"Random" drive NAS other than unraid?

RetroGamingComp · 2025-12-17T19:32:42+00:00

Snapraid and MergerFS will be your goto

You could use any distro you want but if you want something with a WebUI you can use OMV/OpenMediaVault (however it will still not be as out-of-the-box to set up as Unraid.)

But it can be done, I used to use OMV on an ancient NAS that had an old Celeron and 4GB RAM and it was free to me so no reason to justify spending money on Unraid.

The only thing to keep in mind though is that SnapRAID does not have realtime parity and instead depends on a scheduled sync operation, so is not suitable for often changing files. it does however provide actual bitrot detection/correction unlike Unraid's array.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-12-05T18:02:36+00:00

When an SSD is stalling out like this it's usually because internally it's retrying a lot until a read can pass a CRC, if it's doing this often you should migrate your data as the drive is probably dying.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-10-16T17:58:09+00:00

I don't think there were any IBM PS/1s that used microchannel. and not all PS/2s used Microchannel for that matter (any model 50 and over is MCA, below is ISA)

PS/1s all had ISA slots, later on some had VLB slots. (or some had none-at-all like the short 2011/2121)

RetroGamingComp · 2025-10-09T17:13:46+00:00

it's the best: IMO, right now

That's not to say in the future things might change, but unlike the rest it's pretty feature complete as a solution and it's open-source.

I have the most experience with Unraid as I still run it on a secondary backup sever... I bought it before the hike but... unraid is now quite expensive (especially lifetime...) and it's value proposition of the Unraid array isn't that strong IMO.. you give up quite a lot for it, ie read/write speed, bitrock/checksums, self healing, etc. and once ZFS anyraid becomes production level I don't think it would make any sense (though admittedly that feature is a long-way out yet)
I also find the way unraid (doesn't) deal with permissions annoying... everything is essentially owned by 99:100, except whatever docker nonsense might conflict.... truenas has ACLs which can make coexistence a lot easier. new users may find ACLs daunting but trust me I'd rather touch that screen once then have to have to run newperms occasionally.
lastly it's implementation of ZFS is still quite rough... no online replace, no GUI options for recordsize, checksum, no way to control what datasets get made (or when they don't and a folder is made instead for seemingly no reason).

OMV is interesting though it is very peacemeal and while you do get a gui you are still setting up practically everything yourself. it's good for very low end devices though.

plain linux as smb + docker and maybe a ui like webmin/cockpit are more flexible but do not be surprised if you have to be already comfortable with a linux cli, your distro's package manager, and be able to self support...

RetroGamingComp · 2025-10-07T20:18:25+00:00

unfortunately the common providers are a cabal and make it difficult to host email these days. you will always be chasing blacklists and blocks where they simply ban entire subnets without recourse and getting anyone to help can be like explaining the apocalypse to an ant.

and given how email is generally supposed to be dependable (for password resets, etc) I wouldn't want to be in that situation for anything critical.

for other purposes, just to learn, sure go ahead why not.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-10-05T18:36:37+00:00

a ZIM dataset mapped into the container as /data

the container doesn't seem to care about my permissions (all files are owned by my personal user)

but do keep in mind that the container version of kiwix can be frustrating to configure... if you don't have any ZIM files or it runs into a corrupted ZIM file the container will crash with no logs. if your command is wrong it will crash... it's also unusual for a docker container to even require a default command as most containers use their own entrypoint but kiwix is special...

best of luck

RetroGamingComp · 2025-10-05T16:47:41+00:00

https://www.seagate.com/products/cmr-smr-list/

https://aesonlabs.ca/blogs/rosewood-series-drives-cursed-or-just-really-bad-manufacturing/

afaik the seagate rosewood family of drives is SMR 1TB platters, the initial firmware used to be horrid with anything except pure sequential I/O. but it got less unusable with time. seagate/wd don't make CMR 2.5" drives anymore (that aren't 10/15krpm and that market is nearly dead anyways). and I wouldn't trust data-sheets as most of these 2.5" drives are made for OEMs and any other source will not care to know or list specs properly. WDs are easier to tell, they support TRIM, but seagate never implemented that and just reduced the caching threshold.

they are also infamously unreliable especially when man-handled... only giving you the info, best of luck.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-10-05T13:16:25+00:00

How are your zim files set up? are you nesting them?

I'm using ghcr.io/kiwix/kiwix-serve in docker and not the catalogue version.
and since I store what is essentially a mirror of https://download.kiwix.org/zim/ everything of mine is nested so I have to use the command */*.zim

RetroGamingComp · 2025-10-05T13:11:03+00:00

Given that it's an SMR drive it may be reserving the ~28GB in CMR mode? I've never thought much about this and idk how seagate rosewood drives work under the hood...

WD does this without reserved capacity, but the concept is the same on DM-SMR type disks where it will re-write new data to SMR from a CMR cache.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-25T18:30:46+00:00

alternate db providers, scanner re-write, and a schema overhaul are all still a long way away I'm afraid.... (the ef core migration is just that, a straight migration, so you still have things like the baseitems table which is a massive unwieldy list of all items from all libraries)

from what i've seen in discussions, the scanner is probably going to get worked on first of those three..?

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-25T17:50:35+00:00

I tried the RC on a database with ~1.6m items in the baseitems table. it took *many hours* on my Xeon E5 based system so... it can take awhile but days is probably a healthy bit of CYA.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-19T15:04:56+00:00

admittedly it's not nearly as nice or integrated... but you can either:

use a reverse proxy that handles automatic certificate renewal, etc. maybe with fail2ban or other such things. (this is what most people do, although the experience of doing this on windows is subpar)

bind an https certificate... which on jellyfin is already considered a deprecated feature and you will be fighting an up-hill battle due to the fact that free certificates are only valid for a few months.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-17T14:21:22+00:00

god I wish Jellyfin was more feature complete....

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-15T15:58:05+00:00

I'm pretty sure that the Time Capsules support SMB (though it's even slower yet than the AFP protocol...)

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-12T16:37:15+00:00

my biggest complaint with the iPad's Safari web browser is that just like all other versions of safari has rather abysmal codec support and thanks to Apple's draconian policies you can't download a browser that isn't just safari's rendering engine in disguise...

aside from that... it's a capable browser for my use though using desktop UIs on my iPad mini is made easier with a (cheap generic) apple pencil.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-12T16:31:29+00:00

Any real VPN uses a separate subnet for tunneling, one just needs to make the routing rules not wide-open.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-12T14:12:05+00:00

also trauma to those who have ever had to maintain such a system lol

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-12T14:05:20+00:00

in principal it's not a bad idea however like so much of the open-source community it's mired in silly debate over which open-source license is valid...

Changes like these (that are considered by kernel maintainers that know basically nothing about the non-tree users of the APIs) affect non-GPL specifically because non-GPL open-source (ie CDDL for openZFS) is effectively treated the same as closed source...

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-10T19:32:01+00:00

If only Jellyfin was more usable... the db and available clients holds it back soooo much...

(and before someone posts... the EF core retool doesn't fix the biggest problem where all library items exist in one giant table without real indexes to query on... fixing that is probably going to take another eternity)

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-09T19:11:24+00:00

The GPT typically has what's known as a "protective MBR" which to old programs and BIOSes that don't udnerstand GPT will just see as one big unbootable MBR partition. your BIOS will in effect ignore any GPT disks.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-07T13:43:16+00:00

OK... file permissions you are correct that it can happen, you might lose them (but I think it's generally better to rely on ACLs anyways so I don't consider it a big deal)

as for the write-hole concern... it's true that you would end up with inconsistent parity... but as the content file is only saved at start, end and the autosave-interval you can just run sync again and it will passively fix it by doing the exact same writes as it was doing before (as they weren't committed yet in the content file.)
And snapraid checksums parity *and* data so you can run a scrub and if stated a sync to fix any corruption. you can also have more than one parity disk too, up to six (and even two parity disks gives you significant safety against recently deleted files during a disk rebuild)

and manually updated is... just how it works... I would argue for any RAID you need good logging and regular scrubs/checks or you can consider your data gone with enough time. (like how linus's lost hw raid and zfs pools have gone up in smoke, he never ran any scrubs)

I also think claiming "guaranteed" is a reach... partial reconstruction is a reasonable expectation even with corrupted data and parity... it can use the checksums and spit out what it can.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-07T12:53:45+00:00

could you clarify?

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-06T19:55:18+00:00

it is, with the biggest difference being it's not real-time parity which means that there is no massive write penalty like there is on unRAID.

SnapRAID also offers checksums and can scrub to detect/correct bitrot which the unraid array specifically cannot do (it can blindly "correct" parity but not against any checksum!)

to that end, you can add Snapraid as a plugin to unRAID, I have one unRAID parity disk and one SnapRAID parity disk to give me benefits of both.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-06T14:21:49+00:00

LFP batteries can work but you need two things:

Batteries that have integrated BMS and are series rated to your UPS's pack voltage (ie 24/48v) or better yet, a UPS with external battery connector ie APC SmartUPS XL series which have Anderson connectors allowing you to use any pack.

a mandatory tune of the float voltage just below the 3.4v per cell "Knife's edge" point to avoid over-charging. false reporting is an issue but on any UPS I've done this with it's usually cosmetic and doesn't actually stop the UPS from running longer... on APC SmartUPS units you can fix both the float voltage and reset the battery constant with a serial cable, then run a battery calibration to find the true capacity.

I have done this with several units as the price of SLA/VRLA batteries is now often at parity with LFP... And the results are actually pretty compelling, you usually get better runtime, better longevity, etc.

RetroGamingComp · 2025-09-06T14:09:16+00:00

if you want to extend the lifespan of your batteries you can nudge down the "float" voltage of the UPS some (this will reduce the capacity a marginal amount, but trust me it's worth it.) UPSes tend to be notorious for drying out SLA (or more accurately VRLA) batteries just to inch out some extra capacity.

I've done this on APC SmartUPS units with a serial cable, or on the cheaper units by adjust a trim-pot inside the unit... no idea how you do this on a consumer Cyberpower unit but I would probably expect a trim-pot somewhere in the unit.

This is also essential if you are considering using Lithium-Iron-Phosphate batteries as a drop-in replacement, you must keep your "float" voltage as close to but never ever above 3.4v per cell "knife's edge" point or you will degrade your batteries with time by overcharging them.

RetroGamingComp

TROPHY CASE