APC Back-UPS 850.
I’d guess that those maybe don’t use the same protocol as an APC Easy UPS. There’s a (widely-used) Linux software package, Network UPS Tools, which can talk to the APC UPSes that I’ve seen in the past.
https://networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html
It has Back-UPS devices listed in the hardware compatibility list as well as devices from many other manufacturers, but I don’t see any reference to an “Easy UPS”.
Right now when updates get applied to the NAS, if it gets powered off during the update window that would be really bad and inconvenient require manual intervention.
You sure? I mean, sure, it’s possible; there are devices out there that can’t deal with power loss during update. But others can: they’ll typically have space for two firmware versions, write out the new version into the inactive slot, and only when the new version is committed to persistent storage, atomically activate it.
Last device I worked on functioned that way.
you might lose data in flight if you’re not careful.
That’s the responsibility of the application if they rely on the data to be persistent at some point; they need to be written to deal with the fact that there may be in-flight data that doesn’t make it to the disk if they intend to take other actions that depend on that fact; they’ll need to call fsync() or whatever their OS has if they expect the data to be on-drive.
Normally, there will always a period where some data being written out is partial: the write() could complete after handing the data off to the OS’s buffer cache. The local drive could complete because data’s in its cache. The app could perform multiple write() calls, and the first could have completed without the second. With a NAS, the window might be a little bit longer than it otherwise would be, but something like a DBMS will do the fsync(); at any point, it’d be hypothetically possible for the OS to crash or power loss or something to happen.
The real problem, that I need an nas for, is not the loss of some data, it’s when the storms hit and there’s flooding, the power can go up and down and cycle quite rapidly. And that’s really bad for sensitive hardware like hard disks. So I want the NAS to shut off when the power starts getting bad, and not turn on for a really long time but still turn on automatically when things stabilize
Like I said in the above comment, you’ll get that even without a clean shutdown; you’ll actually get a bit more time if you don’t do a clean shutdown.
Because this device runs a bunch of VMs and containers
Ah, okay, it’s not just a file server? Fair enough – then that brings the case #2 back up again, which I didn’t expect to apply to the NAS itself.
I’d guess that those OSes may not permit arbitrary software without administrative privileges to initiate shutdowns. That’s the case on Linux.
I’m assuming that your goal here is automatic shutdown when the UPS battery gets low so you don’t actually have the NAS see unexpected power loss.
This isn’t an answer to your question, but stepping back and getting a big-picture view: do you actually need a clean, automatic shutdown on your Synology server if the power goes out?
I’d assume that the filesystems that the things are set up to run are power-loss safe.
I’d also assume that there isn’t server-side state that needs to be cleanly flushed prior to power loss.
Historically, UPSes providing a clean shutdown were important on personal computers for two reasons:
Some filesystems couldn’t deal with power loss, could produce a corrupted filesystem. FAT, for example, or HFS on the Mac. That’s not much of an issue today, and I can’t imagine that a Synology NAS would be doing that unless you’re explicitly choosing to use an old filesystem.
Some applications maintain state and when told to shut down, will dump it to disk. So maybe someone’s writing a document in Microsoft Word and hasn’t saved it for a long time, a few minutes will provide them time to save it (or the application to do an auto-save). Auto-save usually partially-mitigates this. I don’t have a Synology system, but AFAIK, they don’t run anything like that.
Like, I’d think that the NAS could probably survive a power loss just fine, even with an unclean shutdown.
If you have an attached desktop machine, maybe case #2 would apply, but I’d think that hooking the desktop up to the UPS and having it do a clean shutdown would address the issue – I mean, the NAS can’t force apps on computers using the NAS to dump state out to the NAS, so hooking the NAS up that way won’t solve case #2 for any attached computers.
If all you want is more time before the NAS goes down uncleanly, you can just leave the USB and RS-232 connection out of the picture and let the UPS run until the battery is exhausted and then have the NAS go down uncleanly. Hell, that’d be preferable to an automated shutdown, as you’d get a bit more runtime before the thing goes down.
and open-source.
Sure. Heck, occasionally I do actually do that, like if I post a piece of information that I’ve looked up and then refer back to it later.
It looks like a fair bit of it was TV-watching, which is now being displaced.
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/15224.jpeg
Some will, some won’t. Not a hivemind.
Yes. I wouldn’t be preemptively worried about it, though.
Your scan is going to try to read and maybe write each sector and see if the drive returns an error for that operation. In theory, the adapter could respond with a read or write error even if a read or write worked or even return some kind of bogus data instead of an error.
But I wouldn’t expect this to likely actually arise or be particularly worried about the prospect. It’s sort of a “could my grocery store checkout counter person murder me” thing. Theoretically yes, but I wouldn’t worry about it unless I had some reason to believe that that was the case.
I feel like I’m reasonably tolerant towards GNU Hurd.
What hardware and Linux distro would you use in this situation?
The distro isn’t likely to be a factor here. Any (non-super-specialized) distro will be able to solve issues in about the same way.
I mean, any recommendation is going to just be people mentioning their preferred distro.
I don’t know whether saltwater exposure is a concern. If so, that may impose some constraints on heat generation (if you have to have it and storage hardware in a waterproof case).
One last thought- Bakelite seems to love dust. I’m going to dust them regularly, but if there is a way to light them well without making the dust show up well, that would be great.
Are you going to listen to the radios or look at them?
If you don’t need to listen to them, so the glass won’t be an issue, I imagine that you could put them in one of those glass-fronted display cabinets that are designed for this sort of thing, displaying china and such.
EDIT: Also, I remember reading that Bakelite does slowly break down. I don’t know if sunlight accelerates that; it does affect a lot of substances. If so, you might want to keep it away from sunlight.
kagis
Yeah, sounds like it.
Extended exposure to heat and sunlight also degrades pure Bakelite faster than more advanced plastics.
Discoloration – Bakelite often yellows with age and extended UV exposure. Keeping items out of sunlight can minimize this effect.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-LH65WMRWBGCXEN-WM65R-Monitor/dp/B07WT547MM/
Here’s a 65" monitor being sold by Amazon UK. It’s less, though also touch.
EDIT: Though I really hope that that wattage rating is just an error in Amazon’s database.
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-C8621QT-85-6-Touchscreen-Monitor/dp/B0CJ5S18TT
Here’s an 85" monitor.
At 190 lbs, though, that’s getting back into the same “I don’t want to haul that up stairs” territory that CRTs were getting into near the end of their days. I think I’d start looking at projectors with nice screens at that point.
If there’s a better way to configure Docker, I’m open to it, as long as it doesn’t require rebuilding everything from scratch.
You could try using lvmcache (block device level) or bcachefs (filesystem level caching) or something like that, have rotational storage be the primary form of storage but let the system use SSD as a cache. Dunno what kind of performance improvements you might expect, though.
I talked to a Baskin Robins ice cream shop manager during a summer (not peak time for the disease) in the pandemic who was wearing a mask (surgical, not the N95 variety) and asked him when he planned to stop, and he had an interesting point. He said that it was that some customers got upset if they saw someone working at the store not wearing one, that it affected their sales. It sounded like for him, it wasn’t so much whether-or-not he thought that the mask was providing much of a benefit, but a straightforward computation as to what brought in customers: like, if he could get more sales by wearing a fluorescent outfit, he’d wear fluorescent.
then I started watching blich and it was good.
Bleach?
I did some time back. I don’t recall it being incredibly difficult to get running. What hardware are you trying to run it on?