My ReadyNAS Blog

Th-th-that’s All Folks!!

2012-12-28T00:00:00+02:00

This blog was started in August 2010 as a means to document tips & tricks I had found related to ReadyNAS Network Attached Storage devices from Netgear and to create a public record of the support posts I made on the ReadyNAS support forum. Originally this was a Wordpress-based blog hosted on a ReadyNAS Ultra-4.

Over the past year my involvement in the ReadyNAS community has significantly declined - not least due to the very apparent defocus Netgear has on their consumer storage products - to the point that the time has now come to retire the blog and so I have archived it here so that it remains available to those that may continue to find it useful.

I hope it continues to be of help to those many ReadyNAS Users out there. Comments remain open and I will do my best to respond to any questions, but there will be no further posts.

/sphardy

Using Final Cut Pro X with ReadyNAS

2011-10-18T00:00:00+03:00

With the release of Final Cut Pro X, Apple has removed the ability to directly and easily work with video clips & projects stored on traditional AFP, CIFS or NFS accessible network volumes, now only supporting XSAN based network storage.

It is however still possible to archive video and projects to ReadyNAS devices by following a few additional steps

Background

For the past 2 years I have primarily used Final Cut Express - the baby brother to Apple’s professional Final Cut Pro video editing suite - as my video editor of preference and in particular taken advantage of the ability to locate the “Scratch Disk” on my ReadyNAS. While this feature makes it possible to work directly with video data stored on my NAS, my primary aim has been to enable easy archiving of video projects to my NAS but still have them readily accessible.

With the release of Final Cut Pro X (FCPX), which replaces both Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express, this concept of a “Scratch Disk” has been removed. Instead, like with many of Apple applications, FCPX now requires that projects and video clips be stored in specific locations and only on HFS+ formatted volumes. While Apple does support XSAN - a fibre channel based Storage Area Network technology - this is hardly an option for most home users and the HFS+ requirement ensures storing project data on AFP or CIFS mounted network volumes is no longer directly supported. (Note: video clips located on network volumes can still be referenced when imported - see later).

FCPX does fully support the use of disk images and with the built in project duplication capabilities of FCPX this proves to be a useful alternative way to maintain accessible project archives

Archiving Projects

1) Create a disk image

Open Disk Utility, select “New Image” from the tool bar and create an appropriate image - for example:

Here I’m creating 10 GB capacity image as a sparsebundle to minimise actual disk usage. The key requirement is that the format of the image must be “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.

2) Store the image on a ReadyNAS volume & mount

Copy the disk image created in step 1 to your NAS, double-click to mount and the image should appear in FCPX as follows:

3) Duplicate a project, targeting the mounted disk image as the destination

Select the project you wish to archive within FCPX, and either drag to the mounted Disk Image, or press CMD+D to open the “Duplicate” dialog box, selecting the Disk Image as the destination:

Finally, select the appropriate options regarding what data should be archived and press “OK” to confirm the duplication.

The net result is you now how a full Project Archive, stored on your ReadyNAS that can be re-mounted to provide direct access to that project from your ReadyNAS.

A Note on Working with Video Clips stored on your ReadyNAS

Using video clips stored on a NAS couldn’t be easier in FCPX. When importing video files, the following option is available:

If you do not select the “Copy files to Final Cut Events folder” option, FCPX will instead create aliases to your original media including to that stored on standard network volumes

Apple Related Services not Visible over WiFi

2011-09-10T00:00:00+03:00

Apple products primarily rely on a technology called mDNS to advertise and discover the availability of services, the Apple implementation commonly known as Bonjour. ReadyNAS products implement the Linux application Avahi to provide mDNS support for Mac users.

Unfortunately however, a number of Wireless routers do not properly support mDNS over a wireless connection, and as a consequence it can appear that a ReadyNAS device is not working correctly when in reality the issue is caused by the router effectively blocking the necessary advertisements.

Typical symptoms include:

ReadyNAS devices do not appear in (or sporadically disappear from) the OSX Finder sidebar, preventing access to shares
ReadyNAS devices are not discoverable in Time Machine,
The iTunes Server shared library does not appear in the iTunes sidebar - for Windows or OSX users

To test if the your router is suffering this issue, temporarily connect your client via a wired ethernet connection - if the ReadyNAS is then visible you can be pretty sure the router is at fault

Below is a list of the routers that appear to demonstrate this issue:

Thomson routers in general, but specifically:
- BT Home Hub (Seems to be the worst affected as may also exhibit this issue over a wired connection!)
- O2 provided Router
- Telia Home Gateway
Netgear Wireless-G routers in general, but specifically:
- WGT624 v3, DGN2000, RangeMax WPN824
Home Box from TDC (Sagem F@ast 3464)
Billion modem/router
Belkin Playmax F7D 4401
Belkin Play
Tiscali Siemens router
Trendnet TEW-639GR

Note that D-Link routers can also suffer this issue, but this can typically be corrected by enabling Multicast support for the wireless connection within the router setup

Please post below if you find other routers that experience this issue and I shall add them to the list.

Bliss Addon for ReadyNAS (x86)

2011-06-11T00:00:00+03:00

Warning: The addon described in this post no longer exists

When first purchasing a ReadyNAS, my only real thought was to have a centalised backup for an every growing library of documents & media, and a facility to make backing those files up easy. But owning a ReadyNAS device introduced me to the idea of actively streaming audio from a central library to multiple clients. My audio library is now available on any of our computers at home, via our Plex based media center, multiple Squeezebox audio players, iOS devices and even remotely via the excellent Subsonic application.

The ubiquitous access to our audio however soon revealed one limitation: the high resolution screens of some of the devices being used (eg iPad) clearly showed that the artwork associated with my audio library was pretty poor quality, incorrect, incompatible with some applications but not others, or just non-existent. In short - the audio artwork of out music library was a mess.

While I found that there are a number of applications around that puport to help with artwork issues, most seem to focus on tagging rather than artwork, with artwork being just another tag. Also as all of my media was stored on my NAS, streamed from it and managed there, I much preferred to have an artwork management application that would also run from the ReadyNAS rather than run separately with an OS specific frontend .

That’s when I found Bliss

Background

Bliss is a java application that can run under Windows, OSX and Linux with an interface that is is web based and so accessible from any OS. It seemed ideal for running on a ReadyNAS and so it has proved - correcting and embedding artwork into all of my audio files with minimal effort on my part, be they MP3, FLAC, ALAC, AAC or even the odd Windows Media files I have hanging around. Better still - the artwork quality is easily controllable; I choose to only allow artwork of 500x500 pixel resolution or greater to be used which looks great on my iPad, in Subsonic or Plex and means there’s a good selection of artwork to choose from.

The interface to bliss is very simple. Bliss scans your audio library to provide a view of all of your albums in alphabetical order together with the current artwork (See image above). Click on the album and bliss presents you with the option to change the artwork providing suggested artwork from various internet resources such as Google or Amazon. Changing the artwork includes the option to embed it into the audio files as well as copying the artwork file to the relevant folder containing the audio files (See image to right).

And while focused primarily on artwork, bliss is not just limited to fixing artwork - Genre, year and naming of files can also be fixed. Better still, the application is under very active development with a lot of new capabilities coming.

There are a number of more complete reviews of bliss - links to which can be found here. But I’ve been so impressed with the application that I decided to take the step of developing an addon for ReadyNAS devices so that bliss can easily be installed and setup without a user having to manually setup the application via command line. Here’s how to get the addon installed an bliss running on your ReadyNAS

Installation & Usage

The addon can be downloaded from the ReadyNAS forum

Installation is as for any ReadyNAS addon via Frontview. The addon will download the latest publicly available version of bliss directly from the https://www.blisshq.com website during installation. (The version installed will be displayed in the Frontview Configuration panel). Once the addon is installed, note that it does not immediately launch the bliss application. This is because the addon first requires a configuration setting.

As bliss will download new artwork to the NAS, and potentially embed artwork into the audio files, it requires full write access to those audio files. To enable this and ensure appropriate file access and ownership is maintained the addon requires that a user account be defined which has write access to those files/folders. This needs to be entered in the dialog box and confirmed by pressing the “Change” button. Once the user has been defined the application can be started by checking the enable box and pressing “Save”.

Note: If a user name is entered that does not exist, the addon will not start.

The addon will download the latest publicly available version of bliss directly from the https://www.blisshq.com website during installation. (The version installed will be displayed in the Frontview Configuration panel). Once the addon is installed, note that it does not immediately launch the bliss application. This is because the addon first requires a configuration setting.

Note: If a user name is entered that does not exist, the addon will not start.

Once the addon is enabled and running, it can be access by pressing the “Launch Bliss…” button, or loading http://<nas_ip_address>:3220 in your web browser

On first launching bliss, initial settings such as location of audio files & artwork requirements must be defined, full details of which can be found here.

Bliss will then scan your media, presenting each album with its current artwork and an assessment of whether that artwork meets the requirements you defined when setting bliss up in the previous step. For those items that are not compliant, click on the edit icon and bliss will search the likes of Amazon, Google and MusizBrainz for relevant artwork that can be used instead - both embedding it in the audio files as well as downloading the image file to the folder contaning the album

And that is pretty much it.

To those who give bliss a go, I hope you find it as useful as I have.

Note: As the title of this post hopefully makes clear, this addon is only available for x86 based ReadyNAS such as the Pro and Ultra series. Please don’t ask for a Sparc version for NV+ and/or Duo - there will not be one as bliss is an x86 application only.

Setting Up a Website with PHP & MySQL

2011-06-08T00:00:00+03:00

One of the most common tasks ReadyNAS users wish to use their devices for is to host a small personal web site

Creating a basic Personal Web Server is very easy to do and documented on the ReadyNAS site here

This basic setup is perfectly sufficient for hosting HTML only based web sites, but many users would like to go that step further and create more advanced setups, perhaps using common Open Source CMS systems such as WordPress (like this site) or Joomla. To support such setups, the ReadyNAS typically needs to be updated to support both PHP - a common programming language used for creating web sites - and MySQL - a relational database application.

Here’s how to add the PHP and MySQL missing pieces:

Note: Where addons are linked to, the applicable version is as follows:

sparc version for ReadyNAS Duo / NV / NV+ / 600 / 1100
x86 version for ReadyNAS Ultra, Ultra Plus / Pro / NVX and all rack mount units excluding the 600 & 1100

Installing PHP

PHP support can be enabled by installing one of PHP addons available from the [ReadyNAS Community Addons]forum. Personally I would recommend the “WhoCares?” PHP 5.2 addons - x86 version, sparc version - as these tend to be compatible with all other addons, have worked well for me over the years and come with the modules required for PHP access to MySQL databases. Other versions of PHP addons may provide additional features that may be required, so check them out.

Note: Unless you know that you need PHP 5.3 - which includes language construct changes vs PHP 5.2, not just enhancements - I would not recommend installing that PHP addon

Enabling MySQL

MySQL is included in the default ReadyNAS firmware for all devices as it is used by the ReadyNAS Photos application. However, if you are not using the ReadyNAS Photos application, then MySQL is disabled by default. It can be enabled by installing the MySQLON addon: x86 version, sparc version

Note: MySQLON and ReadyNAS Photos should not be enabled at the same time as the 2 may conflict

Managing MySQL Databases

Once MySQL is enabled, there is of course a requirement to create and manage the MySQL databases. If you have enabled root SSH access to your NAS, then you can of course manage MySQL from the command line. For those less adept with commandline access, there is an application called phpMyAdmin (x86 version, sparc version) that can be installed to provide a web based graphical front end to managing MySQL.

Once installed, browse to the address http://<nas-ip-address>/phpadm - using “admin” and your ReadyNAS admin password if prompted for access to the page. Once loaded you should see this:

To login for the first time use the user name “root” and leave the password blank. This should give you access to the following page:

From here you can create and manage you databases, create new MySQL users and, of course, set a password for the root MySQL account.

Backing Up Your MySQL Database

Due to the nature of database applications, care must be taken when backing them up - as most users would prefer their databases to continue to run while being backed up, stopping the MySQL server and copying the actual database files is not usually acceptable.

There are 2 options to over come this:

Use phpMyAdmin to export the data from a database. This has the advantage of allowing you to make a backup on demand while the database continues to be functional, but is a very manual process
Install the MySQLBackup addon (x86 version, sparc version). This addon allows you to schedule regular database backups maintaining daily, []weekly and monthly archives of all databases in your backup share.

Finally…

Often a user will want to edit the web site on the NAS via a share protocol such as CIFS or AFP, and will connect to the NAS using a personal user account. To ensure that the ReadyNAS web server can read files created and edited by users, it is important that “everyone” is granted read permission to files created within the share. Details of how to set this up are covered in this post

And that’s it.

Migrating TimeMachine Backups to a ReadyNAS

2011-06-01T00:00:00+03:00

ReadyNAS devices can be used as a target for TimeMachine backups. However when users first set this facility up they also often want to migrate an existing backup from an external HDD attached to their mac to the ReadyNAS so that they maintain their backup history but free up the external HDD

Here’s is one way to do this that is known to work based on feedback from one user as well as success doing this myself.

Enable the TM service on the ReadyNAS in Frontview
Configure the mac to backup to the ReadyNAS and allow a backup to start. This will cause the TM to create the required diskimage on the ReadyNAS that you will replace with the data from your USB disk
Allow the backup job to copy some data, but to save time stop the job after a short while (as we will be replacing the backup data there is no point allowing the job to complete)
Disconnect the mac from the AFP service and then reconnect over AFP to the NAS with the username “ReadyNAS” and the TM password you setup in step 1
You should then have access to a share called “ReadyNAS”, in which there is a diskimage that will be named after your mac - this is the new backup target. Double click on it to mount the image
Start Disk Utility on your mac and then use the Restore function to copy the TimeMachine contents of the external HDD connected to the mac to the diskimage you just mounted - this will take a while.
Once complete, dismount the external drive and mounted diskimage, disconnect from the from the ReadyNAS AFP service, and then launch a TM job.

If all went well TM will mount the backup image which now has the same data as your external HDD and the TM job will incrementally add new backup data. Once verified, redeploy the external HDD

My ReadyNAS Wishlist

2011-05-04T00:00:00+03:00

After using ReadyNAS devices for a few years now, I have a number of features that I would like to see in future products and software. None are earth-shattering enhancements - many would address the tweaks documented on this blog for instance. But some are already supported on competitor products and could address many of the more common ease of use issues we ReadyNAS users often encounter.

Whether you believe these ideas are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, worthwhile or not, I thought I’d take the time to list them and track when (or if) any of them are addressed, if only for my own benefit. I may well also add other items as they occur to me.

The list is in no particular order other than to try and categorise the requests in some limited way.

Note: I fully appreciate there are security implications to some of these requests, but i consider that is only reason to fully document those risks not decline support of the feature as to great a risk.

General

Software Documentation
- I’d like some… For example
  - A FAQ that is actually up to date (for instance actually mentioning ReadyNAS Ultra, ReadyDLNA or iSCSI)
  - A user guide for ReadyDLNA - that includes how to debug when scanning fails, what file formats are supported etc
  - A user guide for iSCSI
  - A user guide (and privacy policy) for ReadyNAS Photos
  - Full specifications for products (eg what Processor does each NAS use?)
  - Publishing a Guide to setting up share access & permissions would substantially reduce the number of hits this site gets…
eSATA
- My one & only Hardware-specific feature request. For most home users, external drives are the only economical way to back up their NAS data - and despite the many discussions of eSATA vs USB on the ReadyNAS forums, I find the lack of eSATA ports on new ReadyNAS products absolutely nonsensical. Couple that with the addition of USB3 that has happened to the Ultra-2, which a year after release still does not appear to be working properly with USB3 disks hardly vindicates Netgear’s decision that this a better alternative.
- This will certainly be a key decision criteria for me when I upgrade my NAS storage in future
Solid Media Streaming Support
- ReadyNAS devices provide DLNA, Squeezebox Server and iTunes Music Streaming support “out of the box” and have done for many years. But how and when will this capability develop?
  - Itunes Server is now so limited as to be useless to many users
  - There is no Netgear support for mobile devices,
  - 3rd party support is announced and then dropped (Orb)
  - No documentation provided
- The reliance on 3rd parties suggests that this is not a focus for the ReadyNAS team despite advertising otherwise
Photos Application Support without the 3rd Party server requirements
- No application running on my NAS should cause me to be reliant on a 3rd party server just to enable operation
Stop relying on the community
- The ReadyNAS community has a very strong reputation and is a primary reason for many users to choose Netgear - myself included. However Netgear appear to be relying on the community to provide advertised features - for example Torrent Support. If a feature is claimed as supported, then it should be supported & provided by Netgear

Backup & Restore

Ability to Name Backup Jobs
- Backup jobs are numbered. If a job fails I get the informative message that “Backup Job 013 has encountered an error”. I would like to name rather than just number my jobs so that such messages are meaningful at a glance
Rsync Access to Home Shares
- I backup all my data to a USB drives using rsync, but also to a second NAS by pulling the data from my primary NAS via Rsync. This works great except for home shares - rsync access is not allowed. This is a pain to deal with.
Controlled NFS access to home shares
- Similar to lack of rsync access, NFS access cannot be customised to allow root privileges like other shares, meaning that backup and restore of home shares is needlessly difficult.
- The inability to control access via host name/address to home shares also means these shares are open to all network users - an unnecessary security hole
iSCSI Backup/Replication
- As stated elsewhere on this blog, I feel the addition of iSCSI to consumer NAS is one of the best enhancements recently made to ReadyNAS devices. But iSCSI comes with its own challenges - particularly in the area of backup. I would like to see Netgear address iSCSI LUN backup/replication in some way for users like myself.

Web Server Configuration

SSL Certificate install
- Like many people I wish to access my NAS remotely, for instance setting up this website. I also want access to be secure and ReadyNAS does fully support HTTPS and FTPS, but only with self-signed certificates that generate warnings that are unfamiliar to non-technical users. As posted here it is possible to support commercial SSL certificates but requires hacking to make it work, rather than there being a simple install facility in Frontview.
Virtual Host Support
- Yes - I would have liked to have setup this site to be “readynas.sphardy.com”, but again while such support for Virtualhosts is possible and not difficult, it requires more hacking, and in this case changes that will be overwritten each time the firmware is updated.

Maintenance & Management

A User Interface for the 21st Century
- Compare Frontview to Synology DSM (user: admin, Password: synology) - enough said
UI Improvements for large/small screens
- My primary client has a screen with resolution 1920x1200 - and yet I still need to scroll around in Frontview to access most options. Equally, I have and iPhone & iPad that I would like to use to manage the NAS - Frontview is hardly ‘tuned’ for such screens.
GUI to view logs
- One of the most common problem solving steps is to review the NAS logs, of which there are many available purely as text files. How about a GUI that both provides some kind of context/organisation to the reports (do you expect DLNA errors to be found in the UPNP-av.log?) as well as assistance in looking at those logs (eg highlighting of errors). For the average user this is simply not a debugging step they can undertake.
- This idea may of course become redundant if a new approach to presenting logs is taken, instead of just dumping individual logs per linux process eg as part of an updated interface.
Vol Maintenance NOW option
- It is possible to schedule both online Volume checks and RAID scrubbing - why is there not a “Do this NOW” button?
iSCSI LUN management
- The current iSCSI management within Frontview is extremely limited. I want the ability to be able to delete and move individual LUNs, assign LUNs to different targets, manage backup & restores, all via drag and drop and/or some other simply step-by-step wizard.
Access to the ‘C’ volume over AFP / NFS
- Why do CIFS users get all the perks? Admin access to the C volume via NFS and AFP should be enabled
NAS Status monitoring
- Thanks to forum members like Super-Poussin and WhoCares? there are numerous ways to monitor the status of your NAS. But should this really require a 3rd party solution? At the very least a customisable status update could be generated & emailed on a user defined schedule. To the other extreme I’d like to see a Netgear-implemented & supported monitoring capability rather than have to use a bunch of addons.
Snapshot Resizing
- Will this ability ever return or should the statement “Snapshot resizing is disabled in the release. We will re-enable this feature in a future update” that has been published in the release notes for many firmware releases now be changed?

True Builtin Web-based File Manager
- The current HTTP file manager is very primitive and incompatible with WebDAV access. Again, addons exist to address this - I personally use Ajaxplorer - but a novice user should not have to go to such effort to enable simple, GUI based, drag & drop style remote access to shares.
- Develop this instead of the awful ReadyNAS Remote Product which:
  - Needs the user to install a client and so is instantly less attractive
  - Is overly complex causing client networking issues and restricts bandwidth
  - Relies on 3rd party servers to work (which they often don’t seem to)
  - Is sporadically updated (or not at all for Mac users)
  - Is not supported at all under Linux
FTPS only support without hacking
- FTP is supported. FTPS is supported. But you either get both or none and not the 3rd, more secure, option of only enabling FTPS. Easily “hackable” - but should not be necessary
FTP HideFiles Support
- Again CIFS users get all the perks. The built-in CIFS server is configured so that system files generated by other protocols remain hidden from users, presumeably to prevent problems by users altering those files and/or to improve ease of use (Hide what the user doesn’t need to see). So why not enable the same for FTP users? The server does support this via the “HideFiles” directive - it would be useful to have this both automaticially configured to hide common system files, but also customisable by the user.
Simultaneous Anonymous & User authenticated FTP
- As documented here, FTP authentication is either Anonymous OR User based - it is not possible to have both, though the fix is relatively simple
SFTP with ‘chroot’ support
- I fully appreciate that SFTP is unlikely to be formally supported due to the implications of opening up SSH access. But for those of us that are willing to ‘go it alone’, a version of OpenSSH that implemented SFTP with ‘chroot’ support doesn’t seem an unreasonable request.

What are Reallocated Sectors?

2011-04-07T00:00:00+03:00

Most ReadyNAS users have probably experienced it. Waking up, eventually checking email over a morning cup of coffee to find that overnight your NAS has sent you the friendly warning:

Error message: Reallocated sector count has increased in the last day.

Disk1: Previous count:0 Current count:4

Growing SMART errors indicate a disk that may fail soon. If the errors continue to increase, you should be prepared to replace the disk

So after clearing out the coffee you just spluttered all over your keyboard, what are Reallocated Sectors and, more importantly, what are you going to do about them?

Note: ReadyNAS devices perform HDD SMART tests early each morning - so it is most common to get such a message in your morning inbox)

What are Reallocated Sectors?

The disks, or more correctly the platters, in a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) are of course circular - data is organised on each platter in a series of concentric circles called a track, with each track partitioned into multiple smaller units called sectors. By convention, each sector is able to store either 512 bytes or 4Kbytes of data.

In large drives there can be millions of such sectors and for a disk to fully function each one of those sectors must operate perfectly - in theory. As the capacity of disks increases, and thereby the sector count increases, the possibility of a drive having problematic sectors also increases.

HDD Manufacturers strive to ensure their drives are ‘perfect’ but in the real world where they are also try to drive costs down we have to accept the fact that this is an extremely difficult goal to achieve. Further, HDD users do not wish to find their data unexpectedly corrupted due to a ‘bad sector’ and have no recourse. Therefore HDD manufacturers introduced the technique of being able to “Reallocate” sectors.

When writing to a sector the HDD verifies that the data has been written successfully. If the verification fails, and perhaps after multiple retries, then the HDD considers that particular sector as ‘bad’ and so reallocates the data to another sector while keeping a record of the bad sector (ie a “Reallocated Sector”) so that it will not be used in future. This method avoids user data being corrupted and means the disk continues to be fully operational despite a very minor flaw.

Are Reallocated Sectors a Problem?

In themselves, reallocated sectors are a sign your HDD is properly protecting your data. Ideally we would hope to never see them, but in practice they are quite common.

Reallocated sectors really become a big deal when they start to increase rapidly or reach a very high count (eg thousands) - that tends to be an strong indicator of a disk that is about to fail. For example, a typical scenario is if the ReadyNAS reports a jump from 3 reallocated sectors to 103, and perhaps more the following day(s). (The ReadyNAS devices check for increased Reallocated Sectors once per day)

An increasing number or large count of reallocated sectors can also cause performance issues as the drive is repeatedly having to deal with these and perhaps finding new sectors that must be reallocated, so reduced performance in combination with an increased reallocated sector count may also be a strong indicator of pending failure.

What to do about Reallocated Sectors?

In my experience it is not unusual to see a small number of reallocated sectors discovered in the early operating life of a disk. As the disk is used for the first time and starts to write to the various locations it often finds a small number of sectors that need reallocating. There is no specific number of reallocated sectors that is considered “bad” - different people have different opinions - and as described all disks can have millions of sectors, so 2, 4 or 8 reallocated sectors is hardly a big deal.

The number of reallocated sectors that should cause concern becomes a judgement call, though some of the diagnostic tools provided by HDD manufacturers have thresholds of when reallocated sectors should be considered a problem that can vary per disk type - so this is one way to check if the disk should be replaced.

Note: The ReadyNAS FAQ lists the various HDD diagnostic tools available

My personal rule of thumb in the absence of any HDD manufacturer guidelines or disk checks:

Single digits? Ignore it - the disk is “bedding in”
Less than 100? Don’t worry about it too much but pay attention:
- Hearing funny noises from the drive?
- Has performance decreased?
- Have a spare disk at the ready.
More than 100 or see the number increase rapidly? Replace the drive
- Note that the disk is still operating properly and so there is no need to remove the failing disk before a replacement is obtained & available to be hot-swapped.
- Remember that 100 reallocated sectors is just a guideline; but it is common to see the number start to increase fairly rapidly once such a level is reached.

In summary, read the message sent by the ReadyNAS carefully and then make your own judgement call:

Growing SMART errors indicate a disk that may fail soon. If the errors continue to increase, you should be prepared to replace the disk.

Managing your Music on your ReadyNAS

2011-04-06T00:00:00+03:00

A primary use of home NAS devices is the central storage of, and access to, a media library. For many people a large portion of that library will be music, music that is also often being accessed by multiple applications: SqueezeboxServer, DLNA servers, iTunes etc.

It would of course be of great advantage if that music library could be managed directly on the NAS in a manner that all these other applications can access the same consistent metadata and cover art and I recently came across the application bliss, the aim of which is exactly this - a single web based tool for organising a music library. While it appears to be in the relatively early stages of development, with an initial early focus on Album Art management, it works very, very well and I’m keen to see how it develops.

I won’t cover the functionality of bliss here, there are full detailed instructions on the bliss website, but here are some instructions specifically for installing bliss on a ReadyNAS device.

Note: as bliss is a java based application it can only be supported on x86 based NAS such as the Pro and Ultra series. Sparc based devices like the Duo & NV+ are not - and will never be - supported

Installation

~~Bliss requires Java v1.6 for which there is currently no addon, but which can be installed manually - instructions are provided here~~

~~Once Java is installed, bliss may be installed and run via SSH - installation instructions can be found here: https://www.blisshq.com/install-linux.html~~

It can be run as a regular account provided that account has write access to the media (ie root access is not required) and so I would recommend installing bliss into its own share and being run via a regular user account

~~Once installed and running, bliss can be accessed at http://nas_ip_address:3220 - see screenshot above~~

Addon

(Update: 11 June, 2011) I have now written a ReadyNAS addon to simplify installation - details can be found at https://www.sphardy.com/web/bliss

Backing-up via Rsync to a local USB disk

2011-04-05T00:00:00+03:00

It is often desirable to use rsync to backup data due to the benefits it offers: true incremental backup, the ability to remove data from the backup that has been deleted in the source and rsync’s support for verification of the backed-up data are just some of the advantages.

Below is an example of the backup settings needed to enable rsync to be used to backup a NAS share to a locally attached USB drive.

In the above example all Home Shares are being backed-up to a USB drive called “USB_Shares” and stored in the subdirectory “home”. Other shares can be backed up similarly.

Notes:

It is equally valid to specify an rsync server source - using the name of the share to be backed-up in the folder dialog - and the USB drive share as the destination
Rsync must be enabled in Frontview » Services » Standard File Protocols
Rsync access is controlled via Frontview » Shares » Share Listing, and selecting the rsync option for the appropriate USB drive (or share if an rsync source is specified)

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Using Final Cut Pro X with ReadyNAS

Background

Archiving Projects

A Note on Working with Video Clips stored on your ReadyNAS

Apple Related Services not Visible over WiFi

Bliss Addon for ReadyNAS (x86)

Background

Installation & Usage

Setting Up a Website with PHP & MySQL

Installing PHP

Enabling MySQL

Managing MySQL Databases

Backing Up Your MySQL Database

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Migrating TimeMachine Backups to a ReadyNAS

My ReadyNAS Wishlist

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What are Reallocated Sectors?

What are Reallocated Sectors?

Are Reallocated Sectors a Problem?

What to do about Reallocated Sectors?

Managing your Music on your ReadyNAS

Backing-up via Rsync to a local USB disk