This is a two part question, thanks in advance for any help.
First question is: Can I turn on and off my NAS using the power button to my pc? I just want it turn it on when I need it and just turn it off when I’m not using it. So just turning it on with the power button would be great. Is this possible?
Second thing is I made a new user following a youtube video, I can log into the nas as the root, but when I try and log into the nas as a user I can’t. It just says user or password is wrong. I’m like certain the password is right, I even made it super simple as ababab just to test and make sure.
Power button I’m not so sure, it may call a standard linux shutdown in which case middleware would not be able to perform shutdown tasks, but it’s very easy to shut down via the WebUI.
For the user, have you confirmed that the account is not locked? (credentials → users → edit → lock)
Or potentially have you manually set the user’s home directory to /nonexistent (if you followed an outdated video), it should be /var/empty. I’m not sure if this may cause issues but did see that this has changed recently.
Oooo ok. So I shut it down with the web UI and I turn it on with the power button?
Also I just figured out what I was doing wrong. I was using //(insert IP address) instead of \(Insert IP address) when trying to log in. Ahhhh, I’m such a noob. haha
You should be able to just push the button (don’t hold it for more than a second) and have it initiate an orderly shutdown. You can test that by hooking up a monitor and trying.
If you’re using CORE, you can only log into the UI as root. If you’re using SCALE, you can also log in as an administrator. In no case can you log into the web UI as a normal user.
So… I sorta turned off the NAS using the IP address to shut down the NAS, things seemed work well. The NAS turned off with no issues. I turned on the NAS with the PC power button and it says “This is a truenas data disk and cannot boot system. System halted”.
Just make sure your BIOS doesn’t have a setting to determine what the power switch does, for example some Supermicro boards you can choose between it meaning instant power off or sending a signal to the OS with a quick press.
…but why? I can see issues with this desire unless it is used for cold backup. For example; repeated spin up/dn of HDDs, arguable time for SMART tests, arguable time for scrubs.
I’m just curious why you’d build a separate machine as opposed to investigate into more storage for your normal pc.
If you mean the power button going straight to your PC as opposed to you NAS powering on both devices at the same time? Yes, you could 100% wire up some kind of Y split from both your motherboards to a single button - I wouldn’t recommend it because it makes no sense to me. I’m not sure if anyone would sell something like this, but it would be easy enough to cobble together with a soldering iron.
I hope I don’t come across as rude - I’m just confused.
ooo, ok ok. I’m just using my old gaming PC. Maximus Formula IX with a I7 7700k. I loved that gaming PC and I didn’t want to sell it since I have such great memories gaming on it and I needed more storage to save my art work so it totally made sense to turn it into a NAS. Super excited that it’s worked out so far!
I meant separate power buttons for each. One for my NAS PC and one for my MAIN PC. That way I can save all the data I’m currently working on, on my main PC and save back ups and transfer over data that I’m not really using but would like to save for later on my NAS.
I don’t really need the extra storage all the time on my NAS so I didn’t want it on all the time. Just store it for a backup.
I hope I answered your question but I may not have, but it wasn’t intentional! Thanks for your insight friend!
naw that 100% makes a lot more sense than what I was imagining.
Unless electricity is crazy expensive where you live, don’t forget to occasionally let the NAS run SMART tests and SCRUBs so it can warn if you a disk is about to fail & validate your data integrity!
Yeah it’s expensive, plus I’m weird and I don’t like leaving pc’s on due to a potential fire hazard. I would never forgive myself if it some how caught on fire when I wasn’t home and it burn my apartment down and my cat died due to my carelessness.
Someone more organized than me will likely link you the recommended guide, but the shortest version & will contain simplified info that is mostly correct:
Scrub - ZFS will confirm data on pool it isn’t corrupted
SMART Test - The HDD/SSD will perform testing on itself to confirm it isn’t failing/hasn’t failed
At some point the recommended time(s) to run these was:
Scrub 1st & 15th of each month
Short SMART Test: 5, 12, 19, and 26 of the month
Long SMART Test: 8 and 22 of the month
(set specified hour during low usage window).
Considering your NAS is mostly always powered off my specified schedule might be very stupid & not relevant to your use case. But would recommend occasionally performing a scrub & smart short & long tests as you see fit.
[Edit: it is recommended to never run SMART Test and Scrub at same time -]
ooo, ok! Thanks! I’m guessing the more the system is used and is powered on, the more tests you should do?
I shall have to set this up once I get my HDD, I’m using some old 256g SSD since I wasn’t sure if I was able to get this up and running. Now that I got this up and working I should buy those HDD . Super excited I was able to get it to work.
Also your info is super helpful and insightful friend! Thanks a lot kind sir.
Anytime man - generally more testing for sleeping better at night. Some of us care too much about our precious 1s and 0s & go to silly lengths for backups, redundancies, and testing.
Since you haven’t bought the HDDs yet, just make sure they are CMR, not SMR drives. Short version - SMR plays very badly with ZFS, maybe nothing bad happens, maybe it is slightly slower, maybe strange UI glitch, maybe 1 day all your data is gone irreversibly.
Congratz on getting things working & enjoy the many learning opportunities.
Depending on how serious you take your own data there are lots of best practices. All of them aren’t strictly necessary to get something that ‘works’ and all of them are a minor pain to learn when you’re new, but following things like:
setting up smart test & scrubs
setting up email notification for alarms
performing hardware burn in
planning your pool layout before moving any data onto it (major pitfall for new users)
Will eventually turn your NAS experience into autopilot mode; until a drive dies. The best, and worst part about it is that YOU get to decide how much you care about any of it & what is/isn’t worth your time and effort.
