DarkFoon wrote:
FreeNAS sounds like a neat idea, unfortunately it's not quite what I had
in mind for this backup computer. I was going to write a cron job for
this computer so that every night (or maybe once a week) it would turn
on(the BIOS has an auto-boot function), and use smbtar to grab all of
the files from a fileserver and back them up on that computer, then it
would shutdown. If the disk got too full, it would delete older backups
to make room for new ones.
you may want to consider rsync over ssh with hard links...
Check out the following...
http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/
also - if you are using freebsd you can use atacontrol to attach and
detach the controler of an individual disk (in combination with
removable drive cartridges) and do offline storage.
Right now the file srver is running windows
XP, so I can't really tell it to send its files to that backup computer
at a specific time.
What about that jumpering thing, though? I remember from linux that if
you have a drive jumpered to be smaller than its actual size, you need
to have hdx=stroke as a boot parameter so linux can use all of the
space. Well I've gotten off topic perhaps. I'll do some reading in the
FreeBSD pages.
Thanks!
Anthony
----- Original Message -----
From: "Holger Bauer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <discussion@pfsense.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 9:34 PM
Subject: RE: [pfSense-discussion] pfSense merge with freebsd?
I doubt that a bios flash will make that drive usable at that old
machine. And for these utilities... I don't like them too much. I have
used such a utility a very long time ago to bypass bios limitations. It
actually went in the bootsector to get loaded before anything else (like
the old evil masterbootrecord viruses ;-). It worked fine for some time
until I needed to reinstall my OS as it was broken. The OS replaced the
tool in the bootrecord and all my data stored at all partitions was gone
with that. There was no way to reinstall the tool without doing a full
preperation of the disk again whiping everything that existed there. In
business environments things like these are really the worst ideas one
can come up with.
However I might have a solution for you to try. First find out what the
max size limit is that box is natively supporting for hdds. Then get a
bunch of these and run them with http://www.freenas.org/ . You even can
build RAIDs with this (stripes and mirrors should be supported afaik),
however I haven't tried it out personally. Just a suggestion.
Holger
-----Original Message-----
From: DarkFoon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 6:24 AM
To: discussion@pfsense.com
Subject: Re: [pfSense-discussion] pfSense merge with freebsd?
The "god box" is always a bad idea.
Yeah, I told him the "God Box" idea was a bad one. Figured I
should look
into it anyways. Right now his pfSense box is a Dell pentium
III 866Mhz
(same as the box I'm using right now to make this email) with 256Mb
SD-100 ram and 5 added in Nics (plus the integrated, for a
total of 6).
I had a similar box running a SAMBA domain server and it was
alright, so
I thought I'd try to combine the two. But I digress. The God
Box is out.
Got that.
As a matter of fact (this is probably a generic BSD question) he wants
me to do the impossible again: He has an old K6-2 box laying
around and
he wants me to put in a 300GB seagate drive to do a network
back up to.
I told him the tech is too old to support 300GB (its ATA/UDMA66 or
whatever; too many titles for the same thing)
But he read some tidbit on Seagate's site that a mobo BIOS flash or
using the seagate software will make it so the drive can be used, and
apparently that means I can do it (completely ignoring the
fact that the
hardware came years before even 100 GB drives) and I'm a
slacker for not
making it happen.
So the question is, if I jumper the drive to limit it to 32GB so the
darn computer will actually boot (the BIOS freezes detecting
the drive),
can I get FreeBSD to recognize all 300GB? I probably should check the
FreeBSD man pages, but being as ill as I am right now, I feel like
asking you guys first (ya'll seem nice enough ;) )
thanks for the help!
Anthony
(stupid flu!)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Burnette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <discussion@pfsense.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 6:49 PM
Subject: Re: [pfSense-discussion] pfSense merge with freebsd?
DarkFoon wrote:
I am curious if it is possible to "merge"-for want of a better
word-pfSense with a FreeBSD install. Why? Well, I have a
client who
wants to integrate everything into 1 box if possible. I
told him its
not
possible, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't
check to see if
I
am wrong.
You could of course snag the pf rules out of a pfsense box
and put in
a
*bsd box if absolutely required.
The "god box" is always a bad idea. Generally does everything poorly
(think of what a fantastic pair of scissors are included in a swiss
army
knife). I have very very large clients that think the same
of optical
long haul gear, routers, and switches and how they all belong in one
box. Invariably, they get burned by lousy functionality and cost
overruns. (yes, think US DoD...)
boxen sufficient for a pfsense firewall are $100 or so from many
sources
(I paid $109 on ebay for the first one, then $100 for a
rack mount job
that fit in my cabinet better). Same size/capacity box
should do for
an
SMB server (sans Big Fantastic Disks of course).
if that's too much $$, then the client likely can't afford you ;-)
But,
isn't that what they pay you for in the first place?
Good luck,
andy
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