Greyhole

Greyhole is an application that uses Samba to create a storage pool of all your available hard drives (whatever their size, however they're connected), and allows you to create redundant copies of the files you store, in order to prevent data loss when part of your hardware fails.

Installation

Currently there is no package available for install either in the Arch package repository or in AUR so Greyhole must be installed manually.

1. Install the required packages

# pacman -S mysql php php-pear samba base-devel rsync

1. Go to here and download the latest source package.

1. Extract the Greyhole files

# tar zxvf greyhole-*.tar.gz
# cd greyhole-*
# GREYHOLE_INSTALL_DIR=`pwd`

1. Create work directory for Greyhole

# mkdir -p /var/spool/greyhole
# chmod 777 /var/spool/greyhole

1. Install Greyhole files

# install -m 0755 -D -p greyhole /usr/bin
# install -m 0755 -D -p greyhole-dfree /usr/bin
# install -m 0750 -D -p greyhole-config-update /usr/bin
# install -m 0644 -D -p logrotate.greyhole /etc/logrotate.d/greyhole
# install -m 0644 -D -p greyhole.cron.d /etc/cron.d/greyhole
# install -m 0644 -D -p greyhole.example.conf /etc/greyhole.conf
# install -m 0755 -D -p greyhole.cron.weekly /etc/cron.weekly/greyhole
# install -m 0755 -D -p greyhole.cron.daily /etc/cron.daily/greyhole

1. 2 files required for php-pear don't seem to be supplied with archive so grab them from Github and move them into the required location

# wget https://raw.github.com/gboudreau/Greyhole/master/includes/common.php
# wget https://raw.github.com/gboudreau/Greyhole/master/includes/sql.php
# include_path=`php -i | grep include_path | awk -F':' '{print $NF}'`
# mkdir "$include_path/includes"
# install -m 0644 -D -p includes/common.php "$include_path/includes"
# install -m 0644 -D -p includes/sql.php "$include_path/includes"

When setting the include_path if PHP complains about the timezone then set your timezone in the /etc/php/php.ini file.

1. Install the Samba VFS module

Find out what version of Samba you are running

# smbd --version

If you are running Samba 3.4

# if [ -x /usr/lib64/samba/vfs/ ]; then cp samba-module/bin/greyhole-x86_64.so /usr/lib64/samba/vfs/greyhole.so; else cp samba-module/bin/greyhole-i386.so /usr/lib/samba/vfs/greyhole.so; fi

If you are running Samba 3.5

# if [ -x /usr/lib64/samba/vfs/ ]; then cp samba-module/bin/3.5/greyhole-x86_64.so /usr/lib64/samba/vfs/greyhole.so; else cp samba-module/bin/3.5/greyhole-i386.so /usr/lib/samba/vfs/greyhole.so; fi

If you are running Samba 3.6 then you will need to compile the module manually

# SAMBA_VERSION=`smbd --version | awk '{print $2}'`
# wget http://samba.org/samba/ftp/stable/samba-${SAMBA_VERSION}.tar.gz
# tar zxf samba-${SAMBA_VERSION}.tar.gz && rm samba-${SAMBA_VERSION}.tar.gz
# cd samba-${SAMBA_VERSION}/source3
# ./configure

Before building the module we need to fix a few files to work with Samba 3.6. Firstly download the following file into your current directory and run the patch command File:Greyhole-Samba-3.6.patch

# patch -p1 < Greyhole-Samba-3.6.patch

Next download the following file into the "modules" directory File:Vfs greyhole.c. Now we can build Samba

# make

This step may take a long time depending on how powerful your machine is. Once the process has finished you can copy the Greyhole module to the correct directory

# if [ -x /usr/lib64/samba/vfs/ ]; then cp bin/greyhole.so /usr/lib64/samba/vfs/greyhole.so; else cp bin/greyhole.so /usr/lib/samba/vfs/greyhole.so; fi

1. Now (re)start Samba

# rc.d start samba

or

# rc.d restart samba

1. Next we need to install the Greyhole init script however this will have to follow at a later date as I have not yet made one. A generic linux example init script is supplied with the Greyhole source and is called "initd_script.sh"

1. Finally we need to work around problems with the CIFS client

# modprobe cifs
# echo 0 > /proc/fs/cifs/OplockEnabled

==Configuration==
{{Note|This process is taken from the USAGE file that is supplied with Greyhole.}}
# Setup Samba
Edit "/etc/samba/smb.conf" and add the following 2 lines to the [global] section
<pre>
unix extensions = no
wide links = yes

For each of your shares, add a 'dfree command' and 'vfs objects' lines, as seen below. Example share definition:

[share_name]
    path = /path/to/share_name
    create mask = 0770
    directory mask = 0770
    read only = no
    available = yes
    browseable = yes
    writable = yes
    guest ok = no
    printable = no
    dfree command = /usr/bin/greyhole-dfree
    vfs objects = greyhole

Restart Samba

# rc.d restart samba

1. Setup the database

If using MySQL: Ensure MySQL is running

# rc.d start mysqld
# mysql -u root -p -e "create database greyhole; grant all on greyhole.* to greyhole_user@localhost identified by '89y63jdwe';"
# mysql -u greyhole_user -p89y63jdwe greyhole < /usr/share/greyhole/schema-mysql.sql

1. Customize the greyhole configuration at "/etc/greyhole.conf"

1. For each directory you defined as 'storage_pool_directories', execute the following command, to create a hidden file in the root directory of each partition:

# touch <dir>/.greyhole_uses_this

Those files will be used to differentiate an empty mount from a now-gone mount. i.e. Greyhole will output a warning if this file is not in the root directory where it is about to try to save a file, and it won't use that directory. This will prevent Greyhole from filling the / partition when a partition is unmounted!

1. Start the Greyhole service

# rc.d start greyhole