Samsung 32GB Class 10 MicroSD Card

Posted by on 07/04/2012 No comments

Got this off Gmarket at a fairly cheap price and it was delivered today. Link to the specification of item here.

Packaging of Samsung 32GB MicroSD Card

Memory cards are getting cheaper everyday, even for a 32GB capacity. From what it is advertised, it’s suppose to go up to read speed of 24MB/s and write speed of 13MB/s.


Just how true is that? Well, let’s put it to the test.

Samsung 32GB MicroSD card speed test

Not bad at all! Guess it’s worth every penny (for it’s cheap price as well)! No complain… :)

Transmission V2.50 available plus change in location of settings.json file

Posted by on 06/04/2012 2 comments

Late post but better than never.

Transmission V2.50 was available for awhile. There’s quite abit of UI + function changes. The most significant change is the location of file: settings.json.

(Note: if you are using my post “Installing and configuring Transmission for Synology DS411” as a guide, replace the path in Step 4 to the new path below.)

This is the new path:

/usr/local/transmission/var/settings.json

As usual, you can download the file from http://synopkg.superzebulon.org/spkrepo/packages. You can also grab it directly off here: transmission-88f6281-2.50-1 for those using DS411 or similar.

Tested with DSM 4.0 – 2198 and Transmission Version 2.50.

Quick dive into DSM 4.0!

Posted by on 07/03/2012 No comments

Woot! Barely one day after the official release of DSM 4.0, I took the plunge and upgraded my DS411. So far everything is smooth sailing. Yipee!

One minor hiccup though - I need to do a manual upgrade rather than via the automated approach. I guess everyone is hammering the server to perform their upgrade as well.

Every other applications which was pre-installed in DSM 3.2 – 1955 all works well in DSM 4.0 so far, no restore to defaults required. This includes: wordpress, phpmyadmin and transmission. Phew…

In its glory, DSM 4.0!

Unfortunately, Cloud Station is still in beta. I am still contemplating whether to install. Probably I’ll just wait for a while. My data are just too precious for me not to consider taking the risk.

Synology DS1812+ to reach our shore soon?

Posted by on 29/01/2012 No comments

During the CES 2012, Synology not only reveal it's upcoming DSM 4.0. It also came with a little teaser – DS1812+, a 8-bay NAS! Digging the news from Synology forum and google, it seems that this beast is on sale now. I would think this is a replacement of DS1511+ although nowhere was it mentioned.

In Taiwan, it is seen selling online here at 29999 TWD which translates to somewhere around SGD1265. A product review can also be seen here.

The specs looks really juicy. If the information is correct, this is more power efficient compared to DS1511+. 69.8W for 5 HDDS at full load with DS1511+ and 71.5W for 8 HDDs at full load with DS1812+. Just how cool is that? :P

Synology DS1812+ Datasheet

DSM 4.0 is just around the corner!

Posted by on 11/01/2012 No comments

Looks like Synology is ready to release DSM 4.0. Thumbs up for them to get their OS evolving continuously. Can't wait for new surprises for the rest of this year!

Link to DSM 4.0 presentation slides here!

Internet speed to reach another level (with fiber)

Posted by on 26/12/2011 No comments

Managed to get fiber internet (from Singtel) installed last Saturday. 100 Mbps down / 50 Mbps up for local speed and 15 Mbps for international speed (yes, international speed is kinda pathetic). Got my AIO modem to be in bridge mode for internet packets to be handled separately so as not to stress it too much. Speed seems to be consistent these few days using www.speedtest.net.

I guess this will get my Synology DS411 to work better! :)

Entry Level NAS VS Premium NAS

Posted by on 13/12/2011 No comments

Started out exploring Network Attached Storage (NAS) around 3 years ago when I was looking for a solution to centralise my files storage and to access them over the internet. First NAS I got was D-Link DNS-343 which surprisingly is still selling in Singapore now.

Back then, any NAS available in the market was still highly priced. A 2-bay NAS could easily cost over 200 bucks. The NAS that I got was a 4 bay. It was a greedy and ambitious first attempt nonetheless.

Looking forward, I’ve also tried out D-Link DNS-323 and DNS-320 for a brief moment before I venture out to Premium NAS (a 4 bay) which easily cost me double as compared to my previous NAS (also a 4 bay). With the easy availability of high speed internet access, more people download files. Hence, ‘Cheap’ NAS are easily available partly because of that in my opinion. 2 brands come into my mind. D-Link and Buffalo. Both target users who do not want to spend too much while looking for attractive features like media streaming, data protection, torrents download and as well as file access over the internet. Any NAS now could easily provide all these features.

What Premium NAS stands out is that it goes few steps further to provide users with advance features. Things like web hosting, database, mail server, unique user management and probably features you can only see in corporate products (e.g. AD, VPN etc). Brands like Synology and QNAP provides tons of applications which advance users can venture into. Of course, the hardware itself is top-notch: quality chassis build, lower and more efficient power consumption to name a few. The OS is outstanding as well. You can also easily find a few models using intel Atom CPUs if you are looking for high transfer rates.

Should you jump straight into Premium NAS or just get an Entry Level NAS to try out first? Probably you need to ask yourself a few questions before making a decision.

1. What is your budget?

Low budget -> Entry Level NAS
High budget -> Premium NAS
 

2. Do you have prior knowledge of how a NAS really works?

If you are new to NAS, go for something that alot of people are going for: Entry Level NAS. You probably could have gotten more help if you encountered issues from the huge pool of users compared to Premium NAS where fewer will venture into due to the higher costs.
 

3. What features do you need from a NAS?

Basic features like the ones I mentioned above, go for Entry Level NAS. If you do have high speed internet access, you probably will consider doing simple webhosting like blog, photo gallery, forums etc. That is where you need to go for premium NAS. They can provide you with more ‘horsepower’ from hardware and software aspects to achieve your needs.
 

4. Are you always hunger to try out new features or probably stick to a few features and nothing else?

If yes to former, only Premium NAS can fulfil it. Reason is simple. New features may require more memory and speed to perform. Entry Level NAS being cheap, is built on minimum resources required. Any new features added may cause noticeable performance slowdown which in turn can be quite frustrating.
 

Final conclusion: I guess just like buying other IT gadgets, getting info prior to buying is the best strategy. Internet researching, forums reading and user reviews articles are essential. If you first started out in Entry Level NAS, take time to learn. Probably after you are more familiar, you can upgrade later on.

Installing and configuring Transmission for Synology DS411

Posted by on 09/12/2011 10 comments

Beyond the download station in DSM, I would prefer to install Transmission for my torrents download as some trackers do not accept proprietary bittorrent client.

In this post, I will go through how to install Transmission and most importantly, set up username and password to it so that only you can access the UI of the application if you are outside your home.

1. Create a shared folder call “transmission“. Inside this folder, create 2 folders namely “download” and “incoming“. Make sure you assign yourself to full access for “transmission” shared folder.

2.  Next, do ONE of the following:

a. go to Package Center -> Settings -> Package Sources and add in the link - http://synopkg.superzebulon.org/spkrepo/packages,

b. download the package manually from the same link above and install it in Package Center -> Install / Update,

c. download from here: transmission-88f6281-2.42-2.spk if you are using DS411 or similar and install it in Package Center -> Install / Update as well.

Method b and c requires you to know what CPU is used in your NAS. As in my case, DS411 is using Marvell 6282 SoC. Models like DS411+ II or DS1511+ cannot use method b and c since they are using Intel Atom CPU. More info can be found here.

Right after you installed Transmission, you will see it under Installed tab. If it is running, stop the service first as some configurations need to be done if you want to set it with username and password. By default, the web interface of Transmission is running in port 9091.

In DSM, enable your telnet and ssh in Terminal. You can use DOS command prompt or download a telnet client like Putty and telnet to your NAS.

Telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (where the x represents your NAS IP address)

3. Login username will be root and password is the same one as you log in to DSM with admin account.

Telnet login

4. Type the following:

 vi /usr/local/var/transmission/settings.json

You should see the transmission configuration parameters immediately. If you did not see anything, that means the path is wrong. Double check on it or perhaps the path is not the same as mine so you need to find out the correct path.

5. Scroll all the way down to “rpc-authentication-required” field and press “End” key on your keyboard. The cursor will now shift to the end of the line.

6. Press “left arrow” key on your keyboard (you may need to do a few times) so that the cursor will be within the sentence. Now press “I” key on your keyboard.

7. You will notice one “I” at the bottom left corner. Right after you see that, you can now move your cursor freely. Below are the parameters you need to change.

“rpc-authentication-required”: true,
“rpc-password”: “XXX“,
“rpc-username”: “YYY“,
 
Substitute XXX and YYY to your desired password and username respectively.

8. Once all is done, press “Esc” button on your keyboard. The “I” located on the lower left corner will immediately change to “-”.

9. Now press “:” key on your keyboard.  The “-” located on the lower left corner will immediately change to “:”. Type “wq” and press “Enter” key on your keyboard. This will save your changes.

10. Now run your Transmission application service in DSM and it should now prompt you for username and password before you can access.

Sidenote: By then you should have notice that you can change alot of parameters inside settings.json including the default Transmission UI port (9091).

Happy torrenting!

Tested with DSM 3.2 – 1955 and Transmission Version 2.42.

Changing maximum upload file size for WordPress

Posted by on 07/12/2011 4 comments

By default in my Synology NAS, installed WordPress maximum upload file size allowed when uploading media file is 32MB. It will not suffice since certain media files like video would easily exceed that by a few times.

One way is to locate the php.ini and increase the file size allowed. However, a quicker way is to add the following lines in .htaccess file which is located in WordPress folder or the URL where you access the blog (http://www.xyz.com/wordpress OR http://www.xyz.com).

php_value upload_max_filesize 1024M
php_value post_max_size 1024M
php_value max_execution_time 200
php_value max_input_time 200

1. Download the .htaccess file.

2. Save it to your desktop. (Notice that after saving to desktop, the filename will change from .htaccess to htaccess).

3. Insert the four lines mentioned above at the end of the file and save it. You can change 1024M for line 1 and 2 to the size your’re comfortable with.

4. Rename the existing file in the server from .htaccess to htaccessold for example.

5. Upload the file which you’ve made changes to back to the folder and from there, rename it to .htaccess

6. Log in again and you should see the maximum file upload size updated to the one you defined in .htaccess!

Tested with DSM 3.2 – 1955 and WordPress Version 3.2.1.

Expanding my DS411 to 3rd HDD and beyond…

Posted by on 06/12/2011 No comments

My intention is to quickly fill up all the remaining two slots with HDDs. After I inserted the third HDD, the building process took me 20 hours! It’s rather easy to trace the duration as DS411 has a very informative log system which capture most of the tasks information.

This building up of third HDD via SHR is similar to RAID 5. That means I have the capacity of 2 virtual HDDs while the third HDD is fault tolerance. By the way, during the process of expanding of the volume, I can still access the HDDs which is good. All seems fine and right now, I’m building up the 4th HDD. At 1st hour, the process is completed at 3%. That means I need about 33 hours to finish building up the volume! At the end of it, it’s 3 virtual HDDs capacity while the fourth HDD is fault tolerance.

I also did a quick check: while all the 4 HDDs are being accessed, the power consumption is constant at 30W which is very close to the power consumption mentioned by Synology @ 29.7W.

All installation done. As of now, I’ve installed WordPress, phpMyAdmin and Transmission. While the installation of transmission is a breeze, I did meet obstacles setting it with a username and password. Probably in the next post, I’ll do a quick guide on how to do that.

*UPDATE*: The building of 4th HDD is faster than expected. It took me 24.5 hours instead of the mentioned 33 hours earlier on.