If you install Samba on Mybook from Debian “lenny” repo, you probably face to the following problem:

$ smbclient -L //localhost/
Domain=[NAS] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.26a]

        Sharename       Type      Comment
        ---------       ----      -------
        TTTTTTTTTTTT    Disk
        llllll          Disk
        IIIII           IPC       IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Domain=[NAS] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.26a]

        Server               Comment
        ---------            -------

        Workgroup            Master
        ---------            -------
        WORKGROUP

that is every “share” appears with first letter of share name, repeated length+1 chars of the name length.

This is caused by a bug of gcc compiler for ARM, that fails code generation if you use any level of optimization. This bug affect Samba up to release 3.0.28-1, and will be corrected in the 3.0.28-2 release of the Debian package.

References:

• Debian bug report #445566
• Honza Stastny website, that talk about this bug, and the battle to bring Samba to life on his Mybook

Note

The disk I installed on my Mybook (the one I use to made all the tests) fails, without warning, after less than five months. Having smartd installed not helped at all…
So I’m currently unable to do more tests, or give any help.
I’m sorry.

I read about making a backup of a Western Digital Mybook World edition, and how some of this backups fails at the moment of restore.

The main reason is those backups are made with partition imaging software (like Partition Magic or Partimage), and some guide includes instruction to save partition table and MBR, too. Right, but there are more data on disk that needs to be saved, and that cannot be recovered in any other way that do a raw image of a number of sector at the start of the disk.

Mybook disk configuration

In picture you can see schematic of the typical WD Mybook WE disk. At the start (in absolute sector 0) there are MBR and partition table (in blue). The partition table point to partitions, stored after some hundred of sector away (in yellow). The original partition table of Mybook place the first partition start on cylinder 4, that is over 48,000 sectors far away from MBR.

Why?

Because in that space there is some software that is vital for Mybook startup process: the bootloaders (in red in figure)!

So, if you want a really complete and working backup, you must save all this sectors in a raw file, using Linux command dd.

A rough procedure can be: use sfdisk to get the exact sector of start of partition sda1:

# sfdisk -d /dev/sda
# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start=    48195, size=  5879790, Id=fd
/dev/sda2 : start=  5927985, size=   208845, Id=fd
/dev/sda3 : start=  6136830, size=  1975995, Id=fd

In this example sda1 starts at sector 48195. Well, when we save the MBR we use the command:

# dd if=/dev/sda of=sda-mbr bs=512 count=1

But this save only first sector. We need to save all the sector up to start of sda1 partition, so the command must be:

# dd if=/dev/sda of=sda-mbr bs=512 count=48195

Of course, change the number 48195 to match your disk configuration.
So, now we have the content of the entire space from MBR to start of sda1 partition, with all the bootloaders included.

Now the backup is really complete.

Con mldonkey installato nel Mybook resuscitato abbiamo un client peer to peer gestibile via web. Può connettersi alle reti: emule/edonkey e bittorrent.
(Articolo solo in inglese. Se qualcuno è interessato me lo faccia sapere che lo traduco in italiano)

Using mldonkey on the Revived Mybook we have a complete peer to peer client with web interface. It uses edonkey/emule and bittorrent protocols/networks.

Prosegui la lettura »

Come attivare la condivisione file Windows™ compatibile nel Mybook risuscitato.
(Questo articolo è solo in inglese. Se qualcuno è interessato me lo faccia sapere che lo traduco in italiano.)

How to add Windows™ compatible file sharing in the Revived Mybook.

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Come trasformare il Mybook resuscitato in un print server per stampanti USB o di rete.
(Questo articolo è solo in inglese. Se qualcuno ha interesse me lo faccia sapere che lo traduco in italiano.)

How to enable the Revived Mybook as a print server for USB or network printers.

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Western Digital Mybook Workd Edition has ten leds on the front side. This article talk about using it.
(Articolo solo in lingua inglese. Se qualcuno è interessato me lo faccia sapere che lo traduco in italiano.)

Prosegui la lettura »

Una raccolta di foto del Mybook, durante le varie fasi delle operazioni descritte qui.

A photo gallery of Mybook, during operations described here.

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Ora attiviamo i log di sistema per il Mybook.
(Nota: se abbiamo installato una immagine del root filesystem versione 20070826 o successiva occorre solo installare il logrotate, i demoni syslog e klog sono già installati)

Now we install log daemons for Mybook.
(Note: if you install a root filesystem image release 20070826 or newer, you need only logrotate, syslog and klog daemons are already installed and operative)

Prosegui la lettura »

Dopo aver resuscitato il Mybook, dobbiamo di nuovo renderlo utilizzabile. Con questo parte una serie di scritti brevi in italiano ed inglese su come aggiungere funzioni al Mybook.

After reviving the Mybook, we need to made it usable. With this post, I start a thread in english and italian language on how to add functions and services to the revived Mybook.

Prosegui la lettura »

Ci sono novità:

• Un nuovo kernel
• Un nuovo root filesystem basato su Debian “lenny”

There are some good news:

• New kernel
• New root filesystem, based on Debian “lenny”

Prosegui la lettura »