Category: Storage

  • Ubuntu: How to restore your files from a tape

      This is just like extracting a regular tar archive:   tar -xvf /dev/[path to tape] [directory or file to restore]   e.g.:   tar -xvf /dev/st0 backups   This will restore the “backups” file/folder to the current working directory. To check your current directory, you can use:   pwd   to make sure that…

  • Ubuntu: How to check the contents of a tape

    Ubuntu: How to check the contents of a tape

      To check the contents of a tape, insert the tape and run the following:   tar -tf /dev/[path to tape device]   e.g.:   tar -tf /dev/st0   Note that typically it’s a zero, not a letter o, at the end.

  • Ubuntu: How to write files to a tape

    Ubuntu: How to write files to a tape

      To put files onto a tape, run the following:   tar -cvf /dev/[path to tape] [file or directory] [file or directory] [file or directory]   An example would be:   tar -cvf /dev/st0 /home/bob   This will back up the user bob’s home directory to the tape, here located at /dev/st0 (a typical location…

  • Seagate HDD Date Codes

        On Seagate drives you may see a Date Code – e.g. 07466. What does it mean?   Simply put, it’s in the format of YY:W:D, or YY:WW:D, where Y is year, W is week and D is day of week.   The year is fairly self-explanatory; the weeks aren’t measured from January, though,…

  • Western Digital Green drive resilver rates

    Western Digital Green drive resilver rates

        We get asked fairly regularly about resilver rates for ZFS pools – these matter as it impacts on how quickly a vdev with faulty disks can rebuild data onto a fresh disk, as well as how quickly you can swap one disk for another. The longer it takes to rebuild the vdev after…

  • Samba log showing error: failed to retrieve printer list

    Samba log showing error: failed to retrieve printer list

      If you’re using Ubuntu and seeing the following error in your Samba log:   Failed to retrieve printer list: NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL   If you are a home user and using samba purely for file sharing from a server or NAS you’re probably not interested in sharing printers through it. If so, you can prevent this…

  • Intel SSD 330 120GB benchmarks

        As promised, here are some benchmarks of Intel’s SSD: An average of 390MB/s for sequential reads? Nice. IOPS: HD Tune Pro’s File Transfer test: Hovering around 500MB/s there – impressive. Last benchmark for now: Overall this is a well performing drive and is the only Sandforce-controller-based drive that we currently use.

  • How to restart NFS server on Ubuntu

    How to restart NFS server on Ubuntu

      Once you set up your NFS exports by adding lines to /etc/exports you need to restart your NFS server; do this with the following:   sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart   You should see output along the lines of:  * Stopping NFS kernel daemon                 [ OK ] * Unexporting directories for NFS kernel daemon…           [ OK…

  • ZFS on Ubuntu error: Failed to load ZFS module stack

    ZFS on Ubuntu error: Failed to load ZFS module stack

      If you see the above error in a fresh installation of ZFS on Ubuntu one cause may be that the package build-essentials wasn’t installed prior to installing the ubuntu-zfs package; run:   sudo apt-get purge ubuntu-zfs   then check for the remaining packages with the following:   dpkg –list | grep zfs   …and…

  • Right-angled SATA cables

      Having trouble with routing SATA cables in a tight space? Don’t forget that you can get SATA cables with connectors at a variety of angles, including 90 degrees to the side:     This can make routing cables quite a bit easier – sometimes allowing you to avoid pressing the cable in at an…