[gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
I've got a 2 year old Gentoo machine that got patched together using a lot of small hard drives which worked fine for what I used the machine for 2-3 years ago but the machine isn't getting used much anymore. The processor, memory MB are all reasonably good - i5-661 4GB - but my laptop VM compute server are both faster - so I was wondering what I might do with the box. I saw a Wired article last night about a guy building a NAS box using Debian which got me thinking. I've got a bunch of 1TB Green drives which would make a good base for storage so there's no cost in doing this, but I don't know anything about network attached storage that just works out of the box with Windows clients and I have NO desire (or time) to spend learning stuff that's very Windows specific. If there is a good solution for me it needs to support both Win XP and Win 7 machine and shouldn't require anything be added to the Windows VM. Years ago I tried this basic guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/quick-samba-howto.xml I don't remember why but I didn't have much luck with it. However it's been updated and cleaned up a lot so maybe it's OK. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Cheers, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:38, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: I've got a 2 year old Gentoo machine that got patched together using a lot of small hard drives which worked fine for what I used the machine for 2-3 years ago but the machine isn't getting used much anymore. The processor, memory MB are all reasonably good - i5-661 4GB - but my laptop VM compute server are both faster - so I was wondering what I might do with the box. I saw a Wired article last night about a guy building a NAS box using Debian which got me thinking. I've got a bunch of 1TB Green drives which would make a good base for storage so there's no cost in doing this, but I don't know anything about network attached storage that just works out of the box with Windows clients and I have NO desire (or time) to spend learning stuff that's very Windows specific. If there is a good solution for me it needs to support both Win XP and Win 7 machine and shouldn't require anything be added to the Windows VM. Years ago I tried this basic guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/quick-samba-howto.xml I don't remember why but I didn't have much luck with it. However it's been updated and cleaned up a lot so maybe it's OK. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Cheers, Mark The easiest solution, most used, is probably SAMBA. You should give it a chance again. Claudio Roberto França Pereira (a.k.a. Spidey) hardMOB - HTForum - @spideybr Engenharia de Computação - UFES 2006/1
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Spidey spide...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:38, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Years ago I tried this basic guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/quick-samba-howto.xml I don't remember why but I didn't have much luck with it. However it's been updated and cleaned up a lot so maybe it's OK. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Cheers, Mark The easiest solution, most used, is probably SAMBA. You should give it a chance again. Yes. Samba is the basis of the link above, and I figure it's going to be the underlying technology that does the work. I was just wondering if there was a more user oriented, possibly GUI based app that did all the dirty work sort of like the CUPS web interface does with CUPS configuration. Thanks, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:43, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Spidey spide...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:38, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP Years ago I tried this basic guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/quick-samba-howto.xml I don't remember why but I didn't have much luck with it. However it's been updated and cleaned up a lot so maybe it's OK. Thanks in advance for any ideas. Cheers, Mark The easiest solution, most used, is probably SAMBA. You should give it a chance again. Yes. Samba is the basis of the link above, and I figure it's going to be the underlying technology that does the work. I was just wondering if there was a more user oriented, possibly GUI based app that did all the dirty work sort of like the CUPS web interface does with CUPS configuration. SWAT? -- Daniel da Veiga
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Oct 4, 2011 8:41 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: I've got a 2 year old Gentoo machine that got patched together using a lot of small hard drives which worked fine for what I used the machine for 2-3 years ago but the machine isn't getting used much anymore. The processor, memory MB are all reasonably good - i5-661 4GB - but my laptop VM compute server are both faster - so I was wondering what I might do with the box. I saw a Wired article last night about a guy building a NAS box using Debian which got me thinking. I've got a bunch of 1TB Green drives which would make a good base for storage so there's no cost in doing this, but I don't know anything about network attached storage that just works out of the box with Windows clients and I have NO desire (or time) to spend learning stuff that's very Windows specific. If there is a good solution for me it needs to support both Win XP and Win 7 machine and shouldn't require anything be added to the Windows VM. Years ago I tried this basic guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/quick-samba-howto.xml I don't remember why but I didn't have much luck with it. However it's been updated and cleaned up a lot so maybe it's OK. Thanks in advance for any ideas. If you want to rebuild it totally, why not go the simpler route of installing 'soft appliances' like FreeNAS, OpenFiler, or Nexenta? Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On 10/4/2011 8:43 AM, Mark Knecht wrote: Yes. Samba is the basis of the link above, and I figure it's going to be the underlying technology that does the work. I was just wondering if there was a more user oriented, possibly GUI based app that did all the dirty work sort of like the CUPS web interface does with CUPS configuration. In Samba's case the config is pretty simple if you ignore printing which you should. Just add the IP range, setup a share, and add some accounts or leave it public. Probably take longer to setup a gui. kashani
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:53 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: SNIP If you want to rebuild it totally, why not go the simpler route of installing 'soft appliances' like FreeNAS, OpenFiler, or Nexenta? Rgds, Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't know about any of these. Some comments: 1) The machine is already running Gentoo and is reasonably up to date. (Within 30 days or so) I didn't want to start from scratch but rather just wanted to remove a couple of drives which don't support system needs, throw a couple of 1TB hard drives and hopefully I'm up and running. 2) As for the three suggestions, and at a glance they all look very capable of supporting my limited needs, I really don't want to learn to maintain a server running different tools. (I.e. - anything not portage) I sure like the look of the FreeNAS pages though. Thanks! Cheers, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:01 AM, kashani kashani-l...@badapple.net wrote: On 10/4/2011 8:43 AM, Mark Knecht wrote: Yes. Samba is the basis of the link above, and I figure it's going to be the underlying technology that does the work. I was just wondering if there was a more user oriented, possibly GUI based app that did all the dirty work sort of like the CUPS web interface does with CUPS configuration. In Samba's case the config is pretty simple if you ignore printing which you should. Just add the IP range, setup a share, and add some accounts or leave it public. Probably take longer to setup a gui. kashani I suspect you are right, but Alan's recommendation of wicd was so easy to set up and use I'm hoping someone did something similar for NAS solutions. Also, my VMs are both Win XP and Win 7, and my understanding of those is that remote support is different, so I'm concerned I'll end up going down some rabbit hole trying to get the new setup to support everything, but maybe I'm wrong about that? - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Oct 5, 2011 12:10 AM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:53 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: SNIP If you want to rebuild it totally, why not go the simpler route of installing 'soft appliances' like FreeNAS, OpenFiler, or Nexenta? Rgds, Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't know about any of these. Some comments: 1) The machine is already running Gentoo and is reasonably up to date. (Within 30 days or so) I didn't want to start from scratch but rather just wanted to remove a couple of drives which don't support system needs, throw a couple of 1TB hard drives and hopefully I'm up and running. 2) As for the three suggestions, and at a glance they all look very capable of supporting my limited needs, I really don't want to learn to maintain a server running different tools. (I.e. - anything not portage) I sure like the look of the FreeNAS pages though. TBH, I have no experience with either FreeNAS or Nexenta, but people I know in other fora swear by them. As to OpenFiler, I've deployed it several times in my office, twice for production. It's quite easy to manage, especially since it's update-able from the webGUI. There *is* a learning curve, though. Exposing OpenFiler to act as a NAS box that's accessible from Windows has a few gotchas, but after reading some wikis, I got it up and running beautifully. Rgds,
Re: [gentoo-user] NAS for Windows - does any Wiki solution 'just work'?
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: On Oct 5, 2011 12:10 AM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:53 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: SNIP If you want to rebuild it totally, why not go the simpler route of installing 'soft appliances' like FreeNAS, OpenFiler, or Nexenta? Rgds, Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't know about any of these. Some comments: 1) The machine is already running Gentoo and is reasonably up to date. (Within 30 days or so) I didn't want to start from scratch but rather just wanted to remove a couple of drives which don't support system needs, throw a couple of 1TB hard drives and hopefully I'm up and running. 2) As for the three suggestions, and at a glance they all look very capable of supporting my limited needs, I really don't want to learn to maintain a server running different tools. (I.e. - anything not portage) I sure like the look of the FreeNAS pages though. TBH, I have no experience with either FreeNAS or Nexenta, but people I know in other fora swear by them. As to OpenFiler, I've deployed it several times in my office, twice for production. It's quite easy to manage, especially since it's update-able from the webGUI. There *is* a learning curve, though. Exposing OpenFiler to act as a NAS box that's accessible from Windows has a few gotchas, but after reading some wikis, I got it up and running beautifully. Rgds, I wonder if VMWare monitors this list? I just a couple a minutes ago received an email offering me VMware vSphere Storage Appliance at the low, low cost of $10,180. And that's 40% off list price! :-) - Mark
