Posts in category "nas"

Bought a Sony Blu-ray player with DLNA support. Added MediaTomb with a static binary on the Blackarmor. Tested it an it wasn’t very happy. It did run but the performance just wasn’t there.

The default Sony Blu-ray with my new BA NAS 400 series works just fine. A solution to my long standing problem with playing my digital content on my TV and sound system. DLNA support in the Sony equipment just seems to work.

Hajo on the BlackArmor Forums has an older posting about getting Debian Linux 5.0 (Lenny) installed on BA NAS 110/220/4x0. This is not a port that includes the kernel but simply a minimum install that gets the system setup to install binaries out of the Lenny EABI ARM platform. The kernel that comes with the BA NAS is compatible with those binaries. The newer kernel for the Debian 6 or higher is not compatible with the BA NAS. This has some limitations but offers a way to get to some newer software pre-compiled. I don’t want to loose the existing functionality on my test system but the draw to DLNA services is pretty strong right now.

To top it off, Debian has a nicely setup cross-compilation setup documented for people working on non-Intel platforms. This offers a way to compile newer software without killing myself anymore on building the entire compiler and supporting software myself.

The goal has always been to make the NAS device useful and I want to play my movies off it to my TV upstairs so this might be the next thing I play with on the development NAS.

I was reading a bit more on DLNA servers and found that someone had gotten miniDLNA working under the Debian port for the BlackArmor NAS. NickolasZev looks like he is enjoying his Debian install on his BA110. He is documenting his Debian initial install, adding miniDLNA, a webserver, bittorrent and download manager. I’m not interested in putting Debian on mine and want to stay as close to the vanilla firmware as possible but it is nice to see that someone has it working on the hardware.

Today I was reading a couple of forums and bumped into a write up on the “BubbleUPnP - UPnP/DLNA Control Point and Renderer” application for Android that has both DLNA client and server support. The BubbleUPnP setup also has a Java based server mentioned in their section on NAS devices, such as the QNAP which is very similar to the BlackArmor NAS.

Earlier in my writing, I was reviewing a version of Java for the ARM that was called “Sun Java SE for Embedded”. It would allow for executing a Java application on the BlackArmor. Up until now, I did not have a Java application to really motivate me to install and test this but the BubbleUPnP DLNA server might allow for my BlueRay Play, Roku and Android cell phone to play my movies directly off the BlackArmor NAS.

There is one problem which is getting the ffmpeg library compiled and running. This is described in the docs above for the QNAP NAS but I’ve not been successful at getting a working toolchain yet. I may have to backtrack and see if I can just use the toolchain provided by Seagate to compile this newer version of ffmpeg.

Another issue is that the Java SE for Embedded is licensed strangely by Oracle. It cannot be redistributed and requires licensing costs if it is redistributed by a professional package.

So step one would be to compile the ffmpeg library and test it out. I hope to try that out with the existing Seagate toolchain. The next step would be to get the Java SE Embedded to run a basic HelloWorld application on the console. After that, try to get the BubbleUPnP server running.

I’ll see if I can get a couple hours together to work on this this coming week. It would be nicer to have an open source DLNA server but I’ll take what I can get. Since I’m talking about taking some time to compile C/C++ code anyway to get this working, I checked on open source DLNA servers and popped up something from eLinux that was interesting to read over. It looks like MediaTomb, uShare, and Serviio are candidates that could replace the BubbleUPnP server if I get the compiler toolchain working.

We will just have to see how much time I can get together to play around with this.

I bought an “APC Back-UPS ES 550” awhile back from CostCo without knowing for sure if it would work with the Seagate BlackArmor NAS. It works great so far. I was afraid I would have to hack on the configuration file for the software but it worked out of the box without any extra effort other than enabling the UPS Manager.

I had a second dilemma which was that I use the NAS as my print server for an older “Brother MFC 7420” printer and did not want to loose that configuration. There is only one USB port off the back of the unit that is supposed to work with printers and UPS. So for my next surprise, I found that it works for both the UPS and printer with an old un-powered notebook USB hub that I got as a door prize at some Cisco event.

I may test plugging up my old 500GB Seagate USB hard disk to that hub as well and see if it recognizes the space and makes it available.

So for anyone else, I cannot vouch for all UPS and printers but my configuration above is working great.

I found my old Samsung x426 USB cell phone programmer cable as I was cleaning out my home office. I might have mentioned this cable earlier when I wrote about adding a serial console to the BlackArmor NAS. The cable is a really old style one that has a weird connector for the cell phone way before the mini-USB became standard. The interesting thing about this cable is that it has a serial to USB converter chip (2303HXC 0546) that does the magic of converting serial to USB. That is why that thing was ridiculously expensive ($35) when I bought it back in the day.

Why this is even on my radar as possible is that the website CrapNAS had an entry for how to connect a serial or USB cable so you can watch the Linux boot up as a serial console session. They specify two different ways to do this. For the serial connection, they specify a MAX3232 as necessary. The USB connection has a schematic that includes a 2303HX. I’m not sure what the difference is between that and my 2303HXC so I will be doing some reading before I cut into the cable and get out the soldering iron.

Why am I even messing around with a serial console? Because as I am planning to mess around with the lower level system, I should have a back out plan if I do something wrong. A serial console on the device gives me more options during the boot up even if I cannot connect via a network connection.

As far as getting time to work on the compiler toolchain, I’ve been relaxing over the holiday break with family, cleaning my messy home office and have not even booted up the virtual machine since my last post. I intend to get back to it someday.

Yeah it’s been hectic at work and lots to do in domestic life as well so this hobby project hasn’t gotten much attention. Christmas break is coming however and I’m planning on getting some time to work on it. I think most Open Source projects or hobbies get a boost over the holidays.

Merry Xmas & Happy New Year in case I don’t get back here before the holidays.

Earlier I was working on the problem with compiling using the arm-elf-gcc on very basic programs. After some work, I found the base problem is that the libc replacement from newlib are not being picked up at compile time and properly using the syscalls mechanism. Hardwired hacks to work around it produced an executable but something is still wrong with how the compiler was built.

I’ve distilled the error down to a single search.

Google Search: "/lib/libc.a(lib_a-exit.o): In function `exit':" "newlib/libc/stdlib/exit.c:65: undefined reference to `_exit'"

Several other people appear to have run into the same problem, so I’ll be reading up on the problem and see what solutions exist.

The problem is that I can get an ARM executable but not sure why the default system is not working to produce a basic HelloWorld.

Two full toolchains built and a third that I still think might be made to work. The first is using older versions of everything and was mostly done as a test to get the build environment working against known sources that are known to build. Even this known build process required some effort to get working in a current OS environment. Those docs, notes and scripts will be coming in the near future.

I’ve been working on building a toolchain using the notes from OpenHardware Building the ARM GNU 4.3.2 with some success. I finally got the base set of GCC 4.3.2 tools to build successfully. I have not used the resulting GCC to produce an ARM executable or verified the executable works on the Black Armor NAS. Those are tests for tomorrow evening when I can get the NAS setup again on the network. It is currently in a box in the corner.

There were several minor things that needed to be updated and modified to get the scripts and environment to work. I’ve kept careful notes and will post those in the next couple of days once I’ve tested the output from the compiler works. I’m also attempting to update the versions of the libraries and software to more current versions as well. The GCC 4.3.2 and associated libraries are several years old and I’m trying to get the GCC 4.6.x to build along with newer newlib, binutils and insight/gdb using the same basic set of notes and scripts. I bumped into a zlib issues in the second phase GCC build that stumped me for the night. I’ll hit it again tomorrow. Again, I’m keeping careful notes and build docs for the newer version as well.

The dependencies from the operating system are sometimes a pain to track down for the software. I picked a very stripped down install of Ubuntu. The operating system I am using is Ubuntu Server 11.10 because it is easy to install and update. Any Linux would do but the package names may change. Ubuntu Server has no frills so you add everything you need which means all the libraries like GPM, etc.

So there is some progress and in the next couple of days I’ll let you know if the build produces working ARM executables. I’m really excited about getting a working “HelloWorld” out there.

Lesson learned on doing a toolchain build or anything else for that matter; make sure you are reading the most current documentation available. I was working with very old versions of the software by using the GNU ARM website mentioned earlier. In digging into the problems for those builds, I found a few other sites that have detailed discussions on building the toolchain for specific version of the ARM platform.

I found the GNU ARM Toolchain website awhile back and that they have several different versions out there for the toolchain. A toolchain is just the basic tools needed to build software. In this case it is the standard libraries, the compiler, debugger and various other tools needed to write software. The version of the toolchain that is provided by Seagate is version 3.0 and a very old version. The oldest on the ARM website is 3.3 with 4.1 being the newest.

Earlier I mentioned a technology called “Jazelle DBX” for the ARM processor that allows for Java Bytecode eXecution (JBX) directly in the ARM hardware which should make it run faster. That DBX technology is being phased out with newer Thumb-2 instruction set being the new preference by ARM for acceleration. However, the processor in the BlackArmor NAS was the first processor to have this Jazelle DBX feature and I want to see if it has any merit. I did some digging around, like I mentioned I would, and found that Sun had produced a version of Java that may have this technology.

So earlier I was digging around trying to find out more about the Black Armor NAS hardware and pulled some interesting information. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of ARM background so a good bit of it was confusing as I reviewed it.

Snippet from earlier hardware information gathering:

$ uname -a
Linux NAS3 2.6.22.18 #1 Thu Aug 26 12:26:10 CST 2010 v0.0.8 armv5tejl unknown
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor       : ARM926EJ-S rev 1 (v5l)

To rectify my lack of knowledge I started reading on Wikipedia and found the ARM architecture which made me realize that I’ve been missing out on an entirely different ecology of technologic innovation. The features that are available for each processor was an interesting ride down memory lane with my memory of Intel CPU features, that I’m familiar with, running parallel to the ARM decisions in the same areas. They have two completely different paths but seem to have interchange between the two. ARM has an interesting history as a company as well.

So my list of things to figure out keeps growing but I don’t seem to get any time to work on them.

1. UPS software setup
2. DLNA server functionality
3. USB Hub issue to figure out so I can run the UPS and Printer together.
4. Serial Port hack (new)

I also want to get the serial port hack working which requires some physical work disassembling the NAS and maybe some soldering work to build a serial converter. The major work is already done by another guy on http://crapnas.blogspot.com but I’d have to follow along. There also appears to be a shortcut with an old Nokia USB cell phone cable that might be worth checking out.

Maybe next weekend I’ll get some time. Project is just not getting cycles but I’m still thinking about it.

So I’m working on the UPS addition and forgot I use that USB port for my printer sharing. So time to do some reading on USB hubs and the Black Armor NAS 110. The printer is important and the UPS is important. I wonder if I can mix my peanut butter and chocolate.

Even stranger, there is a USB port on the front of the box but that is special purposed for just USB Memory backups only.

So I have several paths here to check.

I have two new quick projects that I need for my Black Armor NAS 110 in the immediate future.

First I need the UPS functionality for this device as I’m taking power hits at my residence and my old UPS’ are just way too old and not working to keep the NAS running after a power blip. I bought an APC Back-UPS ES BE550G 550 VA 330 Watts at CostCo with one of their specials. The Black Armor NAS documentation said it only works with APC UPS so I thought I was okay but with further reading in the forums they say results vary with APC devices. So time to see if my new APC UPS will work with the built-in software or if the software needs improvements. So I hope to have a smart UPS running but just the dumb UPS functionality without a shutdown mode will have to do if I cannot get it working. The smart UPS depends on apcupsd 3.12.2 according to a post.

$ /usr/sbin/apcupsd --version
apcupsd 3.12.2 (18 January 2006) redhat

Next on the list is to figure out how functional the streaming media works on the device. This will hopefully be more straight forward than the UPS. Family time will be vastly improved if I can get the DVD collection running off this device. DLNA is an interesting subject and my BlueRay player hooked to my TV may be able to play movies off the NAS. That would be optimal.

Here is the beginning of a dump of information on the Black Armor device from the Linux kernel and environment. From this I learned the processor type and features. I also got some pointers to cross-compiler options used. These will all be important later.

I figured out something simple but neat on the Black Armor NAS 110 (BA-NAS110) device. It has rsync a powerful file-system replication tool from UNIX.

Caveats are that in order to do this you must have root on the device and a ssh connection with the command line. I’ll write a friendly doc on how to get ‘root’ later. (Just search for Hajo Noerenberg’s work on the subject sans the friendly write up if you want to do it now.)

So, the BA-NAS110 is capable of using rsync from the command line to replicate its data to another NAS or Linux system if you have root on the system. Getting it setup was simple enough but knowing that the rsync daemon and client were on the systems was the trick.

You have to create a rsyncd.conf file since there isn’t one pre-built. Syntax is common to the typical rsync 3.0.4 version.

I found something fun.

The Seagate NAS (Network Attached Storage) that I’ve been using at my house is running an embedded Linux. A NAS is a big network hard drive you can share between computers. I got a root account on it and have found a whole world of fun that could be done in there. Root is the master administrative account for UNIX systems that let you do extra things beyond the normal.

First steps is getting a functional toolchain and then build some trivial tools. The goal would be to have a full set of GNU tools available in a package format for people to use. I want to publish a full working OpenSSH with scp support and rsync for this thing as a starting point. Maybe add some features for NFS. Just digging around on this thing reminded me how much I enjoy hacking on hardware.