QNAP: Apache and Needed Information

So you're setting up various things like your WordPress or perhaps messing around with some internals based on tips you get across the web. You type them in then doesn't work and says you have invalid or the wrong user permissions. What gives?

Don't forget you are working on a semi-embedded environment and not all things follow what is on Apache spec all the time. So how do you find out more about your installation without having to be able to read all these script lines? Let the installed system work for you of course. Everything is working on the basic that means you just need to know what the settings are.

First things first, get your tools and be where you should:

Step #1: Download WinSCP (or if you're further advanced feel free to use ssh).

Step #2: Log-in to the NAS as admin

Using username "admin".

Step #3: Change directories to Qweb

[~] # cd /share/Qweb/

You are now at the root of your web server, you have the following options:

Step #4a: To find out what user your instance (Apache default is httpd) is running as (QNAP default is httpdusr), create a temporary file, mine is called phpinfo1.php, and it only contains one line:

Step #4b: To dump all that is known from the system, create a temporary file, mine is called phpinfo2.php, and it only contains one line:

Step #5: Whatever your choice is from either of the last two-(2) steps above, open a browser instance and run the relative PHP file.

http://(your-ip-address)/phpinfo1.php
http://(your-ip-address)/phpinfo2.php

Security tip:

Once you are done with the scripts above, DELETE them. You risk divulging critical information about your installation if you leave these files lying around.

QNAP: WordPress and Connection Information

Newbie users like me will probably be stumped when faced with this ftp log-in screen when trying to update/upgrade/patch WordPress and/or plugins. You can attempt to guess and enter your details but there's a fair chance the whole process will fail midway through the next steps. Why? What to do?

Chris was quite helpful to get me on the right path. I have outlined the steps below for us QNAP users:

Step #1: Download WinSCP (or if you're further advanced feel free to use ssh).

Step #2: Log-in to the NAS as admin

Using username "admin".

Step #3: Change directories to wordpress

[~] # cd /share/Qweb/wordpress/

Step #4: Change the file permissions of the current folder and sub-folder contents

[/share/Qweb/wordpress] # chown -R httpdusr:administrators ./

Step #5: Exit the console

[/share/Qweb/wordpress] # exit

Step #6: Open your browser, get back to your WordPress admin console

http://(your-ip-address)/wp-login.php

Step #7: Pour yourself a nice beverage

Step #8: Enjoy!

As soon as you're done, make sure to start updating everything.

Security tip: Outdated WordPress installations and plugins are bad.

QNAP: RAID 6 to the Rescue (continued)

Its the onset of Fall and the leaves are starting to make a mound in the backyard. There's been some rain as well. With the seasons changing that also means the room temperature as well.

This morning was the first time I ever saw the advantages of RAID 6.

Actually, the single advantage appears to be stability in the face of two-(2) failed hard drives. For some reason Slot-6 and then Slot-1 started to act up and drop out of the RAID. Now, I know there's nothing wrong with them and my efforts to check the temperature history should little variance. What I did to recover was to simply pull out, dust off, then jammed (literally) the drives back in. This seems to have worked and the RAID just went ahead and rebuilt itself.

Scary, with several NAS once in a while making beeps you get to a point of ignoring these please of alert. Literally the first time Slot-6 fell it wasn't even apparent to me that something was going on as the QNAP is a heavily used file server with gigabytes of transfer going on at all times of the day.

So was it really the weather?

I was going through some forums as well just now and did see some reports similar to what I had just described. Some say firmware on the NAS, some say its the WD20EADS drives -- to me it was the weather and I'll stick to my theory unless something else comes up. :-)

Did this experience help me to reconsider aiming for RAID 5 and recovering 2TB? Maybe, just a little.

However, if things push forward and I get the chance to transfer the main download/upload function to a data center ...? 2TB back for storage please, thank you very much!

QNAP: Add another drive to RAID 6, Part II

Its already Tuesday and the expansion is stuck at 75%. All services don't want to work and the space shown via ssh is only 25-MB, plus /dev/md0 is unmounted. The system is still emitting that irritating double long beep every so often that I hear it in my sleep.

There is too much data on those RAID drives now, now way will I accept it getting lost. Knock on wood! I'm scared and loosing sleep over it :-(

I saw a link to someone having expansion problems in the forum as well as the follow-up solution. In case a reboot won't work there was another way shown. ..... Its a backup plan.

But really, hopefully my process actually works and I can send some more positive feedback to users who would rather not have to mess with the internals and stick to the interface. Though QNAP Tech Support is in California and sound to be very helpful, I'd much rather not have to deal with any form of remote access to my machines as much as possible.

Lets be clear that the SATA Disk view still says that all my drives are healthy. The fact that /dev/md0 is already unmounted may actually mean that at 75% this is in Step #9 of the suggested manual expansion process. :-)

But I'm still not sure :-(

QNAP: Add another drive to RAID 6?

Yesterday I mentioned that everything was working well in terms of building a 7x2TB configuration while the remaining 2TB of data from an external connection was transferred over to the RAID.

Well, this morning all the copying seemed to have finished overnight which meant it was time to plug the last 2TB drive and expand the size of the RAID.

Funny, I was about to say "RAID array" but that is redundant being as RAID does mean "redundant array of individual disks" so saying it would have been like referring to a "redundant array of individual disks ARRAY". No, duh.

It looks to be there is a terminology difference in the jargon used and its confusing. What makes it more difficult is that there isn't enough specific information about what one has to do if using RAID 5 vs RAID 6. After much head-to-knuckle banging (at the possible data loss in one fell swoop of a misconfigured array), a clue on the Wikipedia definition of RAID 6 helped. So it looks to be that its considered by some "RAID 5 + 2 spare disks". Meaning that I could take the "Add hard drive" under the RAID Management tab even if it says only for RAID 5 and implement it on my RAID 6 - which I did. The results are in the first graphic above as well as some intermittent dual-beeping coming from the TS-809 right now.

Those 2 beeps (per the manual, yes of course I read it) mean any of the following things: HDD volume is filling up (don't think so), HDD is indeed full (nope), HDD is in degraded/failed mode (nah), HDD starts/currently rebuidling (YES!!).

So, right now the RAID is rebuilding as a result of the added disk and also calling the expand module. Its still stuck at 1% but like the initial building where I was letting it multi-task copying from the last 2TB drive in the set, its more probably a result of me copying 69-GB of data at 18 MB/s over the gigabit network to one of the NAS' shared drives.

Time to wait and see and a post-update later ....

Apple Mac OS X:Time Machine

Thanks to the QNAP TS-809 Pro being Linux based, it was snap easy to have it create an iSCSI Target.

For those not quite familiar, iSCSI target provisioning allows a shared folder on your SAN (in this case a NAS) to be created and treated as a virtual storage volume.

Specific Mac instructions for all QNAP devices are here. All of this of course wouldn't be possible without globalSAN's iSCSI initiator which they've provided free.

QNAP: RAID size and 2TB drive support?

Per the press release on March 25, its all good finally after much waiting and forum discussion. :-)
http://www.qnap.com/PressRelease_detail.asp?pr_id=128

"Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB (WD20EADS) SATA hard drive is now supported by the entire TS-109/ 209/ 409/ 509/ 439/ 639/ 809 /809U-RP and the latest TS-119/ 219 Turbo NAS series."

"The maximum capacity can be extended up to a total of 16TB now on a TS-809 or 809U-RP' says Andy Chuo, Product Manager from QNAP."

Also, the latest compatibility list published April 22 has the WD20EADS in the list (and notably without any extra remarks!):

Myself, the server just arrived yesterday and I'm currently waiting impatiently for the RAID 6 rebuild to finish on 7x2TB. Currently simultaneously moving files from the front-USB backup (figured I may as well test it) off the final 2TB drive before I add it into the full RAID set.

At 7x2TB its showing me just below 10TB available ... yeah, RAID 6 means (n-2 disks) with each 2TB showing up only as 1.8TB. I just may decide to make it RAID 5 instead when all is done.