A Weblog…Again

NAS: Move Over FreeNAS, Here Comes Ubuntu

A couple of months ago, I embarked on building a NAS with 3 x 1 Terabyte drives in a RAID 5 configuration (see here).  I used an old server that I had lying around.  I thought I had it working, but after several hours of use, the drives would heat up and sometimes they would go offline.  I would then have to reboot the server.  So, obviously, this was not a very stable solution.  I had put really silent fans inside of the server, since it was in my office, but that was probably not providing enough ventilation, thus the overheating hard-drives.

Now that I’ve run Cat 5e cable from my office into the basement, I can put the server into the utility room in the basement and voila sound is no longer a constraint.  In the meantime, the stability of the system was deteriorating.  I also didn’t like the inflexibility of using FreeNAS.  Sure, it is nice to have it all pre-packaged, but I think FreeNAS is really for those who aren’t technical enough to roll their own NAS and enable the appropriate services.  Don’t get me wrong, FreeNAS is good if you just want to get a NAS running with minimal technical know how.  But one of the issues with FreeNAS is that it appears that it only has a sole developer behind it, so releases are infrequent.  Also, the forums aren’t as active as they could be.  All of this, along with the fact that one of my drives went kaputt, has led me to build a NAS based on Ubuntu.  With very little effort, I was able to build an Ubuntu based NAS using RAID 10 with 2 x 1 Terabyte drives.  I am just playing around with RAID 10  right now as I only have 2 drives and I’ll switch to RAID 5 when my 3rd drive gets shipped back to me.  Using mdadm and some simple instructions, it was a cinch to get RAID 10 working.  I used a separate 40 GB drive for the OS install.  Once I got the system up and running, I installed the excellent web-based administration tool called Webmin.  From the looks of Webmin, it appears that you can perform RAID configurations from within it, so there really isn’t much command line expertise even required.

Since I wanted to mimic a lot of the functionality of FreeNAS, I also installed Fuppes so that I could stream media from the NAS to my XBox 360.  These instructions were invaluable for installing Fuppes.

I also wanted to configure the server allow AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), so that the Apple computers in the house could use that instead of NFS, which would be more inefficient.  These excellent instructions for configuring AFP on Ubuntu worked flawlessly. 

Once I get my replacement drive back, I’ll work on the following:

1. Put all 3 x 1 Terabyte drives into a RAID 5 configuration
2. Enable the server to act as an iSCSI target.  This is important, because my personal Macbook can then read data from the iSCSI target, which will be treated as a local drive, which means that Mozy (the online backup service I use) will back up the data.
3. Burn (once again) my complete CD collection to the NAS.  Unfortunately, with the last disk failure I lost all of the MP3′s that I had burned.  In any case, I want to now burn them in a lossless format.
4. Configure the NAS to act as an iTunes/DAAP server so that music could be streamed to any device in the house.
5. Move this server into the basement, because it sounds like a rocket engine in my office.

Out with Kindle 1, In with Kindle 2

Last September, I bought the Kindle 1 as a birthday present from Mona to me.  At the time, they had a promotion of $100 off the price of the Kindle, so I think I ended up paying about $265 for it or so.  Since I’ve had it, I have been very pleased.  I’ve been reading more novels and book length non-fiction.  I have found that I no longer realize that I’m reading electronic media; it has dissolved and I become absorbed in the words.  I actually have no reason to buy the Kindle 2.  Well, in steps my father into this picture.  He is obsessed about reading the New York Times and since he travels around to all of his childrens’ houses so frequently, there is no shortage of anxiety for him in figuring out how he is going to get the Times the first thing in the morning.  Add to that, that his vision isn’t what it used to be and the cost of the paper NY Times subscription, the Kindle makes a lot of sense for him.  I showed him my Kindle 1 and its ability to enlarge the text font and the immediate delivery of newspapers and books and he simply had to have it.  So, we arrived at an agreement where he gets my Kindle 1 and I get the Kindle 2.  Wait, it gets better.  Because both Kindle 1 & 2 will be registered under my Amazon account, we will be able to share all of our books with one another at no additional cost.  This doesn’t apply to subscriptions, only books, unfortunately.  Since we read a lot of the same non-fiction, this will be very worthwhile.  So, my Kindle 2 will be here on Wednesday.  Till then, I’ll just have to go "old school" and read a physical book a la Gutenberg.

Wireless – 0; Wired – 1

This afternoon I worked on one of the projects that I had earlier mentioned.  I decided to abandon trying to get WDS (Wireless Distribution System) working between my office on the 2nd floor and the home theatre in the basement.  Instead, I bought a 100 ft of Cat 5e cable and just ran the wiring from the outside of the house.  In my office and in the basement I have Netgear GS105 gigabit switches, so the connectivity blows away any wireless network that I could’ve set up.  It took about 3 hours or so to run the wire, tack it down, cut drywall, punch the wiring into the adapters, but I think I would have spent a lot longer trying to get WDS working correctly.  So, what’s the net result of this wiring job?  Well, now we can finally watch movies from our Instant Queue on Netflix via the XBox 360 on the plasma TV downstairs.  Oh, that is, of course if I actually had time to watch TV.

Twitter: Blogging for the Lazy?

Ever since I have become more active on Twitter, I am finding that I am reading fewer blog posts.  What is even more worrisome is that it seems like a lot of people who zealously jump into "tweeting"[1] start to blog less.  This is troubling, to say the least.  Several people who I follow on Twitter will make comments in multiple 140 character tweets[2] in order to communicate their message.  This is flat-out wrong.  If you can’t tweet what you want to say within 140 characters, then it shouldn’t be tweeted in the first place, but should rather be blogged.  Certainly, it is easier to just blast away a 140 character comment than it is to write a couple of complete sentences on a blog.  Plus, the immediacy and ephemerality of tweeting does have its own appeal.  But just like SMS or IRC before that, Twitter should be used for ideas and thoughts that are not intended to be perdurable.   

[1] "Tweeting" is the act of submitting a message on Twitter.
[2] 140 characters is the maximum allowed per tweet.

P.S.  I can be followed at http://twitter.com/pbrao