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HP N54L Microserver - Getting Everything Working


Dadudeondacouch

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OK guys I have managed to get my HP N54L Microserver up and running fine with 4x3tb WD Black Drives and 4gb of ram, I managed to get wake on lan working after a bit of research by modifying the mac address in the grub.conf file on the boot drive. I only have a basic understanding of linux and have only had my N54L for 2 days and info about Xpenology seems scattered (can't seem to get 100% correct info because of different builds, custom bios's etc) so I figured I would post this and try get some info from someone who has more experience with the N54L and Xpenology.

 

I'm using trantor's dsm 4.2 build 3211 v1.2 and the bays 41 firmware

 

1. System beeps not working...anyway to fix?

 

2. Ups support...usb/network? Can someone enlighten me on the status of this? (not a big issue my ups runs it for 2hrs but I would like the synology to auto shutdown if power fails).

 

3. Hard drive hibernation...I have read the usb needs to be ejected for the drives to sleep, the nas operates on a power on off schedule during business hours and currently runs a script 5 mins after powering on that ejects the usb drive boot drive (I still havet checked to see if they are sleeping properly). Is there a better/proper way to do this without manually having to remove the drive every day?

 

4. The perfect setup for me would be 4x3tb drives in raid10 with a hotspare in the 5.25" bay, 1-2 more ethernet ports, usb3 and maybe an ssd for caching, is that even possible? (e-sata?) the other idea I had was if you could have 4x3tb drives in raid10 and 4x1tb 2.5" drives in raid0 in the 5.25" bay and then have a raid controller and extra 1-2 ethernet ports. Can anyone give me some advice on that?

 

5. Give me your knowledge...if there is anything else I should know about Xpenology on the N54L? Hardware combinations, problems, scripts, packages etc.

 

Cheers

Daniel

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  • 2 weeks later...
OK guys I have managed to get my HP N54L Microserver up and running fine with 4x3tb WD Black Drives and 4gb of ram, I managed to get wake on lan working after a bit of research by modifying the mac address in the grub.conf file on the boot drive. I only have a basic understanding of linux and have only had my N54L for 2 days and info about Xpenology seems scattered (can't seem to get 100% correct info because of different builds, custom bios's etc) so I figured I would post this and try get some info from someone who has more experience with the N54L and Xpenology.

 

I'm using trantor's dsm 4.2 build 3211 v1.2 and the bays 41 firmware

 

1. System beeps not working...anyway to fix?

 

Not to my knowledge. Does the N54L even have a beeper on board?

 

2. Ups support...usb/network? Can someone enlighten me on the status of this? (not a big issue my ups runs it for 2hrs but I would like the synology to auto shutdown if power fails).

 

Trantor's 1.2 has the required USB modules, meaning you can connect a USB UPS unit and set it up (if it is supported, I don't have a list of them).

 

3. Hard drive hibernation...I have read the usb needs to be ejected for the drives to sleep, the nas operates on a power on off schedule during business hours and currently runs a script 5 mins after powering on that ejects the usb drive boot drive (I still havet checked to see if they are sleeping properly). Is there a better/proper way to do this without manually having to remove the drive every day?

 

HDD hibernation should occur automatically, with Trantor's 1.2 even with USB devices. But you can tweak the syno config files so that e.g. it excludes your boot stick. I did so.

 

4. The perfect setup for me would be 4x3tb drives in raid10 with a hotspare in the 5.25" bay, 1-2 more ethernet ports, usb3 and maybe an ssd for caching, is that even possible? (e-sata?) the other idea I had was if you could have 4x3tb drives in raid10 and 4x1tb 2.5" drives in raid0 in the 5.25" bay and then have a raid controller and extra 1-2 ethernet ports. Can anyone give me some advice on that?

 

I'd suggest using a 2 or 4 bay 2.5" cage in the ODD drive, and a MOLEX Y cable to connect it. Also grab a better USB3 + SATA3 card, to connect them. RAID controller is unnecessary, it is easier if you set it up in Synology (and most definitely better managed!).

 

For the extra ethernet ports (I don't see the reason why would you need it though, the onboard one is Gigabit, and maybe you can add an extra gigabit interface for routing through the server, making it into a firewall), a PCI ethernet card will do, but you have to make sure it can fit the x4 port on board. I believe Intel manufactures 10Gbit dual port cards, though they are far from cheap.

 

5. Give me your knowledge...if there is anything else I should know about Xpenology on the N54L? Hardware combinations, problems, scripts, packages etc.

 

Cheers

Daniel

 

Well I use my N54L as a multimedia and download server, and had no problem so far. WoL is unnecessary for me, so is a separate UPS unit, and such I don't use these. But what I use are:

- Transmission

- Sickbeard, TPB edition

- CouchPotato

- A nice setup of LDAP and RADIUS for wireless auth

- Syslog server for my devices (phones, laptop, tablets, router, server itself)

- SAMBA shares

- Plex

- Mailserver, VPN server, etc., that's required to access my NAS from outside the network

 

All these work fine together, without any problem.

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2. Ups support...usb/network? Can someone enlighten me on the status of this? (not a big issue my ups runs it for 2hrs but I would like the synology to auto shutdown if power fails).

 

Trantor's 1.2 has the required USB modules, meaning you can connect a USB UPS unit and set it up (if it is supported, I don't have a list of them).

 

 

I'm also having an issue with my microserver detecting my APC SmartUPS 1500 via USB, I'm updated to the 1.2 repack but still no joy. I've seen somewhere that it should be supported so not sure where to go with this. If you find any resolution to this Dadudeondacouch then I would be ecstatic.

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I ended up getting most of it working ok...

 

My setup

 

HP N54L

4x3tb hdd's in raid 10 (investigating esata hot spare idea, anyone know if the n54l supports esata port multiplier?)

4x1tb hdd's (going to use pcie card to control these and 1 internal sata for hot spare or for an ssd cache drive)

4 hdd 5.25" bay (still need a pcie sata+usb3 controller, 4 sata 2 usb3 preferred any ideas?)

Built in eth and pcie 1x eth (wol working, built in becomes 2nd device when pcie is installed)

 

As far as I can tell there is indeed no beeper in the n54l which kinda sucks i would like it to beep to indicate errors etc.

 

I found that the drives were sleeping ok, but i'm still using a script to unmount the internal USB drive after booting anyway as I don't want it visible.

 

I also found that Synology uses NUT for usb ups support and only uses the usb-hid driver, my generic upsonic ups uses the blazer_usb driver so I changed the ups.conf to make it work but I still haven't got the estimated time working (shouldn't be hard) the same thing should help you ollie have a look at this for more info. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=917&p=4339&hilit=Enable+unsupported+ups#p4339 and this is the NUT compatibility list http://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html I'm guessing you need to open the ups.conf and change ups-hid to apcsmart after looking at the list.

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I ended up getting most of it working ok...

 

My setup

 

HP N54L

4x3tb hdd's in raid 10 (investigating esata hot spare idea, anyone know if the n54l supports esata port multiplier?)

4x1tb hdd's (going to use pcie card to control these and 1 internal sata for hot spare or for an ssd cache drive)

4 hdd 5.25" bay (still need a pcie sata+usb3 controller, 4 sata 2 usb3 preferred any ideas?)

Built in eth and pcie 1x eth (wol working, built in becomes 2nd device when pcie is installed)

 

As far as I can tell there is indeed no beeper in the n54l which kinda sucks i would like it to beep to indicate errors etc.

 

I found that the drives were sleeping ok, but i'm still using a script to unmount the internal USB drive after booting anyway as I don't want it visible.

 

I also found that Synology uses NUT for usb ups support and only uses the usb-hid driver, my generic upsonic ups uses the blazer_usb driver so I changed the ups.conf to make it work but I still haven't got the estimated time working (shouldn't be hard) the same thing should help you ollie have a look at this for more info. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=917&p=4339&hilit=Enable+unsupported+ups#p4339 and this is the NUT compatibility list http://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html I'm guessing you need to open the ups.conf and change ups-hid to apcsmart after looking at the list.

 

Nice setup!

eSATA multiplier only works with the modified BIOS, you have to enable certain settings (hot swap and full SATA speed) to make it work though.

What I don't understand is, where do you want to place the extra 4 hard drives?

 

Also please post the exact parts you're going to use (4x2.5" cage, and USB3+SATA3 card), as I want a really similar setup, quite soon.

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The extra 4 drives are 2.5" I've been looking at a few different 5.25" options I ended up going with the first one...

 

http://www.storagemarket.com.au/vantec- ... able-rack/

http://www.dvhardware.net/article49516.html

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?mai ... 7bcae24bb2

 

Cooling the 5.25 bay is tricky as they can get hot and I'm not sure about the sata + usb3 controller if I cant get a combo card I'll do without usb 3, at the moment it looks pretty awesome with the bays up top.

 

kinda side tracked cause I just discovered usb wifi dongles work lol still learning something new every day about these things, I haven't been able to get my bluetooth to discover any devices yet but it is coming up in bluetooth.

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@ fonix232:

 

Yesterday you wrote (in the now closed thread I started):

The reset issue does not affect us. This motherboard does not let Synology touch the BIOS settings, and such, it won't be any problem.

At least for me, it was never, and it was always my settings.

 

Then how come, that you in July wrote:

 

I have the same problem, the issue is that DSM, as it is a strictly closed-line product of Synology, expects the BIOS to be in a specific format it can edit (and not the AMI BIOS HP uses in my case, both on my fresh N54L and my hackology server that consists of the stuff in my signature). Now, this invalidates the CMOS, wipes all the changes (I for one need them, as I boot from USB, and primary boot device on this board is a Floppy device set even though there isn't on connected, and fails to go through all the devices to find the USB drive), and you're left with an unusable CMOS config that gets reset every time you restart.

Unfortunately this service runs real-time, so no matter what you do, power-off via pulling the plug, shutdown via terminal or GUI, the CMOS gets written and thus invalidated.

 

Now, so far I found only two solutions to counter this:

1. If you have a CMOS read-only pin, put a jumper on that madafaka. This should protect it from Synology's stupid CMOS-overriding daemon.

2. If you are good with it, try to modify your BIOS, hack around some default values, and set it up for your taste. I only recommend this to those who know EXACTLY what they are doing!

 

Another solution would be that someone finds the service that modifies the BIOS, and eliminates it. But I fear that this service might be embedded into many others and would possibly be bad to disable all of them.

 

So, is there or is there not a BIOS reset problem with the N54L and the hacked BIOS :?:

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@ fonix232:

 

Yesterday you wrote (in the now closed thread I started):

The reset issue does not affect us. This motherboard does not let Synology touch the BIOS settings, and such, it won't be any problem.

At least for me, it was never, and it was always my settings.

 

Then how come, that you in July wrote:

 

I have the same problem, the issue is that DSM, as it is a strictly closed-line product of Synology, expects the BIOS to be in a specific format it can edit (and not the AMI BIOS HP uses in my case, both on my fresh N54L and my hackology server that consists of the stuff in my signature). Now, this invalidates the CMOS, wipes all the changes (I for one need them, as I boot from USB, and primary boot device on this board is a Floppy device set even though there isn't on connected, and fails to go through all the devices to find the USB drive), and you're left with an unusable CMOS config that gets reset every time you restart.

Unfortunately this service runs real-time, so no matter what you do, power-off via pulling the plug, shutdown via terminal or GUI, the CMOS gets written and thus invalidated.

 

Now, so far I found only two solutions to counter this:

1. If you have a CMOS read-only pin, put a jumper on that madafaka. This should protect it from Synology's stupid CMOS-overriding daemon.

2. If you are good with it, try to modify your BIOS, hack around some default values, and set it up for your taste. I only recommend this to those who know EXACTLY what they are doing!

 

Another solution would be that someone finds the service that modifies the BIOS, and eliminates it. But I fear that this service might be embedded into many others and would possibly be bad to disable all of them.

 

So, is there or is there not a BIOS reset problem with the N54L and the hacked BIOS :?:

 

Back in July I was using a different server :wink: It was a HP MediaServer M8000n, using an Asus-made motherboard with AMI BIOS. Our motherboard with the N54L is a Gigabyte motherboard with dual BIOS, meaning if the primary CMOS is corrupted, the backup is loaded. But any time you save a setting, and it is correct, it gets saved into the secondary CMOS, and is loaded when the primary is corrupted by DSM.

 

Sorry, I had to change my signature when I switched servers, and thus that post kind of lost its meaning. I will correct it in a moment.

 

So for further note: I got my Synology server in the beginning of September, any post before this is irrelevant to the ProLiant Microserver line.

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My idea for doing that,

is to use the original drive that shipped with the server in the ODD bay, as I have all the needed HW to place it there.

I will then re-install xpenology, and do some tests, while waiting for my 4 new storage drives to arrive.

That way, it will be easy to pop them in, not needing to open the box once more.

 

Keep in mind, I will be preparing 2 "identical" systems, one for my self and one for a friend of mine,

so I should use the KISS approach :mrgreen: to make it easy for him later on, as it will be a set and forget system.

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I ended up getting most of it working ok...

 

I also found that Synology uses NUT for usb ups support and only uses the usb-hid driver, my generic upsonic ups uses the blazer_usb driver so I changed the ups.conf to make it work but I still haven't got the estimated time working (shouldn't be hard) the same thing should help you ollie have a look at this for more info. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=917&p=4339&hilit=Enable+unsupported+ups#p4339 and this is the NUT compatibility list http://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html I'm guessing you need to open the ups.conf and change ups-hid to apcsmart after looking at the list.

 

Unfortunately this didn't work, I kinda failed at the first hurdle as my UPS isn't even detected. I'm suspect that OHCI isn't installed even though I followed the instructions from totalnas to use the 1.2 repack USB which should apparently give me support.

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Either was mine because it was using the incorrect driver and the config file had to be edited you need to ssh in and change the ups.conf file and then it will detect it perfectly

 

I tried changing the driver in ups.conf using SSH which worked to change the driver, however before that when using "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices" to try and detect it I get the following:

 

XPEnology> cat /proc/bus/usb/devices

T:  Bus=03 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=480  MxCh= 4
B:  Alloc=  0/800 us ( 0%), #Int=  0, #Iso=  0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0002 Rev= 3.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.30 ehci_hcd
S:  Product=EHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:16.2
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=  0mA
I:* If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=   4 Ivl=256ms

T:  Bus=02 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=480  MxCh= 5
B:  Alloc=  0/800 us ( 0%), #Int=  0, #Iso=  0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0002 Rev= 3.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.30 ehci_hcd
S:  Product=EHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:13.2
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=  0mA
I:* If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=   4 Ivl=256ms

T:  Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=02 Cnt=01 Dev#=  2 Spd=480  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=090c ProdID=1000 Rev=12.19
S:  Manufacturer=USB
S:  Product=DISK 2.0
S:  SerialNumber=848PVWHXAXP8SH2F
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=100mA
I:* If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=0ms
E:  Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 512 Ivl=31875us

T:  Bus=01 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#=  1 Spd=480  MxCh= 5
B:  Alloc=  0/800 us ( 0%), #Int=  0, #Iso=  0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1d6b ProdID=0002 Rev= 3.02
S:  Manufacturer=Linux 3.2.30 ehci_hcd
S:  Product=EHCI Host Controller
S:  SerialNumber=0000:00:12.2
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=  0mA
I:* If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub  ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=   4 Ivl=256ms

 

I just see ehci mentioned which was leading me to believe ohci wasn't available but I could be mistaken.

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Ahh now I see what you mean I thought you meant within dsm lol my bad i believe that means your ups is not compatible or there's something about the USB port you're using.

 

I tried in the front and rear ports and the UPS is listed in the NUT compatibility list so theoretically should work, also I plugged the UPS into my PC and it detected and installed straight away. I still figure it's simply something I'm doing wrong , might have to get a USB card and see if that helps.

 

Thanks for the assistance by the way.

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Hello, I also have to buy HP N54L.

 

There are problems with Xpenology or work well?

 

How do I install it? (I can do it with usb or do I buy a cd player?)

The Italian language is available?

Where can I find a comprehensive and easy?

 

 

After installing it, I can handle HP N54L (without monitor) directly from the PC that has Windows 7 Professional 64bit?

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Hello, I also have to buy HP N54L.

 

There are problems with Xpenology or work well?

 

How do I install it? (I can do it with usb or do I buy a cd player?)

The Italian language is available?

Where can I find a comprehensive and easy?

 

 

After installing it, I can handle HP N54L (without monitor) directly from the PC that has Windows 7 Professional 64bit?

 

Seriously, all these questions are already answered in the big thread! Just read it...

But for your sake, and the 2l energy drinks I have in me, I'm gonna answer.

 

There are problems with Xpenology or work well?

It works fine for me. Some obviously hardware-locked features are of course not working, but they are mostly related to stuff you wouldn't even use the way Synology implemented it. E.g. the BIOS settings.

 

How do I install it? (I can do it with usb or do I buy a cd player?)

The threads describe it pretty well. You'll need a small USB drive, 256MB+ preferred, burn the boot disk on it, plug it in on the motherboard USB slot, and commence with the install as described.

 

The Italian language is available?

Yes it has. You can set language for the whole system, or for a given user. You also have to separately set the notification language, as it is global.

 

Where can I find a comprehensive and easy?

Comprehensive and easy what? Girl? I suppose the red-light house on the edge of the town would supply those :grin:

 

After installing it, I can handle HP N54L (without monitor) directly from the PC that has Windows 7 Professional 64bit?

Yes. DSM is a web interface oriented OS, every management is done on the UI. If you add a monitor, all you get is shell access. Which comes useful sometimes, but you can usually do everything on the web interface.

Also it is OS independent. As long as it has a web browser that can access the web server (e.g. same network, or your NAS is globally available), you can even manage it from your fridge/oven/microwave.

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