A quick story about my home media server crash (a headless Linux server) as a Windows guy
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This unit is actually a donated (from one of my personal clients) MediaSmart 485: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859105420
It's one of those "boot em up, load the CD on your desktop PC to attach" kind of servers that runs WHS. I rebuilt it last year using Ubuntu server and RAID'd 3 x 1TB drives (yeah, I know, RAID 5) + 1 drive for OS. I do have everything backing up from the RAID volume to an external source locally + Crashplan to the Cloud (don't hate me Scott).
You saw the topic heading - this thing is headless in the truest sense. There's no video output - no SVGA, DisplayPort, HDMI, etc. so troubleshooting is a real bitch. You might ask how I built it in the first place? I have an HP dc5700 that I popped the OS drive into and installed/configured everything and then moved the drive back into the media server. The underlying architecture was similar enough I suppose, but you Linux guys can probably explain that better than I...
I rebooted the server the other day and it wouldn't completely fire up. It would ping, but I couldn't SSH to it, Webmin wasn't working, couldn't get to Plex, etc. I assumed that maybe there was a message waiting for me So, I popped the drive out, put it back in the HP and everything boots fine - complains that the media volume group couldn't be found, but this was expected. Since I'm not actually seeing exactly what was going on with the media server (drives are over there, in that box there...not this HP!) I couldn't troubleshoot...so, I decided to rebuild. I thought maybe the boot drive might have been going (it was an oldie, so I switched to a 3TB that I had on the bench).
Once rebuilt, I installed/configured openSSH, then popped the drive back in to the server, booted it up and then installed webmin.
Adding the volume that I had created previously was a cinch, but apparently due to some improper shutdown I had some corrupted files on the volume. I couldn't get to a particular folder that had all my kids movies...so, after some Googling the particular error (about inode not being found and some input/output errors while performing a copy) I backed up everything I could to another drive, unmounted the volume, and ran e2fsck on it and let it repair (like chkdsk for Windows). In retrospect, I wonder if the boot wasn't completing because it was waiting for an answer to repair the volume?
Once repaired, my files were in the lost+found folder, I think I only lost a few. I installed Samba via Webmin, moved the files back to their proper folders, installed Plex and pointed them at the files. Everything is working swimmingly now.
Lessons learned:
- If you run an OS you're not familiar with - video output is a really, really good idea
- Webmin is awesome
- I like Linux. It's powerful, but it's such a different beast than Windows it takes a mental gear-shift to work with it. You can't just "do things" with Linux. You have to be deliberate and be aware of the repercussions of anything that you do.
On a side note - does anyone know of a Linux-supported USB-driven display adapter? I know I can buy a kit that I can plug into the motherboard to get video, but I'd prefer something that wasn't so specific to this unit.
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What kind of slots do you have for cards? If you pay the postage I'll send you a video card, I have several just lying around.
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@Dashrender said:
What kind of slots do you have for cards? If you pay the postage I'll send you a video card, I have several just lying around.
I wish it was that easy! There's just no slots available for cards...it's very proprietary that way. Basically, there's a small header on the motherboard that can be plugged into and wired up to a svga adapter.
Here's the solution that people have come up with:
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@Rob-Dunn sweet hack!
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That's hilarious.
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You can easily do Linux without video output, use the serial port! Works just like routers and such. That's the standard TTY for headless systems. Most UNIX systems don't have video options and this is the only way to get access to them not over a network. Itanium, Sparc and Power systems are exclusively like this, for example.
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Oh, I didn't know that (re: serial ports)! Alas, this box doesn't have that either...it's a very specific configuration - what it does have, 4 bays
that was my biggest draw.EDIT: Buuuuut...would it support a usb -> serial dongle?
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Could it support a USB dongle, yes. Would that work for native TTY output without special configuration, no. So it would help, but only so much. Real serial console output is ideal.
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To finish all this up, I reinstalled Crashplan and configured it via these instructions:
http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Configuring/Configuring_A_Headless_ClientDoes anyone else use CrashPlan? I love the fact that they make it available for Linux (and easy to install!) to able to be run in this manner; i.e. run your desktop installation to manage the headless server.
Now I'm going to reconfigure my Windows desktop to point to my Linux box for localized backups!
Linux is awesome in some ways - it is definitely getting easier to handle over the years (in my opinion!).
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Congrats on diving into Linux. I bet that you will find that BASH scripting is dramatically easier to get into than PowerShell too.
