CLOSED: Adding multiple HDDs to a new server

[kurtroeder]

Hi,
Ultra newbie looking for advice on next steps.
I'm setting up a new build as an Amahi server and my initial install went fairly well but I'm not sure of the best way to add my additional hard drives.
I have a gigabyte board with six SATA connections. Drive 0 is a 120gb SSD where I installed Fedora 19 and amahi 7 off of the basic DVD. I have four brand new 1TB drives which I disabled in my BIOS during the initial install and have now reactivated.

What is the best way to add the 1TB drives? Would you recommend adding the Grayhole app at this point? Do I need to boot with a Gparted USB and partition them first?

Im looking for something fairly easy without alot of linux command work. I'm comfortable boting with different programs if the UI is easy and the headless web interface from my other computer seems straightforward. Most of my experience with command line goes back to high school when my friend let me play on his brand new commodore 64. (Don't laugh, 64k was big back then.)
Thanks in advance for the assistance,
-K
p.s. I had lots of trouble with the uefi bios during setup and it took a long time to figure out what was wrong. After I turned that off in the Bios it went ok. Thanks for your posts on that topic.

[bigfoot65]

I would recommend following the adding a second hard drive to your HDA guidance. Although it's command line, it's fairly simple and does not take long.

You could use gParted to partition and format the drives, but that is an extra step that requires server reboot and a Live CD/USB image. You still have to do command line for mounting the drives.

I would add the Greyhole UI application after the drives are formatted and mounted.

Keep in mind if you have problems, help is not far away

[kurtroeder]

Thanks, Bigfoot,
I was able to partition and formatted the disks EXT3 using cfdisk. It took a while but you're right, it wasn't too complicated to get them partitioned and formatted. I'm not sure if I got them to mount correctly or if there was a problem somewhere else. I used hda-diskmount and it seemed to work. Do I need to continue through the "setting disk mount order" instructions? It looks like they are only intended for Ubuntu but I can't tell if I'm missing something here.

I can see the disks in my dashboard but I don't see anything telling me I have space available. Trying to view the drives from my dashboard doesn't match the screenshots. My dashboard is very dificult to read--it has black type on a dark blue background in some places. Maybe it's a browser problem.

I'm going to take another look at it tonight and I'll let you know how it goes.

[bigfoot65]

Glad you found the guide easy to follow and did not have too much difficulty.

Once you mounted them and added the drives to /etc/fstab, you are done. The drive order is not necessary as it only determines which drives get mounted first.

The issue with seeing free space, you should be able to easily see that in the dashboard. You are correct in the browser may be causing issues. What browser are you using?

[kurtroeder]

I must be missing something.

I used HDA-diskmount and got a message similar to what is in the example for the new drives. After that the instructions diverge into fixing errors and seem to be describing entering text strings to save something but I'm getting lost.

Is there a video somewhere showing the process? I think that would help.

[bigfoot65]

There is no video that I am aware. We have the Disk Wizard app in development that will do most of this work via the dashboard. Not ready yet unfortunately.

Once you run the hda-diskmount script, you should proceed to the section that covers adding the drive line to /etc/fstab. Once that is finished, you can run the mount command.

If there is a specific section in the wiki that you are unsure needs done, let me know and I will try to clarify.

The wiki page Adding drives to your HDA is a little less detailed so might be more helpful. It covers all the pertinent pieces without all the extra options that most don't need.

[kurtroeder]

I am getting stuck adding and trying to edit etc/fstab. I'm using the "Adding drives to your HDA" work instruction.

The "backup" step step seems to have worked because when I repeat it tells me the files already exist. After that the "make a dummy fstab" step doesn't give the result I expect.

Here is what happens starting at the "make a dummy fstab":
I have the superuser (root) prompt ending with #.
I type in: cp /etc/fstab ~
I hit enter.
I type in: blkid >> ~/fstab
I hit enter. There is a brief pause and I am back to my prompt with the blinking cursor. There is no additional output.

At this point my instruction says "you should have something like this now..." and there is an expmple list of text describing etc/fstab. I don't see anything like this.

I proceeded anyway without seeing the output I expected:
I typed in: nano ~/fstab
I hit enter. I received the message "bash: nano: command not found"

Can't get past this point.

Answering a previous question about why my dashboard is difficult to read, I am using Internet Explorer 11 with update 11.0.15 which gives me black text in some areas over a dark blue background. Switching over to Chrome 40.0.2214.94 m (most recent version) fixed the problem.

I can easily see my disks and free space when using Chrome to view my dashboard, I don't think IE 11 works. If I restart my server and use HDA-diskmount the drives will appear on my dashboard. I think that because I haven't been able to successfully save to ETC/fstab they need to be remounted on every restart. Is this what is happening?

Thank you again, I appreciate your patience as I work through this.
-K

[bigfoot65]

The best thing to do for the drives is to edit /etc/fstab and add the lines for each drive mounted.

A. Check /etc/fstab to ensure the drives are not listed that you are trying to add.
B. Reboot the server so the drives are unmounted.
C. Remount them one at a time, adding to /etc/fstab after each run of hda-diskmount.
D. Once you are done, you can then execute

Code: Select all

mount-a

and should not see any errors.

I would recommend you also remove all /var/hda/file/drives/drive1, etc before running the hda-diskmount the first time after reboot. As each drive is added, a new drive1, drive2, etc will be created. Those will be your mount points for each drive. Don't be alarmed if they show up as drive4, drive5. It does not matter as long as you put the correct entry in /etc/fstab.

The lines you add to /etc/fstab will look something like this:

UUID=9d972abc-1639-44df-a60e-668618d40236 /var/hda/files/drives/drive1 ext4 defaults 1 2

The wiki shows sdb1 which is not correct. I will have to fix that soon. Your /etc/fstab should have a line for each drive you are mounting. Think of this like a folder that points to the actual drive and it's contents.

Does that help?

[jkbuckethead]

The second step described in the wiki to add a hard drive, requires you to log in to root. How does one complete this step when one cannot log in to root?

The official Amahi installation youtube video says you don't need to create a root password if you set the user as an administrator, and the installation docs page says a root password is optional. I did create a separate root password, and when I try to log in to root, the system does not accept my user password. I get "su: Authentication failure" even though I typed the same password I just used to login.

Is there a way to add a root password, or do I need to redo the install?

[bigfoot65]

See my reply here:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5744