NASLite Network Attached Storage

Greetings all,

I'm exploring alternatives to a certain free nas server software, as said software has difficulty with my FIC VA-503+ mb with the VIA MVP3 chipset. The VIA MVP3 chipset requires the 4-in-1 driver (specifically the PCI portion) for optimum use with Windows, and I am too much of a Linux newbie to know if there is a Linux alternative to the 4-in-1 driver.

The problem is that the nic is not recognized and I get a "watchdog timeout" that points to the nic. I've tried 3 different nics (D-Link DFE-530TX, 3com 3c595tx, 3com 3c509tx - all PCI), but all have resulted in the watchdog timeout messages and no network connectivity. This leads me to believe the problem is in support for the VIA chipset.

Does anyone know if NASlite will support this chipset? I don't want to buy NasLite just to find out it has this problem. Thank you in advance for your reply.

Hi jtuma,

You can try the free version of Naslite, you can then test.
The D-Link DFE-530TX does work with Naslite I have seen various posts concerning this nic card.

Eden

I have used the 3com 3C509 on NASLite before upgrading to a GB card. It worked fine.

I did some quick searches on VIA MVP3 and Linux and only found references to issues that were several years old. So maybe it's fixed by now. As edeng says, try the free version, it won't cost you anything but time....

I'd like to test the free version, but don't have access to a Linux box to create the boot floppy. If someone would like to do that and send me the results, or tell me how to create the boot floppy on a Windows box, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Hi jtuma,

If you download knoppix here http://www.knoppix.org/ it will allow you to boot up off the CD, Without installing

Open a browser window download the floppy then use the commands here.

gunzip NASLite.img.gz
fdformat /dev/fd0u1722
dd if=NASLite.img of=/dev/fd0u1722

you will have to change the filename to match the version you downloaded.

Eden

From another post (1.722 floppies demystified)

6) There is a DOS tool that can create the NASLITE disk in one single
pass, formatting and copying image:
DCOPY 2.8 FAST by Jorgen Bosman
http://users.pandora.be/jbosman/applications.html
SYNTAX to be used is:
DCOPY [path]\NASLxxxx.img A: /F:1722 /S /V
(remember that you have to unpack the compressed NASLite-XXX.img.gz
with an unpacking utility and change the name to a compatible 8.3 format
before, suitable names are as follows:
NASLite-SMB.img.gz -> NASLite-SMB.img -> NASLSMB.img
NASLite-SMBG.img.gz -> NASLite-SMBG.img -> NASLSMBG.img
NASLite-FTP.img.gz -> NASLite-FTP.img -> NASLFTP.img
NASLite-FTPG.img.gz -> NASLite-FTPG.img -> NASLFTPG.img
NASLite-NFS.img.gz -> NASLite-NFS.img -> NASLNFS.img
NASLite-NFSG.img.gz -> NASLite-NFSG.img -> NASLNFSG.img)
Jorgen Bosman also made an NT version of DCOPY, do not try to be
smart, it does not work with this format.

7) Nowadays floppies are much worse than a few years ago, it might be
tricky to find a floppy that has no errors, and with the NASLITE image
you CANNOT have ANY defective sector. Strangely enough "bulk"
non-preformatted floppies are better for this purpose than "brand"
preformatted floppies.
However ALWAYS format the floppy to 1.44 by using
DCOPY A: /F:1440 /FO /V
BEFORE trying to write the NASLITE image as in 6)

The only thing I found incorrect is in 7). Always format the floppy to 1.722 NOT 1.44 first:

DCOPY A: /F:1722 /FO /V

THEN:

DCOPY [path]\NASLxxxx.img A: /F:1722 /S /V

This method worked fine for me. Just boot to DOS first (go to http://www.bootdisk.org if you need a DOS bootdisk.)

Mark

Hi jtuma,

I have tried to make the disk creation simple, if you download this Floppy Disk Creator and follow the steps in the readme.txt you may have some success.

Good Luck

Eden

Gentlemen,

javascript:emoticon(':D')
Very Happy I'm pleased to report success running NASLite-SMB on my FIC VA-503+ machine (details in previous messages). It took some doing between realizing that I need to use the SMB version, creating a boot DOS floppy, burning the img file onto a CD, rebooting with the DOS floppy to get CD-Rom support, creating the NASLite boot floppy off the CD, booting the FIC machine with the NASLite floppy, configuring NASLite, etc. This took all of last evening and part of this one, but it was worth it when I was able to access the NASLite server without any problems.

NASLite is beeping at me every five minutes because the ancient 540Meg Conner drive I have in the FIC machine is too old to support SMART, but I was only using it for test purposes and will replace it with a much newer and bigger drive shortly.

Next I plan to do some research on which NAS version to buy and will be purchasing shortly - thanks to everyone for your help.

Glad to hear it.

...burning the img file onto a CD, rebooting with the DOS floppy to get CD-Rom support, creating the NASLite boot floppy off the CD,...

Old hard drives lying around make it so much easier; just swap'em in and swap'em out. No need to waste CD's:)

Mark

jtuma,

when you purchase NASLite you have the option of turning off SMART testing which will stop the beeping