Seagate Goflex Net with Debian Linux, RAID1 & OpenMediaVault

  • by Don Charisma


    This is posted on my blog http://DonCharisma.com, but thought it would be useful here too. Here's the link on my blog - http://doncharisma.com/2013/09…raid1-and-openmediavault/


    Thanks to all the guys here for maintaining the forum and all of the invaluable information posted here, without it, I wouldn't have been able to do this:)


    Would also like to thank the developers of OpenMediaVault, for producing software which is on a par with what I've seen on pro NAS'es like QNAP. I chose Linux/OpenMediaVault over FreeNAS because of the horrendous memory requirements for RAID under BSD. OpenMediaVault is awesome, and I really hope it will continue to get developed and get better and better.


    Cheers, Don Charisma, http://DonCharisma.com


    FROM MY BLOG


    The result of spending copious hours and days, knee deep in Linux IS - a working and stable 2TB NAS with Debian Linux based on Seagate GoFlex NET. Persistence and Charisma eventually paid off, ended up being a labour of love, but it was WORTH IT. This is a guide on how to do the same the EASY WAY.


    WHY?


    I like saving money and being green at the same time is a bonus.


    Seagate GoFlex Net has two SATA ports for portable hard drives, it has a 1.2GHz processor and runs on just a few watts of electricity. For it's size it's powerful, expandable and green. Free market prices vary obviously, at the time of writing it's not expensive around £29 in UK, I guess that's $40 in USA. Total of around £130 for a two disk RAID1 NAS with a web based GUI for administration, off the shelf alternatives are maybe £200-£250. Ability to install any of the 25000 debian packages, priceless.


    Seagate package this device with built in software from Pogoplug. Seagate in my experience are THE BEST hard drive manufacturer. However they tend to suck big style on the software they include with their hardware. Pogoplug on GoFlex Net is like putting a lawnmower engine in a Ferrari. It's OK for some consumers who don't want to know anything about the technical side, but really it's not much use for anyone serious. Also it poses some security issues, such as sharing data on Windows network without any password, meaning anyone who has access to your local network has access to your shared files.


    I wanted a semi-portable NAS. Seagate GoFlex Net weighs only a few hundred grammes, hand luggage for travelling.


    I didn't want to mess around too much with circuit boards, a finished device in a nice case fits the bill. GoFlex Net has a nice moulded plastic case.


    I wanted the device to be a NAS, that is accessible on the Network so I don't have to mess around plugging and unplugging USB cables. GoFlex Net has gigabit ethernet port.


    As I don't want to spend all my time knee deep in Linux commands, I wanted some kind of easy-to-use management interface. OpenMediaVault fits the bill, everything in one place.


    I wanted RAID1 for integrity of my data. GoFlex Net has 2 SATA ports, so RAID 0 and 1 and also spanning possible.


    HOW?


    Looking around on the internet, I looked at various different devices. Perhaps a Raspberry PI, but doesn't have case or SATA interface for drives. Pogoplug? expensive and cheaper models don't have SATA.


    Seagate GoFlex Net was the best I could find on a miser's budget and having the possibility of doing what I want it to do. I like the way the hard drives hot plug into the top of the device. Just a great design.


    Stock software on GoFlex Net is Pogoplug, basically it's Pogoplug with a Seagate label on it. Searching internet revealed that other's had installed Arch Linux and Debian Linux on the device, and personally I have a preference for Debian Linux as I use Ubuntu and that's based on Debian.


    Enter Jeff Doozan's website, http://www.doozan.com . They have posts and pages about specifically what I wanted to do, Debian on GoFlex Net and other ARM devices such as Pogoplug and Zyxel NSA320. It all sounded oh so simple in my research.


    But it's never as straightforward in real life is it ?


    It's taken me a lot of hours, weeks in fact to get to the point of having stable GoFlex Net with Debian Linux, OpenMediaVault and RAID1. And many many failed attempts !


    This is a guide for how to do it, and sharing what I learn't along the way. If you want to build a similar device, then you'll be able to using this guide, the EASY WAY, avoiding the mistakes I made, saving time and stress.


    Obviously if you follow this guide you do so at your own risk, and it's your responsibility to make sure that you're doing things correctly, not mine. GoFlex Net can be broken (aka bricked, foobared, door-stopper) if you don't use care and caution, ESPECIALLY when doing anything to do with the inbuilt NAND flash memory. Take care in what you're doing and you won't have a problem. Check everything carefully and check the references I've given to external sites.


    What you'll need to do this


    Don Charisma, doncharisma.com Toolbox
    Tools
    Mandatory


    Seagate GoFlex Net


    USB Flash Drive (not camera card eg SD), I use Sandisk Cruzer and Cruzer Fit


    Ubuntu or other flavour of Linux, either running direct on a PC/Laptop or in a Virtual Machine


    An SSH client program, Ubuntu has one or on Windows I use BitVise SSH Client.


    Some time and patience and willingness to learn. A little bit of Linux knowledge extremely beneficial.


    Optional


    gparted GUI partion editor on Ubuntu


    Portable/2.5" Hard Drive(s) - Seagate Hard Drives recommended, Backup Plus 1TB are a good fit and cheap at around £50 each



    This is how we do it


    STEP 1 - Get ssh access to GoFlex Net
    STEP 2 - Make a bootable "rootfs" on USB drive
    STEP 3 - Update the GoFlex Net inbuilt bootloader to boot from USB
    STEP 4 - First boot from USB
    STEP 5 - Install rescue system (optional but HIGHLY recommended)
    STEP 6 - Install netconsole (optional but HIGHLY recommended)
    STEP 7 - Install OpenMediaVault to USB
    STEP 8 - Migrate your rootfs to SATA hard drive (optional)
    STEP 9 - Setup RAID1 (optional)
    STEP 10 - Do some cool stuff with the LEDS (optional)
    APPENDIX - for reference, chrooting for kernel upgrade/change or troubleshooting


    *When I tried to post the entire article, I got this message from this forum - "This message was flagged as spam and has been denied."*
    ... so to continue reading, please see my blog http://doncharisma.com/2013/09…raid1-and-openmediavault/

  • Sorry DonCharisma,


    the spam protection is a bit high here. When you do some other posts it may gets easier to post things. Also you may edit your post now and edit the missing content in.


    Greetings
    David

    "Well... lately this forum has become support for everything except omv" [...] "And is like someone is banning Google from their browsers"


    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

    Upload Logfile via WebGUI/CLI
    #openmediavault on freenode IRC | German & English | GMT+1
    Absolutely no Support via PM!

  • Hey David,


    No probs, spammy little spammers are a royal nuisance, so makes sense. However does mean than a 5 minute task starts to eat into my free time, and I like my free time !


    Happy for people to read on my blog:) If admins can confirm I won't get message again, I'll take the time to post the full thing here.


    I'm really happy with my end result, it's stable and I'm getting a good response (latency and transfer speed) on Samba sharing


    Cheers


    Don Charisma
    http://DonCharisma.com

  • Well, we can't set anything manually on the spam filter. So theres nothing I can do for you, besides encouraging you to do some more posts.


    Greetings
    David

    "Well... lately this forum has become support for everything except omv" [...] "And is like someone is banning Google from their browsers"


    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

    Upload Logfile via WebGUI/CLI
    #openmediavault on freenode IRC | German & English | GMT+1
    Absolutely no Support via PM!

  • Hey David,


    OK, I take a look once people have posted a few comments here.


    Thanks once again to the team at OpenMediaVault. I looked high and low for something "similar" and this is *exactly* what I wanted. Can you pass that on for me to the relevant people, they deserve praise:) OpenMediaVault I believe ought to be the standard for open source NAS.


    freeNAS needing like 6GB of RAM for RAID, I just clicked next when I saw that. BSD is great to work with (have used pfSense), but seems to expect more resources than I'm willing to pay for. My router I use OpenWRT, another linux derivative.


    PS sorry I forgot to thank the guy that wrote the Pogoplug guide here, that was very helpful too:)


    Anyway ...


    Cheers


    Don Charisma
    http://DonCharisma.com

  • LOL, thanks appreciate that, it was a mission and a half ... hopefully some others will be able to harness the power of the Seagate GoFlex Net, it's a fantastically portable low power dual sata bit of kit...


    My pleasure, I do honestly like OpenMediaVault, a lot, you guys have done something awesome which I couldn't find anywhere else:)


    Don Charisma
    http://DonCharisma.com

  • ok so i'm going ask these questions here also. hopefully someone might have some useful suggestions or help.


    i've had 0.4 running on the goflex home for a while. i like the new 0.5 version and am trying to install it to run on the gfh. i worked my way through the procedure an get as far as installing omv but it fails for unmet dependencies: php5-proctitle


    the php5-proctitle deb package is available for x64 and i386 but not armel. i found what I think is the source code for php5-proctitle on the omv site.


    any ideas how to get it to work with omv 0.5?
    is it possible to compile and package php5-proctitle on the goflex without having to cross-compile?
    any suggestions?
    any ideals?
    any help with compiling php5-proctitle?
    any plans for armel support in the near future?


    and i suspect php5-proctitle won't be the only package that is not available for armel.



    in case someone should ask: my reason for wanting to do this is jollies

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    You can install build-essential and proctitle's dependencies on the box and compile it. It is a small package so it won't take long.

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • Reposted from http://DonCharisma.com, but looks like ryecoaaron may have already posted an answer, happy days:)


    Hey maihoaomv,


    Don’t worry about posting in multiple places, the info for this is very much distributed anyway and no one would blame:)


    Interestingly I had the *exact* same problem with OMV 0.5 in my attempt to install. In short the conclusion I came to was that it isn’t at this moment compatible with armel. ie I gave in, in favour of a working solution, against a distant perhaps possible solution.


    Solutions :


    1. Wait until Debian make php5-proctitle available for armel. You could pester them, maybe it’s almost done ?
    2. Ask OMV guys if they know a work around, or whether OMV would use a different package, or be hacked not to use php5-proctitle
    3. Compile to package yourself for armel … sorry I don’t know how to do this, but I suspect it’s possible, don’t know how hard or how long it would take. Only experience I have with Linux compilation is the reg.db for wireless, which wasn’t too difficult with a tutorial. There are guides I know on doozan.com for recompile kernel, but don’t know if compiling the php5-proctitle package would be similar procedure. Best source of help with this probably doozan.com


    Very hard to say at this stage whether php5-proctitle is the only obstacle, it was probably 5-6am when I gave in and didn’t plan on re-exploring !


    I will repost this doozan.com and OMV forums, hopefully someone who knows more than me will chip in:)


    Cheers


    Don Charisma

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I compiled it on debian wheezy amd64 when i was trying to get omv to work on wheezy. Not hard to do.

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • i installed build-essential and php5 and put the source code in the root directory. looks like php5 is the depend but there is no configure file.
    is there something else i need to download or install?
    anybody have any suggestions on how to build the package?


    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Do this:


    Code
    apt-get install xsltproc php5-dev fakeroot debhelper


    download all the files from here


    go to the php5-proctitle from the files you downloaded.


    Code
    chmod +x debian/rules
    dpkg-buildpackage -T binary


    This will compile and create the php5-proctitle_0.1.2-1_armel.deb for you. I would build it but I don't have an armel system running now.

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • got php5-proctitle_0.1.2-1_armel.deb to build and it installs. omv still fails further on for "no arrays defined in configuration" and collectd. haven't figured out what is going on with that on yet but i think it may have something to do with the answer i chose for the 'MD arrays configuration' popup. i will keep working on it.


    thanks for your help.

  • the way i understand the error is that omv is failing because the md arrays are not configured in collectd. i told it "NO" in the "configuring mdadm" box. i didn't have a problem here when i installed 0.5 on an i386.


    i'll work on it some more.



  • mdadm is a "W:" which is a warning, a warning isn't an error and makes sense as you don't have any arrays defined. So not a problem I think.


    The problem I think is collectd, I've had similar problems with collectd in the past. From memory it was one of the network config files that needed tweeking, so check your hosts etc. This problem I had with OMV 0.4, so I reckon they've fixed whatever the problem was in 0.4, maybe somehow it's re-appeared in 0.5 ?


    Also there is also a way to get more information on why collectd is failing, so suggest look at logfiles etc for that.


    This may help, but not sure it'll be the solution - http://forums.openmediavault.o…opic.php?f=12&t=514#p2071


    OMV uses collectd for the pretty graphs, so it's an "essential" part of OMV


    I'm happy with my 3.3.2 kernel/Squeeze/OMV 0.4, don't want to break my box at the moment:) So can't be more specific.


    Let us know what you discover!


    Cheers


    Don Charisma
    http://DonCharisma.com

  • Yea!!! Got openmediavault 0.5 sardaukar to work on the GoFlex Home. The mdadm is actually a warning as Don Charisma pointed out. The real problem is the /etc/collectd/collectd.conf file. For some reason it is not being correctly configured during installation of omv. I cheated and copied the contents of collectd.conf from the virtual machine into the collectd.conf on the GoFlex and the installation completed successfully.


    Once I had the WebGUI up and logged I was able to do the minimum configuration. Samba, NFS, and SSH is working. I couldn't get Plugins to work though. I get a communication error. Still don't know why collectd isn't configured correctly. Maybe someone on the omv forum can tell me.

  • i reinstalled omv 0.5.11 again on the goflex home. i got the exact same error with collectd that i expected. when i looked at /etc/collectd/collectd.conf almost everthing was commented out including the hostname. i uncommented the hostname, restarted omv install and it ran to completion without further error.


    this is what /etc/collectd/collectd.conf looks like when omv fails. note that Hostname "localhost" is commented out.


    is this a bug in the install package? or am i missing something that should be installed prior to running omv install?
    where in the package is this config file generated? the config file is not there prior to running omv.


    i didn't have any problems with the vm install using the iso. is there something different between the iso install and the package install on top of an already existing debian squeeze install?


    i realize that this is on an arm device and not officially supported yet. i have it running mostly. i just need some help with getting the problems sorted out.


    thanks
    m


    Code
    root@GoFlexHome:~# uname -a
    Linux GoFlexHome 3.3.2-kirkwood-dg #1 Mon Apr 23 17:09:27 CDT 2012 armv5tel GNU/Linux
    root@GoFlexHome:~#

    /Plugin http192/Plugincache-misses/dev/ttyUSB0


    9/30/2013 -this problem is solved. adding the following line to the /etc/hosts file fixed the problem (for me) and will allow omv to install to completion without failure except for php5 and php5-proctitle (which can be pre-installed prior to installing omv:


    127.0.1.1 GoFlexHome.localdomain GoFlexHome


    the /etc/hosts file should look something like this:


    root@GoFlexHome:~# cat /etc/hosts
    # This configuration file is auto-generated.
    # WARNING: Do not edit this file, your changes will be lost.
    127.0.0.1 localhost


    #add this line to fix collecd failure
    127.0.1.1 GoFlexHome.localdomain GoFlexHome


    # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
    ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
    fe00::0 ip6-localnet
    ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
    ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
    ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
    ff02::3 ip6-allhosts



    where GoFlexHome would be your hostname.
    # FSType


    #/File

  • Hey maihoaomv


    Good job congrats, and thanks for passing on the how-to.


    Personally I'm sticking with what I have just at the moment as it's stable. BUT what you've written will be very useful for those wanting to try OMV 0.5.11


    Sincerely


    Don Charisma
    http://DonCharisma.com

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