Arch Linux

Arkamririon

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2005-12-27

Posts: 35

Ximeta Network Drive Driver

Hi, I bought a Trekstor Network Harddrive and now trying to use it with Arch. USB works so far, but Network would be nice
The Drive uses the Ximeta Ndas Device Driver for network access:
http://code.ximeta.com/cgi-bin/tracX.cgi/wiki

I downloaded and tried the latest stable and the latest nightly:
http://code.ximeta.com/download/1.0.2/2 … -24.tar.gz
and
http://code.ximeta.com/dev/1.0.3/98/lin … -98.tar.gz
and some older versions, but older versions but this older versions didn't compile.

I followed Gentoo HowTo's (the only description on how to build from source i found):
http://code.ximeta.com/cgi-bin/tracX.cgi/wiki/Gentoo
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-41 … imeta.html

With the exports  (need to specify the Kernelpath and Version - im using the latest beyond kernel) the compilation was no problem.
I know it is not the Arch way, but i tried a "make install" which ended in an errormessage:

if [ -f /etc/debian_version ]; then 
            ln -sf /usr/share/ndas/ndas /etc/init.d/ndas;
            /usr/sbin/update-rc.d ndas start 73 2 3 4 5 . stop 13 0 1 6 .; 
        else if [ -f /etc/SuSE-release ] ; then 
            ln -sf /usr/share/ndas/ndas.suse /etc/init.d/ndas;
            /sbin/chkconfig --add ndas;
        else if [ -f /etc/gentoo-release ] ; then 
            ln -sf /usr/share/ndas/ndas /etc/init.d/ndas;
            rc-update add ndas default; 
        else 
            ln -sf /usr/share/ndas/ndas /etc/init.d/ndas;
            /sbin/chkconfig --add ndas;
            /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 ndas on ;
        fi
        fi
        fi

/bin/sh: -c: line 17: syntax error: unexpected end of file
make: *** [install-admin] Fehler 2

Ok after that i tried the manual way described in the gentoo forum:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-41 … imeta.html
(placed the init script in /etc/rc.d and not in /etc/init.d)
And then started the daemon. Seems to work: output :

Starting NDAS: modules inserted node created started

But dmesg shows errors:

NET: Registered protocol family 29
ndas: cache memory size 1552
ndas: registered ndas device at major number 60
ndas: fail to register network interface eth1 (-12): ignored
ndas: fail to register network interface sit0 (-12): ignored

I could register the device using the ndasadmin tool, but no slot is assigned and the device is showed as offline:

cat /proc/ndas/devs
Name            ID                     Key Serial    Version Online     Slots
NetworkDisk     BEDKEQQJ1EM52M8*****   Yes 08000294  N/A     No

Anyone managed to get a Ximeta Network Device running, or at least have a idea how i could fix the problems?

r76

Member

Registered: 2007-09-13

Posts: 19

Re: Ximeta Network Drive Driver

Did you ever get this to work?

Am looking at http://code.ximeta.com/trac-ndas
There seems to be some info, but I already followed their instructions for Ubuntu and it didn't work.  I don't want to screw up a smoothly running arch system for the sake of one network drive

clownfish

Member

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 72

Re: Ximeta Network Drive Driver

i got it working. just a few days ago.
1) download the source from http://code.ximeta.com/dev/current/linux/
2) extract it
3) cd to the extracted dir
4) run ./configure
5) open Makefile in a text-editor, look for "init.d" and change it to "rc.d" (it occours just once in the whole file)
6) make
7) make install (as su)
8) make install maybe will show you some warning messages at the end that /sbin/chkconfig can't be found. doesn't matter cause that would just add ndas to be started at boot. do this yourself by adding ndas to the daemons array in /etc/rc.conf
9) register your Netdisk as described there: http://code.ximeta.com/trac-ndas/wiki/Usage
10) enable it as descirbed at the above URL
11) reboot (or just start the daemon, as su run: "/etc/rc.d/ndas start")
12) the partitions of your NetDisk-drive should show up as /dev/ndasXXXXXXXX-0p1, /dev/ndasXXXXXXXX-0p2, ... where XXXXXXXX are digits and may be drive-specific. -0p1, -0p2, ... just tells you the number of the partition on the disk. Could be compared to -0p1 is hda1, -0p2 is hda2 on your local drive. So just mount /dev/ndasXXXXXXXX-0p1 or whatever partition of the netdisk-drive with the according file-system.
13) don't forget to unmount it again.

some issues: i copied a file with about 1GB to the netdisk-drive and watched the net-traffic with conky. when the commandline showed me, that the process of copying was finished, there was still full net-traffic and just about 800MB of data uploaded. don't know if conky is wrong or the drivers are buggy. but after huge and important traffic to the drive, wait a minute and be aware that there is definitely no traffic anymore. or just take a look at the netdisk-drive, you should hear if it stopped reading/writing.
and always unmount it, although i don't know if in this case umount really waits until there is no traffic and no reading/writing anymore as umount itself just can trust the ndas-drivers.

after using the drive for some months with linux, a recommendation: if it's not your only external drive, i would recommend you not to use it as your primary backup-device for important files.
i use it since some months. until some days ago, i used older drivers, which didn't really work flawless and didn't make me really happy. the new ones seem to work better, but i still don't really trust them and tripple save really important backups (once at the netdisk and twice on dvd/cd).

i adapted the file for /etc/rc.d/ndas and the Makefile to work with arch-linux, but don't want to argue now with the AUR-guidelines. if you want the files i can give a copy to you.

Last edited by clownfish (2007-09-30 22:25:08)

r76

Member

Registered: 2007-09-13

Posts: 19

Re: Ximeta Network Drive Driver

Many thanks for making that so clear clownfish.  I followed your instructions and now NDAS works great for me too.

4) run ./configure

didn't do anything apart from complain there was no configure file, so I skipped the configure step

i adapted the file for /etc/rc.d/ndas and the Makefile

I only changed the Makefile as you advised, I left  /etc/rc.d/ndas alone as it works and I didn't understand it - from what I read it seemed to check for which distro you are using.

but after huge and important traffic to the drive, wait a minute and be aware that there is definitely no traffic anymore. or just take a look at the netdisk-drive, you should hear if it stopped reading/writing.
and always unmount it, although i don't know if in this case umount really waits until there is no traffic and no reading/writing anymore as umount itself just can trust the ndas-drivers.

after using the drive for some months with linux, a recommendation: if it's not your only external drive, i would recommend you not to use it as your primary backup-device for important files.

Your advice is much appreciated, I've been accessing this drive by dual booting into XP - and even there the drive seems to write after the "copying files" dialogue box has closed.  And I wouldn't trust it with the primary copy of any of my files.  I drag them there from one of my USB backup drives - my NDAS disk sits in another room - it's a Freecom Network Mediaplayer 35 and is attached to the TV.

I can't get over how slow NDAS is as a transfer method, but not having to reboot into Windows to transfer video files to the TV makes that a non-issue.  Many thanks again.

I'll have to learn how to mount this drive for access as a regular user rather than as root but that should be easy, I might mount it in fstab as described on the wiki (although I don't plan to connect to it too often)

clownfish

Member

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 72

Re: Ximeta Network Drive Driver

hm, you're right, there is no configure script in the extracted source. actually i don't know why i wrote this

but i'm glad that i could help you getting your netdisk to work on linux!

to mount it as a regualr user, just add it to /etc/fstab, a line like the follwing might be a good shot:

/dev/ndas-13201136-0p2 /media/netdisk xfs user,noauto 0 0

that's the line in my /etc/fstab. your tux-box interprets it this way:
  - /dev/ndas-13201136-0p2 (the linux partition on my netdisk), should be mounted in /media/netdisk
  - using the xfs filesystem (i partitioned it to xfs, but don't ask how, cause i don't get cfdisk runing for the netdisk anymore ?!?)
  - the options user,noauto tell, that regular users are allowed to mount it, and not to mount it automatically on bootup or whenever it's plugged in
  - the 0 0 section are values for dump and fsck, see "man fstab", the paragraphs starting with "The fifth field" and "The sixth field" tell you what they mean

cheers, clownfish

Last edited by clownfish (2007-10-03 09:40:30)

clownfish

Member

Registered: 2006-09-04

Posts: 72

Re: Ximeta Network Drive Driver

I only changed the Makefile as you advised, I left  /etc/rc.d/ndas alone as it works and I didn't understand it - from what I read it seemed to check for which distro you are using.

just to complete it: i changed /etc/rc.d/ndas to show up the same message as the other daemons in arch. it's just a cosmetic change for bootup in arch

dun32

Member

Registered: 2012-10-31

Posts: 22

Re: Ximeta Network Drive Driver

Hello,

I'm now trying to install NDAS software on my : Linux SpiderArch 3.6.8-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Nov 26 22:10:40 CET 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Which is now starting with systemd and it makes a few months that http://code.ximeta.com/dev/current/linux/ is not available.

After a lot of Google's stuff, how can I manage to connect my Dane Elec SoSmart to my Arch system ?