Update: Boot from USB with HP Microserver Gen8 and OpenMediaVault

Only usable if you use OMV with HP Microserver Gen8 where you cannot boot from a ODD disk (connector) and inserted HDDs in RAID)
Today, a day before my holiday (murphys law). I noticed that suddenly a samba share was not responsive anymore and that OMV was running in read-only mode.

A quick scan showed first a 2,5″ HDD failure (the disk where OMV is on) and a second scan showed that the USB flash drive with grub (this starts OMV) was not accessible anymore. (probably caused due too high temperatures last week).

The RAID installation with 4 HDDs was expected to be ok.

So I grabbed a new flash drive, and a new 2,5″ 500GB disk (I had those laying around especially for this purpose). a bootable SD card with OMV 4 was also present

Steps:
1. change the 2,5″ disk (remove the failed one and connect the new disk)
2. insert the SD card, boot and OMV splash screen should be shown, install OMV on the 2,5″
3. After reboot insert the USB flash drive after OMV is booted
4. my USB drive is /dev/sdb
5. clean the flash drive
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
6. fdisk the flash drive as a bootable linux drive:
I believe the sequence as:
fdisk /dev/sdb
> n
> p
> 1
<enter this>
> a
(toggles boot flag)
>w
write this

7. format the drive: mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1 (please notice the 1 !!, not using this issues with grub !! (Message to self)
8. mount the drive with mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
9. grub-install –no-floppy –root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdb
Please notice that it is used: dash dash no-floppy dash dash root-directory
10. grub-mkconfig -o /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg

Message to self: if there is any issue reported in the screen about ext2, or about blocks .. no correct installation and usage of grub and your system will not boot

Calibre, Calibre-Web with a network share

A lot of people do report issues with the Calibre database when the database is on a NAS or network drive. Last week I had issues with Calibre-Web and the validation of the database when Calibre and Calibre-web do maintenance on the database.

People get: “CantOpenError: CantOpenError: unable to open database file”

Within the comments the git repository of Calibre-web I got a hint. and that solved my issue
a number of years I was running a 13K ebook database, but I was never satisfied. Adding books was almost impossible without syncing, copying books, move the database and messing up the database with duplicates. Terrible.

Last week the database was not able to fix itself anymore and I decided to start over with only those books I really like or wanted to keep. And I wanted to fix the database issues.

To fix it, you must be able to run a NAS or (virtual) Server with SAMBA version1 (NT1). As I am running VMWARE a new Linux Server was built quickly. Please be noticed that I do not care about security in my home network on that machine and for that purpose.

Import configuration steps in /etc/samba/smb.conf

[global]
min protocol = NT1
max protocol = NT1
client min protocol = NT1
client max protocol = NT1
# this will run samba in Samba Version 1 mode.

[share]
force user = [a-username]
path = /var/www/html/books
writeable = yes
browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
guest account = [a-username]
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
oplocks = false
level2 oplocks = false
# Especially the oplocks on false are needed. If not Calibre-Web will not get access to the database if Calibre is using it. If that happens your database can be corrupted again very quickly.

If you run Calibre under Windows 10 make sure you add SMB1 support through the ‘features’ option this is disabled by default.

I started with 400 books and now I added 520 books in many sessions without any open database issue.

Using the oplocks on false could be also a solution when using SMBv3 or SMBv4 but I did not try that.

Please also notice that the writer of Calibre does not suggest to use a network share and it is known that for some it is working fine and for others not. This blog items could lead to more solution(s). Even it is not supported ;)