Login

JD1 · 05-Jan-2020, 10:30 AM

I have installed Snakeoil 1.18 OS on a small SATA SSD and copied one song to the created Music folder that sits on that SSD as a test. Now I'm trying to add a second (larger) SSD for my music library (Ideally exFAT).

Initially, I formatted the SSD to exFAT on my Mac, loaded music and then plugged it into my Snakeoil server. From Terminal I can see the SSD is recognised by Linux to some extent but from the Library tab I am unable to mount it.

I read on another thread about the Mac/Windows/Linux incompatibility of exFAT and tried fsck.exfat /dev/sdb1 but that was unsuccessful. I then googled various linux commands and believe I reformatted the SSD from within Snakeoil via Terminal and even then mounted it (also via Terminal). It then appeared as a mount point in the Library tab but I couldn't work out how to copy music to it. From my Mac, I still only saw the music folder named "Music" that sits on the small SSD. Looks like I also failed some command to make sure the new mount point comes up at reboot since it disappeared.

Any help appreciated and please include the basics of mounting any drive to a location that I can find on the network from my Mac (Samba?). Apart from exFAT issue, I think I'm lacking knowledge in this area. I have never tried to use 2 SSDs before. Not even sure what to name and where to put the 2nd mount point or whether I can delete the 1st.

Cheers,
JD

JD1 · 05-Jan-2020, 02:27 PM

OK, I've given up on exFAT. The only format that kinda works is VFAT. I have mounted the large SSD but cannot access it via Samba from my Mac so can't load any music.

Strangely, my OS SSD was assigned to /dev/sdb1 and my large SSD is /dev/sda1 mounted at media/music/sda1

I can access the music folder from my mac but don't have permission to access the sda1 folder inside it.

Can anyone help?

Cheers,
JD

JD1 · 05-Jan-2020, 08:17 PM

Managed to reformat SSD to ext4 from within Linux and now it shares automatically. Think I'll just go with that but if anyone gets exFAT working, please let us know. Being a Mac user with no Windows PC, I don't know of any easy way to format a disk as ext4 (or NTFS) so just loading a usable 2nd SSD, in any format, onto Snakeoil was surprisingly difficult. If exFAT would work, it would not only make that easy but I could load music from my Mac before installing the SSD onto Snakeoil...maybe. Wink

I may have missed something simple here. Happy to be educated.

Cheers
JD

JD1 · 11-Jan-2020, 01:10 PM

An update to my woes:
Both OS disk SSD and music SSD formatted with Ext4. Somehow I managed to get the OS disk as sda1 and the music disk as sdb1. Still there was a problem when I tried to copy music files via Samba. My Mac saw the 2TB music SSD as being only 50GB (size of OS disk). I got around that my plugging the music SSD directly into my Mac and copying files into it that way.

Now, one problem remains:
When I start up my Snakeoil server, it most often does not recognise both disks...but sometimes it does. It might recognise only OS disk or only Music disk
in BIOS it will typically not show either disk as a boot option and may or may not show one or the other disk as an attached SATA drive. However, if I press F12 during start up, it will typically show both disks as options for booting from...and I can start it that way.

So BIOS sees the disks in some respects but not in others and is not sure where to boot from. This is despite setting OS disk as Boot Option 1 and having no USB drives connected. The next time I boot into BIOS, the Boot Option menu is likely not even accessible as that part of BIOS does not see any drives at all.

Any suggetions?

Cheers,
JD

***agent_kith*** · 11-Jan-2020, 02:49 PM

(11-Jan-2020, 01:10 PM)JD1 Wrote: An update to my woes:
Both OS disk SSD and music SSD formatted with Ext4. Somehow I managed to get the OS disk as sda1 and the music disk as sdb1. Still there was a problem when I tried to copy music files via Samba. My Mac saw the 2TB music SSD as being only 50GB (size of OS disk). I got around that my plugging the music SSD directly into my Mac and copying files into it that way.

With Samba it's always going to be a problem. It's seeing the size of the parent, not the disk itself. Hence if your parent (OS) is 2MB, but your disk is 2TB. Samba will always use the parent size 2 MB. And copying files < 2MB will fail.

To overcome this, leave the "mount path" empty, as such, your disk will be mounted straight, and that should give it the correct size of 2TB (as an example).

Alternatively, you can use the WebApp to copy files instead. This should have no size limitations.

(11-Jan-2020, 01:10 PM)JD1 Wrote: Now, one problem remains:
When I start up my Snakeoil server, it most often does not recognise both disks...but sometimes it does. It might recognise only OS disk or only Music disk
in BIOS it will typically not show either disk as a boot option and may or may not show one or the other disk as an attached SATA drive. However, if I press F12 during start up, it will typically show both disks as options for booting from...and I can start it that way.

Are these USB sticks, or mounted as SATA?

(11-Jan-2020, 01:10 PM)JD1 Wrote: So BIOS sees the disks in some respects but not in others and is not sure where to boot from. This is despite setting OS disk as Boot Option 1 and having no USB drives connected. The next time I boot into BIOS, the Boot Option menu is likely not even accessible as that part of BIOS does not see any drives at all.

Any suggetions?

I suspect somehow your system don't work with device lables (/dev/sda, or /dev/sdb). This somehow means your computer will detect your disks in a different order. To fix this requires you to use blkid (block ids). But not entirely sure why you can't use device labels.

Might be a good idea for me to TeamViewer in to change your system to block id in the OS, and bypass the "library" tab in the WebApp altogether. That way it'll always work.

JD1 · 12-Jan-2020, 10:20 AM

(11-Jan-2020, 02:49 PM)agent_kith Wrote:
(11-Jan-2020, 01:10 PM)JD1 Wrote:
I suspect somehow your system don't work with device lables (/dev/sda, or /dev/sdb). This somehow means your computer will detect your disks in a different order. To fix this requires you to use blkid (block ids). But not entirely sure why you can't use device labels.

Might be a good idea for me to TeamViewer in to change your system to block id in the OS, and bypass the "library" tab in the WebApp altogether. That way it'll always work.

Thanks AK. I'll be in touch during the week to set up a TeamViewer session at a time of your choosing. Today, I'm off for some live music Cool

JD1 · 09-Dec-2020, 03:42 PM

@agent_kith I revisited the exFAT issue and unfortunately, I don't have a Windows computer to try that potential solution https://www.snakeoil-os.net/forums/Threa...ight=exfat

This time around, the music-only exFAT formatted SSD that I couldn't get to mount on Snakeoil was not formatted by me. Moreover, it is the same one that I used without issue in the same sever when it was running Volumio.

My solution was simply to replace it with an EXT4 SSD that I had on hand...so I'm not urgently seeking a fix. Just mentioning it in case I can assist you in diagnosing the problem by putting the exFAT SSD back in and running any ssh commands you suggest.

Cheers,
JD

***agent_kith*** · 10-Dec-2020, 09:53 AM

(09-Dec-2020, 03:42 PM)JD1 Wrote: @agent_kith I revisited the exFAT issue and unfortunately, I don't have a Windows computer to try that potential solution https://www.snakeoil-os.net/forums/Threa...ight=exfat

This time around, the music-only exFAT formatted SSD that I couldn't get to mount on Snakeoil was not formatted by me. Moreover, it is the same one that I used without issue in the same sever when it was running Volumio.

My solution was simply to replace it with an EXT4 SSD that I had on hand...so I'm not urgently seeking a fix. Just mentioning it in case I can assist you in diagnosing the problem by putting the exFAT SSD back in and running any ssh commands you suggest.

Cheers,
JD

Can you generate a diagnostic file after Snakeoil failed to mount the SSD? Hopefully some error messages are captured in there.

***agent_kith*** · 10-Dec-2020, 05:53 PM

Heh.. Looks like a stupid bug on my end.. Even when it's exFAT, it seems to still be saved as ext4.. :/ I'll see if I can find a way to fix that.. Will probably be busy over the next 3 days, will be back on the Snakeoil train next week and I'll see if I can fix that bug and release a quick 1.1.x (with backup option) to make a future transition easier.