What is best for me, stock POGO-P21, or which packages?

[bermakiah]

My current situation is that I have a Ximeta NDAS IDE Enclosure that I use for occasional PC backups. It is simply full and IDE drives were only made so big, so I'm looking to replace it. I picked up a cheap POGO-P21, but all I can find is marketing hype about how and what it does in stock form.

I would like it to share the attached drives on my LAN only, without any sharing to the internet or any involvement from the manufacturer's servers. Can this be done with the stock SW, or should I look at loading it up with alternate SW?

What are my alternatives? I've read that Samba has a 2GB filesize limit, so that is out. What about FTP or something else?

I've also read that the manufacturer forces updates, and that these have been known to lose data on the attached drives, is this true?

Thanks!

[kuleszdl]

Hi and welcome,

afaik the stock firmware does not work without any involvement of the manufacturer's servers, therefore the best option for you is to simply install ArchLinux ARM on the box and use it. With this distribution you can use any protocol you like, FTP is for sure fast and a good option but it's not encrypted. The 2GB Filesize limit of Samba is afaik old history, so it should be a pretty good candidate. You could also use SSH/SFTP but this uses quite many resources on the Pogoplug, especially when you additionally encrypt the contents on your disk:

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4712

So, for a "big backup drive in a safe network" I would go for simple FTP, i.e. "vsftpd" is a pretty good server.

Haven't heard about manufacturer updates so far, but for me having the manufacturer involved would be never an option anyways (if someone breaks into their servers they could access my data).

[bermakiah]

Thanks for the info.

The reports of lost data and forced updates are on the amazon reviews page for this thing. I did finally find instructions on how to get the newer samba functioning, so I'll be considering that and FTP.

I do have one last question atm, is it always preferable to use ext3 on the storage drives? It shouldn't make a difference to the clients, as it shows up as a network share (rather than a local drive like the NDAS does) correct?

Thanks again!

[kuleszdl]

Yes, it shouldn't make a difference as long as you don't mix transfer protocols too often. Usually I had problems on my old NAS because I transferred some files as different user with SFTP and tried to access then later via Samba but the permissions did not match etc. - but you can circumvent this by force_user mount and samba options.

So yes, ext3 is a pretty good option for storing data on rotating disks. Ext4 is sometimes a bit faster but not that proven and reliable probably. Ext2 does not have a journal and behaves badly in case of power loss etc. so yes, I would go for ext3.

[WarheadsSE]

Ext4 works well for large drives (> ~1TB). I use Ext3 on most of my < 1TB drives, and Ext4 on my 2 & 3TB drives.

[bermakiah]

OK, I'm going to try Samba first because once upon a time I was very familiar with it. I plan to follow the instructions here (Aaron Randall) and then here (Technofox), minus the swap file. Are there better instructions I should consider?

Thanks everybody!

[Socaltom]

I've used the Archlinux install with Warheads' script.
http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/pogoplug-provideov3. Its much friendlier that what you have found.
Tom

[WarheadsSE]

Also: actually supported.

Since those are ipkg and thus optware, not Arch Linux ARM, we won't be supporting you on those.

[bermakiah]

No problem, I've been reading and trying to sort my way through so many of these tutorials that it hadn't occurred to me that there was more than one distro. I've managed some pretty cool things with DD-WRT, and years ago was able to get around bash decently enough, but I'd never get anywhere without good support.

So I start with http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/pogoplug-provideov3#qt-platform_tabs-ui-tabs2 and then continue to http://archlinuxarm.org/support/guides/applications/samba. I shouldn't need a swap file so long as I don't load any other packages, correct? How small of a flash drive is advisable?

[WarheadsSE]

I would use at least a 2GB flash drive, for a first time use. And generally, you don't need a swap file on these small devices unless you are taxing the living hell out of them.

Also of note: ipkg is optware, which works within the base stock system, so you can easily use their features if you so choose, but going that route.