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Unread 01-28-2005, 03:24 PM   #435
gizmo911uk
Cooling Neophyte
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: northen ireland
Posts: 1
Default Snap 1000 Server Upgrade Howto

Hi, Sorry if this is of no relevance of all but i got this when i bought my snap 1000 server last year, i followed these instructions with a 120gb hdd. great stuff.

Quote:
What I Used:
--------------
-Snap Server series, software version 3.4.803 (latest available as of May, 2003)
-Generic/Noname Intel box w/ 2 IDE busses
-Knoppix 3.2 CD
-Screwdriver (Philips)
-Ide cable which will support 2 drives
-80GB Western Digital 7200rpm drive bought from Office Depot (ATA/100)

What Didn't Work:
------------------------
-Ghost... It doesn't understand the weird Snap partitions and won't clone the disk.
-80GB Maxtor Drive (ATA/133) For some reason, the Snap server didn't like the ATA133 drive, so get an ATA100...

What Did:
--------------
-Update your snap server to 3.4.803 by visiting http://snapappliance.com/ and downloading the patch. To be honest, I don't know if you NEED to be at this version, but it's what I did, and I was successful.

-Back up all data from your SnapServer.

-No, really, back up all your data. When this process completes, you'll have a "clean" (no shares, no files, etc) SnapServer.

-DELETE all data from your SnapServer, and all users, and all shares. We want this server very "stock" before the disk swap.

-Get config info on your drive by visiting http://whatever-you-named-your-server/config/debug (hereafter, this will be called the debug menu) and typing the command "config devices info" and you should see something similar to this:

Quote:
06/20/2003 11:11:26 Command: config devices info

Logical Device: 10006 Position: 0 JBOD Size (KB): 32296 Free (KB): 32168 Private Mounted
Label:Private Contains system files only
Unique Id: 0x0141DE4D1C2F5FDD Mount: /priv Index: 12 Order: 0
Partition: 10006 Physical: 10007 FS Size (KB): 32768 Starting Blk: 515 Private
Physical: 10007 Drive Slot: 0 IDE Size (KB): 78150656 Fixed

Logical Device: 10000 Position: 1 JBOD Size (KB): 76627200 Free (KB): 59689808 Public Mounted
Label:Drive1 Single disk
Unique Id: 0x0141DE4D1C2F5FDD Mount: /0 Index: 0 Order: 1
Partition: 10000 Physical: 10007 FS Size (KB): 77689576 Starting Blk: 57507 Public
Physical: 10007 Drive Slot: 0 IDE Size (KB): 78150656 Fixed


-Note the logical device number for your /0 mount point. This is where all your user data goes, and it's the partition that we'll reformat later. On all the Snap drives I've seen, this number is 10000, but I'm just telling you to check it to be sure... I printed a copy for reference before I shut my Snap drive down, but whatever floats your boat. It's your funeral!

-Issue the command "power off" in the debug menu, and wait for your Snap server to shut down cleanly.

-Open your snap server and remove the IDE drive. If this step scares you, you should not attempt this modification. Not to be rude, but if you can't figure out how to get the case open and remove the drive, you have no business trying this! Of course, opening the case voids your warranty, so just be aware of that.

-Note the jumper configuration on your snap server. Mine was in "master" mode, but I've seen another user's in "cable select" mode, so your mileage may vary. Just be sure you know what mode it was in inside the server so you can set the new drive to the same mode.

-Remove any current hard drives in the Intel/Linux box if you want to be safe, cause you won't need them during this upgrade, then Install both hard drives on a single channel in your Intel/Linux box. Personally, I made the Snap drive Master and the new drive Slave, but whatever makes you happy. On the second IDE channel in the Linux box should be an IDE CDROM with a copy of the Knoppix 3.2 Linux ISO file, so you can boot to linux without touching either of the hard drives in your system.

-Check your CMOS settings and make sure the system recognizes both drives before you move on.

-Now, boot to linux, baby!

-As you boot, Linux will detect the IDE drives in your system, and you want to make sure you know which drive is hda and which is hdb, etc. If it scrolls by too fast, don't worry you can look it up once the system boots. At the shell prompt in Knoppix, enter the following command:

Quote:
$ dmesg | grep hd
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
hda: MAXTOR 6L080L4, ATA DISK drive
hdb: QUANTUM FIREBALLlct20 40, ATA DISK drive
hdc: TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-C2502, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: 156355584 sectors (80054 MB) w/1819KiB Cache, CHS=9732/255/63
hdb: 78177792 sectors (40027 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=77557/16/63
ide-cd: passing drive hdc to ide-scsi emulation.
hda: hda1
hdb: unknown partition table


-You will see the banners for HDA and HDB assuming both drives are recognized. If you don't see an HDA and HDB, reconfigure your jumpers and try again... It is VERY VERY VERY important that you know which is the OLD drive and which is the NEW drive, as the DD command we're going to use to clone the disk will be just as happy to clone your blank disk over your Snap disk as the other way around, and in that case, your Snap drive is dead and has to visit the factory.

-So, we can see in this example that HDB is my 40GB Snap drive (manufactured by Quantum) and HDA is my new 80GB Drive. (Manufactured by Maxtor) Notice that Linux doesn't understand the partition table on hdb, the snap drive. I don't know what weird brand of file system they use, but at least DD will copy it even though you can't mount it.

-If you're using Knoppix, issue the command "rootme" or if you're in some other linux, use "su -" to make yourself root, then as root, type the command: Code:
dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hda bs=1M


-This is a disk to disk copy (if=input file, of=output file, bs=block size to use, in Megs) of your old drive to your new one. THIS WILL TAKE A LONG TIME IF YOU LET IT! DD copies every block, even empty ones, but fortunately, you don't have to copy the whole disk. We're just after the partition table and the first 35 or so megs that comprise the Snap specific OS. The amount of time you need to let the DD run will vary by system, and if you have 13 hours to kill, you can let the whole thing copy, but there is really no need. Be aware that DD has no output till the end, so it won't look like anything is happening until it's done, or you hit CTRL-C, but you can watch your HDD lights and see that there's action.

-What I did was let the DD run for 5 minutes, then I hit CTRL-C to stop it. When you stop the command, it will tell you how much data it copied. My system was copying about 1MB/Minute, so I started the DD over again and let it go for about 40 minutes just to be safe and make sure I had all the Snap software partition copied.

-I then stopped the DD command with CTRL-C again, and saw that enough data had been copied, so I powered the Linux box off and put my new 80GB drive back in the Snap server.

-Set the jumpers on your ORIGINAL Snap drive back to default, and PUT THAT DRIVE ASIDE! If you screw up, you can always to back to that drive. If however, that drive is hosed, your Snap Server will be hosed because the OS is on the drive, not firmware on this server. (Dumb, Snap, inc... Really Dumb...)

-Now set the jumpers on your new drive to match whatever your original Snap drive was (mine was Master, remember) install the drive, and boot the server. The first boot will take a while before you can see the server administration page.

BE PATIENT.

-You will see the usual blinking lights on the front as the server powers on and realizes that there is an error on the data partition. The disk will grind a lot at this point, but after about 5-7 minutes (on my system) the System light (leftmost green LED on the front of the server) will begin flashing about once a second. At this point, you should be able to launch web browser and see your Snap's web pages. If it doesn't come up right away, give it a few more minutes, for some reason it really takes a while for the Snap drive to figure out the new drive. If the light is blinking twice or more a second, it's still working on the drive. Eventually though, it will go to a single blink and you are ready to go to the next step.

-Log in to the server's web console as Administrator and go back to the debug menu. Issue the command:
Code:
config devices format 10000 /reinit

and the server will tell you it will reformat and check the partition at next startup.

-In the debug menu, issue the command
Code:
reboot

and let the server reboot.

-On this startup, the drive will grind for a very long time (mine took 10-15 minutes) as it formats and does a fsck on the new drive. When it finally quits grinding, you'll see the single blink system LED again, and the web console should be ready.

-Log back in to the web console and click "Disk Utilities" then "View Disk Status" and you should see a shiny, happy, 80GB partition.

-Reconfigure your shares and restore your data, and enjoy the new hotness of your 80GB Snap server!
Also i have only tried this today as i am running out of space 120gb hdd is gettin full, it is not possible to have a drive over 120gb as with the ata or somethin, anyway i took my snap server apart again and changed the ide cable in the server with one that had 2 ide connectors i added a second hdd as a slave (a 20gb with a windows os one that i took out of a scrap pc) i also used a scrappy pc to power the second hdd, only as a temporary measure to see if it worked. I then switched on the scrappy pc and went into the bios and left it there, then i switched on the snap server it booted and formated the second hdd automatically. After that was complete i went to view the disk status and there it was share 1 and share 2, this also reported in network neighbourhood where i had share 1 and share 2. My plan now is to get a second 120gb hdd giving me 240gb in total i will though have to build my own case as the 2 hdd will not fit in the 1 case, another thing is the power, am not sure if the on board power supply will power 2 hdd's, but am sure i could bodge somethin together if not.

Anyways i hope this is of some use to someone.
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