Tuesday, May 26, 2009

EON ZFS NAS 0.59.1 based on snv_114 released!

Embedded Operating system/Networking (EON), RAM based live ZFS NAS appliance is released on Genunix! Much thanks to Genunix.org for download hosting and serving the opensolaris community.

It is available in a CIFS and Samba flavor
tryitEON 64-bit x86 CIFS ISO image version 0.59.1 based on snv_114
tryitEON 64-bit x86 Samba ISO image version 0.59.1 based on snv_114
tryitEON 32-bit x86 CIFS ISO image version 0.59.1 based on snv_114
tryitEON 32-bit x86 Samba ISO image version 0.59.1 based on snv_114New/Fixes:
- fixed multi-cpu support
- ssh keys and config files added to backup list
- backup list separated from updimg.sh and located on USB/CF root
- added dtrace to help with future webgui/bui interface metrics
- added marvell 88sx and AHCI drivers (intel Bad Axe2 motherboard support)

You can roll your current custom changes into the new 0.59.1 version by executing updimg.sh with arguments/path to the new unpacked x86.eon image. Please read full details first on upgrading EON from an older post here.
updimg.sh /mnt/eon0/boot/x86_new.eon

Friday, May 22, 2009

EON NAS flexing on a Dell R610 16CPU, 12GB of RAM

So we unboxed a Dell R610 with dual Xeons in the lab today and for giggles I booted EON ZFS storage on this bad boy to see what would work and what would not. The sata controller and broadcom 5709 were missing so I couldn't see the drives or the 4 x 1gigE nics. Still fun none the less to see it scales well. All 16 CPU's online and ready to serve.










Thursday, May 21, 2009

EON ZFS NAS snv_114 preview

Here is a preview of EON ZFS NAS based on snv_114. This release fixes some opensolaris and EON bugs (multi-cpu support, smbadm join domain core dumping/crashing). I would also like your feedback on the addition of dtrace? Will it bring value and add use for you? The intention is to use xmlrpc and dtrace to help with display metrics and information for the future webgui/bui administration interface

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

EON ZFS NAS meets IPS packages

Adding drivers/binaries to your EON ZFS NAS presents a bit of challenge as it requires acquiring the matching SNV_xxx DVD to source the package. There is an alternative called the image packaging system. This is basically Sun's network packaging system similar to apt, RPM in Linux. I've assumed here that the network card is fully functional and internet connectivity, is working.

So assuming your nic works, a wide array of options become available with the help of IPS. This may be useful to add or run certain binaries such as unzip, ipmitool, powertop, openssl, pmconfig, etc. So how do we add pkg and other IPS goodies? First we download the pre-installed toolkit here.

Then, unzip it to a smb/cifs share somewhere on a storage pool (this example unzipped to /deep/pkg-toolkit-sunos-i386). Now let's create the packaging db in /deep/ips
mkdir -p /deep/ips
cd /deep/pkg-toolkit-sunos-i386/pkg/bin
./pkg image-create -F -a opensolaris.org=http://pkg.opensolaris.org /deep/ips
After this completes, we are ready to add packages to the /deep/ips repositories. Note, I am not adding the packages to / (root). This would store the downloaded binaries in RAM and reduce the available memory and most likely cause a crash of the OS. It would also not survive a reboot. So for now, let's use a local repository /deep/ips and lets add unzip. First, I need to know which package unzip, is a part off. So, let's try to find that
cd /deep/ips
/deep/pkg-toolkit-sunos-i386/pkg/bin/pkg search -r unzip
INDEX ACTION VALUE PACKAGE
basename file usr/bin/unzip pkg:/SUNWunzip@5.53.7-0.101
basename file usr/bin/unzip pkg:/SUNWunzip@5.53.7-0.96
basename file usr/bin/unzip pkg:/SUNWunzip@5.52-0.75
We see the package name is SUNWunzip as well as the versions available at the repository (5.52, 5.53). Let's give it a dry run without installing to see dependencies. Still in /deep/ips
/deep/pkg-toolkit-sunos-i386/pkg/bin/pkg install -nv SUNWunzip
And to install it and all its listed dependencies in /deep/ips
/deep/pkg-toolkit-sunos-i386/pkg/bin/pkg install -v SUNWunzip
This can also be used for drivers, for example the sil 3124 sata chipset driver
/deep/pkg-toolkit-sunos-i386/pkg/bin/pkg search -r 3124
INDEX ACTION VALUE PACKAGE
description set 3124 pkg:/SUNWsi3124@0.5.11-0.101
description set 3124 pkg:/SUNWsi3124@0.5.11-0.75
description set 3124 pkg:/SUNWsi3124@0.5.11-0.89
Then, simply adding this SUNWsi3124 or specifically SUNWsi3124@0.5.11-0.101 will get us the driver. One thing I note is the package naming varies slightly to the opensolaris DVD package names. I also could not locate packages SUNWzfsgu, SUNWzfsgr and SUNWmconr to attempt adding the ZFS smcwebserver GUI/BUI administration interface. Some cool pkg usage techniques can be found here at the observatory blog. A cool Hello World example.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Applications to make your ZFS NAS entertaining

Your ZFS storage is just blah without data and content. After loading your data you want access to be simple and secure. So to bridge all your important digital memories and collections with fun browsing, here are some cool open-source apps I've come across that were fairly straight forward and fun to add to EON.
Jinzora
Jinzora is a web based media streaming and management system, written in PHP.




AjaXplorer
AjaXplorer is an easy-to-install file explorer for remotely managing files on a web server. Its “rich client” layout and actions make it accessible to any end-user for a variety of purposes: file management/sharing, photo gallery, code browsing, etc. Only PHP (4 or 5) is necessary, no database needed.

MediaTomb is an open source (GPL) UPnP MediaServer with a nice web user interface, it allows you to stream your digital media through your home network and listen to/watch it on a variety of UPnP compatible devices. I've successfully compiled a 32-bit version of MediaTomb. Packaging and some integration challenges still exist and are being worked on. I will share this or the compile configurations for anyone wanting to build or download it. If anyone has successfully compiled ffmpegthumbnailer on opensolaris please feel free to share.

PS3 Media Server is a DLNA compliant Upnp Media Server for the PS3, written in Java, with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files, with minimum configuration.


Other cool applications with less visual effects but some may find useful include using your EON ZFS NAS as a svn or git revision control system. A nice SVN howto can be seen here. Please feel free to share cool apps you've added or used with your EON ZFS storage.