New with Alt-F !

[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

Hello all!

I have just resurrected an old D-Link DNS-323-A1 by installing Alt-F.

First off, a huge "THANK YOU!!!" to the developer(s), you have my RESPECT, this ancient piece of hardware is alive again thanks to you!!!

I am soon going to post some data (photos, etc.) with the configuration I chose based on my limited knowledge. I wanted to play it safe and see what happens; so far so good!

I was wondering if whenever anyone has some free time, comment on my choices and chime in with your suggestions/improvements.

Also, other that this forum is there (anywhere, online, etc.) any documentation kind of like a "User Manual" but OTHER than the three links posted at the top of this forum (e.g. FAQ, Wiki, 'THIS IMPORTANTE POST') I've already been there.

In a nutshell, I am using two 3TB Western Digital HDs, in a RAID-1 config, EXT2 filesystem, the default 'Users" share with a folder structure for 4 users (one is the Admin with higher permissions).

I struggled at first to figure out how the samba shares work plus what and to whom permissions I should assign, but eventually I (think) I figured it out. Basically the Admin has full RW access to everything, and each of the other 3 users has full access to their own folder but no access at all to any of the others. There are of course the two default Public folders one RW and on RO.

I am on a decent (but aging) gigabit home network achieving about 40 MBps (~320Mbps) RW speeds from host to host. Could have been better but the H/W is about 10 y.o. I have also enabled a (low) 4088 jumbo frame because that was the common value among the 4 NICs on our PCs and the existing 2 network switches.

I am currently doing a filesystem check because after setting everything up last night, I came this morning and my box had both orange LEDs solid on and I couldn't figure out why?! I then noticed in the status page that under filesystem maintenance there was a red asterisk under the 'dirty' column and just to be safe I decided to run a test. I have not loaded critical files yet but the "checking" takes for ever.

I am posting my status page and please let me know if you need anything else.

I appreciate very much your time and thank you so much again!

PS:

i) How do I fix my browser complaining that my connection to the box is not (https://) secure?

ii) Is there any way to make the "auto-refresh" on the status page permanent?

[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

I am happy to report my DNS323 with Alt-F is going strong!

Not the fastest box out there but it is perfect for backing up my main backup in my home office network (yes my backup strategy involves backing up my backups). I was hoping for someone to jump in and possibly offer suggestion(s) on my setup but -again- so far I have not encountered any major issues (e.g. that I couldn't figure out by myself) but I am overall happy as it is.

I will list two questions though that I have not being able to answer, in case someone knows and can point me to the proper solution.

1. Sometimes I log into the box for administrative purposes and I see a message that settings have changed and I should save the configuration. But I am sure I did not change any settings and I always make sure every time I change something to save my config. So, is it possible that something can automatically change thus prompting the "save" message even though I did not touch the box?

2. I have about of 1 TB bulk data (bulk=unsorted) that, now that I have enough space on my DND323, I would like to "dump" somewhere in the box and sort out at my leisure. I do not want to lose any of this data as I do not really know what it is, it must be old family videos, photos, etc., from when my kids where at school, now they are both in College. So I am talking mostly mementos not business, etc, related stuff. So, if I connect this HD directly in the USB port in back of the DND323, what will happen? The file system is one big NTFS partition. Will it be visible and accessible from Windows with a letter OR once connected to my existing RAID-1 Ext2 Linux partition it will be auto-formatted and incorporated as "spare" into the RAID array? I certainly do NOT want to lose all this data out of ...stupidity.

Thanks for taking the time to read and -hopefully- provide your answers to my questions.

Thanks!  

[Hell Fish]

Hey there!

On Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 01:00:23 UTC+1 dimi...@gmail.com wrote:

I am happy to report my DNS323 with Alt-F is going strong!

Not the fastest box out there but it is perfect for backing up my main backup in my home office network (yes my backup strategy involves backing up my backups). I was hoping for someone to jump in and possibly offer suggestion(s) on my setup but -again- so far I have not encountered any major issues (e.g. that I couldn't figure out by myself) but I am overall happy as it is.

I will list two questions though that I have not being able to answer, in case someone knows and can point me to the proper solution.

1. Sometimes I log into the box for administrative purposes and I see a message that settings have changed and I should save the configuration. But I am sure I did not change any settings and I always make sure every time I change something to save my config. So, is it possible that something can automatically change thus prompting the "save" message even though I did not touch the box?

Hovering over that message should tell you which config files are affected, afair it's usually some reoccurring about ntp/time adjust and normal

 

2. I have about of 1 TB bulk data (bulk=unsorted) that, now that I have enough space on my DND323, I would like to "dump" somewhere in the box and sort out at my leisure. I do not want to lose any of this data as I do not really know what it is, it must be old family videos, photos, etc., from when my kids where at school, now they are both in College. So I am talking mostly mementos not business, etc, related stuff. So, if I connect this HD directly in the USB port in back of the DND323, what will happen? The file system is one big NTFS partition. Will it be visible and accessible from Windows with a letter OR once connected to my existing RAID-1 Ext2 Linux partition it will be auto-formatted and incorporated as "spare" into the RAID array? I certainly do NOT want to lose all this data out of ...stupidity.

There is little to no automatic stuff happening, this should be the gist of it:

https://groups.google.com/g/alt-f/c/uojyM5EXKo4/m/-ZCH93ZtBQAJ

you can make it visible, nothing will be formatted by itself

[Alexander Holzinger]

Hi,

I just wanted to let you know that I am running something similar for – I even can't recall exactly – quite some years now.

My Synology NAS is backing up everything via HyperBackup on my good old DNS-323.

DNS-323-A1 with Alt-F

2 x TOSHIBA HDWD260 6TB

Raid-1 Ext4

USB-Stick 4GB Ext4 on the USB port with Alt-F packages (I did put the Alt-F packages on the USB stick in hope that the HDDs would spin down more often – power saving set to medium. I am not sure if I gain anything out of this strategy, but all in all the system is running and the old USB stick has a purpose.)

As you already mentioned, it's not fast, but once the initial backup is done, scheduled incremental backups usually don't take that long (except if there are many new big files).

I never had any real issues with this setup.

Best wishes,

Alex

[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

Hello all, does anybody know where I can read what the 4 LEDs do on the front cover of the DNS-323 and how are they supposed to function? Ok, I understand the top blue one is for power and the bottom for network and that the two amber ones left and right are to indicate (something) with the drives. But sometimes they are all lit up at the same time and blinking in different patterns. Is the box trying to tell me something?! I have a RAID-1 and so far I have not had the need to repair it. So when  they light up like a ...Xmas Tree, I have no clue what to do other than access the status page and see if I can figure anything out. Btw, with the D-Link firmware the amber LEDs never functioned; I thought they had burned out. Apparently, they're still fine. So who can tell me what all this blinking is supposed to mean? Thanks!

[Joao Cardoso]

Read the "About LEDs and buttons" on the Alt-F wiki.

The blue LEDs other then the power LED represent disk activity and are not controlled by Alt-F.

The orange led light may leak to the blue LEDs on the DNS-323.

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[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

Joao thank you for the quick reply, I now got a better idea about buttons and LEDs, it appears that what I currently see on my box is not specifically covered in the wiki but again mine is the A1 version of the DNS-323. Not a big deal so no worries. What I really enjoyed/appreciated reading is how to use the front button and the reset (back) button to perform different functions. So far so good; I am so happy with my resurrected D-Link box, it functions fine in an important role in my home network: backup of the backups! Needless to say I am grateful to you for all the great work. Regards, thank you!

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[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

Hello again! I'm going to run a few questions by you all, in case anyone has had any similar experience. No rush, no urgency, just looking for some casual conversation :)

1. I did read about how the LEDs should behave and (for the most part) my D-Link DNS-323 is doing things NOT covered in the wiki:

i) the Yellow LEDs both flash, alternating, then there is a small pause and then all over again. Basically, the right yellow led blinks once then within 1 sec the left yellow led blinks again, then nothing for 2 seconds and then it repeats.

ii) only the right OR only the left yellow led binks every 2 seconds with no pause in between. I understand yellow leds indicate disk related issues, so when I see yellow led activity I immediately check the status of my box but I found all was well !? I have no idea why? When I first installed my disks and created the RAID-1 and filesystem, I had noticed both leds were constantly ON but I attributed that to the RAID-1 being build. After I transferred a bunch of data (~2.5TB) I also did a full filesystem check which completed successfully. Since then I've had no issues with the box except for the yellow leds activity; I have no clue what it's trying to tell me.

2. Speed wise I average ~60 Mb/s (write) and ~150 Mb/s (read). This is obviously very slow for today's standards but let's not forget the DNS-323 is built with almost 20 years old hardware. But for what I am using it (making an overnight copy of new and changed files of my back up) is performing fine and I never woke up in the morning to find it still transferring data; so it works fine for its intended use. My question is though:

What would be the parameters I could tweak for -perhaps- a slightly better performance. I am using Ext2, with RAID-1, there is only one shared network folder and in there a few folders mimicking the structure of my main backup drive. I have allowed the rest of my family (3 more users) to have their own folder but -again- it is mostly for archival, not dynamic everyday use. Even myself, I do not use the box almost at all, except for some minor maintenance, it is mostly my home network server that pushes the backup of the backup out every night. So there is really minimal use of the box, and I'm wondering if there is anything I have initially setup/configured wrong, resulting in lower than nominal speed.

Thank you for taking the time to read and hopefully send your feedback.        

[João Cardoso]

On Monday, March 4, 2024 at 5:04:22 PM UTC dimi...@gmail.com wrote:

Hello again! I'm going to run a few questions by you all, in case anyone has had any similar experience. No rush, no urgency, just looking for some casual conversation :)

1. I did read about how the LEDs should behave and (for the most part) my D-Link DNS-323 is doing things NOT covered in the wiki:

 

You are observing "disk standby" notifications. As the "about leds and buttons" wiki says:

  "-When a disk spins-down, the corresponding amber led start flashing, with a very short on time and a very long off time."

The on time is about 0.2 sec, and the off time 2sec.

As rarely both disks go to standby at the same time it might look the leds are alternating -- they are not. Also, if only one disk goes into standby, only the corresponding led is blinking.

i) the Yellow LEDs both flash, alternating, then there is a small pause and then all over again. Basically, the right yellow led blinks once then within 1 sec the left yellow led blinks again, then nothing for 2 seconds and then it repeats.

ii) only the right OR only the left yellow led binks every 2 seconds with no pause in between. I understand yellow leds indicate disk related issues, so when I see yellow led activity I immediately check the status of my box but I found all was well !? I have no idea why? When I first installed my disks and created the RAID-1 and filesystem, I had noticed both leds were constantly ON but I attributed that to the RAID-1 being build. After I transferred a bunch of data (~2.5TB) I also did a full filesystem check which completed successfully. Since then I've had no issues with the box except for the yellow leds activity; I have no clue what it's trying to tell me.

2. Speed wise I average ~60 Mb/s (write) and ~150 Mb/s (read). This is obviously very slow for today's standards but let's not forget the DNS-323 is built with almost 20 years old hardware. But for what I am using it (making an overnight copy of new and changed files of my back up) is performing fine and I never woke up in the morning to find it still transferring data; so it works fine for its intended use. My question is though:

What would be the parameters I could tweak for -perhaps- a slightly better performance.

 

There are no silver bullets/magic recipes for that. Search the web for samba 3.6  performance and experiment yourself. I think your figures are quite common,

I get 15MB/s reading from a dns-323-rev-B1 using samba4 (not available for Alt-F, but you can instal optware, which has it)

I am using Ext2, with RAID-1,

I would advise against using ext2 on large disks except if you have a UPS. ext2 is not journaled, making fsck very slow.

Use ext4. If you don't have valuable data on the disks, just reformat the partition as ext4 (and lose all data); if there is valuable data on the disks, convert ext2 to ext4, but that is a very lengthy procedure, as two fsck have to be performed. Both operations are available under Disk->Filesystems.

[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

Joao, thanks for the feedback!

I did read the section about buttons and LEDs apparently I missed the section you highlighted. Good to know the LED activity observing is simply information and not an alert about disc or rate degradation.

Regarding EXT2 I do have the box connected to a UPS so for now I'm not worried; I do intend to convert to ext4 at some point,  I have two 3 TB discs configured as Raid-1 which currently is at 50% full. How long do you think it will take if I started a conversion?!

I'm going to ask you one more very quick question in case you see my message today:

In the status page under 'mounted file systems' there is a red asterisk under 'dirty'. I'm assuming that this indicates that the file system is NOT dirty, am I correct?!

Thanks again for everything!

--

Dimitrios Panagiotidis

773-744-7717

Dimi...@gMail.com

[Joao Cardoso]

On Sun, 10 Mar 2024, 19:55 Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis, <dimi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Joao, thanks for the feedback!

I did read the section about buttons and LEDs apparently I missed the section you highlighted. Good to know the LED activity observing is simply information and not an alert about disc or rate degradation.

Regarding EXT2 I do have the box connected to a UPS so for now I'm not worried; I do intend to convert to ext4 at some point,  I have two 3 TB discs configured as Raid-1 which currently is at 50% full. How long do you think it will take if I started a conversion?!

Tens of hours? Haven't you performed a fsck  ( Disk > Filesystem > check) before? Multiply by 2 or 3.

I'm going to ask you one more very quick question in case you see my message today:

In the status page under 'mounted file systems' there is a red asterisk under 'dirty'. I'm assuming that this indicates that the file system is NOT dirty, am I correct?!

No, it's dirty as soon as it is mounted.

That's ok. It is marked dirty in case a power cut occurs; at power recovery as it is marked dirty a fsck will happen.

Thanks again for everything!

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Dimitrios Panagiotidis

773-744-7717

Dimi...@gMail.com

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[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

Joao -

 

Wow this is all very interesting! Yes I've performed a file system check but that was in the very very beginning before any files where copied into the box. I don't remember exactly how many hours but it was like overnight, around 10 hours or less. Like I said I use a UPS so I'll leave it as ext2 for now.

Thank you very much!

--

Dimitri

[Dimitrios G. Panagiotidis]

Can anyone please help me figure out how to:

1) Connect to Alt-F using HTTPS so that the browser is not complaining.

2) How to SAFELY enable quotas (e.g. without the problems Stefan encountered).

and,

3) I'm accessing the box by using this share: \\DNS323\NAS. All my folders and subfolders

are then under the \NAS\ folder each with appropriate user permissions.

There are some log files and a "lost" folder in the same path, obviously created by Alt-F.

Is there anyway to make these files/folders 'hidden' without adversely interfering with Alt-F's operation?

And if yes, how do I do that: Using CMD from Windows, Telnet into the box, or what?

I tried via the Windows explorer interface but I get this error (see attached)

but I know I'm using an account with full permissions to that folder. 

Thank you!