Using soft links to connect to another non-QNAP server

[philhu]

I have a directory looks like this:

Directory1
-----dir1a
-----dir1b
-----dir1c

I am running out of space and have a 'retired' Synology DS1515+ with 24T in it as a Raid6

I want to point directory dir1b to the new server like shown below. Does QNAP support that?

QNAP:
Directory1
-----dir1a
-----ln -s /ds1515/Directory1/dir1b dir1b
-----dir1c

DS1515+:
Directory1
-----dir1b


I assume I need to:
.Mount the 1515+ drive as a mountpoint on the QNAP
.Set both to use the same uid structure

After that, should it work?

[MrVideo]

No need for symbolic links. Get the data moved from the QNAP to the Synology, then nfs mount the Synology directory on top of dir1b.

You'll probably have to do this manually, since a reboot will probably wipe any changes made to /etc/fstab.

[philhu]

No need for symbolic links. Get the data moved from the QNAP to the Synology, then nfs mount the Synology directory on top of dir1b.

You'll probably have to do this manually, since a reboot will probably wipe any changes made to /etc/fstab.

Ok, I tried this. The QNAP will mount the synology correctly at dir1b, and the QNAP sees the info in dir1b from the Synology

But, Windows and Centos do not see the items in the mapped dir1b, they see it as empty.
I have even tried to umount and mount the qnap on the Centos and Windows boxes again, thinking it was a caching thing, but no luck

Is there some nfs switch to allow this, seems consistently undoable at the windows and Centos levels, nfs mounting a tree with nfs mounts in them.

[MrVideo]

No. It is considered a security risk to let a remotely mounted file system to be exportable. M$ and Centos must mount the file system directly from the Synology. And no, it is not a NAS thing. It goes back to the original Unix creation of nfs.

I would have mentioned this earlier if I had known you wanted to do that.

[philhu]

ok, got it

That confuses the issue then, with backups, and separate filesystems, etc

I was hoping to mount at the NAS level presenting the stitched/overlayed resulting NAS to Centos/MS so they wouldn't see a change in the locations and I wouldn't have to redo all my backups. Substantial on a LT04 tape backup system

But ok

Would mounting using CIFS all for exportable network content?

[MrVideo]

I know nothing about CIFS. I only deal with Samba and NFS.

[philhu]

This is what I needed:

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions ... as-mount-p

[MrVideo]

Question is how to do any of that on the NAS, considering that when the NAS is rebooted, any changes made to system files to accomplish that will be wiped out. The options they show to do that appear to have come along since I last tried any of that. Where I worked, we didn't do any of that funny stuff. We didn't like doing exports of external mounts.

Also, are any of those options even available in the NAS Linux version.

Search the forum, there are hints on how to make system changes survive reboots.

[philhu]

Yes, I will have to read up on this a bit for retaining across reboots

The crossmnt is alreadcy used by the qnap in the /etc/exports file for permissions if you enable 'allow soft links across nas devices', so that would be the hard part

I did get the synology mounted on the qnap and synced up the uid,guid for my users, so the files security/ownership matches

I also got rsync to work across a slightly wierd way, it would not allow the rsync to the synology with 2 errors, 'date/time not implemented on destination server' and something about inode differences. So I rsynced to the mount point I connected the synology to (ie, no destination host, just 'local' rsync (which becomes compressed scp) and not only does it copy, but retains date/time/owner etc, so my centos backup should see it as all a flat nfs volume and not redo the full backup. That is down the road.

The persistence stuff will probably end up being the quiv of an rc.local to do the mounts, etc. That is also down the road

[philhu]

For completeness....this did NOT work

Trying to write into the crossmounted directories caused the process to hang forever. ^C did break out, but nothing written.

So I ended up NFS mounting the 2 NAS units on the 2 Centos boxes that make up my Plex server and Backup system. It all works fine after redoing my backups, pointing at /NFS and /NFS2

[oyvindo]

You'll probably have to do this manually, since a reboot will probably wipe any changes made to /etc/fstab.

I'm not trying to hijack this thread, but your statement above is exactly my experience. Does it mean that modifying fstab is a waste of time since it is always lost during reboot? Or is there a way to make permanent changes to fstab?

[MrVideo]

There might be a way. Search the forum. It is also possible that a firmware upgrade could wipe out the changes as well. A NAS box is not a "normal" Linux box.