# Greyhole

Related articles

- Samba

Greyhole is an application that uses Samba to create a storage pool of all your available hard drives (whatever their size, however they are 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

### Install from AUR

Install greyholeAUR from the Arch User Repository.

### Manual Installation

1. Install the required packages

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

2. Download the latest source package from here

3. Extract the Greyhole files

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

4. Create work directory for Greyhole

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

5. 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

6. Two files required for php-pear do not 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.

7. 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 copy the code from here in to a file called `Greyhole-Samba-3.6.patch`

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

Next copy the code from here into a file called `vfs_greyhole.c` in the `modules` directory. 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

8. Now (re)start Samba

    # systemctl start smbd

or

    # systemctl restart smbd

9. 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`

## Configuration

Note: This process is taken from the USAGE file that is supplied with Greyhole.

1. Setup Samba Edit `/etc/samba/smb.conf` and add the following 2 lines to the `[global]` section

    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

    # systemctl restart smbd

2. Setup the database If using MySQL: Ensure MySQL is running

    # systemctl 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

3. Customize the greyhole configuration at `/etc/greyhole.conf`

4. 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 will not use that directory. This will prevent Greyhole from filling the / partition when a partition is unmounted!

5. The following is needed to work around problems with the CIFS client. This can be added to your /etc/rc.local or you can add cifs to the modules section of rc.conf and use modprobe.d to set OplockEnabled.

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

6. Configure PHP Open /etc/php/php.ini in your favorite editor. Change the line

    open_basedir = /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/

to

    open_basedir = /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/:/

Set date.timezone to your time zone. Use the same time zone set in /etc/rc.conf or PHP will complain.

    date.timezone = America/Chicago

Finally, uncomment

    extension=pdo_mysql.so

7. Start the Greyhole service

    # systemctl start greyhole

Category:

- Storage