Build a small, high-performance NAS (6 bays) for only $392

[Bingie 99]

Wow, I was gonna cheat, and just do a chmod -R 777 ./ to the samba directories, but even as root, it's disabled "Operation not permitted".

ARGH

[Bingie 99]

With sad regret, TrueNAS Scale just isn't ready for usage yet.  The stuff that came over from BSD appears rock solid, but those guys are new to Linux, to Debian, to Docker, to Linux GPU pass-thru, etc.  It will likely be a while before they iron out any of those issues.

Believe it or not, I was a Debian sysadmin for many years, but it's been about a decade since those days.  Since the new Debian 11 "Bullseye" was just released a few weeks ago in August, I'm gonna go native again.  It's been a while, but I'm sure it will all come back.  I'm curious to see how much it has changed in 10 years.

Installing Debian 11 on my new NAS now............

[Bingie 99]

SOLVED

 

Well, I just found out that Intel hasn't released any source code for their video drivers since 2018.  So I won't find *ANY* linux distro that supports the new Intel UHD 610.

Tomorrow, I'll install Windows 10 Home on the NAS.  No need to cover the install/configure here, it's covered extensively elsewhere on this site.

Thanks for reading.

[Q-Droid 989]

I've been following your build thread and noticed your posts in other threads and you've been getting in your own way during this project.

Your CPU with UHD 6xx graphics is in the same general family of 7th -10th gen Intel CPU/iGPU. Emby includes the drivers needed to support graphics and HW transcoding. What you need is a recent enough Linux kernel to support the CPU ID. Kernel release 5.2 and later supports Comet Lake. Many of us are using Emby on different Linux distributions and the same CPU family. If your iGPU can't be detected for some reason then the community can help you resolve specific problems.

Take a breather, then try installing Emby on Debian or give TrueNAS Scale another shot.

 

[Bingie 99]

48 minutes ago, Q-Droid said:

I've been following your build thread and noticed your posts in other threads and you've been getting in your own way during this project.

Your CPU with UHD 6xx graphics is in the same general family of 7th -10th gen Intel CPU/iGPU. Emby includes the drivers needed to support graphics and HW transcoding. What you need is a recent enough Linux kernel to support the CPU ID. Kernel release 5.2 and later supports Comet Lake. Many of us are using Emby on different Linux distributions and the same CPU family. If your iGPU can't be detected for some reason then the community can help you resolve specific problems.

Take a breather, then try installing Emby on Debian or give TrueNAS Scale another shot.

 

I was literally about to install windows when I read this, had already booted the windows install USB.  I searched high and low, even tried Linux Mint which is famous for detecting all hardware, and even it couldn't identify the video card.  I didn't find any results when googling for linux video support for Comet Lake or the UHD 610.  Nothing.  I'm thinking maybe it's the ASRock motherboard and not so much as the Intel gpu.  If I had a more expensive ASUS motherboard, maybe it would've been detected?  It does use the Intel H510 chipset though.  I got no responses from the TrueNAS discord or forums, although it is Sunday, but they are pretty dead anyways.  Same for the Debian forums.

Okay, going to bed.  Maybe tomorrow will be better.

[Bingie 99]

This appears to be the package I need, to support Intel Comet Lake GPU on Debian:

https://packages.debian.org/unstable/intel-media-va-driver-non-free

I already have it installed.  Is there some post installation I'm supposed to do?  export something maybe?

I'm running the latest Debian 11 Bullseye, which was released last month (August).  It includes the Linux kernel 5.10 series.

[Q-Droid 989]

Are you saying Emby isn't working? If it isn't then attach the hardware detection log and server log. 

 

 

[Bingie 99]

I haven't even installed Emby yet.  The console instantly dies at bootup.  The only access I have is to shell in, but only got that by installing the ssh server upon custom install.  If I ever need to use the console for anything, I'm screwed.

I figured part of it out.  I had installed the mesa-* drivers, which seemed to override the intel drivers, so I removed the mesa drivers, and reinstalled the intel drivers.

 

[Bingie 99]

YAY!  GOT IT WORKING!!!!  That was easy

Installed Windows 10 Home.

Now everything works.  No video drivers crap to deal with.  No kernel crap to deal with.  No permissions crap to deal with.  No GPU passthru crap to deal with.

I hate Windows, annoys the crap out of me, but at least it works.  Now I can finish this box, tuck it away and forget about it.

[Carlo 4560]

Is that sort of like "I hate you because you just work out of the box?"  LOL

[Bingie 99]

LOL!

I hate that windows runs whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and there's not much you can do about it... EXCEPT what I did:

1. I installed a clean Win 10 Home (with network disconnected).

2. I then installed simplewall to replace the windows firewall, and prevent windows from permanently accessing networking.  NOTHING!  EVER!

3. I then used the Windows10Debloater power shell script to strip down windows to bare minimum, removes bloatware, cortana, one drive, telemetrics, etc.  Removes all that stuff from the registry.  Stops windows scans.  Stops virus scans.  Basically neuters windows, makes it sit down and shut up.

Plugged in Ethernet cable.

4. Install a few more utilities (monitoring mostly): crystaldiskinfo, core temp, tightvnc, and firefox w/ blocking addons.

5. Install Emby server.  Still getting it ready for a move.

On simplewall, enabled the 4 windows processes required to allow windows file sharing on local network, so I can connect from my desktop pc.  Everything else still blocked.

...

Today, going to move my media HD from old server to this new one.  Move Emby programdata and system directories.  Bring Emby online, then clean it up.  If that doesn't work, delete and try it again.

After Emby is done, going to install Stablebit Drivepool and Scanner.  Get my media redundancy done.

After that, I want to backup the boot drive to somewhere, probably to just the drive pool to start.  Then build a bootable USB stick to repair windows if it gets damaged.

Still not sure what I'm going to do about remote monitoring.  I love the windows built-in Taskmgr, it's brilliant and beautifully done.  Contains 95% of monitoring info.  Wish it had a few more things like cpu temp/fan, motherboard temp, chassis fans, ssd/hd temps.  I'd like to find a remote tool to monitor all that stuff together in one place, and view it from my phone.  When home, can always just connect to tightvnc.  There are ways to do it.  Windows has built-in monitoring utilities perfmon/resourcemon.  Can write a script, put it in task scheduler, which will allow me to remote monitor.  Hoping to find all that already done by somebody else, still checking free utilities on Internet.

That should be it.  Can move the server out of the way and monitor remotely.

 

[Neminem 1518]

If you want to monitor windows remote, take a look at prtg or zabbix with grafana.

It takes some setting up, the only thing that I haven't figured out yet is GPU monitoring.

Screen shot of zabbix with grafana, runnig on a separate server in a VM.

[Bingie 99]

1 minute ago, jaycedk said:

If you want to monitor windows remote, take a look at prtg or zabbix with grafana.

 

Thanks!  I'll definitely check those out.  Looks good btw

[Neminem 1518]

I do use a VPN to connect to my home.

I use a Raspberry-pi with PIVPN and a Nginx reverse proxy setup.

So I make sure not to open to many ports in my firewall.

[Bingie 99]

My current NAS management interface :P needs a little love...

 

[Bingie 99]

Okay moving hard drive from old server to this one..........................

 

 

[Bingie 99]

Found one thing that didn't carry over.  Will have to edit that.  Still checking.

 

[Bingie 99]

Everything looks good.  Move appears successful.  Playing a movie on the roku, 1 transcode, NAS is basically idle, the gpu doing a little work.

 

[Bingie 99]

I love how cool everything is running.  The CPU is running cooler than the nvme and hard drive.

I need to bring that nvme temp down.  I think I'll buy a heat sink and glue it on the nvme.  Everything else looks fine.  The hard drive is running much cooler in this NAS than my old external fanless drive bay.

 

[Bingie 99]

2 transcodes going, still idle.  gpu a little more active but still little utilization.  I think this box will serve me well.

 

[Bingie 99]

only 3gb ram used (almost all of that is windows) w/ 4 streams, 2 are transcodes that's cool

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Bingie

[Bingie 99]

I'm reading about nvme heat sinks, was going to buy one.

I'm glad I didn't buy the fastest nvme available, right now mine runs cooler with no heatsink than other people with a heat sink.  And since my m.2 drive is basically idle (I neutered windows to do nothing) and emby is configured to keep everything but the log files on another hard disk, my m.2 drive should stay the same temp during it's life.

I'll read up some more, but 44C seems just fine for a m.2 drive, they are designed to tolerate much higher.  Glad I bought a smaller slower one LOL don't need more.

[Bingie 99]

On 9/16/2021 at 11:26 AM, Q-Droid said:

If you absolutely must have 6 SATA ports then yeah, it's gonna be hard or expensive to build for mini-ITX. I got lucky and the cost was a lot lower just a couple of years ago.

But if 4 SATA ports are enough then something like this might be in the ball park: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/F8c3rr

 

@Q-Droid I want to thank you for all your help on this project!  I actually ended up going with your build, and it's perfect, I'm thrilled with it.  Emby on windows barely scratches the cpu, 1-2% utilization LOL rarely runs above 1GHz and it's a 4 GHz cpu, so I have lots of spare resources.  Very future proof.  I'm also thrilled at how cool temperature everything runs.  Unless I'm unlucky, I should get quite a few years out of this box.

The only thing left is to decide which management options I'm going with.  A lot of the free monitoring utilities include triggers and email capabilities, so I'll probably set them up to email me daily reports, and trigger special report the first sign of problems.

Thanks again, I couldn't be more pleased.  I highly recommend this hardware configuration to anyone looking for a NAS in the $400 ballpark.

[Q-Droid 989]

Cool. I'm glad it's working well.

[Bingie 99]

LOL I was testing remote connectivity, but my cell phone was connected to my home wireless, so I was connecting over the LAN instead of the WAN doh!  Thought all my passwords were missing

Time for bed

 

Edited September 22, 2021 by Bingie