[XCSSA] 1 step forward...(DIY NAS Continued)

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

So I thought I would share my experiences this weekend since there's a  
few people at least talking about NAS solutions. I've been trying to  
solve the booting from flash dilemma. I only need about 1.5GB or so  
(without compressing anything) which means I could easily put the OS  
on a CF card. Trouble is, to me CF cards seem kinda janky. Either I  
get a motherboard that has an on-board card, or by an adapter, etc.  
Then there's the problem of copying these things since, as discussed,  
making a backup on the storage RAID would be a bit useless since I  
would need to re-configure LVM/RAID manually in the event of a  
failure. Then there's SSD drives, but they are too expensive to be  
worth it at the moment (maybe a little on down the line).

The thought had occurred to me, however, that I could just as easily  
boot from a USB memory stick. Turns out, I had an extra 2GB memory  
stick I got as a white elephant gift last Christmas. The thing is  
pretty ugly - I wouldn't want to be seen in public with it :) But, if  
I could boot from USB, then I could stuff it in my NAS or at least  
install it on the back of the case. Problem solved!

Turns out, my current motherboard would not boot from USB and, in  
fact, in trying to get it to boot, I nuked my working copy of GRUB on  
my RAID drive. Whoops. Well, of all the things I like about Ubuntu,  
one of them is not its rescue environment. It basically sucks (at  
least the one that comes with the Server distribution). Since I didn't  
have my Gentoo CD on-hand, I was stuck.

So, instead of fixing that, I decided to swap out motherboards. Turns  
out I had a really nice Athlon XP setup in my old case stuffed in my  
closet that I forgot about. So, after some work, I threw that in  
hoping that it could boot from USB. Fortunately, it could! Plugged in  
the stuck, turn the boxed on, and BAM, there was Ubuntu! Granted, by  
BAM I mean watch it boot for about 2 minutes - the USB device isn't  
exactly fast. But it does work. And the nice thing is, if I want to  
clone it, I can yank it out, do a file-system dump off it and drop it  
onto another stick. In fact, if I really wanted to, I could even do  
software RAID on the USB sticks (I would just have to bind the sticks  
somehow to a specific device, so they don't get shuffled around).

Anyways, point is, USB sticks are cheap, large, and plentiful. Since I  
find that they are a bit easier to back-up, I think I'm going to go  
that route. Slow boot-up times do not bother me, and neither will the  
lack of wear leveling (which CF cards do not support natively as far  
as I am aware), particularly since I am still going to minimize writes  
to the USB stick where possible. If I really wanted to, I could also  
use cramFS or something like that to put the working OS in RAM anyway.

Unfortunately, right after I got the system up and running, my RAID  
controller started to beep :( Drive 2 was making the click of death  
and would not rebuilt. So, I had to pull the drive and bust out an  
RMA. Turns out, while Seagate still has a 5 year warranty on some  
drives, they now charge $19.99 to have the replacement shipped to you  
first. Granted, it is via 2 day shipping, but I thought it was kinda  
lame.

I opted to go with that anyway since, while I won't need the current  
RAID much longer, I will need it stable enough so I can build my new  
RAID and not worry about it. *shrug*

Tweeks, you'll be happy to know that I may opt to stick with my  
hardware RAID after all. I thought I had a 4 port SATA controller, but  
it's actually a 6. That is plenty of room to be able to migrate from  
one RAID to another if I had to, so it would make sense to keep it  
around. I admit I did think of using the on-board SATA ports on my  
next motherboard since they might give me better performance (no  
crippling PCI 32-bit bus) and use software RAID, but meh :)

Wow this e-mail was longer that I thought. Oh well, here it is anyway  
in case someone out there is bored :)

Tim S.