Snap 18000 Alternative OS ?

[davidmilne]

Hello,
I've bought a "working" Snap 18000 with 2GB ram and 8x256 sata 150s; it does appear to work in the loosest sense of the word in that it powers up but it appears to have no OS on it. The last message on the console is "failed to boot from all devices, System Hang !".

From reading your fine forum, it appears I am somewhat doomed (apologies to John Laurie), in that I have no image disks, and even if I had it would be hard to get it on.

Is there any other OS I can put on ? Options appear to be FreeNAS or, crossing to the dark side, Windows Storage Server. I'd rather stick to Linux OSs.

As this is just for home and its just a bit of fun, I'm not really up for spending a lot of money on licences I don't already have. Nor would it be on most of the time as it screams (predictably) like a sexually frustrated banshee that's just received a particularly large gas bill (or what one would imagine one to be like).

What would you do in my position ? Any help gratefully received.

Dave

[davidmilne]

Hmm, no responses in 8 days; somewhat disappointing, but for those who did take the time to read my question, thanks !

For any other traveller venturing along the road of Snappiness, I'd offer the advice to junk the useless piece of shit in the nearest and most welcoming landfill site and purchase the minimum amount of therapy that you require to forget the whole sorry experience.

You can't get the Guardian OS for free, and even if you could, you can't install it.
I found that neither FreeNAS, OpenFiler or Windows Home Server would recognise the disks.

[jaydee]

I have no experience with Snap Servers but are you sure the drives actually work? Maybe the drives are faulty and thats why they are not being reconized. As I said though I have no idea about Snaps... Good Luck.

[Max8]

Putting an 18000 in landfill is not very environmentally friendly.

Alot of businesses wipe their drives before they get rid of them... some just throw the carrier and drive which is stupid unless you are a gov or defence body etc...

If the unit is 100% fine all you need is to borrow a drive that has GOS on it to boot up from and allow the unit to auto-copy the os over to the other drives then replace the original drive.

I would love to lend you one but unfortunatly I am 16,800 odd klms away from you...

There are plenty of Snaps in the UK so even if you do play around with the other OS's you shoudl still attepet to source a GOS Disk to keep on hand so you can easily put GOS back on... many think that GOS is better than anything else out there...

Once you have it working keep a couple of imaged drives on hand as spares

Do a post with a new heading saying; "GOS SATA drive in the UK" it will get the attenton of UK members you may have to buy it or you maybe able to make other arrangements... you may even make a new friend!

[davidmilne]

Thanks, will try.
Was joking about the landfill site - I'd have taken it to the scrapyard and recycled it in actuality. They even pay you money !

[blue68f100]

You violate copyright laws if someone preloads a drive for you and you DO NOT HAVE A LEGAL COPY of the Version loaded.

[Max8]

Originally Posted by blue68f100

You violate copyright laws if someone preloads a drive for you and you DO NOT HAVE A LEGAL COPY of the Version loaded.

Too True Blue.... I was not thinking too clearly....

Do you think that Dave could sell it to a snap person in the UK who has full ownership of a Snap HDD to put in it... once fully rebuilt and up and running Dave could buy it back for 5 quid (or $5 USD) more..?

Or is that just my Convict Ancestry rising to the surface again?



Hey Blue, on that subject...

If I buy a snap with no OS and I take one of my drives with the OS to rebuild it is that OK?
And it is ok for me to sell a fully working Snap to anyone?

[davidmilne]

In the end, I put Ubuntu 10.4 server on it, with software raid and exposed it as NFS. For a lightly used home network, performance is acceptable ; 42 MB/sec read across the LAN. I wouldn't be surprised if my router was the limit there.
While doubtless less good than the GOS solution, a linux box does have some advantages as a backup server device for my existing mail server..

Thanks for your help guys. All in all, I'm pretty pleased ; didn't pay much more than 100 quid for it.

Dave

[blue68f100]

Originally Posted by Max8

Too True Blue.... I was not thinking too clearly....

Do you think that Dave could sell it to a snap person in the UK who has full ownership of a Snap HDD to put in it... once fully rebuilt and up and running Dave could buy it back for 5 quid (or $5 USD) more..?

Or is that just my Convict Ancestry rising to the surface again?



Hey Blue, on that subject...

If I buy a snap with no OS and I take one of my drives with the OS to rebuild it is that OK?
And it is ok for me to sell a fully working Snap to anyone?

Copyright laws vary from country to country. But Normally if you sell a working unit the OS License is transferred to the new owner. So you can not use that License on another unit unless it's a multi-License. Now we are going to a gray area. These units are shipped from the factory with OS installed and working. They (mfg) also supply you with a CD copy of the OS. Most of the 4500 were shipped with v3 GOS, don't know what 18000 were shipped with. Any version after that was an upgrade. It could have been a version that was purchased and downloaded from the Overland. So their is no CD for the up graded OS. In this case, the OS is still tied to the unit, service agreement. So a sell the working unit, transfers the OS to the new owner. But in this case you may not get the gsu file. If you sell a unit without the OS, the original owner retains it and may be install on another machine. Remember, 1 License required per/server.

If I buy a snap with no OS and I take one of my drives with the OS to rebuild it is that OK?

By Law you are required to purchase a new License. This is where Overland is taking a loss since they will not sell the License without a service agreement. And requiring them to certify EOL hardware equipment soundness. They should just sell the GOS with No Support for home users. Even if it fails Overland test it still may function flawlessly for home use. Home users normally dot push units as businesses do.

I hope this helps muddy the waters some more.

In some countries, the os stays with the hardware if originally shipped with one. Just like Microsoft 1/pc. Now some server software requires a License for every user.

Disclamer, I'm No Lawyer but you can read the License agreement