On 2/03/2010, at 1:40 PM, Rob Sheldon wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:19:57 +0100, "Claus Niesen" <cnie...@gmx.net>
> wrote:
>> I'm trying to figure out the best way to setup a home file server. I
> have
>> a 700MHz Celeron with 512MB RAM (maxed out), a gigabit network adapter
> and
>> 1.5TB hard drive along with a few smaller ones. Currently it is set up
> with
>> OpenBSD and samba. The 1.5 TB hard drive is partitioned in three equal
>> partition so I have a chance to pass the fsck if ever needed. This
> setup
>> works well, except that I have to partition the drive into "smaller"
>> partitions. I really would like not to be bound by the partition size
>> restriction. But of course I would also like to be able to reboot the
>> server and access the data after a power failure or such. And read-only
>> mode isn't an option either.
>
> I've done exactly this -- a "large" hard drive (1TB in my case) on a puny
> computer with specs similar to yours.
>
> fsck was do-able but extremely painful. In my case, it was also doing
> software RAID, but still -- it took 26 hours to mount all filesystems after
> an interruption. Not good.
>
26 hours!? I have a Dell SC440 with a couple of 500 Gb drives in, and the
fsck as part of an upgrade is around 45 minutes to 1 hour per drive.
(Figures are completely from memory.)
No RAID, or anything like that, just 2 x 500Gb SATA drives. fsck as part
of version upgrade, happy drives.
cpu0: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 3 GHz
...
real mem = 1071722496 (1022MB)
avail mem = 1027489792 (979MB)
...
wd0 at pciide1 channel 0 drive 0: <ST3500630NS>
wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 476940MB, 976773168 sectors
wd1 at pciide1 channel 0 drive 1: <ST3500630NS>
wd1: 16-sector PIO, LBA48, 476940MB, 976773168 sectors
wd0(pciide1:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 5
wd1(pciide1:0:1): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 5
ichiic0 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 "Intel 82801GB SMBus" rev 0x01: apic 8 int
17 (irq 10)
iic0 at ichiic0
spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 512MB DDR2 SDRAM ECC PC2-5300CL5
spdmem1 at iic0 addr 0x52: 512MB DDR2 SDRAM ECC PC2-5300CL5
...
An fsck of 1 TB will not necessarily take 26 hours, so definitely YMMV.
I know you said your timing was on crappy hardware, so interested in
what might be "normal" for bigger drives on more modern hardware.
I've probably completely missed the point, so get the cluesticks out!
> The only way around this is to (dramatically) change your block size, and
> then you might end up wasting a significant amount of disk depending on the
> type of files you're storing on it.
>
> As fond as I am of OpenBSD, this just isn't something it's very good at at
> the moment.
>
> (Alternatively, you could install an uninterruptible power supply with a
> USB connection, set up monitoring in OpenBSD, and have the machine cleanly
> shut itself down if the battery runs out. But that's kinda just a stopgap
> solution.)
>
> - R.
>
> --
> [__ Robert Sheldon
> [__ Founder, No Problem
> [__ Information technology support and services
> [__ Software and web design and development
> [__ (530) 575-0278
> [__ "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma
> Gandhi
