New User: eSATA enclosure, dashboard, shares issues

[diggityDawg]

I just decided to switch from Windows Home Server 2011 to Ubuntu/Amahi last week, and installed everything yesterday. I'm having several issues, which I'm hoping you can help with. First of all, here's my setup:

Home built PC running Intel i5-3570k w/8GB RAM
Internal drives:
sda - 2TB Seagate - mixed (see below)
sdb - 1TB Seagate - ntfs
sdc - 1TB Seagate - ntfs

During the install I partitioned the 2TB as follows:
sda1: 64GB ext4 /
sda2: 1GB swap
sda3: 1.72TB ntfs - this is my old data, which I want to move over to an ext4 partition eventually
sda4: 346GB /home

I also have some "unusable" space on that drive and so far I haven't been able to make use of that, but I assume when I get the other issues worked out I'll be able to expand one of the partitions to use that...

I also have a Sans Digital 5-bay eSATA enclosure with 5 drives in it. This is the TRM5 model, with a RocketRAID 622 controller. I used it in WHS 2011, and all of the drives in there contain media I want to share out to the network. So my first problem is that I can't get the system to recognize this enclosure. I've gone to the HighPoint Global site (they make the controller) and downloaded the driver for Ubuntu. Now remember, I'm very new to Ubuntu, and haven't used Linux in about 10 years or so... So I extracted the tar to /tmp/dd, then wen to the folder in a Terminal window and ran # sh install.sh, as it says in the installation manual. I got an error about not having permissions to create a file, but it also said to reboot to use the driver. I rebooted, but no love. I also tried a couple storage management apps, but I just can't get the enclosure's drives to show up at all. So I'm not sure what to do at this point...

The next issue I'm having is that I can't login to the Dashboard. Every combination of username and password I can imagine I used doesn't work. Now, this has to be the admin's username that I used to setup Ubuntu, right? And then the password that I changed when I first setup Amahi? I tried everything and they all fail. Do I have to create a new user?

The last issue, and this isn't as urgent as the others because I really need to get my storage working before I can worry about shares, but I can't access the existing shares from a Windows machine on the network. They are there, and I see them, but when I try to go into any of them I get prompted to login and nothing I try works, including the administrator login I use to get into the Ubuntu machine each time it boots up... I know I enabled read/write for all network users, so not sure why this isn't working.

Ok, for now that's it. I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants here, and until I get this all worked out my family can't view the media we had access to just a couple days ago, so I'm kinda nervous about this major move. I'm hoping it will all work out... Thanks for your help!!

Eddie

[bigfoot65]

Recommend you check the install trouble shooter to start with. Need to ensure install did not have any errors as well.

https://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Ubuntu ... leshooting

The install log is in /root folder and might help.

[diggityDawg]

When I try to browse to the /root folder it says "You do not have the permissions necessary to browse the contents of 'root'" even though I'm signed in as the first user, which I think is considered "root", right? I also tried getting there from the Terminal and I get 'permission denied'. So if I'm not root, how do I login as root??

[bigfoot65]

Not quite. To access as root, you must to:

https://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Open_Terminal_as_root

[diggityDawg]

Ok, I've got in and I can view the log file. Not seeing anything that would make me think it failed. At the end of the file it says "Amahi installed successfully! Please reboot it!" twice. I don't know what to look for in this 4417 lines, and I can't figure out how to copy the file to somewhere I can use it, or to copy lines out of the file into another file...

If you could give me some more detailed advice, I'd really appreciate it. This could take days at this rate.

Thanks again for your help!

[bigfoot65]

To add additional drives to Amahi, you need to follow the guidance here for each drive.

https://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Adding ... o_your_HDA

We are working on a disk wizard to make this easier, but it's gonna be a while.

As for root user permissions, see here:

https://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Open_Terminal_as_root

Not sure what could be the issue with logging into the dashboard. Did you ensure the caps lock was not engaged? How about spaces in the user name or password. Linux sometimes has problems with user names using spaces.

Not sure what else to offer at the moment. Maybe you can make some progress and narrow down the issues remaining.

BTW, I hope you followed the Amahi install guidance at http://docs.amahi.org. If you deviate from that, it could result in problems.

[diggityDawg]

Thanks - If I could get the OS to recognize the enclosure, then I could add the drives to the HDA, but if I can't get the enclosure to be recognized, I'm not sure how I can even begin to add drives to the system...

I did the root permissions you suggested already and replied to that. I can get in to the root directory and open the install log in vi, but it looks like everything installed fine. Is there some way to copy that file OUT of root so I can attach it to an email or posting? Also, is there a way to copy lines out of the file so I could paste them into another document?

I did use the Amahi installation directions to install the system... Yes, I checked the cap locks, and I don't use spaces in my usernames. Can you at least tell me what login Amahi is expecting when I try to load the dashboard from another computer in the network? Is it the main admin login for the Ubuntu box? And if I have to reset the Amahi password, how do I do that?

I just thought Amahi made it easier to get Linux running as a home server. This is painfully slow and complicated just to be able to plug in a drive enclosure and get it to be recognized or access files from another computer in the same network... This is the newbie forum, right? I am a newbie, and if I can't get this working in the next 24 hours, I'm ditching it and trying FreeNAS or OpenMediaVault. I guess i could always go back to WHS, but I was hoping to avoid that...

[bigfoot65]

The login credentials is the one you created when installing the OS.

The issue with using your eSata box is an OS problem. Once that is fixed, Amahi config for it should work.

There is a command line script to reset the password. Its reset-user-password. That might help.

Sorry this has been so complicated. The enclosure is part of the cause. Drivers can be a pain in Linux.

To capture the install log, do paste init log filename. Paste the URL here and I can review.

Sorry about all the questions. Just making sure I knew your install process. Some deviate or use wrong OS version and that is the root cause.

And yes this forum is to help users of all levels, newbies and advanced alike. Hope this helps.

[ Post made via Android ]

[diggityDawg]

Thanks for your advice. I did find a way to reset the admin password, and now I can get in to the dashboard, and also have the shares working over the network.

I ordered a replacement eSATA card, which I *hope* will be recognized by Ubuntu so I don't have to deal with driver hell. If it works (and I've found several posts which indicate it should), then my external storage issue will be resolved as well, and then I'm well on my way to getting this thing working.

I've installed all of the apps I like to use on the server, which actually went much smoother than I expected, so I'm feeling much more confident and happy with my decision to ditch WHS for Amahi/Ubuntu today than I was yesterday...

Thanks again!

[bigfoot65]

You are welcome. Good to hear it's up and running now. Hope the new card works better for ya!