Debian 6.0.0 "squeeze" was released February 6th, 2011. As I use Debian on my NAS server I decided to upgrade system to this new version. However, I decided to perform a clean install, because of this firstly I backed up some scripts and configuration files (like smb.conf, fstab, rsync scripts, crontab and some others). Later I downloaded small cd image for installation.
My NAS configuration consists of Patriot Xporter XT USB flash drive which is used for operating system (it had one ext3 formatted partition and one swap partition) and two different 1.5TB (Seagate and WD) SATA disk drives (no RAID) . One of them is ext3 formatted and is used to share data across the network, the other one is a xfs formatted disk for back up (rsync is used to synchronize them). Firstly, I connected SATA CD-ROM to ADPE4S-PB controller, however, it worked incorrectly on debian (I'll discuss later on this matter), because of this I needed to reattach it to USB port (through SATA to USB adapter). Debian CD bootloader gives two general options to install system. The first one is ncurses (text) based and it is selected by default and the other option is graphical install. I chose graphical install and installer loaded without problems. I reformatted my system partition to ext4 this time. Everything else left unchanged. Software selection was made by categories. Firstly I chose everything except graphical desktop environment, laptop and DNS server but the install process didn't go smoothly first time. Deselection of the print server solved the problem and Debian installed correctly. I don't know what was wrong at first time. I selected some Duisburg repository and it could be the case with some missing packages. The last problem was bootloader (which is grub2). MBR was written to first hdd drive instead of flash drive. Because of this I needed to reinstall bootloader after first boot to Patriot drive though it was configured correctly.
Configuration went very smoothly. I updated fstab file, copied old smb.conf, rsync, crontab files, reconfigured sshd and my server was ready. Later I added transmission-daemon with its web interface. I needed to use old torrent-flux in previous Debian version as transmission-daemon didn't work for some reason.
The boot time and responsiveness feels better but I don't have exact numbers and it is not a fair comparison due to different number of services and other filesystem. Currently Debian boots between 34 and 40 seconds.
What is more, I decided to test my ADPE4S-PB daughterboard (Marvell 88SE6145). As I mentioned it didn't work correctly during install. However, I found a workaround which helped to solve a problem for me (at least, partially). I added ahci.marvell_enable=1 in separate file stored in /etc/modprobe.d/ folder and ran update-initramfs -u command. Debian recognized attached devices after that and they could be used. You can read on provided link above about what this option does.
Finally, I decided to test HDDs attached to integrated VX800 controller under AHCI mode (RAID option in BIOS). I was very pleased that the bug had been resolved and drives hadn't fall to PIO mode. Everything worked correctly so I think it is possible to make real (soft) RAID finally. Sorry, I still not tested any RAID setup not with VX800 nor with ADPE4S-PB.
I also tried to update to a newer BIOS version once again. Unfortunately, kernel still hanged up just after boot loader started to load it. So the problem remained.
Changes:
Final words
I was very happy with smooth Debian Linux update. I didn't expect that I would do everything in less than one evening. What is more, it solved some problems like VX800 AHCI/RAID support, added new features (for example, ext4 and grub2), upgraded my software and felt faster, cleaner and more responsive. Finally I managed to solve some old problems like ADPE4S-PB support and transmission-daemon. This upgrade was very successful and useful for me and it gave a big plus for Debian in my mind :). If you think about such upgrade too, give it a try. Especially if you have SMP system. Don't forget to backup current system. The last thing I wish to be solved is kernel hang up problem with newer than A05 BIOS versions.
My NAS configuration consists of Patriot Xporter XT USB flash drive which is used for operating system (it had one ext3 formatted partition and one swap partition) and two different 1.5TB (Seagate and WD) SATA disk drives (no RAID) . One of them is ext3 formatted and is used to share data across the network, the other one is a xfs formatted disk for back up (rsync is used to synchronize them). Firstly, I connected SATA CD-ROM to ADPE4S-PB controller, however, it worked incorrectly on debian (I'll discuss later on this matter), because of this I needed to reattach it to USB port (through SATA to USB adapter). Debian CD bootloader gives two general options to install system. The first one is ncurses (text) based and it is selected by default and the other option is graphical install. I chose graphical install and installer loaded without problems. I reformatted my system partition to ext4 this time. Everything else left unchanged. Software selection was made by categories. Firstly I chose everything except graphical desktop environment, laptop and DNS server but the install process didn't go smoothly first time. Deselection of the print server solved the problem and Debian installed correctly. I don't know what was wrong at first time. I selected some Duisburg repository and it could be the case with some missing packages. The last problem was bootloader (which is grub2). MBR was written to first hdd drive instead of flash drive. Because of this I needed to reinstall bootloader after first boot to Patriot drive though it was configured correctly.
Configuration went very smoothly. I updated fstab file, copied old smb.conf, rsync, crontab files, reconfigured sshd and my server was ready. Later I added transmission-daemon with its web interface. I needed to use old torrent-flux in previous Debian version as transmission-daemon didn't work for some reason.
The boot time and responsiveness feels better but I don't have exact numbers and it is not a fair comparison due to different number of services and other filesystem. Currently Debian boots between 34 and 40 seconds.
What is more, I decided to test my ADPE4S-PB daughterboard (Marvell 88SE6145). As I mentioned it didn't work correctly during install. However, I found a workaround which helped to solve a problem for me (at least, partially). I added ahci.marvell_enable=1 in separate file stored in /etc/modprobe.d/ folder and ran update-initramfs -u command. Debian recognized attached devices after that and they could be used. You can read on provided link above about what this option does.
Finally, I decided to test HDDs attached to integrated VX800 controller under AHCI mode (RAID option in BIOS). I was very pleased that the bug had been resolved and drives hadn't fall to PIO mode. Everything worked correctly so I think it is possible to make real (soft) RAID finally. Sorry, I still not tested any RAID setup not with VX800 nor with ADPE4S-PB.
I also tried to update to a newer BIOS version once again. Unfortunately, kernel still hanged up just after boot loader started to load it. So the problem remained.
Changes:
- Debian 6 uses grub2 boot loader instead of grub by default
- Option to use ext4 instead of ext3 on root(/) partition (default still ext3)
- Transmission-daemon works correctly
- HDDs transfer method is not dropped to PIO mode anymore if RAID option is selected in BIOS for integrated VX800 SATA controller
- System boot is faster now, the system responsiveness is better
- I found a workaround for ADPE4S-PB (Marvell 88SE6145) SATA controller to make SATA drives to be identified on Debian (It is not a new version workaround but I tried daughterboard with this version only)
- Still needs modprobe acpi-cpufreq to be executed to make CPU lower it frequency (another option to recompile the kernel but this time I decided not to). Update: I found this wiki page to solve frequency scaling problem. You need to install cpufrequtils and cpu frequency scaling will be enabled automatically during system start up.
- Linux kernel still hangs with newer than A05 BIOS version (Jetway JNF76-N1GL-LF motherboard)
- Graphical environment (openchrome), though graphical install worked ok
- any RAID setup (system BIOS supports only one RAID controller at once, ADPE4S-PB can be used only if VX800 SATA controller is set to IDE mode)
Final words
I was very happy with smooth Debian Linux update. I didn't expect that I would do everything in less than one evening. What is more, it solved some problems like VX800 AHCI/RAID support, added new features (for example, ext4 and grub2), upgraded my software and felt faster, cleaner and more responsive. Finally I managed to solve some old problems like ADPE4S-PB support and transmission-daemon. This upgrade was very successful and useful for me and it gave a big plus for Debian in my mind :). If you think about such upgrade too, give it a try. Especially if you have SMP system. Don't forget to backup current system. The last thing I wish to be solved is kernel hang up problem with newer than A05 BIOS versions.
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