Comments on: Greyhole – Drive Extender for Linux

By: @jayrock74

@jayrock74 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:17:47 +0000

Mike, have you started doing s.th. in C#? I'm thinking about doing the same. If you're interested mail me at jayrock_at_gmx _dot_net.

By: Worried

Worried — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:06:43 +0000

Sorry, I'm not meaning to be offensive, but PHP is not normally considered as the best option for system level scripting like this. I've done my fair share of apps with PHP and quickly moved on to ruby or python for projects that are just a bit too complex for bash.

I'm also not a big fan of WHS. geez, it seems like I'm pretty negative, eh? Anyway, I'm just saying I think clean code and separation would go a long way in furthering possible use/contrib to your project. And unfortunately that's pretty difficult with PHP

By: Guillaume Boudreau

Guillaume Boudreau — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:55:05 +0000

This is indeed not for everybody.
It's more targeted to power users who don't feel all warm and cozy to have to pay a WHS license to Microsoft to get (about) the same features, but on a Windows kernel.
If that's not your case, I see no reason why you'd switch from WHS to Greyhole.

And in it's current state, Greyhole is not ready to store important files for anybody (except maybe mine).
At this time, I'd compare it to the first version of WHS, which sometimes 'ate' users files…

PS I don't see why a simple problem needs a complicated solution. A simple Samba VFS module to create logs, and a simple PHP program to eat the logs, and execute cp / ln / rm / etc. commands to move / replicate the files, when necessary. It could have been shell script, and it would have worked as well.

By: Worried

Worried — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:40:19 +0000

This is scary. Written in PHP and most of the source is in a single file. It may work, but that doesn't make me feel all warm and cozy

By: Mike Lowrey

Mike Lowrey — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:59:16 +0000

Hi,

hm i had no realised that it’s written in php! That’s a good news!

Can you mail me the syntax of the log files? I think with the .net component “filesystem.watcher” and a .net service it should be possible to provide such a log file.

chaostheory[at]gmx[dot]de

@ brent

I know the problems of Mono, but a can’t found a general disqualification for Mono and/or Java.

By: Guillaume Boudreau

Guillaume Boudreau — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:05:42 +0000

Well, I does depend on the drives you have, and the amount of data you have, and the percentage you want to protect…

Say you have one 2TB, and three 1TB (so total 5TB unprotected space).
Say I have 3TB of recordings I don't care about, and 1TB of stuff I really care about.

With UnRAID: 2TB HDD is used for parity, giving me 3TB of space = less than the 4TB of data I have, so I need to buy another 1TB HDD.

With DE or Greyhole: The 3TB of recording takes 3TB, and th 1TB of stuff I care about takes 2TB. Total 5TB = fits on my current drives.

By: Madhav

Madhav — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:48:24 +0000

I'm a big fan of the fused filesystem products and appreciate more options, especially ones running on an open source OS.

I do have to comment on the following not being true with unRaid however. "Having redundancy on those would cost me 2-3 TB more than what I currently have." It would in fact be protected for "free" as the parity information protects all attached storage at the cost of one drive.

By: Luca

Luca — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:31:57 +0000

3 reasons only I use WHS : DE, SIS backups, TV card supported

Actually I can manage a small TV card farm in my WHS with light and free 3rd part software but I fear that v2 will be crippled with tons of crappy drm and blocked codecs like W7.

I hope linux will be ready in time.

By: DV-Design

DV-Design — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:17:24 +0000

You should highly consider working on something like a GUI in the future. I understand that you need to get it working before that, but the biggest reason i use WHS instead of Linux is because a monkey could setup WHS. Even though i have some general know-how in linux i just cant be bothered with the commands and attention linux would need from me.

If you eliminate that learning curve by giving it an intuitive interface, it will open up the demographic of people who will use and implement it.

Just a suggestion.

By: Guillaume Boudreau

Guillaume Boudreau — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:30:29 +0000

It's implemented in PHP, so it is cross platform.
The reason I mention it's for Linux at the moment is that it requires Samba logs to work.
All files operations on the storage pool needs to be logged in a file, so that Greyhole can then work it's magic using this operations log.
I didn't look for a Windows equivalent (since I don't plan to use this on Windows), but I'm pretty sure this could at least work on many Unix and maybe Mac, with some know-how.

By: Guillaume Boudreau

Guillaume Boudreau — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:27:30 +0000

It does support ext4. In fact, it supports any file system you can mount in Linux.
You can even mount a remote NFS file system, and include it in your storage pool, if you'd like!

There's currently a lot of command-line instructions to install; it's not very easy for novice. No GUI. Might change when we get near 1.0.

By: @brentfriedman

@brentfriedman — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:51:51 +0000

Mike,
Linux doesn't support C#, it is a Windows only language that is dependent on the .NET Framework. Well, you could use Mono with C# but not for something like this. Due to what the project does, Java would not be appropriate (even though it is cross platform).