on DVD but it wouldn't complete the transfer. I had a look at the log file and it was showing some EXT3 fs errors similar to those in a previous post. The only other thing i'd done earlier that day was to rename some files which were on the server, I didn't take a note of the time of the errors.
I did a check & repair file system, it asked me to reboot to mount the drive but it wouldn't reboot. I keep getting a Kernel panic / bad EIP value.

I'm waiting for different model board to arrive to see if i can get it working with that. So the USB server has been set back to work in the mean time.

If the new board doesn't work i'll have to have a rethink.

Any ideas?

Kernel panic is severe. I'd start by turning ACPI off temporarily and also taking a close look at the RAM you are using. Power supply can also cause such problem, usually at cold boot when the load is high.

Is it locking up on boot or after some use?

I did wonder about the power supply. The memory is pretty good, i used it in a overclocked pentium 4 2.4Ghz running at 3.2 for a couple of years and it never flackered.
It gives the Kernel panic on boot.
As i said i'm going to try an Asus WS Pro board with some new Corsair memory. If i'm still having problems i'll try a bigger power supply.

In the meantime I'll try a Ubuntu LiveCD to see if i the data is intact or if i can repair it, and i'll let you know how it pans out.

Cheers

Colin

I've bitten the bullet and ordered a 620W Enermax PSU. I might give that a try before ripping it apart and putting the other board in.

My M2N32 WS Pro ran fine with 10 x HDD's on an Akasa 500W PSU - it's currently running an Antec Trio 650W for "comfort".