Brad,
Thanks for the vote of encouragement. I've made a little
progress, but I keep getting tripped up by the small stuff.
The first problem was my own inneptitude and I don't mind taking
hits for it. I was pointing my browser at http://<box>:446. Notice
I
left off the "s" for SSL. Again, my own fault. But this raises an
issue. Please implement any (or all?) of the following:
1) Make the web server listen on the standard SSL port (443) so I
don't have to enter a whacky URL. Why is a non-standard port
being used on a box that isn't running anything else?
2) Make a non-SSL request automatically redirect to the secured
version of the page. I do this all the time for any web app I
write. Make it simple for the user to get to the app.
Ok, so I can log into the web interface. The next problem, and I
can't possibly be the only one seeing this:
3) Fix the stylesheet(s) so that text in input fields is not
clipped on its bottom edge. I'm using IE6 on XP Pro and the input
fields look like crap because I can't see the bottom 10% of the
letters and numbers. How did this ever get released without being
caught?
I've put a screenshot of what I see when I look at the
Authentication page here: http://www.bennedum.org/files/of1.jpg.
The
problem is not isolated to that page.
Here's a few more problems I see in the GUI within 15 minutes of
starting:
4) In the physical storage management page, my SATA drive is
listed as type SCSI. Why? It's SATA (or least IDE) not SCSI.
5) I created an iSCSI LV that consumes a whole VG. On the List of
Existing Volumes page, the pie chart looks like this:
http://www.bennedum.org/files/of2.jpg. I would suggest that a
special case should be added to whatever code generates the pie
chart such that when all of a VG is used, the pie chart doesn't
show the crappy "non-slice" of unused space (the gray bar in the
image).
6) May I suggest the Status page be the default page when first
logging in? Why would I want to see the Accounts/Authentication
page when I first log into the box? In fact, the entire tab
structure could probably be better organized, with Status first
(and reorg
that page to put the more useful info near the top. The hardware
information box in my setup is so large, the nice memory and
filesystem graphs are off the bottom of the page; users don't
like to scroll.), then the General tab, then the rest of them.
7) Wasn't there another web address on the box that I could go to
to make other system level changes (like network config stuff)? I
thought I read about it on the mailing list once. Something
provided by rpath itself? If so, what's the address? Can it be
linked in from the main admin pages so no one has to hunt around
for it?
Maybe some of the comments seem picky and only reflect on
cosmetic changes, but the people I'm trying to sell this Openfiler
idea to are REALLY picky about stuff like that. They feel that the
quality of the interface (the stuff they can see) reflects on the
quality of the underlying code (the stuff they can't see), and I
can't fault them for that belief as I share it too. Polish is
important to perception and I think Openfiler wants to be
perceived as the best (and it's so close it's painful when I find
things that detract).
So, now that I've played with the interface a little, I ssh'ed
into the box and ran conary updateall (before I remembered I could
do this in the GUI). Again, the update runs only so far before it
appears to freeze:
Applying update job 1 of 19:
Install
kernel(:runtime)=2.6.19.7-0.1-1[~!kernel.debug,~!kernel.debugdata,
~!kernel.numa,~kernel.smp]
Applying update job 2 of 19:
Install
kernel(:runtime)=2.6.19.7-0.1-1[~!kernel.debug,~!kernel.debugdata,
~!kernel.numa,~!kernel.smp]
Writing 669k of 49955k (1%)...
In each of the 4 installations I've done of this OF version on
this box in the last 24 hours, it freezes at a different point,
but usually around the same place. I can always ctrl-z out of the
process and put it back in the foreground, so the box isn't hung.
The CPU is mostly idle, no disks spinning, no network activity.
What's OF doing? I'll let it run a little longer to see if it ever
recovers.
BTW, I'm using the ISO I downloaded from SourceForge (through the
download link on the OF home page). If I'm supposed to use the
image from rpath, then why doesn't the home page point there? This
is another perception problem. There should only be ONE place to
get the images (with possibly many ways to get there). NEVER make
a bad image available to the public.
And other people have griped about this, so I'll throw mine in
too:
why are the docs on the OF site so out of date? When a new version
is released, it shouldn't be considered released until the docs
are up to date. Until then, it's only an alpha/beta/test version.
The
docs are as important as the software.
-Tab
On Fri, March 16, 2007 12:30 pm, Brad Dormanen wrote:
Tab,
Sorry to hear that your experiences to date have been
frustrating. I
have been there and can understand.
I do know that the ISO has had a couple of reissues since the
original release. If you have not used the latest image, try
again with the downloads at.
http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/openfiler/release?id=5384
I have a total of 7 Openfiler servers spread out over 3
locations and most on the 2.2 release. Their hardware ranges
from Dell PowerEdge,
Xinit Hardware, Old Compaq machine and many test laptops/old
desktops. One server even connects to an Apple Xserve RAID and
we love iSCSI. I have not had any issues installing to date. I
have even directed someone offsite on it's install procedure and
they have never used Linux before.
As far as your rant is concerned, like I mentioned I can
understand where you are coming from. I can tell you that as an
IT company we
have implemented Openfiler in mission critical production
environments and find it rock solid. I hope you are able to get
it going and get to see the amazing power and application that
it could bring to you as it has for us.
Regards,
Brad
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of
Tab
Bennedum
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 12:32 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [OF-users] Installation/upgrade problems
Update:
I let the box sit at the "stuck point" overnight. When I looked
at it this morning, I have a prompt back with a message:
The local database is locked. It is possible that a database
journal file exists that needs to be rolled back, but you don't
have write permission to the database.
I'm logged in as root, so how can not have permission?
Figuring something was wrong, I attempted to conary rollback,
but I didn't use the command correctly so it didn't run.
Thinking, "What
the hell?", I ran conary updateall again and this time it seemed
to finished "correctly" (without the huge delay) after applying
17
update jobs. I say it that way because I don't know what
"correct"
looks like, but I ended up at a shell prompt with no glaring
errors on screen.
I've tried hitting the web page again, but it's still blank. So
I
rebooted. Before I could get to the keyboard, I noticed 3
choices in the boot loader. I wasn't able to read them before
the bootloader timed out and started the first image in the
list.
After a reboot, the web page is still blank. I tried a conary
updateall to make sure everything was cool, but said there were
no new troves. So, I would expect at this point to have working
box, but I clearly don't. I have no idea what to do now.
Irebooted the box and looked at the boot choices this time. The
first choice does seem to be the correct one, with a newer
kernal and non SMP. Still a blank web page.
<slight rant>
I know Openfiler is free, so don't get on my case about what I
should expect for nothing; this comes from a programmer that
takes pride in his work doing exactly what it's supposed to do
before anyone else ever sees it.
I thought the point of the Openfiler project was to produce a
burnable disk image that could be used to turn an ordinary lump
of computer equipment into a fully functional network attached
storage appliance. When I think of "network appliance" I don't
think of a shell prompt, I think of web page. I don't think of
Linux, I think
of "I don't care what it runs". When I think "fully functional",
I
think it should work as advertised after installation, maybe
with the need to run an update and probably make lots of
configuration changes (all using a web page).
Since beginning testing with v1 versions and now v2.2, on my
current hardware and on other hardware, I've never seen an
Openfiler
instance that I would consider beyond a Beta version, let alone
v2.2. I would never consider using this software in production
or paying for support given the problems I've seen myself and
the problems I've read about in the mailing lists and forums. I
want the product to work and I don't mind paying for support,
but the product first has to be at least beyond beta. If I want
beta software, I'll use MS products.
Is my understanding of the OF project not correct? Am I being
too critical? Should I just drop it and find something else?
I've even
considered rolling my own (with just the functionality I need,
iSCSI), which I'm fairly confident I could do in an amount of
time comparable to the time I've wasted so far. </slight rant>
Anyway, can anyone suggest what I should do to get this system
functional?
-Tab
On Fri, March 16, 2007 12:37 am, Tab Bennedum wrote:
I tested an older v1 version of OF a while ago and have been
lurking ever since. Now that 2.2 is out, I'm back to testing
again. And I'm disappointed.
My system is brand new hardware: Athlon 64 running on an MSI
nforce4 board (K9NBPM2-FID, v5.3 BIOS), 1 GB RAM, 80GB Seagate
PATA
system disk and 320GB Seagate SATA data disk.
I've installed the OF 2.2 i86_64 ISO image. Immediately after
install,
I try to hit the web page (http://<box>:446/) and I'm greeted
by a blank page. A view source shows an empty HTML doc
(HTML/BODY
begin/end
tags, no content). Hmm. Is the ISO that broken?
I should note that I receieved no errors (that I could
identify) during installation.
Ok, so I ssh in as root and run "conary updateall". I get
this:
Applying update job 1 of 19:
Install
kernel(:runtime)=2.6.19.7-0.1-1[~!kernel.debug,~!kernel.debugd
ata, ~!
kernel.numa,~kernel.smp] Applying update job 2 of 19: Install
kernel(:runtime)=2.6.19.7-0.1-1[~!kernel.debug,~!kernel.debug
data, ~!
kernel.numa,~!kernel.smp] Creating database transaction (1 of
2)...
And conary is hung. I can suspend the process and kill it,
but before doing so, I left it in the above state for over an
hour with no progress being made.
I started from scratch again and reinstalled, this time
partitioning as described in the docs (I did it a little
differently the first time). Long story short, I get the same
results.
Anyone have any clue what might be going on? What other
information can I provide that might help? Didn't find
anything in the forums that
applied, and been reading the mailing list for a couple
months. Anyone?
I'm getting ready to show this system to someone (tomorrow)
who might be interested in putting together an iSCSI SAN but
as it is, it will never see the light of day and some other
solution will be used.
-Tab
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