ch3snas

Request for comments: CH3SNAS

I’ve 2 bugs submitted to the dev team about CH3SNAS:

‘ Clock drift ‘ ; this issue was not ‘reproduced’ by the dev. team. I need a clear description how the bug can be found and/or reproduced. They used for more than 10 days the command rtc -r and date to check the time and saw no issues. Please do not drop it in the comments but e-mail me.

NTP bug: it’s difficult to test, can someone try to give a more clear way to test like:

  • 1. exact time
  • 2. Nas display time with GMT+1 and no DST
  • 3. Nas display time with GMT+12 and EU DST
  • 4. NAS display time with GMT and No DST
  • 5. NAS dislay time with GMT and no EU DST

The more info the better. Please submit your help to my e-mail address.

 

and NTP bug

CH3SNAS with Squeezecenter / Squeezebox howto

Some persons asked me if it is possible to have SqueezeCenter running at the CH3SNAS

After long time writing: nope, it’s not possible we finally have a howto how the CH3SNAS can work easily (kuch) with SqueezeCenter 7.2

The correct installation you can find here, please notice the 4.2.3 section where the DBD::MYSQL package needs to be installed, you have to use the alternative compile option. the normal Perl Makefile.PL rule is not compiling on the CH3SNAS, you need the longer rule with alternative references to the libraries (libs).

When you follow this walktrough completely you have a working SqueezeCenter software server running at your CH3SNAS. A big thanks to Yannick for his great howto

note: you need to create a squeezecenter user on the CH3SNAS otherwise you cannot chown certain files.

CH3SNAS: 1.04RC6 firmware release

New updated firmware for CH3SNAS 1.04RC6

2 fixes in this release:

Set the time by using NTP or from Computer, but when restart the device the time is set back an hour.
Settings uses:
NTP Server: nl.pool.ntp.org
Time Zone: GMT +01:00
Daylight Saving Time: EU
Issue fixed

When using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 than we can create a new user, all is ok
but when modifying this user (new password) than: no username is shown which one is being edited,
when you manually enter a username the page will time-out (blank page)
Issue fixed

download here the 1.04 rc6 firmware
as always: this is a release candidate which can contain wierd things (like some things mentioned in the comments). Make sure when upgrading you have a backup!

CH3SNAS: status update

status update about 1.04RC5 firmware and reported bugs

1. After reboot, the time is 1 hour behind: can be reproduced and will be fixed now

2. Firefox cannot change password from user: can be reproduced and will be fixed now

3. HDD cannot be in standby: cannot be reproduced

4. Unicode part under review when mounting samba share with unicode characters (not displayed properly on cfullhdma, when using nfs no problem

CH3SNAS: 1.04RC5 firmware

After getting good feedback from various users and testing myself as well I was really unhappy with the way the UPnP server was integrated and causing issues with updates. And not to forget having issues with Playstation 3 and suddenly missing SRT support again (neat feature which is not available within many UPnP servers, so I could get some fame… (I already have cause we do have Kernel NFS ;-) ).

Today a new release for beta testers .. 1.04RC5.

What is extremely important is that after firmware upgrade you NEED to reset the CH3SNAS to factory defaults. If you do not do this than certain scripts will not be updated from firmware into flash.

  1. Fixed:

CH3SNAS firmware 1.04RC4

As it was the purpose to have the 1.04RC3 being released officially I’ve decided not to release it through the official channel. I have just received an important bugfix which was finished earlier than expected. So probably early next week this version will be released.

In this release only the following has been fixed:

  • The samba server time setting is not synchronized with FTP server and device web time setting.

This means that in certain conditions you could see time differences when uploading / copying files to the CH3SNAS. Download the 1.04RC4 here

Note: the PS3 issue is still under debugging. Playing a 7GB .ts media file can show the correct size, but it can only be played for 2 hours.

CH3SNAS: Firmware 1.04RC3

After listening to users of CH3SNAS I finally present you the 1.04RC3 which will be released on the official webpage soon as 1.04-0627 version

Release notes:

In this release we have fixed a number of issues needed to be fixed for an official release:

(this release is about to be released through the official channel as wel as official supported download)

  1. http://ch3snas/server.pem & http://ch3snas/etc/shadow can reveal information: fixed
  2. Certain UPnP Devices (Like PlayStation 3) could only browse but not play content: fixed
  3. Files > 2GB could not be played entirely: should be fixed
  4. Issue with mt-daapd when using bonjour tool: Partly fix: we only support to see the status. New features needed can be proposed and if useful, we can try to add.

Please reset your device to factory defaults after upgrading to have certain scripts work properly. Without resetting to factory defaults I cannot guarantee any option to work properly.

Download the 1.04RC3 file here.

Solving my NFS issue

Suddenly …. after hours of thinking, analyzing .. I’ve found it … Yeah …

If the DNS IP address within the CH3SNAS is equal to the gateway address it will NOT work (or sometimes work).

Your router will forward DNS stuff, so normally the IP address of the router can be given as DNS server .. but on NFS level it is causing issues.. No idea why ..

It took me a lot of patching and I needed a lot of settings to be changed but as well as here in my office as at home both parts are working the fullest now…

Phew.. Thanks for everyone commented… maybe maybe this is helpful for someone outthere ..

Trying to understand: CH3SNAS & NFS = Help needed !

I’ve written earlier a simple howto for users with a CH3SNAS to work with NFS. UNFS is a user space implementation of the NFSv3 protocol. This is working flawlessly on the CH3SNAS with various Linux PC’s I am running (CentOS, Debian, Linux Embedded device etc.. )

but for a VMware implementation I need the READDIRPLUS procedure which is not available in UNFS. So I need to run Kernel-NFS on the CH3SNAS

Fonz fun_plug is providing Kernel NFS (enabled in the CH3SNAS) and UNFS. Installation is easy and almost fool proof.

The issue is following: on all my linux boxes (CentOS, Debian etc.. ) I get following message:

mount: mount to NFS server ‘192.168.1.60’ failed: timed out (retrying).

  • rcpinfo -p 192.168.1.60 gives all correct info
  • showmount -e 192.168.1.60 gives all correct exports
  • rpcinfo -u 192.168.1.60 gives:

program 100005 version 1 ready and waiting
program 100005 version 2 ready and waiting
program 100005 version 3 ready and waiting

  • Showmount -a 192.168.1.60 gives the mount points I ‘tried’ to use:

All mount points on 192.168.1.60:
192.168.1.100:/mnt/HD_a2

and even syslogd gives on the NFS server (CH3SNAS):

Jun 12 18:33:07 DEVELOPMENT daemon.notice mountd[1868]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.100:615 for /mnt/HD_a2 (/mnt/HD_a2)

  • Portmap is running at server and client!!

I am totally not understanding why I get time-outs. I do not have a firewall, I do not use iptables. Today I tried in another environment the same: always the error:

mount: mount to NFS server ‘192.168.1.60’ failed: timed out (retrying).

suddenly here at home after about 20 minutes trying to mount the NFS share, the NFS server has been mounted on my local system. But when umounting and mounting again I have again same situation. In my work environment it was totally not possible (standard Debian setup and a CentOS configuration) to have the NFS share mounted. Although it is similar setup ..

So although al tools tells me that everything is correct: I am not getting any mount :-(

Is there anyone with enough NFS knowledge who can tell me why the NFS share is not mounted?