Adding new drive + Greyhole

[zia]

I am trying to add a new drive an been following this wiki http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Adding_ ... o_your_HDA

So i have formatted my drive yesterday and i have tried to ass it to the pool, but the checkbox is not active in Amahi. The checkbox of my other drives,( seems they got format LVM2, so my two drives are seen as one, ), is active, and i can check it.

Following the wiki mentioned above i have seen sthg like this "/var/hda/files/drives/sdb1". Checking in that folder, i do not understand more than this, i have noticed that the folder "/var/hda/files/drives/" is empty, i hav no sd* in there.

First question, iss that normal or not? Did i miss sthg when installing Fedora and amahi? My shared drives have been created and they are working on the drive, means i can also acces them from my other machines.

I think that my first drive is not mounted correctly, could that be, here is my etc/fstab

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Sun Dec 19 18:59:03 2010
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
/dev/mapper/vg_serveur-lv_root / ext4 defaults 1 1
UUID=a01fd7a3-3c57-499e-87ee-453ff1454dc6 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_serveur-lv_swap swap swap defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

If someone could explain please.

Thanks

[zia]

So, i retried the procedure again and i managed to get it working. Added my second disk to greyhole.

Just one question, must i change the mounting point of my first disk too?

UUID=a01fd7a3-3c57-499e-87ee-453ff1454dc6 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2

This is what i have for my second disk:

UUID=869ea6ac-46e8-44ed-bddb-dbfc9c978f89 /var/hda/files/drives/drive1 ext4 defaults 1 2

And another question, i saw that in the settings tab, in the server menu, the greyhole server is not running. When i try to start it, it doenst start. Can someone tell me why?

[zia]

Replying to myself: After some search here an reading some wiki, it seems that it is ok like i have it now.

About the fact that the greyhole server is not running, found a thread here, will try if it will fix the problem.
http://forums.amahi.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2220

Question:
1) Following this wiki http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Greyhole, it says that the root partition should not be used in the pool, so i presume that the first partition shown in the image (Location /) should not be selected.
In fact, comparing the picture on the wiki with what i have on my server, i do not have the same. Beside the "/", i have an exclamation mark and a "+" sign. When i move over the + sign with the mouse, i get a popup with a message like "no greyhole pool" or something like this.
Is there a problem with that drive?
You must know that in fact this one is composed of two drives, using LVM2, so it is recognized as one single drive. I probably made a mistake when installing fedora. Is this a problem for greyhole?

2) Now a stupid/noob question.
My system and shares are installed on a 120GB HDD. Adding my second drive (1,5TB) to the pool, i should have +-1,6TB. Writing data to my shares will fill up first the HDD of 120GB. In case this HDD is completely filled up, adding new data to my shares, will they automatically be written to my 1,5TB HDD?

Really stupid question, but i need this for my understanding of greyhole.

Sorry for all my questions, but i am new to all this, i am a windows user

[gboudreau]

1. That exclamation mark tells you you should be careful before selecting that partition. The + next to it is a link to a wiki page. Click it to read it, and see why it might not be a good idea to select that partition to include it in the storage pool.

2. If both drives are part of the pool, as soon as you write files to your shares, they will be moved on the drive that has the most free space (your big disk, until it has less than 120GB of free space left). That moving can be slower that you writing files to your shares, so your 120GB could get filled to capacity during the initial transfer. When that happens, just stop transferring, wait a while, and then continue.
Greyhole will always write incoming files in the same directory: the directory defined as the 'Location' of your shares. That Location directory can be modified in the Amahi Dashboard, so you could, if you want, move it to your big drive (/var/hda/files/drives/drive1/share_name). You'd then have less chance to fill the 'landing zone' during big file transfers.

[zia]

Thanks for reply.

I reinstalled everything on my machine, now i am using a 120gb HDD for my system and i am using my 1.5TB HDD for my shares. For the moment i am not using Greyhole. I will just install a second 1.5TB HDD for my backups.

[zia]

Coming back on this, even if i do not use GReyhole for the moment, but i want to understand how this exactly works.

Tell me if what i am saying is right or not.
For the moment i have:
- 120GB HDD for the system, no shares
- 1,5TB HDD with shares on it.

Let's say i will add another HDD with 1,5TB (for example). I want to expand my storage capacity to 3TB.

1) I follow the instructions and in the Dashboard i check the new HDD to be in the Storage Pool. I presume that now the two HDD are seen as one big drive by Greyhole?

2) I do not want to have a copy of my actual files on my second 1,5TB HDD, so i presume that i must not check the shares to be added to the storage pool in the Dashboard? Is this right?

3) As long as i have space on my first HDD holding the shares, data is written to that drive.
Once the drive is full, i presume that all further data will automatically be written to the second drive. Is this true?

4) When i access the share from another machine, i will see all the data of my share, data stored on my first HDD and of my second HDD.

Tell me if all of this is correct or not.

Thanks and sorry for all this questions.

[gboudreau]

1) No: you need to select your old 1.5TB too.
If you just mounted it as /var/hda/files, it's used as what Greyhole calls the landing zone, i.e. a temporary placeholder for new files, before they get moved in the pool, which is all selected drives in the storage pool page.
So if you want 3TB of space in your pool, you need to select both 1.5TB drives.

2) I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you saying that you do not want EXTRA copies of your files ?
If you don't want extra copies, you should leave the 'extra copies' selection (per-share) to 0 (-).

3) No. Greyhole store files on the drive that has the most available space, thus balancing the free space on all the drives that are part of your pool.

4) Yes.

[zia]

Hi,

Thank you very much for your answers, i think i'm beginning to understand how greyhole works.

1) First 1.5TB HDD is mounted as /var/hda/files, so selecting the two HDD will expand storage to 3TB.

2) You understood right, in fact i saw that with greyhole you can create extra copies of the files, this is what i do not want, just keep my original files without creating copies to storage pool. So you answered my question.
Extra copies selection to 0 (-).

3) So my data will be stored on the two HDD, not first on one until it's full and then on the other. Right?

4) Ok understood.

Thanks again.

[gboudreau]

3) Yes.

[zia]

Thanks again for your answers, now i understand how it works.