atom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

  <title><![CDATA[pacNAS]]></title>
  <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/atom.xml" rel="self"/>
  <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/"/>
  <updated>2014-06-12T19:09:17+02:00</updated>
  <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/</id>
  <author>
    <name><![CDATA[pacNAS community]]></name>
    
  </author>
  <generator uri="http://octopress.org/">Octopress</generator>

  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[future - more thoughts]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2014/06/12/future/"/>
    <updated>2014-06-12T20:54:00+02:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2014/06/12/future</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Having slept a good night I re-tought a couple of my previously written lines.</p>

<p>The release concept sounds still really cool to me, question is, if we really
do have enough resources to keep a rolling-release going. Most probably we could
reuse most of the stuff, that AL is already doing there, but it still is a lot
of work to stay in sync. My thoughts right now go into the direction of leaving
the rolling release aside and concentrate on a fixed release. The first fixed release
will basically be a snapshot of the current ABS in AL.</p>

<p>What do you think about this one?</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[mediaplayer]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2014/01/13/media-player/"/>
    <updated>2014-01-13T20:29:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2014/01/13/media-player</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>First post this year, and I can annouce some progress on my personal media player
setting. My media setup is (like described earlier) totally based on UPnP. The
media server is <a href="http://minimserver.com">minimserver</a>, which will run on the pacnas
server. The UPnP control point is <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp&amp;hl=de">BubbleUPnP</a>
for my Android Smartphone.</p>

<p>I have already bought an <a href="http://www.cocktailaudio.de/index.php/de/funktionen.html">X10</a>,
but unfortunately this did not work out really as an UPnP Renderer. It works nicely
but not gapless, which is a necessity for me, because I do own quite some MixCDs.
There is a lot of discussion going on in the Forums, and hopefully they will add
this functionality. Therefor I just bought myself an <a href="http://cubox-i.com/">Cubox</a>
and I hope that this will work out. To test it, I just setup my Raspberry Pi with
<a href="http://www.runeaudio.com/">runeaudio</a> and installed <a href="https://github.com/ademenev/gmrender-resurrect-openhome">gmrenderer-resurrect-openhome</a>
on it, to enjoy the (currently bad quality) sound of my digitalized CD collection.</p>

<p>To get this really up and running, I needed to follow the <a href="http://blog.scphillips.com/2013/07/playing-music-on-a-raspberry-pi-using-upnp-and-dlna-revisited/">Installation Guide</a> from Stephen. Nice one, based on Debian, but still very
helpful. So I guess, that we are going to provide a package for the
 <a href="http://www.bubblesoftapps.com/bubbleupnpserver/">BubbleUPnP Server</a> on the pacnas system as well ;&ndash;)</p>

<p>Hope this helps you as well ;&ndash;)</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[year end notice]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/12/30/year-end-notice/"/>
    <updated>2013-12-30T16:37:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/12/30/year-end-notice</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>This post is just a notice to inform you, that the year is going to end, but not
this project. Currently we are adding some functionalities to ajenti to provide a
working system also on ArchLinux. Since we are based on ArchLinux, this is also
of interest for our own project (lets put it in other words, we are doing these
extensions specifically for us and these are working on AL as well).</p>

<!-- more -->


<p>We still have plans for the project. It was quite silent during the last month,
but nonetheless we are still working behind the scenes on it. See especially the
commits we have done on the <a href="https://github.com/Eugeny/ajenti">ajenti</a>.</p>

<p>Furthermore we are trying to get approval of Simon (the owner of minimserver), to
be able to provide this nice UPNP-Server directly in our distro.</p>

<p>So, you see, some small but necessary features are in the works, and the next
most needed step is a first release of the installer-ISO. Please wait a couple of
days (aeh, weeks?) and this is going to happen.</p>

<p>Up until then, I do wish you all a happy new year ;&ndash;)</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[install willie]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/11/23/install-willie/"/>
    <updated>2013-11-23T20:24:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/11/23/install-willie</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>This is mainly a documentation post on how to install <a href="http://willie.dftba.net/">willie</a>
as a service on an ArchLinux server.</p>

<!-- more -->


<p>All necessary dependencies can be installed easily with pacman (mainly: python2-pytz
and python2-pyopenssl). The willie PKGBUILD can be found in the <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/willie/">AUR</a>.</p>

<p>After the install, the bot installs a new configuration file in ~/.willie. This file
should be adopted later. I have made the following adoptions to the config:</p>

<figure class='code'><div class="highlight"><table><tr><td class="gutter"><pre class="line-numbers"><span class='line-number'>1</span>
<span class='line-number'>2</span>
<span class='line-number'>3</span>
</pre></td><td class='code'><pre><code class=''><span class='line'>[core]
</span><span class='line'>logdir = /var/log/willie
</span><span class='line'>pid_dir = /run/willie</span></code></pre></td></tr></table></div></figure>


<p>The above mentioned directories are created manually ;&ndash;) Of course the rights
need to be set as well:</p>

<figure class='code'><div class="highlight"><table><tr><td class="gutter"><pre class="line-numbers"><span class='line-number'>1</span>
<span class='line-number'>2</span>
<span class='line-number'>3</span>
<span class='line-number'>4</span>
<span class='line-number'>5</span>
</pre></td><td class='code'><pre><code class=''><span class='line'>chown root:willie /var/log/willie -R
</span><span class='line'>chmod g+w /var/log/willie -R
</span><span class='line'>
</span><span class='line'>chown root:willie /run/willie -R
</span><span class='line'>chmod g+w /run/willie -R</span></code></pre></td></tr></table></div></figure>




<figure class='code'><div class="highlight"><table><tr><td class="gutter"><pre class="line-numbers"><span class='line-number'>1</span>
<span class='line-number'>2</span>
<span class='line-number'>3</span>
</pre></td><td class='code'><pre><code class=''><span class='line'>[db]
</span><span class='line'>userdb_type = sqlite
</span><span class='line'>userdb_file = /var/lib/willie/willie.db</span></code></pre></td></tr></table></div></figure>


<p>The above mentioned directory is created manually as well. The db-file is
created then automatically. The rights need to get set here as well:</p>

<figure class='code'><div class="highlight"><table><tr><td class="gutter"><pre class="line-numbers"><span class='line-number'>1</span>
<span class='line-number'>2</span>
</pre></td><td class='code'><pre><code class=''><span class='line'>chown root:willie /var/lib/willie -R
</span><span class='line'>chmod g+w /var/lib/willie -R</span></code></pre></td></tr></table></div></figure>


<p>A new user (willie) is created using the following command</p>

<figure class='code'><div class="highlight"><table><tr><td class="gutter"><pre class="line-numbers"><span class='line-number'>1</span>
</pre></td><td class='code'><pre><code class=''><span class='line'>useradd -d /var/lib/willie -M willie</span></code></pre></td></tr></table></div></figure>


<p>The I copied the <a href="https://github.com/embolalia/willie/blob/master/contrib/willie.service">willie.service</a>
to /etc/systemd/system/willie.service. Some pathes (e.g. to the config file) needs to get adopted
accordingly. Of course this service needs to get enabled via systemctl ;&ndash;)</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[own repository]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/11/11/own-repository/"/>
    <updated>2013-11-11T20:57:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/11/11/own-repository</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Our own binary repository is now reachable on the newly installed server
build.pacnas.org. To use this repository, you should edit your mirrorlist
and point it to <a href="http://build.pacnas.org/pacnas/$repo/os/$arch.">http://build.pacnas.org/pacnas/$repo/os/$arch.</a> We do provide
the following repositories:</p>

<!-- more -->


<ul>
<li>pn-core</li>
<li>pn-extra</li>
<li>pn-community and</li>
<li>pn-testing</li>
</ul>


<p>Those repositories are filled via our own now up and working buildbot instance
at <a href="http://build.pacnas.org/buildbot">http://build.pacnas.org/buildbot</a></p>

<p>If you are willing to contribute, you can get access to the bot as well as
are able to provide an own buildslave. We are working also on a PKGBUILD to
install the slave to an pacNAS system. The sources for the buildbot are located
in our github repository at <a href="http://github.com/pacNAS/pnbuildbot">http://github.com/pacNAS/pnbuildbot</a></p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[pacnas buildbot]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/11/02/pacnas-buildbot/"/>
    <updated>2013-11-02T20:29:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/11/02/pacnas-buildbot</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>In my last post, I have written about the <a href="http://vlcore.vectorlinux.com/buildbot/">VectorLinux Buildbot</a>.
We have now adopted this basic bot configuration to our needs and published it to
our <a href="http://github.com/pacNAS/pnbuildbot">github repository</a>.</p>

<p>The next step is now, to get this bot installed on our server, to make full use of it.
The bot is configured mainly via the pnconf.ini-File. Furthermore the manifest-File
contains a list of all packages, which are being build with the bot.</p>

<p>Oh, one more thing. We have now setup an IRC-Channel on the freenode-Network (where else).
You can try to get in contact with us on the #pacnas Channel. Hope to see you there.</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[howto build a buildservice]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/10/27/howto-build-a-buildservice/"/>
    <updated>2013-10-27T20:23:00+01:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/10/27/howto-build-a-buildservice</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Currently we are trying to automate the build of our own packages. Therfore we just have
rented a server from <a href="http://www.netcup.de">netcup.de</a>, because they do have some fair
offers (see <a href="http://www.netcup.de/bestellen/produkt.php?produkt=547">here</a>).
Based on this offer, we do have already established our own package repository (a domain for
this will be published soon). Furthermore we need a build service, and this should be based
on the already exisiting build-services from archlinux (called devtools).</p>

<!-- more -->


<p>After some initial investigations, the <a href="http://www.buildbot.net">buildbot</a> seems to be a
good solution to build something like this fully automatic. After looking at the
ArchLinux <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Automated_Package_Build_System">Quarters</a> wiki
page and the proposed solutions there, we decided to take a look at other possible solutions
and walked across <a href="http://vlcore.vectorlinux.com/buildbot/">VectorLinux Buildbot</a>.</p>

<p>This buildbot is a adoption of the original buildbot and offers some modifications, which
are necessary for us as well (e.g. one multi-project repository with several &ldquo;packages&rdquo;). You
can take a look at their source code <a href="https://bitbucket.org/VLCore/vlbuildbot/src">here</a>.</p>

<p>Since buildbot does a separation of a build into several steps, we defined the following
steps for our builds:</p>

<ol>
<li>create the source package of a package (using makepkg &mdash;allsource)</li>
<li>create two build chroots (i686 and x86_64)</li>
<li>copy source package and build in the corresponding chroot (e.g. each architecture)</li>
<li>copy build source package to a accessable directory (accessable from a HTTP share)</li>
<li>copy build package into the corresponding repository (e.g. core/extra/community and i686/x86_64/any)</li>
</ol>


<p>We tried already some different order and separation of build steps (try to use the grub
package, since this one does seem to be &ldquo;special&rdquo;, and requires some special treatment, e.g.
it is using bzr as a source package as well as it uses the CARCH-Variable in the PKGBUILD)
and the above build order seemed to work quite well. Further adjustements int he future are
possible and will be implemented, if the need arises.</p>

<p>There are still some issues concerning permissions, but those do seem to be resolvable. Other then
that we do plan to push a first rough draft of our solution to github quite soon, pleas watch the
devtools-repository and most probably a new repository with the buildbot itself will pop up as well.</p>

<p>Up until this, we are more then happy to receive some feedback from your side. What are your thoughts
on this one?</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[pacnas installer]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/10/06/pacnas-installer/"/>
    <updated>2013-10-06T17:19:00+02:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/10/06/pacnas-installer</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Our installer (currently a very easy and still a rough draft version) brought up
a couple of problems. We have taken a look onto the <a href="https://github.com/Antergos/Cnchi">antergos Cnchi installer</a>
and decided that the CLI part of it seems to be a good starting poing.</p>

<!-- more -->


<p>We have stripped this installer and reworked it, so that we can use it for our own
purposes. Basically the installer does now provide the following functionality:</p>

<ul>
<li>Select the language</li>
<li>Select a keymap</li>
<li>Adjust time and date &ndash; This is not working right now, in that the selected
date and time are not used on the new installed system.</li>
<li>Prepare Harddrives &ndash; This is an easy way to partition and format the harddrive
fully automatic. The subvolumes for btrfs are created in this step as well. There
is still some work needed to provide some adjustements for ssds and normal hard disks.</li>
<li>Install the System &ndash; The base packages are installed into the newly created system.</li>
<li>Configure the System &ndash; Some minor configuration for the system.</li>
</ul>


<p>Well, this is pretty much it. We definitly would like to add some possibilities, so
that you are able to provide your own partition scheme, if you would like to. Most
probably we will follow the steps used from the original
<a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_Guide">ArchLinux Install scripts</a>.</p>

<p>Furthermore there is still some room for error handling and other optimizations, but
for a rough first draft, it looks pretty good ;&ndash;)</p>

<p>One problem arose during the implementation. Since we are using btrfs on our root
file system, the mkinitcpio-fsck-hook reported an error, that fsck.btrfs is not
available. Digging into this issue brought up some <a href="https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/37203">errors</a>
in the ArchLinux bugtracker. Due to the response in the shown Bug, we have decided
to provide our own <a href="https://github.com/pacNAS/pkgbuilds/tree/master/core/mkinitcpio">mkinitcpio-package</a>.
This version basically patches the HOOKS-variable to not use the fsck-hook anymore.</p>

<p>So, if you have any ideas and/or recommendations for improvements of the installer,
feel free to fork and add pull requests. We are more then happy to receive those ;&ndash;)</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[btrfs - best practices - part 2]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/09/11/btrfs-best-practices-part-2/"/>
    <updated>2013-09-11T22:39:00+02:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/09/11/btrfs-best-practices-part-2</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>We discussed the usage of btrfs in our previous post. We discovered a nice
mkinitcpio-hook, which allows us to provide a rollback option based on snapshots.
We have forked an up-to-date version, and will most probably provide some
additional documentation and scripts. For the source of the package see <a href="https://github.com/pacNAS/mkinitcpio-btrfs">github &ndash; source</a>
and <a href="https://github.com/pacNAS/pkgbuilds/tree/master/core/mkinitcpio-btrfs">gihub &ndash; package</a>.</p>

<p>Our new installer will use the suggested structure of the btrfs subvolumes while creating
the disk structure of the new system.</p>

<p>We do have created a new version of the above mentioned sources. This new version is
slightly adopted to our needs. The original version (<a href="https://github.com/xtfxme/mkinitcpio-btrfs">xtfxme</a>)
contains both the logic/source as well as the PKGBUILD, which we split, to keep these
separate.</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[btrfs - best practices]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/09/10/btrfs-best-practices/"/>
    <updated>2013-09-10T20:56:00+02:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/09/10/btrfs-best-practices</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Right now we are adapting the installer to use btrfs as the base filesystem for
the PacNAS system. There are obviously a couple of ways on implementing this, so
that we try to &ldquo;suggest&rdquo; one way to do this, but also allowing other possible ways
as well.</p>

<!-- more -->


<ol>
<li><p>Partioning
If you are searching for &ldquo;btrfs best practices&rdquo;, you will stumb across <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.btrfs/25423">this</a>
mailing list entry, and I guess, we are going to follow the &ldquo;partition instead
of raw device&rdquo; philosophy. We will create one partition on the wanted device and
will then separate the partition by using subvolumes.</p></li>
<li><p>Subvolumes
I guess, that <a href="http://blog.fabio.mancinelli.me/2012/12/28/Arch_Linux_on_BTRFS.html">Bitloom</a>
suggests a valid approach for subvolumes on a btrfs root volume. What I don&rsquo;t like about
his approach is the subvolume for /var and the mounting of /var/lib into the root
subvolume. If you take a look on <a href="http://blog.patshead.com/2010/02/testing-btrfs-root-file-system-on-ubuntu.html">patshead.com</a>
you will read, that he prefers to creates many subvolumes beneath the root of the
Btrfs volume. I guess this is a way more KISS way.</p></li>
</ol>


<h1>&ldquo;Our&rdquo; Best Practices</h1>

<ol>
<li>We are partioning the wanted drive with just one partition.</li>
<li>We are creating a couple of subvolumes (rootfs, tmpfs) on this partition and
mount these volumes to the corresponding mount points (/ to rootfs, /tmp to tmpfs).</li>
<li>On each update of the system, we are creating a snapshot (at least provide
some scripts for this), and do provide a mechanism to &ldquo;undo&rdquo; the latest update.</li>
<li>We are not using a homefs subvolume, since we strongly believe that the home
directories are stored on separate partitions (meaning: data drives). Of course
these data drives can (and should) be formatted with btrfs.</li>
<li>It is a possibility to use the btrfs seed-device as a &ldquo;live&rdquo; system and copy this
drive over to the new system. This needs to get investigated, but see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs#Seed_devices">Wikipedia &ndash; btrfs</a>.</li>
</ol>


<h1>Some Roadmap Things</h1>

<ol>
<li>Create scripts for creating and restoring snapshots before/after an pacman
update.</li>
<li>Add mkinitcpio-btrfs hook as a default.</li>
</ol>


<p>What do you think about our Best Practices, what suggestions do you have? We are
more then happy to get some feedback.</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
  <entry>
    <title type="html"><![CDATA[pacNAS - Why A New Distro?]]></title>
    <link href="http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/08/25/pacnas-why-a-new-distro/"/>
    <updated>2013-08-25T14:01:00+02:00</updated>
    <id>http://pacNAS.github.io/blog/2013/08/25/pacnas-why-a-new-distro</id>
    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>A couple of month ago I did start to rip all my CDs into the nowadays quite
popular flac-format. Just as an information, you can take a look into <a href="http://www.discogs.com/collection?user=triplem74">my</a>
discogs collection. This collection contains all CDs in my collection, which are
already converted. Right now (current number of collection items is 521) I did
convert already half of the whole (and unfortunately still growing) collection.</p>

<p>During this phase of ripping and tagging and handling my collection, I was searching
for a nice Media Player, which is able to play my quite large music collection
and present this in a &ldquo;standard&rdquo; way. Some goodies on this would be a control of
what is played via my smartphone or some other nice way (e.g. web interface). I
stumbled across <a href="http://www.minimserver.com">minimserver</a> and I am still very much
interested in this project.</p>

<!-- more -->


<p>So now you are asking, what does this have to do with a NAS distribution? Well,
during my search for this &ldquo;music server&rdquo; I looked for different NAS distributions
(music files can grow quite quickly and there is lots of disc space needed) and
decided, that I need a NAS to store all my files. This NAS should be able to run
minimserver and also probably some other related stuff (like e.g. a kind of proxy,
to be able to let the music stream to my stereo without having the smartphone
turned on all the time). Since minimserver uses Java I thought, all is fine and
I can probably use an already existing NAS distribution. But far from it, since
minimserver is also using some distribution related binaries. This is still possible
with all of the NAS distributions, but with a higher effort (at least on the
FreeBSD based distros, since there I needed the Linux compatibility mode).</p>

<p>Of course I stumbled on the <a href="http://openmediavault.org/">OpenMediaVault</a> distro,
which is Linux based. This distro is based on Debian, which I am not really into,
and furthermore it is based on a slightly outdated Kernel, so I would not be able
to use the latest up and coming filesystem (Btrfs).</p>

<p>After some digging around and much thoughts, I decided to create a new distro based
on my preferred distro <a href="http://www.archlinux.org">ArchLinux</a>. This distro has the
advantage, that I know it quite well (I use it since nearly 5 years) and it has
a very large and active community. Furthermore it does provide the latest and greatest
kernel version all the time.</p>

<p>Since I already participated in a &ldquo;new distribution project&rdquo; (ArchServer), I
asked the founder of this project (fukawi2), if he would like to participate.
Fortunately, he said yes. The new distro &ldquo;pacNAS&rdquo; was born.</p>

<p>Why the name pacNAS? pacNAS is a concatination of the word &ldquo;pacman&rdquo; (the famous
package manager of ArchLinux) and the word &ldquo;NAS&rdquo;, which tells you, that we are mainly
focused on being a NAS distribution.</p>

<p>If you have any further questions, remarks, do not hesitate to leave a comment.
Furthermore, if you like the idea and like to participate as well, contact us via
email (see our <a href="http://github.com/pacNAS">github project</a>).</p>
]]></content>
  </entry>
  
</feed>