--- title: Building NAS - software date: 2013-05-26 21:32:07 tags: [nas, linux] category: server --- ## Operating system I think my NAS box build is no longer in much flux, so I thought it'd be nice to describe it. I had some disks laying around, I had them installed and started playing with the software setup. ``` Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes Disk /dev/sdc: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes Disk /dev/sdd: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes Disk /dev/sde: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes ``` First one is an SSD drive, I used it for OS installation.  I went for [Crunchbang](https://www.bunsenlabs.org/) as I was already familiar with it, however now I'm thinking of just getting newest Debian there, as it's finally released. Nothing fancy about the OS, a regular install really. ``` storage# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs 53G 2.4G 48G 5% / /dev/sda1 461M 31M 407M 7% /boot ``` As you can see `/` filesystem takes little amount of space, hence the next thing I plan on doing is actually move `/` to USB3.0 pendrive and then free the SATA drive from it's current duties. I'm reluctant to do so right now, as moving swap to pendrive might result in significant wear. I'm thinking of getting more RAM and then getting rid of the swap at all. These stats were acquired after reboot, there are some loads under which I saw swapping occur. ``` storage# free -m total used free shared buffers Mem: 1636 282 1354 0 53 -/+ buffers/cache: 166 1470 Swap: 1903 0 1903 ``` ## Software + configuration NAS means SAMBA, right ? That's what I thougth. RAID5 + SAMBA for Win clients and NFS for others. After a while I got accustomed to this setup and started playing with my photo collection as it was laying on NAS. The problem ? I deleted one photo and wanted it back. It was nowhere to be found. RAID5, although having internal copies for resiliency, was visible as one drive only and happily deleted the data when asked to. What I really needed was a backup solution, not a NAS. My final answer to that: ``` storage# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs 53G 2.4G 48G 5% / /dev/md0 294G 36G 243G 13% /mnt/array_back /dev/sde1 459G 35G 401G 8% /mnt/array_front storage# cat /etc/fstab # /dev/mapper/vg_storage-root / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 UUID=b9d32208-edc0-4981-ab74-5da1e7348a1a /boot ext4 defaults 0 2 /dev/mapper/vg_storage-swap none swap sw 0 0 /dev/md0 /mnt/array_back ext4 defaults 0 2 /dev/sde1 /mnt/array_front ext4 defaults 0 2 storage# mdadm --detail /dev/md0 /dev/md0: Version : 1.2 Creation Time : Sun Apr 21 22:47:38 2013 Raid Level : raid5 Array Size : 312318976 (297.85 GiB 319.81 GB) Used Dev Size : 156159488 (148.93 GiB 159.91 GB) Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 17 0 active sync /dev/sdb1 1 8 33 1 active sync /dev/sdc1 3 8 49 2 active sync /dev/sdd1 ``` One disk `[sde]` serves as a front for all user operations. After a while, all changes except for deletions are being flushed onto `[array_back]` which is a RAID5 matrix. ``` storage# cat /etc/cron.daily/90_sync_front_to_back #!/bin/bash rsync -avr /mnt/array_front/ /mnt/array_back/back ``` ## Secret sauce [ownCloud](http://owncloud.org/). `[array_front]` is not directly exposed via SAMBA or NFS, it's governed by ownCloud instance, and then only ownCloud sync client on the computer or phone gets to mess with the data. By having such setup I get 3 copies of each file. One on device, one on the front array and one on the back array. What is also cool about ownCloud is that it also handles contacts and calendar storage for me. One more step towards getting all my data off google ! Points for improvement: - `[array_front]` is not an array now. It's just a disk. Make it an proper disk array. - encrypt the data from array_back and send it to S3 and then let it graduate to Glacier