PC-BSD - Taking the Plunge

v 0.2

18Aug 13

I've been thinking that it is time for a new computer - after all, the machine that I've been using is 6 years old.  The server setup I'd done has been chugging along nicely and the interesting thing is that it is as fast as my Windows desktop.  After doing a bit of fantasy building, I thought "why not just use the server machine - add a couple of things and make it really good before moving on and getting what I really want?"

And then my Windows desktop started cutting out - I figured the CPU was overheating, so I specially cleaned it - which fixed things for a while - but I had this sense of unease.  What really bothered me was the software raid I'd used with Windows .. tight licencing with Microsoft made me think that if this thing fell over, then I'd have a "bother of a time" getting it sorted, so I started dragging stuff off it.

I had about half my data off, when a strange electrical smell started - then "BANG!!!" and a flash from the power supply.  And the house got dark.  Alright, I thought, at least I know what the problem is now ....  A visit to my local friendly computer shop and with a new power supply my machine was now as good as new again.  I'd gone past the tipping point though, and I wanted to move on.  Yes, I did need Windows for a couple of things, but I wanted out.

My "Home Server" .. it was inexpensive to put together, having an i3 CPU, an Nvidia GTS450 graphics card I had lying around (to make PC-BSD work), 8 gig memory and a Western Digital 2 TB "Green" hard disk.  I had (so I thought) another of these disks lying around, and I went out to purchase a third.  I had finished playing with the machine with PC-BSD and thought this was an opportunity to re-do things the way I wanted, using things I'd learned.

The Plan

• Re-install the latest PC-BSD rolling release.
• Use three 2tb disks in a ZFS Raid-1z configuration
• Use Jails and Virtualbox to run servers in the background

PC-BSD - the Really Cool Stuff

Whilst I remain a committed fan of Debian (Wheezy is just so cool), PC-BSD has too many great things going for it not to be used.  A few months ago when I was looking at it, there were two "killer problems" .. it would not immediately recognise USB memory sticks, and the Flash video was not an Adobe "priority".  Well, the USB problem has been solved, and I figured that if I really needed Flash video, then a Virtualbox VM would do it for me.

What has me really excited about PC-BSD is the user-friendly implementation of the Zetabyte File System (ZFS).  

The installation routine allows a simple implementation of many "multiple disk" file systems in Raidz configuration.  You can have a simple "mirror" configuration with two disks, moving up from there.  I have a three disk configuration whereby the failure of one disk allows me to replace it and then re-build the configuration without loss of data.

But wait! There's more!

Using the PC-BSD Control Panel you can specify system snapshots to allow you to roll back in the GRUB menu to a previously good system (if an upgrade wasn't all you hoped for).  This system snapshot does NOT affect your own files - it is purposefully restricted to system files.

Servers running in a jail can have snapshots taken automatically, say, every hour so that if all hell breaks loose, you can just roll back to the last good server.  Say someone attacks your  server in its jail .. and trashes files and installs malware.  Roll back and the malware is gone and the files are back.  Magic!

Steak knives!

The supplied backup program .... the PBI installation system for additional programs ....

My Experience

Drives

First, I discovered that I did not have three WD Green drives, but two with a Seagate one.  Ah .. it will be ok.  Ultimately I had to shoehorn the Seagate drive in because of a lack of mounting holes .. but figured ... "it will be ok" .... well, it wasn't BUT that showed how great ZFS is .... and I was able to fix everything. 

So, what was the problem with the Seagate drive? .. well I just laid it out on top of one of the other two drives .. giving the drive circuitry no chance of getting any cooling air.  The obvious happened and the drive fell out of the ZFS zpool.  Bother.  BUT .. the zpool kept working!

Next day when I rebooted, everything worked! The zpool resilvered .. aha ... sounds like a case for duct-tape! ... Yes, I have duct-taped the Seagate drive to give it cooling .. but it works and I've had no further problems.

USB

The USB problem has been largely fixed.  So long as your USB Memory stick has 16 gig or less, then no problems for copying TO the computer.  PCBSD does not recognise  USB memory sticks greater than 16 gig.

Where the problem comes in is with copying files FROM the computer TO the memory stick.  What happens is that the system complains that it is unable to re-set the permissions to yours and in the case I was faced with ... that was 700 info windows to click through.  !Fun.

NTFS .. no probs .. though I found that it was very difficult to unmount an external drive.

Overall?

I'm still here.





Later.