[Voyage-linux] RE: Voyage 7 kernel with RAID support

[Demian Martin]

Punky:
Here is the section of the Kernel config for 2.6.35 that configures RAID
devices:

Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)  (Link)

          [N] Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)    (CONFIG_MD)
(bool)  (Help)
                    [N] RAID support    (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_MD)  (tristate)
(Help)
                              [N] Autodetect RAID arrays during kernel boot
(CONFIG_MD_AUTODETECT)  (bool)  (Help)
                              [N] Linear (append) mode    (CONFIG_MD_LINEAR)
(tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] RAID-0 (striping) mode
(CONFIG_MD_RAID0)  (tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] RAID-1 (mirroring) mode
(CONFIG_MD_RAID1)  (tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] RAID-10 (mirrored striping) mode
(CONFIG_MD_RAID10)  (tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 mode
(CONFIG_MD_RAID456)  (tristate)  (Help)
                                        [N] RAID-4/RAID-5/RAID-6 Multicore
processing (EXPERIMENTAL)    (CONFIG_MULTICORE_RAID456)  (bool)  (Help)
                    [N] MD_RAID6_PQ    (CONFIG_MD_RAID6_PQ)  (tristate)
(hidden)  (No help available)
                    [N] Self test for hardware accelerated raid6 recovery
(CONFIG_ASYNC_RAID6_TEST)  (tristate)  (Help)
                    [N] Multipath I/O support    (CONFIG_MD_MULTIPATH)
(tristate)  (Help)
                    [N] Faulty test module for MD    (CONFIG_MD_FAULTY)
(tristate)  (Help)
                    [N] Device mapper support    (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM)
(tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] Device mapper debugging support
(CONFIG_DM_DEBUG)  (bool)  (Help)
                              [N] Crypt target support    (CONFIG_DM_CRYPT)
(tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] Snapshot target    (CONFIG_DM_SNAPSHOT)
(tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] Mirror target    (CONFIG_DM_MIRROR)
(tristate)  (Help)
                                        [N] Mirror userspace logging
(EXPERIMENTAL)    (CONFIG_DM_LOG_USERSPACE)  (tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] Zero target    (CONFIG_DM_ZERO)
(tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] Multipath target    (CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH)
(tristate)  (Help)
                                        [N] I/O Path Selector based on the
number of in-flight I/Os    (CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH_QL)  (tristate)  (Help)
                                        [N] I/O Path Selector based on the
service time    (CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH_ST)  (tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] I/O delaying target (EXPERIMENTAL)
(CONFIG_DM_DELAY)  (tristate)  (Help)
                              [N] DM uevents (EXPERIMENTAL)
(CONFIG_DM_UEVENT)  (bool)  (Help)


I just enabled all of it and used the RAID 1 settings.

A agree that a web gui is essential for a NAS. Creating a complete one is
quite the chore. However there is no clean Dbian raid I have found. 

For the RAID I built (and am rebuilding) here is what I did:
1) install and configure  AVAHI (Zeroconfig) so I can find the nas on the
network if I don't have its IP.
2) Install SAMBA   (I'm still troubleshooting what is preventing read only .
. .)
3) Install Webmin to get a web UI. The conflict are that a) Webmin is really
slow when accessed through Bonjour, and b) much of Webmin is pretty
technical and many who would be comfortable with Webmin could use the
command line as well. However it provides some error checking making it a
little harder to lunch the system.

Then for my purposes I installed Squeezeboxcenter, forked-daapd for iTunes
and Twonky for DLNA. With a vanilla Debian (which Voyage is really) the
packages are endless and easy to install. 
I would create (and probably will) a landing static web page with links to
all of the above.

I don't think an Alix would give a good experience for a NAS, not enough
power and no SATA ports. The Intel D945GSEJT fanless Atom works well for
this, you would need an IDE flash memory module for the OS. Or it could
easily be built with any desktop platform.

If there were a less technical package that would work in a generic Debian
platform it would be preferable to Webmin for most users. And I would really
like a better RAID Web UI for managing and rebuilding it.
      Demian





-----Original Message-----
From: Punky Tse [mailto:punkytse at punknix.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 8:11 PM
To: Demian Martin
Cc: voyage-linux at voyage.hk
Subject: Re: Voyage 7 kernel with RAID support

Hi Demian,

Let me know which kernel config i need to enable software raid, I can 
add it in next kernel revision.

The idea of NAS sounds good, I already have this in mind for long.  The 
main problem would be the development effort on webgui.  The way I 
offered may not be competitive to the existing ones in the market.

Regards, 
Punky