PiNAS: The Trials Begin

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The record begins today, but the trials began some time ago.

Objective: an always-on NAS/server/filestore for local- & wide-area retrieval of music, video, and possibly other important files.

As this is to be permanently powered-up, power consumption needs to be low; this excludes a ‘big’ PC as their power draw is substantial over time. This is a shame, as they are easy to work on, reliable, easy to add storage to, and, very importantly, familiar to me.

The obvious solution to this dilemma is to use a Raspberry Pi: I have several lying around, and they consume very little power, even with a separate power supply in use for multiple HDDs.

The problem with this potential solution is the unfamiliarity with RPi (and other GNU/Linux) operating systems. In addition, previous experience & attempts at working on & with RPis has left me apprehensive at trying anything with them. They are to hand, however, and the monetary cost of attempting a PiNAS is zero. I have time at my disposal, so, no matter how long it takes, the time cost is irrelevant. (FORESHADOWING)

Let’s cut the first, and long, part of the story short: I googled how to set up RAID on a RPi and turned up this:

 https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-nas 

(stricken-through because it DOES NOT WORK)

I followed the instructions, and at the point where it says: “Reboot and you should have /mnt/raid1 ready to go.” the system simply does not start up and furnishes me with one of the wonderful error messages which Linus is so good at providing.

The first time this happened, my assumption was that I must have made a mistake; there are, afterall, lots of unfamiliar terminal commands to input.

So I tried again: same result.

And again.

(At some point after the first or second failure I probably tried a different USB hub.)

Still not working, and I was perpetually getting the classic low power warning.

It is important to note that at this point I still thought that I was the problem: I must have not followed the instructions closely enough, or I must be underpowering my Pi.

Right, let’s change the setup a bit: I moved the project from a RPi3 to a RPi4 and used a dedicated PSU for the Pi, rather than powering the Pi & three HDDs from a single powered hub.

I set it all up and followed, again, the MagPi instructions.

Same error message at the same point when rebooting.

Probably too late, I finally realised that something must be fundamentally wrong with the instructions, so ditched them.

Like a ZARKING IDIOT, I decided to post on Reddit asking for help. I’d sworn off Reddit a few months ago because it’s full of judgemental and reactionary muppets who read what they want to hear, rather than what is written. So, despite myself, I tried a post:

PiNAS - Has anyone else tried

following the MagPi instructions

for setting one up?

https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-nas

I have tried (to my shame...) to follow these instructions four (4...) times on a RPi3

and RPi4 and after repeatedly blaming myself for not following the instructions

properly, have to conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with

the procedure as written.

The error text is:

(please ignore me unplugging HDDs at the end there)

"You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs,

"systemctl reboot" to reboot, "system ctl default" or "exit" to boot into default mode.

"Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked. See sulogin(8) man page

for more details.

"Press Enter to continue."

[ENTER]

"Reloading system manager configuration

"Starting default.target"

(Error repeats, with no chance of logging in. Restarting the system gives the same result,

and the only way to fix this seems to be to reflash the SD card.)

My attempts on the RPi3 used a single powered hub to supply the Pi and three HDDs,

so I thought undervoltage might be the issue at first; however, on the RPi4 I

used two separate PSUs: one for the RPi (5V 3A) and a powered USB hub for the

three HDDs, so I'm pretty sure power isn't the problem in that case.

I've often encountered issues when following Linux instructions that are not recent:

the commands/repositories/links (sorry, I don't know all the terminology) seem to go

out-of-date sometimes. Is this the case here?

Has anyone else tried following these instructions? Had any luck...?

Thanks for reading.

The first reply (so far) says it’s undervoltage. Yeah, thanks for nothing,

you shite-for-brains.

Anyway, next I had a go at this:

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-set-up-raid-1-on-the-raspberry-pi/

which is, amusingly, titled: “How to Set up RAID-1 on the Raspberry Pi, the Easy Way”

This also failed due to some parts of the instructions being out of date (files/repositories/whatever no longer being in the places referred to in the instructions).

PLOT TWIST

 Found this:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/building-fastest-raspberry-pi-nas-sata-raid 

Jeff Geerling is someone I enjoy watching on youtube so I was ready to give his instructions the time of day.…even though his instructions are EXACTLY the same as the ‘failed’ MagPi instructions.

Ok, I thought, why not just follow it through AGAIN and watch it fail. Sod it; not doing anything better with my life.

I followed his words, but at the point where MagPi said to reboot, Jeff suggested a couple of commands to “watch the progress and status of your RAID array while it is being initialized”: 

See what it says?? Status: resyncing!! 2% complete!

Now, I don’t know for sure yet, because this resyncing business looks like it’s gonna take a long time, but surely rebooting the Pi during resyncing can’t be good for it… Neither set of instructions mentions this, but…

I’m going to leave it on now to finish resyncing and then try a reboot. Hasta mañana.