Messages posted by: NLS

Here are the links you need:

(instructions and plug-in MSI)
http://www.deciphered.net/files/file/webwacker/Marceln.HomeServer.ConsoleTab.Utorrent.Setup%201.1.zip

(anyserviceinstaller - could be useful for your webserver too)
http://www.deciphered.net/files/file/webwacker/AnyServiceInstaller%201.0.zip

...and you need utorrent itself and a couple of more extras (see the instructions).

Did it in 5 minutes.

Two notes:

- If after installing the service you try to open utorrent normal (windows) interface, it will whine that it's already open. You need to temporarily stop the service if you really need to open this window (duh!) - for example if you forgot to setup an important program parameter.

- I am not so keen on using a special new account, especially named "whs services" (with a white space!)... As an admin I would suggest it (keep things clean), but in WHS context, better keep things simple: Either use administrator account, or use your "primary" WHS user, who you elevate to a proper administrator (as all of us will do anyway for our own account).

FlexWHS is really cool.

Hm you didn't give much of a look in the link I gave you.

There is a zipped version including a instruction PDF (newer than the web instructions), close the top of the page.

Make sure to test it in your vmware whs... I did and here is what I got: (see attachment)
Pretty neat if you ask me.
BTW, this whole setup looks like a really "amateur" setup (no insult to the guys that made it), so I am sure you can cook something like that yourself without eating too much dev. time.

For me something relatively easy to make, would be to make FlexRAID as an add-in to WHS!

This would allow you to put it in the WHS repository of add-ins and would in fact be a great promotion to your work.

It is supposed to be very easy to make esp. since you already have a working webui (would be better if you make it run as a service though).

Someone even made a utorrent add-in and it works fine!
http://www.deciphered.net/blog/2007/04/25/howto_install_utorrent_service_windows_home_server_whs_ctp

I'd love this.

Can someone verify if indeed when the "shares" folder is missing we can just create it?

Maybe it needs specific security settings, or maybe it's not ok to just go and create something in c:\fs\<X>\DE...

Read the tutorial, indeed is as simple as I thought it would be (in fact I'll probably first test it on a virtual machine my self too)...

Here are some of my questions that still "stand" though:

*1* What warranties that WHS's "resyncing" (moving files around) will not happen DURING FlexRAID's scheduled rsync?
Is it just because WHS new setups are not so sensitive moving around things? Yes there isn't any real protection against that right?

(*2* AFAIK WHS setup splits the first disk to two partitions one for system and the rest for data landing zone? First I read that we don't have control over this, then I read that with latest Power Pack you have control over this and in fact the first data partition is not even considered a "landing zone" any more? So what is correct?) will answer this my self on the virtual machine

*3* Tombstone workaround is already in latest RC? Or is it for 1.4?

*4* What is that "folders" and "shares" that keeps being mentioned? (in WHS context! not what folder and share is in general

) I see people choosing "shares" for FlexRAID.

*

* I couldn't stop myself: Is there any time-frame for FlexRAID-NAS? Like this Christmas? Or in 9 months? Some rough indication?

I sat and read the whole thread and have these questions if anybody can help:

(note I am a veteran computer user -in fact IT is my job- but a real newbie to FlexRAID and WHS - yet)

* Am I correct to assume that hardlinks are not needed since WHS in fact makes them itself? (Prelector seems to say that NOT all of them are there as the "landing zone" drive's one, is not there - correct or not?)

* What warranties that WHS's "resyncing" (moving files around) will not happen DURING FlexRAID's scheduled rsync?

* (since I haven't installed WHS yet) AFAIK WHS setup splits the first disk to two partitions one for system and the rest for data landing zone? Do I have control over this? (sizes etc.) I think someone mentioned, no I don't. Right?

* (Brahim) You say that next release will support those WHS tombstones? The problem is what happens now that FlexRAID doesn't recognize them? We shouldn't use D:\ in our FlexRAID? Now tombstones are not recognized and instead are treated like the files they point? So the parity is actually messed by having each file XORed twice??? Oups? Maybe WHS+FlexRAID is (currently) not what it was supposed to be?

* How someone makes sure that the "parity" folder/drive is not touched by WHS? (moving around etc.) Am I correct to assume (from indications in the thread) that it is possible to have specific disks "outside" WHS "single virtual disk"?

* I don't plan using the mirror function of WHS at all, I just want the "single virtual drive" functionality it gives and possibly other extras it might give that I still don't know about (like?). In that sense maybe I should look other alternatives or even simple FlexRAID-View? WHS seems to be like something that might give me interesting new functionality (again: like?), but I am not sure I like that it's possibly NOT energy friendly (as it will NOT try to keep my "same type" data to the same disk, thus starting this only when I need access to those data... or am I wrong? Maybe the tombstone system and caching work so good that disks that are not needed indeed do not start?) I am also considering a plain Windows Server 2008 Srv "no desktop" setup (I have the licenses needed from MSDN). Anybody care to give me some "for" and "against" using WHS?

* What is that "folders" and "shares" that keeps being mentioned? (in WHS context! not what folder and share is in general

)

* Expanding the above, if I need the WHOLE WHS enabled disks to be secured, DRUs should be (for each drive) like that: c:\fs\<X>\DE\shares\ or like that: c:\fs\<X>\DE\? (or something else?)

* Can I treat WHS as a proper Windows server? I plan on having a torrent client on WHS, possibly FTP and such things.

* This is not clearly WHS, but makes sense to ask for a FlexRAID+WHS combination. So: Scheduling rsyncs actually involves running the webUI all the time and making sure NOT to close it? (the DOS window it opens, not the web page) Or people just use Windows scheduling to call specific FlexRAID scripts? (I want this to be as "headless" as possible - without any needs to logon etc.)

* I couldn't stop myself: Is there any time-frame for FlexRAID-NAS? Like this Christmas? Or in 9 months? Some rough indication?

Thanks for all the help guys!

Is it possible to enable time-zones in the forum software?

It shows post in your own time-zone and confuses (at least me).

Host, client and WebUI all on same computer.

Date issue also on WebUI but different (where DOS client just shows all Greek as weird "graphic" characters - like a bad ASCII implementation -, webUI shows some characters correctly -!- and some as strange characters).

I remind you changing firefox's character encoding has no effect.

Let's nail this for 1.3 release.

This looks to be a wider issue (something not being pure UNICODE?), as I also see issues in DOS client, but I have yet to verify it extensively to see if it actually limits FlexRAID operationally.

Here is part of the bug as shown in FlexRAID WebUI.

WebUI on the left, windows explorer on the right (correct display).
Note that it doesn't matter what encoding I choose in my Firefox. So it's not a matter of "display".

I also attach those three (empty) files, with the empty folder to try and duplicate this yourself (I hope they will expand correctly, use the windows explorer photo as your guide).

Other tests to do based on this:

- Include those in a RAID setup (inside a RAIDed folder).
- Include those in a RAID setup (use the Greek letter folder as root of a DRU)
- Work with them (put things in them, remove things... also using FlexRAID-View)

My current host is the latest RC and build at the time of the post.

(delete this message when is obsolete)

Brahim, FlexRAID really really needs further explanation.
Most people that use it, probably know about it from before opening this forum. What about us newbies.
You mentioned about building a wiki, I would love that. I would love to help write it if I knew FlexRAID better.

I still don't get quite a few things... from the top of my head:

- What is the undo disk mentioned in the WebUI?

- Why do you need real RAID (RAID6 for example), when FlexRAID itself gives data recovery? Am I missing something?

- There is no example to have various folders (or disks - not one), secured by one parity.

- What happens if we add more parity folders (or disks)? It's like having more parity space or like having a second parity?

- Why someone would need to have different "risk units"? (or how you call them)

- Using RAID (or even unRAID) it is very easy to know what size of parity you need. For RAID the same as all your disks, for unRAID the same as your larger disk. How do I calculate this on FlexRAID? Can I get away with SMALLER parity? (but that is a bonus question, depending on the answer to how you calculate needed parity size on FlexRAID)

BTW my opinion is, instead of making this thread use a custom DOS batch file, you'd better teach people do the same work using the DOS client directly, and/or WebUI...

The DOS batch file is a nice demo for the scripting abilities of DOS client, but not something to teach newbies.

Just my opinion.

Keep up the good work (first try to answer my questions please

)...

PS. I see you have "TM" next to FlexRAID. Have you really trademarked it?

Again let me know if I can help.

Since I am just testing, I am not in a real rush to change my regional settings and prefer to wait if this means a few days (like 10-15) and not like a couple of months. (I suspect since you know the problem you are just talking about a new build not a whole new release)

On the other hand if I just need to change my regional settings when I am doing the "create" only, then fine... but not keep it like that.

I am a new user (well just tester for now) - so bear with me.

I just installed 1.3RC4 (yes I know, but I really wanted to test the service capability - in any case if it's a problem with RC, it still has to be resolved right?) and try to setup a new RAID by following the "FlexRAID made easy" topic.

Setup notes:

- It is Windows 7 (sorry, my main machine), with UAC disabled.
- I am just testing it with a single folder.

Here is my config.txt:

The two folders mentioned do exist. In fact I even have a "Test1Undo" folder just because I tested the webUI before and seen there is such a thing (so there is? what does it do?).

Test1 has 3 files in it, Test1Parity is empty.

Here is what I get when I run "simple create":

Ignore the DOS drawing characters, it's just Greek not being displayed correctly.

(BTW this is a bug for the DOS client)

Of course there is plenty of disk space.
I even tried restarting the service.

So... what is the problem?

Since the off-topic folder seems to be the place for the "hi I am here" threads, let me follow this tradition (although just one more guy did it before me).

I've been reading about FlexRAID and seems to be very interesting idea.

In fact it is very very very close to an idea I had years ago but didn't have the means to implement (I might dig out old documents of mine to show you some time

). It was the idea of separating FS from actual redundancy and volume enumeration tasks (or in fact build over the FS native ones, a separate layer). This would also take the burden of using a specific OS, off the redundancy layer. Also thought of not limiting the virtual disks to having same-size physical disks (but retaining redundancy and not leave unused space). That last sentence WAS eventually implemented by a couple of solutions. Not the whole thing though (the separate layer etc.).

I couldn't make it myself (being far from development for many years), nobody else seems to have made it either. Until FlexRAID.

I am interested on a NAS-like solution based on FlexRAID (unfortunately not supported natively by FlexRAID yet), but it seems that people now build FlexRAID over more traditional NAS solutions and WHS.

The "end product" I need, is to be able to use different size and type disks (IDE, SATA etc.), show them as one (or at least as specific volumes based on content, that are not limited to single physical volumes) and have redundancy on them BUT NOT MIRRORING. In other words I am not looking on having 3TB of data and 3TB of redundant data. I am looking for something that would work as parity, in essence "just" loose the space needed for parity.

I am already using "another solution", paid for it, it is a very interesting idea, but basically the lack of additional functionality (except from some gifted independent devs, patching on the side of the closed-source) and more importantly the lack of a very active Head, makes me thinking of moving away, although it will be a VERY hard task for me (as it will involve finding a way to shift terabytes of data).

I think the closest thing to the functionality I need is FlexRAID on WHS (which I have for free being MSDN member), without using WHS duplication feature (which is effectively mirroring - that I said I am not willing to do). I am looking to be able to survive a single disk failure without data loss and a double disk failure with data loss ONLY of the two disks.

You think it is possible with FlexRAID+WHS?

I have a few thousand questions, but I will try to make a small demo myself first (as the system can work nicely over a working environment and limited to just specific folders).

I suspect FlexRAID has an active "head" (Brahim) but the "community" is not yet very active (if I judge based on this forum activity). Am I wrong?

Let me know how I can help this thing go forward in any way I can.