Flexible fileserver on Debian Stretch

Finally getting around to reinstall my fileserver, I wanted to make it flexible with data integrity.
ZFS wasn’t flexible enough for my tastes, and LVM has no integrity check, so I had to create something with btrfs.

Early tests with using btrfs on LVM for root and /boot made the virtual machine unbootable, but using btrfs directly was no problem.
This meant I still had to use separate partitions for /boot, root, and swap (on mdraid10), and then use the rest for LVM.

It seems the installation of Stretch has trouble when adding raid or lvm afterwards, so I partitioned the installation this way:

vda1, 512M, bootable, btrfs, /boot
vda2, 4096M, btrfs, /
vda3, 512M, device for raid (to be made swap after creating raid10 after installation)
vda4, LVM
LVM:
vg0: vda4, vdb4, vdc4
lv’s:
tmp_0, 512M, btrfs, /tmp
home_0, 1024M, btrfs, /home
var_0, 1024M, btrfs, /var

After installation I created the same partitions for vdb and vdc, then created the mdraid10 for swap:
mdadm –create –run /dev/md99 –level=10 –layout=n2 raid-devices=3 /dev/vda3 /dev/vdb3 /dev/vdc3
mkswap /dev/md99

With that done I exchanged all /dev/mapper devices for the UUID’s of the btrfs devices in /etc/fstab and did a reboot as test.

With everything running I created logical volumes tmp_1, tmp_2, home_1, home_2, etc. by specifying the different physical devices to be put on:
lvcreate -L 512M -n tmp_1 vg0 /dev/vdb4
lvcreate -L 512M -n tmp_2 vg0 /dev/vdc4
…

Adding the LV’s to btrfs:
btrfs device add -f /dev/mapper/vg0-tmp_1 /dev/mapper/vg0-tmp_2 /tmp
btrfs device add -f /dev/mapper/vg0-home_1 /dev/mapper/vg0-home_2 /home
…
btrfs balance start -dconvert=raid1 -mconvert=raid1 /tmp
btrfs balance start -dconvert=raid1 -mconvert=raid1 /home
…

For unimportant data I made a logical volume striped across the three disks:
lvcreate -L xxG -n roraid -i 3 vg0
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vg0-noraid (could also be btrfs but the data integrity isn’t important here.
..and added its UUID to fstab with mountpoint /data/noraid

For the data protected with checksum integrity:
create three LV’s raid1_0, 1, 2 on the three PV’s like /tmp, /home, etc. above and make another btrfs raid of these.

Last, don’t forget to grub-install /dev/vdb and /dev/vdc.

The /data/raid1 mount point caused an error after first reboot, but later no more. Maybe a glitch in the matrix..

With this setup I can expand /tmp, /home, /var, /data/noraid and /data/raid1 as needed since I don’t know if I get more data for raid or not.
With two fileservers I can keep a backup of the raid1 data of one server on the noraid volume of the other. The btrfs volumes only protect from bit rot after all.

And if it really fills up I can start exchanging the disks for bigger ones.

 

Revive old home server

After replacing the failing home server with a decent Synology NAS I got my hands on a HP Storageworks Data Vault X510.

Being curious I wanted to see if I could get it to run with Debian so I could do some tests with mdadm.

Turns out it’s not too difficult.

-place the harddisk to install it on in a standard PC and use that to install the i386 version of Debian (in this case it was Jessie)
-add a fixed IP address for eth0 in /etc/networking/interfaces (the Realtek r8168 (seen as r8169) couldn’t get a DHCP address for some reason)
-place the disk in the X510 and boot
-login with SSH (you did install it, didn’t you?)
-have fun with it

 

Windows Home server toegang zonder wachtwoord

Iemand dacht dat het een goed idee was om een HP Data Vault X510 als een backup apparaat te gebruiken voor een Windows 2003 SBS server. Nou, niet echt het ding wat ik zou kiezen maar aangezien het er al stond ging ik het toch maar gebruiken.

Eerste probleem was niet weten wat het Administrator wachtwoord was, en natuurlijk was er geen documentatie over wat dat ding deed. :-/
Tweede probleem was de vermiste recovery disc. Geen disc, geen optie om de server te herstellen en nieuw wachtwoord toe te wijzen. Tijd voor wat ouderwets hakwerk.
Als eerste de Hirens boot cd gebruikt om het administrator wachtwoord te verwijderen maar dat is niet voldoende aangezien Windows geen externe toegang verleent zonder een wachtwoord ingesteld te hebben. Ik trok de eerste schijf eruit, sloot deze aan op een andere Windows machine en gebruikte regedit om de SOFTWARE hive te laden uit (sysdrive):\windows\system32\config. Daar voegde ik de DWORD waarde IsRemoteAccessUser toe aan (hivenaam)\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Home Server\User Manager\Users\Administrator en wijzigde deze in 1. Op deze manier kon ik Externe Bureaublad gebruiken om een verbinding the maken met de Data Vault.
Om werkelijk in te kunnen loggen moest ik ook de SYSTEM hive laden en LimitBlankPasswordUse wijzigen in 0 onder (hivenaam)\ControlSet001\Control\Lsa en ControlSet003 (eventueel 002).

Na de schijf terug gestoken te hebben en de server gestart had kon ik inloggen en de boel recht zetten.

 

Windows Home server access without a password

Someone thought it was a good idea to use an HP Data Vault X510 as a backup device for a Windows 2003 SBS server. Well, not really the thing I’d choose but as it was already there I was going to use it.

First problem was not knowing the Administrator password, and of course no documentation on anything that thing does. :-/
Second problem was the missing recovery disc. No disc, no restoring the server and assigning a new password. Time for some oldfashioned hacking.
First off used the Hirens boot cd to blank the administrator password but that wasn’t enough to gain access as Windows doesn’t allow remote access without a password set. I pulled the first disk, hooked it up to another Windows machine and used regedit to load the SOFTWARE hive from (sysdrive):\windows\system32\config. There I added the DWORD value IsRemoteAccessUser to (hivename)\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\User Manager\Users\Administrator and set it to 1. This way I would be able to use Remote Desktop to connect to the Data Vault.
To actually be able to login I also needed to load the SYSTEM hive and change LimitBlankPasswordUse to 0 in (hivename)\ControlSet001\Control\Lsa and ControlSet003 (or 002).

After plugging the disk back in and booting up I was able to log into the server and set things right.