Updates
More granular updates about the Nasmans server and/or its services, temporary problems may be explained here, as well as reasons why I may not be able to tend to the server for a while
2025-05-16
Hi,
Just in case I wanted to write a quick entry that may prevent you from spending money unnecessarily. You may have been plagued by messages from Plex, insinuating you would have to acquire a Remote Watch Pass. This is NOT the case regarding the Nasmans Plex server. This is only the case when the server owner of the server you wish to watch does not have a Plex Pass subscription.
In my case, I am a lifetime Plex Pass subscriber, so as long as Plex's T&C's don't change again, payment is never required.
Kind regards,
L
2025-02-01
Happy to report that everything finally seems to be back to working as usual. Long story short: I put the new disk in, let the array rebuild, scrubbed the data, and then the scary stuff started: inventorizing the damage. Well, it's quite bad, but I've been lucky to not suffer any irreversible data-loss. It took a series of updates of all the software, and a few "clean" installs to get all the different services back working. The library was hit hardest: the database software was completely unusable. Luckily I was able to reinstall and use the existing database file (this saved me about a fortnight of work).
Sadly, the whole thing cost me an almost brand new hard drive. If you read the previous updates, you will have seen my short explanation about CMR/SMR hard drives. Using my cold spare SMR hard drive, which had fewer than 5000 hours and perfect S.M.A.R.T.-statistics before, in the array for about three days destroyed it. The S.M.A.R.T.-data now show an increasing number of reallocated and bad secort. This is pretty bad, firstly because it was a pretty much new, 4TB, high-quality, industrial drive. Secondly, I no longer have a cold spare, nor can I use it reliably to make backups. So It's pretty much a useless brick now.
As always, I'm still in need of extra drives. So, as I requested before, if you have a spare drive (512e, CMR, and a minimum of 4TB (at least 6TB would now be better, though)) which you would be willing to part with for a fair price/trade, please let me know.
2025-01-28
I received a replacement drive, the array is currently rebuilding and should be a little quicker already. Services will start to work again in the coming days. The replacement drive is very old, but it will probably hold for now.
2025-01-25
You may have noticed slowdowns and/or buffering or maybe complete lack of service over the last few days. Sorry about this. I'm currently experiencing serious technical difficulties. Due to this, the library is down for now. --> Technical explanation & question: I bought a new drive, to deal with the lack of storage, for which I had to rebuild the array. The drive turned out to be dead/dying, so I had to return it and swap in my cold spare to prevent data loss. Turns out my cold spare is an unsuitable kind of drive (SMR instead of CMR) and is constantly running at 100% usage. This means the slowdowns/independability of the services will remain until I am able to get a new drive, which I currently can't really afford. If you have a spare drive (512e, CMR, and a minimum of 4TB) which you would be willing to part with for a fair price/trade, please let me know.
2025-01-12
Hi,
Due to personal circumstances, I currently don't have a lot of time/energy to spend on maintaining the server. This may mean requests will stay open a little longer than usual, or questions may remain unanswered for a while. I will try to get to everything at least once a week, no guarantees.