Disk Management feature request

alefattorini · January 12, 2016, 3:42pm

I’d like to point out that every opinions are important here, without exceptions

stephdl · January 12, 2016, 5:31pm

I believe that they sold the software through the hardware, it is one way to fund development…Unfortunately for Linux, it is free as free beer.

More seriously, does someone has started some works on this topic…I have done some search this morning, and it is a huge, a really huge development to do.

For example, these are the engines of the LVM and RAID module of webmin, thankfully in Perl.

github.com

webmin/webmin/blob/master/raid/raid-lib.pl

# raid-lib.pl
# Functions for managing RAID

BEGIN { push(@INC, ".."); };
use WebminCore;
&init_config();
&foreign_require("fdisk");

open(MODE, "<$module_config_directory/mode");
chop($raid_mode = <MODE>);
close(MODE);
$raid_mode ||= "mdadm";

%container = ( 'raiddev', 1,
	       'device', 1 );

# get_raid_levels()
# Returns a list of allowed RAID levels
sub get_raid_levels
{

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github.com

webmin/webmin/blob/master/lvm/lvm-lib.pl

# lvm-lib.pl
# Common functions for managing VGs, PVs and LVs

BEGIN { push(@INC, ".."); };
use WebminCore;
&init_config();
&foreign_require("mount");
if (&foreign_check("raid")) {
	&foreign_require("raid");
	$has_raid++;
	}
&foreign_require("fdisk");

$lvm_proc = "/proc/lvm";
$lvm_tab = "/etc/lvmtab";

# list_physical_volumes(vg)
# Returns a list of all physical volumes for some volume group
sub list_physical_volumes
{

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I do admit that the guy who will code these modules, will be my hero for the next 2 centuries…around 2000 lines of code.

Jim · January 12, 2016, 7:21pm

And?
We are not turtles… We can do it

We can take a look in how webmin deal, how Rockstore deal, how Openmedia vault deal.

Define what the Disk Management can do:

Show existing disk, show existing RAID, show existing partition.
When a new disk is added… add it to RAID, to LVM, or partitioning it.
Where to mount the partition

It can be a USB Stick to simply backup the conf…
In general, the disk managment must manage mountpoint too…

alefattorini · January 12, 2016, 7:38pm

Ahaha you always make me laugh

Jim · January 12, 2016, 7:46pm

How many lines for NethServer?

I bet 2000 is little amount of code compared to all NetServer code

zamboni · January 12, 2016, 8:00pm

“We” who, precisely?

stephdl · January 12, 2016, 8:01pm

see https://www.openhub.net/p/nethserver you will have your answer

Jim · January 12, 2016, 8:37pm

More than 93.000 at this date.
Thank you…

Everybody who isn’t a turtle…
Even me who produce lot of lines to push this idea

filippo_carletti · January 12, 2016, 10:51pm

Development of this feature could be a bounty.

Ctek · January 13, 2016, 1:04am

I agree This can be a very good test run of the bounty system.
We can span the bounties to two or three very desired features. and see.

haliparotin · January 14, 2016, 1:56am

and add this also for future feature

alefattorini · January 14, 2016, 8:40am

Thanks man, I see there is already a request here. Thanks for reminding it to us

Jim · March 14, 2016, 1:52pm

Today ( 14/03/2016 ) , in Distrowatch, there’s a ClearOS update to announce the support of LVM Cache, that is a great feature.

LVM Cache, is with a name lot of few sexy, the same thing as the Apple Fusion Drive technology:

Can we have such cool feature in our webgui?

Ctek · March 14, 2016, 3:56pm

Hi @Jim, This is possible for us too, but with ZFS and ARC technology.
Read here: http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Performance_tuning (the principle is the same)
As long as the distribution knows about ZFS, then you can use ARC.

This should be I think, in the installation setup part of NS. After that part is done you do not need a UI too much to tweak the fs. parameters. You will not do to much to tweak the file system anyway because you can break it,
A UI is needed only to Add / Remove / mount and scrub pools, and manage snapshots. But only after you have set up the base system.

filippo_carletti · March 14, 2016, 6:17pm

LVM cache has been introduced in RHEL 7.1 and improved in 7.2.

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.2_Release_Notes/storage.html

To use LVM cache in NethServer 7a2 you need to choose the standard centos installation at boot and create an lvm cache volume to install the system.

SkintArtist · June 27, 2016, 9:01pm

I have to disagree with part of this discussion. Disk management is one of the most important parts to running even the simplest server.

alefattorini · June 30, 2016, 9:31am

Ehi @SkintArtist welcome here,
I agree it’s an important part but not easy to be implemented and to make it simple.

Jim · June 30, 2016, 8:59pm

Nobody said that it will be easy…

But this feature is a must have… When You look that there’s NAS project that have Squid Proxy (http://www.mynas.com.au/mynas-features/ ).
There’s other project like OpenMediaVault that have a Firewall management feature…( without GUI forProxy, install Squid is possible ).
It will not take a long time before have in the place a NAS with a full Firewall Features…

SkintArtist · July 2, 2016, 12:40am

True. The best I have used is the disk utility in Ubuntu. It looks nice but its hard to find a few things. I do think it does a good job at keeping the user from breaking things and with a few tweaks I think it could be great for some one new to Linux.

SkintArtist · July 2, 2016, 12:46am

You would think that would be the case but it seems that most in the server community are against it. When I have talked to professionals about it they tell me that firewall / networking and file storage should be done on different hardware due to security and storage failure reasons.