Hi, Thanks, and questions about usage and features

[RiveDC1]

Hi,

Thanks for this really great project.


Just got a 5big N. vs2 recently: with disks removed. Apparently, you guys are also the only support still available for cases like this... Which is just plain sad. I hope you will be able to keep on going.

After digging through some of the available sources here, I'm almost certain to sign up for your great SW instead of just restoring the old firmware (also possible only with your guides here: big thanks for that), though there are some parts I'll first ask for clarification.

- Do I see it correctly that RAID6 is still not available? Any plans for adding this at some point? Kind of a sore point for me.
Raid6 is not supported. The performance is too degraded (poorish CPU) and it does not provide a better significant level of security : if one disk fails then it is very likely that another one will fail as well (same life usage)
- The FW can be installed only for the disk in the first slot? Not exactly clear if there is any chance to install it on e-sata or USB? Maybe with an uBoot upgrade?
No the system disk must be always the left disk
- If it's not possible, can I just exclude the first slot from everyday usage? And: would such system survive the replacement of the disk in the first slot with a cloned one (of the same type/size, SSD)?

I find it weird (and a bit silly) that a RAID pile would survive the crash of any disk except the one in the first slot... That's also the reason why I've asked about the chance of e-sata or USB boot, since that would allow me the usage of all of the five slots.
Your data will be always available even if the system disk fails : just replace it and use fvdw-sl console to initialize it. After you may include it in the raid volume to restore the redundancy
- Can this system handle USB devices connected through an USB hub? The box has just two USB ports.
Yes, fw may support usb hub
- Is UPS support available/planned?
This functionality is not present on your NAS
- Will I be able to extend an RAID5 pile to higher capacity with a series of replace-rebuild operations, till the lowest capacity disk phases out?
Yes you can do it. But I assume you know it is a long way as you have to restore redundancy at each step (replace one by one disks with restoring redundancy at each step and at the end grow the raid size to the new capacity); All the steps may be done from the fw web-interface
Thanks in advance :)

[Jocko]

Hi

For comprehensibility, I edited your post with the answers.

[RiveDC1]

Thank you very much for the answers
'Ill need to think about them for a while

[RiveDC1]

Hi again,

After some fuss I've managed to set up the NAS and it's smooth :)

Though, some thoughts.

- TFTP server included in the console package did not start. Got a free server somewhere and went on, but might be nice to recommend one in the manual (not trivial at all) or add instructions for manually starting the included one.

- UPS connectivity is really missing. Any plans to add apcupsd, upsmon or something like that? With a nice 'shut down when UPS is below xx%' or 'remaining time below xx min' option?

Overall it's a very pleasant experience and thanks for the great SW :-D

[Jocko]

Hi

I did not yet notice you may get status of your UPS AC via an USB port.

I will see with Fvdw to compile apcups tools package

[RiveDC1]

Looking forward to it.


There was one more slight inconvenience during the initial setup.

While batch-initializing the disks only the first disk was initialized successfully, the rest always failed.
So when I selected - for example - disk B, C and D: B success, C and D failure (something about failed to write partition table and that it's still the old one)

Then in the next round for C and D: C success, D failure, with the same message.

If done one by one it was always successful.

Only a minor inconvenience, really.

[fvdw]

I can compile apcups but I have no way to test it.

[fvdw]

attached compiled apcups-3.14.14 with usb driver enabled

Configuration on Tue Jul 18 21:23:06 CEST 2023:

Host: armv5tel-unknown-linux-gnueabi -- unknown unknown
Apcupsd version: 3.14.14 (31 May 2016)
Source code location: .
Install binaries: /usr/local/sbin
Install config files: /etc/apcupsd
Install man files: ${prefix}/share/man
Nologin file in: /etc
PID directory: /var/run
LOG dir (events, status) /var/log
LOCK dir (for serial port) /var/lock
Power Fail dir /etc/apcupsd
Compiler: g++ 9.3.0
Preprocessor flags:
Compiler flags: -g -O2 -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti -Wall -Wno-unused -result
Linker: gcc
Linker flags:
Host and version: unknown unknown
Shutdown Program: /sbin/shutdown
Port/Device: /dev/ttyS0
Network Info Port (CGI): 3551
UPSTYPE apcsmart
UPSCABLE smart

drivers (no-* are disabled): apcsmart dumb net linux-usb snmp pcnet modbus no- modbus-usb no-test

enable-nis: yes
with-nisip: 0.0.0.0
enable-cgi: no
with-cgi-bin: /etc/apcupsd
with-libwrap:
enable-pthreads: yes
enable-dist-install: yes
enable-gapcmon: no
enable-apcagent: no

Two archives
addons-apcups-3.14.14-18jul23.tar to be extracted in /direct-usb/fvdw folder (this is an addon)
root-apcups-314.14-18jul23.tar to be extracted in system root directory (/)
configuration file can can be found in /etc/apcupsd folder
Furthermore the archive contains a shutdown script (sbin/shutdown). Our firmware doesn't use shutdown command but apcups does.
The standard linux shutdown command isn't working properly to poweroff the nas therefor I made a simple scipt. However this simple script supports only one parameter being -P or -H or -h or -r. The first three will initiate a poweroff the last one a reboot

As said I have no means to test the package, the binaries run when using --help option, so let us know if you can get it to work

[RiveDC1]

Very thanks!

I will (try to) check it but given my workload and the fact that I'm not really familiar with kernel/driver level Linux tweaking it'll likely take a while.

[RiveDC1]

Downloaded, extracted to the right place
It may look an exceptionally stupid question, but ... how do I start it? A restart?