That’s what I was looking for. The problem with booting a live distro is that the machine is headless and, while connecting a monitor and keyboard is easier than pulling it out of the rack, getting to the back side of my rack is still a bit of a job.
In the end, there was a third drive that was totally missing in action. Wasn’t even showing upon Disks. So I ended up pulling the box out of the rack and opening it up anyway.
Thanks for the help, guys!
I have a drive in my server that shows up in Disks but not in File Systems. Output of fdisk -l...
Disk /dev/sdc: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimal/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x4b85ddd6
There are no partitions listed. That could be because it's a completely empty disk. I'm not sure. How can I tell? If the disk does have files on it, they're probably pretty valuable to me. What are my options for reading and/or repairing the disk WITHOUT opening up the server and pulling the drive? (which I really don't want to do!)
I'm getting the same error/having the same problem. I don't know how to get to the "remotemount options textbox" or how to "Post the content of your options textbox".
Transcoding on the CPU is IMO the worst choice possible since it wastes energy for nothing. The 'work smarter not harder' approach is letting the video engine do the job. Be it QuickSync on Intel or the specific video engine of an ARM SoC (they're all designed for this, the 'only' problem is driver support within Linux). As an example: Helios - HC2 - Or Microserver?
That's interesting. I didn't know that. I'll look into it. Thanks!
I hate those setups (doing storage for a living for over 2 decades now). The less disks the better.
You may hate it, but it's what I have (and I'm grateful to have it!) What's the alternative? AFAIK, to get the 30TB capacity I have now, I'd need 3 10TB drives plus another for parity. And then there's the system drive. Even if the HC2 could support that, I can't afford it. And if I ever want to expand, there's no great path for doing so.
Having said that, I could leave my power-sipping motherboard and CPU in my existing media server and let it run SnapRAID and manage/share all my storage drives. Emby (and Radarr/Sonarr/Lidarr, etc.) could then run on an HC2. WAY cheaper than upgrading my media server to even a budget Ryzen system. And with the HC2, I've got the same super-cheap replacement capability if it ever fails. Great stuff @tkaiser! Thanks for all the food for thought!
@esbeeb - Thanks for reviving this thread and injecting some interesting points. While your statement about ARM inferiority is clearly a little controversial, you certainly make good points regarding the low price of electricity and the value of my own time.
@tkaiser - Clearly you have some history with esbeeb and I appreciate you providing a counterpoint on the ARM inferiority issue. Having said that, what I'd really appreciate is if you actually weighed in on my OP.
I've thought about this quite a bit since my original post. I have to say that @Wdavery's post made a lot of sense to me. The biggest problem with the "1 big server" approach is that it puts all my eggs in one basket. I don't have the resources to build a server cluster, and even if I did, I don't want a jet engine in my office with me. -- (Having said that, from a noise standpoint, it's interesting to note that my primary (rackmount) PC and media server together are less noisy than my DGS-1024D switch! I intend to put a fan controller in that noisy bastard soon!)
OTOH, I can't really just go with several SBC-based servers because I need something with some power for Emby transcoding. And even if there's a high-powered SBC that could do the transcoding, there's still the issue of connecting 12-16 SATA drives to an SBC. (And that's an issue I already have resolved since I already have the server case and PCI SATA expansion cards - I just need to update the anemic motherboard and processor.) A hybrid approach seems to make the most sense. I LOVE how cheap and ubiquitous a RasPi is. If the SD card dies, no worries - it's backed up and I have spares on hand. If the Pi itself dies, a replacement is dirt cheap and BAM! I'm back in business. If my (x64) media server fails, well, that's a bummer, but frankly, I can live without Emby/Radarr/Sonarr/Lidarr/Calibre/photo server (TBD) a whole lot easier than I can live without Home Assistant (gods forbid I should have to go around at night shutting off lights and locking doors!) or my Ubiquiti controller, so Home Assistant (in a Docker container along with containers for Mosquitto, Node-RED, OpenZwave, Portainer, Watchtower, Pi-hole, and Ubiquiti controller) will live on a dedicated Pi and get backed up redundantly. I think I like the idea of putting NextCloud on a dedicated RasPi, too, and having that be my local backup destination for the Home Assistant server as well as the system drive for my media server (as well as serving Dropbox duties, of course). As for my self-hosted web server, I think it needs to be on it's own VLAN, cutoff from the rest of my network (too much risk there) - and while I want to have it up and running 24/7, I'd prefer it cost me as little as possible to do so - so I'll put it on its own Pi.
I belive calibre has a crazy amount of dependencies. Not easy to build on ARM.
I haven't tried it yet but TechnoDadLife makes it look pretty easy...
Nobody has any opinions or comments on this?
Background: I have a media server that's been offline for a while. It has several disks between 1TB-3TB (JBOD) and room to add more. I built it to simply store all my CD, DVD and BrD rips. I played the files on an HTPC so transcoding wasn't an issue - but I retired the HTPC some time ago and I now use Roku for pretty much everything. I tried setting up Plex (more than once) but had a ton of problems with it so I gave up and I've just been playing my physical media discs on my Blu-ray player when I feel like watching them.
Recently, I started playing around with OpenMediaVault on a Raspberry Pi 3 and I'm intrigued/enthused about all the possibilities. I setup Emby Media Server on it and plugged in a 2TB external drive that's loaded with a bunch of my favorite movies and TV shows. In my tests so far, everything seems to play really well on my Roku (Ultra) using the Emby client. I setup port forwarding and tried watching some stuff outside the house on my iPhone (6). 480P content plays great. 720P stops and has to be restarted once in a while but it's functional enough. 1080P doesn't seem to work at all.
My next step is to get my old server back on line. I don't remember its specs but I built it for low-power consumption so I don't know if it will transcode any better than the Pi3 — I suspect I'll probably have to upgrade it — especially as I start to rip some UltraHD Blu-ray discs. Anyway, I'm definitely going to install OMV and SnapRaid along with Auto Ripping Machine so I can finally get the rest of my media ripped. (I'm about 50% done with DVDs/BDs and maybe 25% done with CDs.)
I may stop there and just use that server for media files. But I'm really interested in all the other functionality that I can implement with OMV... I definitely want to setup (using Docker containers for pretty much everything):
I'm currently doing some of that on the Raspberry Pi 3 and I'm pretty happy with the results. So... here's where I'd really appreciate some input...
Should I try to do all that on a single, powerful server? Or should I limit my “main” server to Emby/media storage (and Auto Ripping Machine and maybe Radarr/Sonarr) then use Raspberry Pis (I have 4 x Pi 2, 1 x Pi 3, and another old mini-ITX based server that’s sitting idle but was earmarked as a torrent server) as single-function servers? What would the pros/cons be each way? What would you do?
Just curious - is this still an issue in OMV4? Or has it been addressed?
I'm having the same problem as mediagiant. The disk (a 2TB external USB "pocket drive") WAS mounted using the web interface. In File Systems it shows that it is mounted and status is Online. But when I go to create a Shared Folder and I click the dropdown for Device, it briefly shows "Loading..." and then nothing. No devices listed, the "Select a Device" field is blank. And if I click the dropdown button again, nothing happens. The ONLY thing I can do is cancel. This happens every time. It seems odd that it doesn't show ANY of the partitions listed in File Systems. There are 3 of them-
1. /dev/mmcblk0p1 - 62 MiB vfat labeled "boot" - mounted:yes, referenced:no, status:online
2. /dev/mmcblk0p2 - 7.15 GiB ext4 (no label) - mounted:yes, referenced:yes, status:online
3. /dev/sda1 - 1.82 TiB ntfs labeled "TOSHIBA EXT" - mounted:yes, referenced:no, status:online
The behavior where it briefly says "Loading..." when I press the dropdown button also occurs when I go to Services > Plex Media Server and try to select a volume for the database volume.
I'm logged in as admin and I've tried rebooting the system as well as unmounting and remounting the drive/file system (again, via the WEB INTERFACE) but nothing works. The drive has 300 GiB available. If someone with expertise in this area wants me to shrink the ntfs volume and create a 300 GiB ext4 volume to see if I can create a shared folder in an ext4 partition, I don't mind doing that. I just really want to get this working.
