Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Chimpy]

The short answer is yes, he would need some form of VPN.

I have never used a commercial VPN provider, so I don't know if they have support for tunnels set up through a hardware device.

[Merusk]

PC mag is useful!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403388,00.asp

I'm pretty sure all of those just use a software client (similar to FortiNET) and the hardware is all on their end.

[MahrinSkel]

Anyone know about NAS servers as MySQL and PHP hosts? I am considering various NAS options, mostly at the low end of 'business grade' (price around $130-150). My best options appear to be either the "BUFFALO LinkStation Pro Duo" (outdated model, but the newer versions appear to have had the MySQL and PHP support removed until you get above the $200 price point) or the TerraMaster F2-NAS2, which is better hardware but from a foreign company with poor english support materials and less friendly firmware and interface.

Right now I am leaning towards the Buffalo, just because it would be easier to get it to do what I want (which includes being accessible from the internet as well as using as a torrent box when I am locked behind unfriendly firewalls). But I'm not sure even what other options might be available (I looked into Synology, but they appear to be completely out of my price range even in diskless form).

--Dave

[Chimpy]

Buffalo stuff in my experience is utter crap.

[MahrinSkel]

More looking offered up the Synology DS214se, which is the very bottom end of their offerings. It's rather anemic hardware compared to the other two, though. Or there's the QNAP TS-212P-US, another Chinese line I know nothing about, I think.

Theoretically the WD My Cloud EX2 is in the same range, but I have not generally been impressed with WD products beyond their core HDD lines. It certainly has a nice set of management apps to go with it, though (I don't need them, but this is really for someone else and if it doesn't need me to babysit it...).

--Dave

[Trippy]

I can recommend the Synology 215j if you want to spend the extra $50 though I haven't used MySQL or PHP on it.

[Trippy]

More looking offered up the Synology DS214se, which is the very bottom end of their offerings. It's rather anemic hardware compared to the other two, though. Or there's the QNAP TS-212P-US, another Chinese line I know nothing about, I think.

QNAP is Taiwanese and they make good stuff. More expensive than Synology, though.

[MahrinSkel]

QNAP is Taiwanese and they make good stuff. More expensive than Synology, though.

In a choice between the QNAP TS-231 ($190) and the Synology 215j ($200), which would you go for? Keep in mind, the primary function of this thing is supposed to be serving media on a home network, I'm trying to shoehorn some extra functions into it, but it needs to be able to do that job without a lot of care and feeding.

--Dave

[Trippy]

I would go with the Synology personally but they are very similar. QNAP makes better stuff at the higher end but Synology is as good or better at the lower end and the 215j probably has the higher throughput compared to the TS-231.

[MahrinSkel]

Will they both play nicely with WD Green 3TB's, or do I need to look at other drives? Part of why I was looking for diskless was that I already had those drives, which were in an old Dell box I was using for pretty much the same function (but it shit the bed if you were trying to stream two different movies at the same time).

--Dave

[Trippy]

The 215j does list a WD 3 TB green drive (WD30EZRX) as compatible but the TS-231 does not.

https://www.qnap.com/i/en/product_x_grade/product_intro.php?g_cat=1&II=155
https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility?search_by=products&category=hdds&p=1&product_bays=2&product_name=DS215j&filter_size=3TB

I use WD Reds in my Synologies (I have an older 213j too).

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, it appears that the Synology have an automatic script to detect and turn off the aggressive "sleep" on greens (they park the heads after even a very short period without reads/writes), essentially they don't let the drive park unless the whole system is being turned off. There are hacks to do the same thing on virtually anything, but the Synology does it the "right way", with directions to the drive controllers rather than reading/writing every few seconds whether it needs it or not.

So, it looks like the 215J is the plan. The QNAP had some other features that were nice (three USB 3.0 ports instead of one 3.0 and one 2.0, two RJ45 gigabit ports rather than just one, an eSATA connector), but not having to drop yet another $240+ on drives right away outweighs expansion features I'd probably never use. 3TB of storage (6GB if I drop to RAID0) ought to be enough for any practical use I have, if I need to add another set of drives a single 3.0 port will get the job done, and connecting it to multiple wired networks is something I'd probably never actually do.

For a home media server it's already ridiculous overkill, and for a development sandbox MySQL/PHP server it should do fine.  Thanks, without you I probably would have wound up going with the Buffalo out of sheer name recognition.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

That would have been a mistake.  As Chimpy said, they're fucking awful.  Also, Netgear NAS devices are currently all bugged to hell and delete all your shit.  Be warned the rest of you.

[Salamok]

I would go QNAP as it is the only NAS I have heard good things about from people I know but I also wouldn't attempt to run a webserver and/or database on a NAS.  It isn't that hard or expensive to build a small form factor Linux server.  The buffalos we have at work are the slowest pieces of shit ever.

[Chimpy]

Synology stuff works great and they are constantly updating their software.

Also, you could probably just use the free tier of AWS if all you want to do is have a sandbox for Php and MySQL.

[Merusk]

That would have been a mistake.  As Chimpy said, they're fucking awful.  Also, Netgear NAS devices are currently all bugged to hell and delete all your shit.  Be warned the rest of you.

Shit.. well glad I didn't power it up and do a firmware upgrade then. Thanks for the warning.

[Ironwood]

You may remember my post from a while back saying  'Oh, I seem to have lost terabytes of data from my NAS, time for a support call' with the follow up post 'Support People are dicks'.

Basically, the Netgears are meant to be able to handle and size of iSCSI disks.  What they don't tell you is that the latest firmware is bugged and can't calculate the size correctly.  So they let it fill up beyond where it can go to and then crash.  And, at that point, you lose all your data.  Like, All of it.  Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Anything.

We were using the NAS to store some Cloud Backup shit at the time, so it was something I was able to come back from, but only from the client point of view.  All the apps and data we'd been storing locally because 'hell, may as well put it there' was lost for Good.

I was not a happy Panda.

[Engels]

Happy friday? 

[Merusk]

Oh, was this a professional-grade device then? Mine's a consumer grade I use at home. Only 1TB, mirrored on both disks.


Awkward Segue:

I've encountered a very weird problem at work and I hope some of you actual network types might have some idea of WTF could be the problem.  There's an entire floor of the office who is having 'weird' issues on the project/ storage volume. If one user deletes/ creates or moves files, they will disappear/ show up/ be navigable on their machine, but not on anyone else's for minutes at a time.

I encountered this firsthand for the first time yesterday. Woman created a folder, pushed all her render textures to it and called me to say they were there for my inspection. I couldn't see the folder or the files and a refresh of Explorer didn't show them either. I have 2 PCs so I checked on the 2nd and it was the same situation until the 2nd refresh, when they showed themselves. They then also appeared on the Laptop I was originally on. Time to appearance was about 2 1/2 mins.

Any idea what the fuck might do this? It's only this single floor that has this issue, and it happens if they're on a deadline and saving/ pushing files around frequently almost like clockwork. Considering there's only ~25 people on this floor and the floor with 50+ people on it with deadlines every day I'm fairly certain it's not a write-speed problem on the project volume.  Those 50+ people push more data onto storage in an afternoon than the  25 do on deadline day.

Thoughts? Hints? Laughter?

[Trippy]

Does this help?

http://serverfault.com/questions/482174/slow-shared-folder-refresh-on-windows-7

[Merusk]

Possibly. I'll have to test on Monday, so thanks.  Seems odd it only affects folders made by this floor, though.

[MahrinSkel]

Just as an update, finally got the Synology DS215j up and running the other day. It serves it's primary function well, although I'm having issues getting DLNA to work properly that may be on the other side, when I browse to files in folder view it works fine.

The apps for Android work well, haven't tried on iOS yet. There are some management functions that don't work well or at all from the apps, but I can run everything from a PC web browser like a somewhat slow and chunky X Windows session, so no worries. It is a bit slow with downloading torrents, but that may be more externally caused, at least I can initiate them from anywhere, then download from the NAS over HTTP.

It's been pretty painless to set up so far. Haven't delved into the web server functions yet, I assume they'll be a little harder.

--Dave

Edit: The iOS apps work pretty much identically to the Android apps, suspect they're HTML5. The DS Video is very cool, Synology DSM tracks down IMDB info from the filenames and puts the proper cover image on them, automagically (it sometimes gets them wrong, for example the Rio cover image is a picture of Katy Perry). I have it set to index just the "kid movies" sub folder, which lets me dump her stuff in there, she can use the DS Video app to access all of them, and she sees movie-poster cover images instead of text on folders full of confusing file labels.

[Mandella]

Just as an update, finally got the Synology DS215j up and running the other day. It serves it's primary function well, although I'm having issues getting DLNA to work properly that may be on the other side, when I browse to files in folder view it works fine.

The apps for Android work well, haven't tried on iOS yet. There are some management functions that don't work well or at all from the apps, but I can run everything from a PC web browser like a somewhat slow and chunky X Windows session, so no worries. It is a bit slow with downloading torrents, but that may be more externally caused, at least I can initiate them from anywhere, then download from the NAS over HTTP.

It's been pretty painless to set up so far. Haven't delved into the web server functions yet, I assume they'll be a little harder.

--Dave

Edit: The iOS apps work pretty much identically to the Android apps, suspect they're HTML5. The DS Video is very cool, Synology DSM tracks down IMDB info from the filenames and puts the proper cover image on them, automagically (it sometimes gets them wrong, for example the Rio cover image is a picture of Katy Perry). I have it set to index just the "kid movies" sub folder, which lets me dump her stuff in there, she can use the DS Video app to access all of them, and she sees movie-poster cover images instead of text on folders full of confusing file labels.

Suddenly I am no longer satisfied with my ten year old Toshiba tablet running Kode and plugged into an external USB drive...

[MahrinSkel]

Suddenly I am no longer satisfied with my ten year old Toshiba tablet running Kode and plugged into an external USB drive...

You shouldn't be. Having potentially thousands of movies accessible from anywhere in the world (although my outbound bandwidth might get swamped serving up more than one or two at a time), with an interface that literally a child can use easily (admittedly, one that has had her own tablet since her 4th birthday), and for the most part it all just *works*. They have their own DDNS solution (that automatically detects when you are on the local network and routes you by local net IP if possible), all of their apps transparently use it, and everything pretty much just *works*, no fuss no muss. My DLNA issues (not being able to jump around or pause the videos) turned out to be client related, it automatically set the drives up as RAID1, once I registered the product and set my "QuickConnect" alias, it simply *works* as a NAS and home media server, including over the internet. On *anything*, from her iPod Touch to her Alienware Alpha.

If I had anything to bitch about at all, it would be that they divided the remote functions between a half dozen different apps instead of just one, and I'm not completely sure even that is a bad thing; It is literally impossible for my daughter to screw any of this up, because the only app loaded on her devices (DS Video) can not do *anything* but browse and play videos that have been indexed by the corresponding server app. Even if she loaded the other apps, she'd need the password to make them connect (DS Video saves the login info, but other apps that are loaded get shared only the QuickConnect and account name, not the password).

No more trying to keep track of which videos are loaded on her PC, her tablets, on any of several different USB drives. No more pouting and fussing because the movie she just absolutely *has* to watch isn't on any of the devices we brought with us. No more finding out that she accidentally wiped out gigabytes of videos because she figured out how to delete the video she didn't want to watch the rest of before she figured out how to skip to the end. She can not delete or change those videos in any way. She can not even *see* all the other stuff on the NAS, never mind get into the administrative functions (I don't keep porn on the network, but I don't want my 6 year old queuing up the Saw movies). I can even set up a different user account for her (with permissions for only her directories), if I decide that I want to use DS Video myself while still not putting gorror flicks where she can get at them.

Whoever designed this app has kids, I'm sure of it. And everything just *works*, if I wasn't the sort that has to get in and fiddle with stuff, I would have been done messing with it in about an hour (except for copying files, the bad thing about WD Greens is that they are *slooooow*), with no more technical skill required than it takes to use Office.

And with only a bit more knowledge required, I have a remote Torrent box I can access via HTTPS from anywhere in the world, and a VPN host I could configure to hop ports faster than my university IT staff would be able to identify. It's fucking beautiful, it does everything I was doing with that ancient Dell box running Ubuntu, but better and generally with only a few clicks instead of endless fiddling. It's not particularly beefy hardware, but I threw the worst realistic case I could come up with at it (saving 40 GB of files being transferred by SFTP as fast as the drives could write them while serving up 2 1080P movies over HTTPS and downloading 10 torrents simultaneously) and the CPU only got to 60-65%.

It'll do. Quit fiddling with USB thumb drives, get one of these.

--Dave

EDIT: And after that glowing testimonial, I have to add this little caution; Do doublecheck the meta-data the automated process picks for the videos. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" somehow wound up with the meta-data for "White Man's Revenge 2". That could have been...extremely awkward (although it was just meta-data, if you clicked on it you got the right movie). I was tempted to put the cover image in here, but I think this thread is supposed to be SFW. So I will just link it on a site that won't set the firewall alarms ringing (linked page is still NSFW): http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7263030&style=ice

[Yegolev]

Good sales pitch.

I've managed to locate the Startup directory on Win 2012, which is great.  Now I'm looking for something that I have never ever looked for on a Microsoft OS: a Shutdown directory.  Does this exist?  If you haven't guessed, I want some commands processed before a OS halt on Win2012.

[Lantyssa]

There isn't a shutdown directory, but you can use GPO to run scripts at logon and logoff.

TechNet article on it.  Of course this assumes you're using Active Directory.

[Yegolev]

It's a standalone 2012 machine.  Stupid Bill Gates.

[Chimpy]

It's a standalone 2012 machine.  Stupid Bill Gates.

The vast majority of Group Policy is available through the local group policy editor for stand alone machines.

Just open the run prompt and enter "gpedit.msc" which will open the Local Group Policy Editor window. In the Computer Configuration section there is a place for Scripts (startup/shutdown).

[Yegolev]

Thanks, I'll give it a try.  Although I'm not sure if I can even do what I want from a separate process.  Does Windows have anything similar to signal processing?

[Lantyssa]

Can you give a rough example of what you're trying to do.  It's sounding more and more like what you want isn't possible without some creative thought though.

[Yegolev]

I don't know if it is possible in any case but some general questions arose due to my research.  I'm satisfied with the general answers.

Specifically, I'd like to have a Terraria server stop gracefully on system shutdown.  I figure this isn't possible simply because the program was not written to handle external signals, but I did then wonder if signal communication was possible on Windows at all, from an academic perspective.

[Chimpy]

When in doubt, check to see if it can be done in PowerShell.

[Lantyssa]

Ah.  That would entirely depend on whether a running Terraria server can accept input from the command line.  More than likely not.  (It would require reserving ports for communication or having some kind of helper app running, and most Windows programs just don't do that.)

I see it has console commands, but that's probably from an existing window.  Because of that you can probably can do something with AutoIt.  Once you get an AutoIt script that can make the console window the focus, you can have it enter console commands to shut it down gracefully.  The script itself could be called as part of logoff.  So theoretically it is possible, if you're willing to use a third-party program to provide you the functionality through work-arounds.

I did find AutoIt invaluable for automating a lot of processes on Windows systems, including manipulating data in a variety of different files.  (Plain text, MS Office documents, web pages, command lines, etc.)

[Ironwood]

If it can be piped into a command line, it's really easy, assuming a graceful shutdown.

Because all you'll need in that instance is a damn batch file, right ?

[Goreschach]

I don't know anything about what you need to do to shut down a terraria server, but even if it doesn't accept console commands, I'd imagine you could have a powershell script that runs an AHK macro before logoff that emulates the mouseclicks and button presses that are needed to shut the server down. Kind of a fiddly hack, but if you're willing to set it up it should be able to do pretty much anything short of any active logic or decision making.