Hello Everyone,

I've been reading up on the threads out there so far and am wondering whether anyone's succeeded in getting into the BIOS on the LX-195? From all indications it should be possible. Might have to use a jumper on the motherboard? I am interested in putting Ubuntu Server on mine but I'm holding off from buying extra RAM and a KVM cable hoping I can see where someone's had success at this first.

Anybody?

Thanks!

Welcome to the world of MSS/WHS! Good to have you aboard!

I have not heard of anyone doing this on an LX195 and, based on the las\ck of responses, you may be the first!

I look forward to you posting your experience with this!

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EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to post a quick update. I now have Ubuntu Server up and running great on my little LX195.

The adventurer in me won the battle and I went ahead a got one of the kvm cables to try my luck with Linux on my LX195. I ended up buying on with mouse, keyboard and serial functionality but as it turns out video would have been sufficient.

All I had to do was jump JP2 as referenced in the other thread here:
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=5422

Delete to get into the BIOS and you're off. (Note: After the install the boot order seemed to return to what it was before - but that was a good thing.)

I installed Ubuntu Server from a USB stick on the back. For some reason the first go around ended in an error when it got to installing the core system but the second (and third) time through everything installed like a charm!

So far I haven't noticed any problems. It's nice to NOT hear my hard drive working all the time though like is was under WHS. It is quiet and solid.

To date I've got my box running FireFly for music, FUPPES for uPnP streaming to my XBOX 360, file sharing, and a LAMP web server with dynamic DNS set up for fun/tinkering.

The only real thing I see that really will need some special attention are the lights on the front. The power light is fine; the disk light is just always off and the network light is blinking blue. (But I consider that sign of 'freedom as in free' right now... I think there might actually be a solution out there since I've seen it mentioned in the other MSS threads on the bigger boxes. I'll have to see about that.

Below are some screen shots.

Just a quick update.

I now have a nice little LAMP server running on my LX195 and am using WordPress to host a little blog from home.

So far no other issues.

One update is that I've found a poor man's way to tackle the lights. I installed the power management package pm-utils on my server. Although I wasn't able to get the "Wake on LAN" to work right I was able to suspend the server.

After suspending it I had to physically hit the button on the back to wake it back up. However, when I did that it came back without the flashing light. So, only the blue power light is on at the moment with minimal distraction. I've tested this solution more than once and it seems to work fine.

A note on the "Wake on LAN" issue. I had a hard time finding a good option for this in the BIOS. Turns out that HP has issued a patch for the LX195 but, of course, you have to be running Windows to install it. So until I borrow another hard drive to do this I'm just going to let it go - suspending is not really a big deal at this point anyway but would be nice to do when I'm asleep.

Are there any settings in the BIOS for controlling the fan? I would like to speed up the fan so the LX195 runs a bit cooler, as this thing gets really hot inside. I've looked in the Windows Registry and found nothing so far, even called HP Support, with no luck.

I installed FreeNAS on my LX195 and it works without a problem. What I did was install FreeNAS onto a hard drive using a different computer than the LX195, then I swapped that hard drive with FreeNAS on it, into the LX195 and booted it up and it worked perfectly. There is a flashing light on the front of the LX195 but I just ignore it. Since Linux inspects the hardware and installs device drivers on each boot there is no problem with moving the hard drive to another computer. Also FreeNAS doesn't need any user input, after it is booted up, there is a webgui which makes available all necessary services and configuration parameters. Hope this may help someone.
I purchased my LX195 used and I didn't have the admin password so I needed another way to make the device useful.

Hi
What kvm cable did you use? Thanks

This one. -> viewtopic.php?t=8066

(you can see it in the lower-right-hand-side side of the picture above)

do you know if there is a cheaper option?

You can build one too. Many have built them by splicing a VGA cable and that works well enough (not to mmention, more cost effective). This link has instructions on how to build a cable, as well as Q&A from various cable builders. It's long forum so be prepared to get some caffeine in your system. I recommend the first page and the last two pages for those pressed for time.

I installed FreeNAS on my LX195 and it works without a problem. What I did was install FreeNAS onto a hard drive using a different computer than the LX195, then I swapped that hard drive with FreeNAS on it, into the LX195 and booted it up and it worked perfectly. There is a flashing light on the front of the LX195 but I just ignore it. Since Linux inspects the hardware and installs device drivers on each boot there is no problem with moving the hard drive to another computer. Also FreeNAS doesn't need any user input, after it is booted up, there is a webgui which makes available all necessary services and configuration parameters. Hope this may help someone.
I purchased my LX195 used and I didn't have the admin password so I needed another way to make the device useful.




Anyone know if this is possible in 2017? FreeNAS is now saying 8G RAM minimum. I have my LX195 maxed out at 2G

Hey, just wondering if you got this to work? I'm considering whether or not I should get another NAS or just use this as a FreeNAS. would love to hear from you soon!

thanks,
aloau

From the FreeNas forum, it will run but the developers don't like it much when you run less than the recommended minimum of 8GB, even if you go as far back as v8.0.1 (2011). The more RAM, the better the performance, and the FreeNAS Forums provide anecdotal evidence from users on how much performance is gained by adding more RAM.

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/thr ... box.62808/

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You might need to tweak ZFS to get it working in FreeNAS (dunno how to do it in FreeNAS but it indeed doable in BSD), but the statement that ZFS require 8Gb to work is a lie. For a 100 megabytes per second mostly sequential reads and writes no cache is required, and size of the pool will not exceed 4 disks anyway. it said 1 Gb is enough here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSTuningGuide I don't believe it is so poorly written it can't manage reasonable memory for a such small case.