Need some help, I'm a bit out of my depth

Hi.

I'm quite new to all this kind of thing. I have had a bit of experience using Linux, I've got Elementary OS running on my media PC.

I have some hard disks from my previous media PC that I was hoping to have access to over my network at home (maybe online once I know what I'm doing). I was going to get a Raspeberry Pi or a Pine but I've got an old desktop that used to run Small Business Server so I thought I would re-purpose that for now.

So, I burnt an ISO DVD and installed OMV on the server, and I've been following the Install and Complete Setup video (although it's for OMV 4 and I've installed OMV 5).

I've got as far as the disks and file systems part, and I'm really not clear what to do. The old server I'm using had a couple of data disks in there and I was hoping I'd be able to have a delve into them and see what's on there. In the setup video he clears the other disks and sets up a RAID thing. I don't want to clear the disks, I want to be able to see what's on them.

So, what do I have to do to be able to see these disks and their contents over the network please?

Thanks

I have had a good try at trying to figure this out by looking at other threads, but I must confess that I don't really understand some of the language so I can't tell if I'm reading a solution.

I take it I have to mount a drive. Can I mount both my data disks? Probably.

When I try and mount one of the other hard disks I get the message 'The filesystem label contains blanks'. In the Label column one disk is called 'New Volume' and one is called 'Windows 7'. The old server was put together by 10 or so years ago by a friend, I imagine it could maybe be booted from any disk for different operating systems. I can change the boot order of the disks in the BIOS to see what happens - but this doesn't solve my problem of how to interrogate the disk contents using Open Media Vault. The main aim is the put in the data disk from my previous media PC.

So, it seems like my first issue is maybe getting rid of blanks in the filesystem label? I've had a hunt around and can't find out how I edit the filesystem label. A shove in the right direction would be appreciated Thanks

So, this is what OMV shows me. It sees the three hard drives and then the second picture is the File systems. I'm not sure what sda5 is, maybe some partition from the previous use of the first hard disk.

If I try and create a file system the first choice is a drop down box to choose device, but there are no choices. It just stays on 'Select a device...'

Should I delete sdc1 and sdb1? As I don't know what I'm doing I'm not keen to delete things.

Thanks for the info. I will have a go at renaming the drives using Elementary. I only have a Windows laptop these days so I would have to get a USB hard drive enclosure thing.

Thanks, I'll see how I get on

HI again.

I've used Gparted and made sure the name of the data disk has no spaces. I then carried on following the instructions and I think I've set OMV up correctly.

I first tried to see the share on my Windows 10 laptop but couldn't get that to work. The instructions for Windows 10 talked about Homegroups but I think that has been removed from Windows 10.

I'm more bothered about getting the disk shared with my Elementary PC though. If I'm right then NFS is the best way. So I've installed nfs-common and then I've done sudo mount -t nfs x.x.x.x://new folder /var/newfolder where x.x.x.x is the ip I used to access the OMV dashboard (and new folder is the mounting folder).

I get the message:

mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting x.x.x.x://foldername

So, I'm stuck again after googling around for an answer. Why is the server denying access?

There's the bit when adding the NFS share where it asks for Client and so I typed in the IP in the example 192.168.178.0/24

I've altered the Client to be the ip of my Elementary pc but I still get the same error

My router is 192.168.1.254 so I've used 192.168.1.0/24 but it still says that access is denied by the server.

I've never seen an IP with a / in there before. What kind of IP is that? And what does it mean by 'Client' when setting up the NFS share?

Zitat von gderf

That isn't an IP address. It describes a 24 bit network of IP addresses beginning with 192.168.1.0 and ending with 192.168.1.255

Ah right. Thanks

HI. Yes I had got NFS turned on (although not to start with!!)

The problem was the share in OMV had a couple of capital letters, I've mounted the drive now.

If I do the df command it shows the drive and usage, so my Linux machine can definitely see the drive. However, I now can't figure out how to browse to the files. The mounting point I created /var/terrordata just says it's empty

What is the /var place anyway? I've seen a couple of other things telling me to set things up in /var

Just for info, the file format of my share is still NFTS. Will this share using NFS?

It's ntfs because it's a 2TB drive from an old PC and that's how it was set up. I assume when you say 'why don't you just use SMB' then I've got to buy a new 2TB disk and then figure out how to copy it all over. I think the power supply in the Linux machine only has two hard drive power supplies - one of which is attached to the Elementary OS drive, so unless I buy new power cables then I don't think I can use that.

The old sever that is now running OMV has enough power supplies for the OS drive and the two 2TB. So, my next question would be can I use OMV to copy the files to a new disk?

However, the main point of this project and going down the route of installing OMV in the first place was to try and give myself access to this drive across my home network without having to spend any money. Is there really no way I can access the data on the old hard drive from my Linux machine using OMV? If I plug the drive directly into the Linux machine it can see everything OK (but then I can't shut the casing), so why can't it see it across the network?

I feel I'm soooo close I've battled my way through lots of new and tricky stuff to get this far, it will be such a shame if I fail at this late stage.

I don't know what any of these things mean.

I googled how to share a drive with a Linux machine is I read that NFS was what Linux used. I was under the impression that Samba was for talking to Windows. I don't actually know what NFS or Samba is. I have to Google everything and see how far I get. The instructions for getting started with OMV 5 only explains how to connect to Windows using Samba and I couldn't get that to work either. There's a bit that says if you're using Windows 10 to follow a link, but that link has instructions using something called Homegroup which I believe has now been removed from Windows 10.

All I want to do is access my old PC hard drive over my home network with my Linux machine and maybe my Windows 10 laptop. Whatever thing in OMV is best to use then I'll use it.

How do I use Samba with Elementary? How do I connect my Windows 10 laptop?

Sorry to be a pain, I did warn at the start I'm a total noob!!! A noob with the spirit to learn stuff though