Category Archives: Computer Servicing

Server HDD Failure – Owl

We had our first true test of the Synology RAID redundancy with our Synology 1812+ server (Owl). One of the hard drives (HDD) failed. All of the other drives were fine, the data was intact and we had a new replacement HDD on hand. However, there was one shortcoming: no email notification of the drive failure. Luckily, the Synology server is next to Steven’s office and he could hear an audible beeping alerting him to the fact that something was wrong. In any case, the email notifications have been fixed and a replacement hard drive was added to the system. Here’s how these things were accomplished.

 

Fix email notifications

The system was previously set to use Steven’s Comcast SMTP server. Sending a test email from Owl failed, indicating authentication failure. I changed this to use the University of Washington’s email server for outgoing messages. Here’s how…

In the Synology Disk Station Manager (DSM):

Control Panel > Notifications

  • Service provider: Custom SMTP Server
  • SMTP server: smtp.washington.edu
  • SMTP port: 587
  • Username: myUWnetID@uw.edu
  • Password: myUWpassword

Interesting note, there’s a “Push Service” tab in the “Notifications” window. This allows you to have Synology send emails to email addresses when the server has an issue. This eliminates the need for the SMTP settings shown above which may not be easy to find and/or understand for a given email service provider. The “Push Service” appears to be much simpler and more user friendly to set up.

 

Hot Swap HDD

We’ve kept a backup HDD on hand for just this occasion, so the HDD failure wasn’t too concerning. Here’re the steps I followed to swap the HDD and have the Synology system initialize/build the new HDD:

 

Remove the dead HDD and put the new HDD in.

 

 

Initialize/build/repair the new HDD.

In Synology DSM:

Storage Manger > Volume

Notice, there should be eight drives listed, but since one has died, only seven are shown:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it! Easy breezy!

I’ve checked with Seagate on the dead HDD and it is still under warranty. Will get that returned and also purchase a new backup drive to have on hand.

Automatic Notebook Backups – wget Script & Synology Task Scheduler

UPDATE 20150714 – READ ENTIRE POST

I’ve been tweaking a shell script (notebook_backups.sh) to use the shell program wget to retrieve fully functional HTML versions of our online notebooks for offline viewing. I had been planning on setting up a cron job to automatically run this script on our Synology server (Eagle) at a set day/time. However, I came across the Task Scheduler that’s built right into the Synology GUI! So, I set up the Task Scheduler to run the notebook_backups.sh script every Sunday. See screenshots below.

 

 

 

UPDATE 201507114

The Task Scheduler was not running the script. Additionally, the Task Scheduler would not run the script even when I manually instructed the Task Scheduler to run. Some internet searching revealed that the Task Scheduler requires you to indicate what type of task is being run (e.g. bash, shell, ash, php, etc.), even if your script contains the proper “shebang” or header that normally instructs the computer which program to use to run the script. See the image below for how the Task Scheduler is currently set up. The arrow indicates that addition of “sh” to the beginning of the Task Scheduler’s path to the script. This tells the Task Scheduler to use the Shell to run the script.

 

ISO Creation – OpticonMonitor3 Disc Cloning

Since many newer computers are coming without optical disc drives (including my laptop, which I want to install this software on), I created an .iso disc image of the OpticonMonitor3 (BioRad) installation disc.

Using OS X Disk Utility:

  1. File > New Disk Image

  2. Dropdown > CD/DVD Master

This creates a Mac-specific .cdr image of the installation CD. Converted to a universal .iso disc image with the following command line:

$hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o [filename].iso [filename].cdr

Replaced [filename] with OpticonMonitor3.

Moved the newly created OpticonMonitor3.iso file to our server (Eagle/Backup/Software/Windows).

Now the .iso file should be able to be mounted and installed on any Windows computer without the need for a physical installation CD.