76 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
76 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Hardware adventures and operating systems installation"
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date: 2020-07-24T18:00:00+02:00
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---
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At the beginning of the project, the goal was to create a single storage server at my apartment. So I bought a [fancy
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case](https://www.ldlc.com/fr-be/fiche/PB00181814.html) with racks in front to hot replace disks and I retrieved an
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[Intel NUC motherboard](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/boards.html) from work. It had
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only two SATA ports available to connect disks which is not enough to plug at least four disks: one for the system and
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three for the storage. I bought a [PCI RAID card](https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B0001Y7PU8) to add four slots. I
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connected two small SSD for the system and four data disks, then installed FreeBSD without any issue. I started to copy
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data to the storage space when a noisy alarm[^1] began to wake everybody up in the building. This was unbearable. I
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decided to buy a *micro ATX* motherboard with processor and memory to replace the Intel NUC board. Wrong. I confused
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[micro ATX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroATX) with [mini ITX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-ITX) formats. The
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first one was too big to fit in the box. So I bought a classic ATX case with a cheap power supply and 3x2TB disks from
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work. **Storage1** was born.
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At that point, I had a working storage server and some pieces to build a second one. At the same time, my wife and I had
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a baby. My office at home became the newborn bedroom. I paused this project for a year to focus on my family. Then, we
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bought a house with plenty of space to handle life serenely.
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During the move, I unpacked my very first computer that I had assembled in 2008. The only missing thing was a physical
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slot to rack the fourth disk. I bought a [low cost ATX case](https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B00LA7PC6Y/) and moved
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every piece into. I started before work on a Friday but didn't finish on time. My home office was covered with computers
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pieces all day long. When I finished work, I went back to the project when a friendly neighbor called on me for help
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because his computer crashed. Right before going to bed, I tried to connect the power button to the motherboard without
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instructions, and it didn't work. I finally found it on the web and made it work, at midnight. **Storage 2** was born.
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It runs on a quite old hardware (10+ years). I thought it would be easy to install FreeBSD because it was created in the
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90s[^2]. I tried to boot from USB but the stick was not recognized. I burnt a CD-ROM with version 12, the latest release
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at that time. The installer was not able to load because of a [LUA
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error](https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=234031) in the bootloader. In the comments and on forums, some
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people managed to make version 11 work. I burnt a CD-ROM with version 11, same result. After having lost an afternoon of
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my time and two CD-ROMs, I went back into my comfort zone and installed a Debian 10 with success.
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Recently, my family offered me the missing hardware pieces to finalize the third storage host. The big one with 4TB
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disks in the mini case. The one I had bought at the beginning of the project. In the end, it is not so practical. Disks
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are not fixed to the rack. They can move back and forth a few centimeters. Some disks were not recognized by the system
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because they were not connected. I pushed all of them with a screwdriver to ensure they were plugged into the SATA
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connector. For the price, I expected it to work out-of-the-box. I was surprised to find four SATA ports on the
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motherboard where I expected five or six. I removed one system disk. Goodbye dirty hack with adhesive tape to stick the
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second SSD! Let's join your friends in the stock. **Storage 3** was born.
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Here is the detailed list of components:
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| Host | Component | Reference |
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| -------- | ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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| storage1 | Case | [Antec One](https://media.ldlc.com/ld/products/00/01/00/62/LD0001006251_2.jpg) |
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| | Power supply | [Antec Basiq Series VP350P](https://media.ldlc.com/ld/products/00/00/89/95/LD0000899597_2.jpg) |
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| | Motherboard | [Gigabyte GA-B150M-DS3H](https://media.ldlc.com/ld/products/00/03/45/35/LD0003453579_2.jpg) |
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| | CPU | [Intel Celeron G3900 (2.8 GHz)](https://media.ldlc.com/ld/products/00/01/47/39/LD0001473956_2_0001473966_0001571304_0001571323_0003614881.jpg) |
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| | RAM | [G.Skill Aegis 4 Go (1 x 4 Go) DDR4 2133 MHz CL15](https://www.ldlc.com/fr-be/fiche/PB00202287.html) |
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| | System disks | [LDLC SSD F2 32 GB](https://media.ldlc.com/ld/products/00/03/42/11/LD0003421194_2_0003421246.jpg) (x2) |
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| | Data disks | 2TB HDD 3.5" (x3) |
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| storage2 | Case | [Advance Grafit](https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B00LA7PC6Y/) |
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| | Power supply | No reference found |
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| | Motherboard | Asus M2A-VM HDMI |
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| | CPU | AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2 |
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| | RAM | G.Skill Kit Extreme2 2 x 1 Go PC6400 PK (x2) |
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| | System disk | Recycled 160GB HDD 3.5" |
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| | Data disks | 1TB HDD 3.5" (x3) |
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| storage3 | Case | [In Win IW-MS04](https://www.ldlc.com/fr-be/fiche/PB00181814.html) |
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| | Motherboard | [ASRock H310CM-ITX/AC](https://www.ldlc.com/fr-be/fiche/PB00275155.html) |
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| | CPU | [Intel Celeron G4920 (3.2 GHz)](https://www.ldlc.com/fr-be/fiche/PB00247186.html) |
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| | RAM | [G.Skill Aegis 4 Go (1 x 4 Go) DDR4 2133 MHz CL15](https://www.ldlc.com/fr-be/fiche/PB00202287.html) |
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| | System disk | [LDLC SSD F2 32 GB](https://media.ldlc.com/ld/products/00/03/42/11/LD0003421194_2_0003421246.jpg) |
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| | Data disks | 4TB HDD 3.5" (x3) |
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Despite heterogeneous components, storage servers have been successfully running for a while now.
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[^1]: Later, I found out that the noise was coming from the disk backplane and not the motherboard. There is a buzzer
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that emits a sound sequence depending on the detected anomaly. At the apartment and at my current house in the summer,
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the temperature in the room was too high (more than 29°C). I moved the host in a cold place. Problem solved.
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[^2]: FreeBSD [initial release](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD) was on November 1, 1993.
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