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Build Your Own Atom-based NAS

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I am looking forward to the article on the MSI Wind PC based NAS. Maybe you could let me know the results ahead of time so that I can get my order in before the rush. :)

Seriously, I have been on the fence for weeks now on putting a NAS together with the MSI Wind PC as my next project. The price and performance make it a great alternative to some of the off the shelf single and dual disk NAS devices. Hopefully, the article will confirm that.
 
I ran into trouble on the described procedure with Ubuntu Server on the host and Windows XP Pro on the client. From Windows, I was able to browse the share and read files, but was told I didn't have permission to add anything. Yet from the webmin file manager I had complete read/write access. Ultimately, using the webmin file manager I got "info" about the shared folder. All Permissions were ticked, except for Other/Write. In Ownership, USER and GROUP were each "root". Without understanding why, I ticked Other/Write and succeeded in gaining write access from Windows.

New folders and files added to that share using Windows, only have "write" ticked for USER, and they list the Ownership for User as "nobody" and Group as "nogroup".

So in short, I've got it working, but I'm wondering where I can make those settings during the share setup process for next time without having to change these manually in file manager? Or, did I foul something else up that explains my problem?
 
I stumbled around with this wwarren for awhile and it actually was one of the things that prompted me to write the article.

I apologize that I can't check on this for you right now, as I don't have the Atom NAS up and running. Perhaps someone else can help?
 
wwarren said:
I ran into trouble on the described procedure with Ubuntu Server on the host and Windows XP Pro on the client. From Windows, I was able to browse the share and read files, but was told I didn't have permission to add anything. Yet from the webmin file manager I had complete read/write access. Ultimately, using the webmin file manager I got "info" about the shared folder. All Permissions were ticked, except for Other/Write. In Ownership, USER and GROUP were each "root". Without understanding why, I ticked Other/Write and succeeded in gaining write access from Windows.

New folders and files added to that share using Windows, only have "write" ticked for USER, and they list the Ownership for User as "nobody" and Group as "nogroup".

So in short, I've got it working, but I'm wondering where I can make those settings during the share setup process for next time without having to change these manually in file manager? Or, did I foul something else up that explains my problem?
Click to expand...

I found that even after I updated permission in Samba that I had to go back to the ubuntu interface and type out the following command (assuming you followed the instructions in the article).

sudo chmod 777 -R /mnt/raidarr/public

With my limited understanding of Ubuntu, when you gave permission to the /mnt/raidarr/public folder it only gave the child read/write permission. The parent didn't have read/write permission so read/write access was still denied. By typing the above command, the parents and child all have read/write permission so no more problems...

Hope this helps.
 
thiggins said:
I used Ubuntu Server and Webmin based on a reader suggestion.

I'll be doing another Atom NAS article using the MSI Wind PC (another reader suggestion). I plan on trying Ubuntu Desktop on that, so we'll see what the differences / limitations are.
Click to expand...

So how's that article coming, Tim? :)
 
Had a slug of NASes come in, and I'm also bringing up a new NAS testbed. So that project has been pushed back.

Hope to get to it before the end of the year.
 
I suppose all these DIY NASes are running software RAID. Has anyone tried using a RAID card to run hardware RAID (either 0, 1 or 5)? What would be the main differences?
 
There are some articles in the "NAS How To" section that are Do It Yourself projects with hardware RAID controllers. Here are a couple of them:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30431/77/
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/27840/77/

The hardware controller offloads the RAID processing form the NAS cpu at the expense of more cost for the controller. The performance benefit depends on the hardware RAID controller being used and what NAS you are comparing the performance to.

I am sure that someone else can add some comments about the performance comparisons...
 
Great article, it persuaded me not to buy another off the shelf NAS. I was running a Synology DS106e, with an additional, external drive and a Compaq Proliant ML370 (dual PIII 1Ghz processors) - why the Proliant? Because I could!

My goals for my new NAS were RAID 1 (under the old setup the Compaq sync’d the internal and external drives once a day); lower power - the combined power consumption for my NAS/server combination was 170W; ability to run Squeezecenter on the NAS. It was the last reason that finally persuaded me to build my own as I just wasn't convinced that the off the shelf systems would have enough power to run it at a decent speed.

The new system comprises a Via EPIA SN18000EG mini itx board (C7 processor), two WD green 1TB drives for storage, 1 80Gb drive for the system (recycled from an old PC) all contained in a Venus 669 case and running Ubuntu 8.10 Server.

From a build perspective the physical build was easy apart from the undocumented write protect jumper for the Bios! Ubuntu install was mostly OK - it failed the first time but rebooted and it went OK the second time. Configuring Ubuntu - came close to losing my sanity! Problem was access rights on the Samba shares as I wanted read/write for me and read only for the kids and this is a lot harder than in Windows (at least for someone with only 30 hours Linux experience).

Overall result - Raid 1 - achieved, low power - partial success as I am using 47 watts but feel it could do better. In particular I can't get the system to "sleep" so the power usage never varies. Lastly, enough performance for Squeezecenter - definitely achieved. In fact, if I was building the system again I would probably go for the SN10000EG board - 1Ghz rather than 1.8Ghz, passive cooling and 5 watt lower power usage. The other change I would make is the PSU as the one is the case is 200W and I could get by with half of that.

Thanks again for the article, it both persuaded me to try and helped me get things up and running.
 
Thanks for the report. Yes, configuring share permissions in Samba is almost as bad as trying to do it in Vista! :)
 
Sorry to resuscitate an old thread, but I was Googling around and noticed that earlier in this thread, thiggins was planning an article on an MSI Wind PC-based NAS project. As it happens, I've almost finished a blog series on that very subject over at http://jazzslider.wordpress.com I've been extremely happy with the results, so if you're interested in seeing my approach, feel free to check it out and offer whatever suggestions you feel I might deserve :)

One big difference between my project and the one described here is that I ended up using NFS instead of Samba...but I'm planning on detailing the Samba process too eventually, since I know of at least one of my readers who wants to see how that works.

Also, I noticed one other message in this thread mentioning that you had trouble getting lm-sensors to work with the Intel Atom...any luck solving that problem since then? I've had the same issue on the Wind PC.

Anyway, just thought I'd share; glad to see there are other people out there working on (and helping one another with) these kinds of projects!
 
Nice...thanks for the link; that's very useful information. I hadn't seen the other barebone you mentioned before, but it would have been out of my price range anyway; I ended up deciding on the MSI box because of its relatively small form factor and price. (Incidentally, I found that it ran pretty hot inside without a special cooling mount for the drive in the 5.25" bay...but with such a mount, my drives are now averaging about 39 Celsius. I wish I could measure the processor temp too, but I just can't get that part figured out.) Interesting, though, to see that the throughput of the VIA system is so similar.
 
DIY ATOM NAS Operating system ?

I built an ATOM based NAS, suing the D945GCLF2, 2GB DDR667, 4GB CF, 2x Samsung 1TB no Raid, Ubuntu 8.10 etc.. pretty much followed the guide on this site. I did perfrom some tweaking of Ubuntu, replaced the bad driver for the on board NIC and installed an app called spindown to spindown my drives. The performance is pretty good 60 -70 MB for file copies 6GB+. I had a few issues with streaming the MKVs to my clients; I had to disable the built in Network Throttle in Vista.

I'm not much of a Linux admin and would like to load Server 2008 Core on my system.

+

1. Familiarity with Windows
2. NTFS permissions
3. SMB2 (all my clients are Vista SP1)
4. 1.3 GB install

-

1. Performance (will and ATOM 330 be fast enough)
2. ...

Any input?

Thanks,
 
dobieg2002 said:
I built an ATOM based NAS, suing the D945GCLF2, 2GB DDR667, 4GB CF, 2x Samsung 1TB no Raid, Ubuntu 8.10 etc.. pretty much followed the guide on this site. I did perfrom some tweaking of Ubuntu, replaced the bad driver for the on board NIC and installed an app called spindown to spindown my drives. The performance is pretty good 60 -70 MB for file copies 6GB+. I had a few issues with streaming the MKVs to my clients; I had to disable the built in Network Throttle in Vista.

I'm not much of a Linux admin and would like to load Server 2008 Core on my system.

+

1. Familiarity with Windows
2. NTFS permissions
3. SMB2 (all my clients are Vista SP1)
4. 1.3 GB install

-

1. Performance (will and ATOM 330 be fast enough)
2. ...

Any input?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Couldn't hurt to try right? Why not just test it out and report back. That way we will all know.

00Roush
 
dobieg2002 said:
I built an ATOM based NAS, suing the D945GCLF2, 2GB DDR667, 4GB CF, 2x Samsung 1TB no Raid, Ubuntu 8.10 etc.. pretty much followed the guide on this site. I did perfrom some tweaking of Ubuntu, replaced the bad driver for the on board NIC and installed an app called spindown to spindown my drives. The performance is pretty good 60 -70 MB for file copies 6GB+. I had a few issues with streaming the MKVs to my clients; I had to disable the built in Network Throttle in Vista.

I'm not much of a Linux admin and would like to load Server 2008 Core on my system.

+

1. Familiarity with Windows
2. NTFS permissions
3. SMB2 (all my clients are Vista SP1)
4. 1.3 GB install

-

1. Performance (will and ATOM 330 be fast enough)
2. ...

Any input?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

As I am also not very familar with Linux and also planing such a system:
Did you realize this system by now?
 
Questions on fine-tuning MSI Wind PC NAS

Without much Linux experience, I followed the MSI WIND Atom NAS guide and was able to setup a MSI Wind NAS with 2x1.5TB seagate HD running in RAID 1. Thank you so much for this wonderful guide!!

My setup is currently as follows:

Verison FIOS -> Addonics Router -> DLink Gamefuel Gigabit router

The Addonics router has a Slingbox Classic and also a Vonage Router hooked (with a Slingbox Solo attached on the vonage router).

The NAS is sitting inside the DLink router and that's also where all my computers logs into. I have a few questions that I am hoping others can help me address:

1) To access the NAS from the web, is it as simple as setting up a Dynamic DNS service from someone like dyndns.com and pointing it to the IP address obtained by the Addonics Router? (I would set up the port forward on the Addonics Router and also in the DLink Gamefuel router to the MSI Wind NAS)

2) Currently, the MSIWind NAS draws about 40watt. Is there a program that I can install that will hibernate the hard drives and/or the computer so that the powerdraw is lower if I am not accessing the NAS? Does the MSI Wind PC have wake-on-LAN featuer?

3) I am getting about 30MB/second throughput (similar speed for reading and writing) when I am copying files from my desktop to the MSI NAS to my desktop computer over the gigabit network. Is there any further tweaking I can do to enhance the speed?

4) I have seen others using DLink DNS-321/323 and use it to remotely queue up torrent file download. Is there a similar program that will enable remote queuing download of newsgroup binary files? I am currently using Newsbin Pro on the desktop (WinXP OS), but I am not familiar with any newsgroup readers on the Linux side and would greatly appreciate it if others can share on what their favorite newsgroup reader is (it would be great if it's GUI and have remote access capabilities!).

Sorry again for all these questions, I have started googling some of the answers, but have not found a consistent answer and as this site seems to have the most complete answer, I am hoping someone would have gone through similar experience and would be able to share their thoughts. I will continue to research on the internet and update any findings as well.

Thanks in advance,

atseng
 
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