PogoPlug Pro - Discussion Thread

@varkey will put the screen shot ASAP, was busy with weekend plans.
jsmithe I do changed the password and do remember it. tried that one to ssh in... i think i will write a mail to pogoplug people as you said...

Thanks All
 
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I got my pogoplug v4 10-15 days ago. Suits my needs very well but found 2 major deficiencies in it (1) The mapped drive(P) in windows 7 vanishes after I put my laptop into standby. (2). If I switch off the pogoplug and restart almost 50% of the times attached drives wont come back online. I have to remove them, plug them into my laptop, fix the file errors and plug it in back to the device.
Issue 1, I can live with, as I can install samba and map the drives separately.
Issue 2, I am not sure what to do to fix it. I know, I can go to my.pogoplug.com and eject the drives, but thats not what I would want to do everytime I put my system to standby. For now, I am leaving the device on 24/7.I hope that the device is designed to be left on 24/7/365 as they did not provide any poweroff option! Not sure what solution can fix this issue.

Anyway, over this weekend, I took the first babystep towards customizing the device and installed samba on a microsd card used along with a SD card adapter. I was able to successfully configure samba, but then after a few hard reboots of the device, I am not able to see the sd card in my device. I reformatted the card and tried, but still no luck. Any pointers?

Thanks for helping me.

Regards,
Mohit
 
@amohit : Did you get the Pogoplug Mobile (POGO-V4-A1-01) or Series 4 (POGO-V4-A3-01).

In case of Pogoplug Mobile, you can install Samba on the internal NAND itself, it has around 90 MB free. No need for SD card.

Issue 2 - Are all the drives using NTFS? I guess you can have some script to fix errors before mounting.

Running the device 24/7 is not an issue, go ahead! :)
 
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Did you get the Pogoplug Mobile (POGO-V4-A1-01) or Series 4 (POGO-V4-A3-01).

Mine is a series 4.

Issue 2 - Are all the drives using NTFS? I guess you can have some script to fix errors before mounting.

All drives are NTFS. I tried a FAT32 formatted drive as well, but the issue persisted.

I wonder if setting up archlinux will give me an option to run some kind of script from windows so that I can execute it everytime I put my system to standby.

Regards,
Mohit
 
Why are you using NTFS ? Why not ext3 or ext4 ?

Because before I got pogoplug that was the format compatible with windows. Now this is the information that I am looking for!!
What can I do to prevent getting this fix filesystem issues whenever I power-off/power-on the device. Will changing the filesystem to ext4 help?
Any pointers, how can I reformat my hdd in that filesystem using windows?

Appreciate your help.

Regards,
Mohit
 
Why not install arch linux ?
That would have been my next mod. But then the device stopped reading SD card. Now, I am really not sure what will happen if mess up with the default OS and then later it stops recognizing the SD card.

Can you guys confirm if these issues of (a) drives not being recognized and (b) Drive filesystems going corrupt every now and then dosent happen with Arch Linux, then I will take the plunge.

Regards,
Mohit
 
use sandisk usb flash drive instead of sdcard, sdcard is not recommended for running os.

I don't think he is running the OS on the SD card, only few apps like Transmission, Samba would be installed in it.

I am not sure what is the advantage of using a USB drive over SD card. Both storage mediums are flash based and ideally not recommended. I had run an Atom box with the OS on a SD card for about 1-1.5 years without any issue though.
 
I am running ArchLinux on 16gb sandisk cruzer blade from past 4 months without any hiccups.

So above solution is totally recommended incase of absence of external hdd.
 
Guys I am confused between the models. I want to remotely monitor torrent downloads on external HDD, and also use it as file/media server for PS3, and have access to the shared folders over the internet, should have inbuilt Wi-Fi too. Which model would you recommend?

As for getting my hands dirty with all this configration, I think I am ready for it.
 
I would imagine SD card not being recommended as flash drives have limited write cycles. But then, I just wanted Samba. And that too because I wanted to control when the backup is taken. I really dont want to rely on Pogoplug backup application to do instant backups for me. This is so, as sometimes it shows some error messages saying unable to copy some files. But to detect which files it failed to copy, I have to go thru the log files. I would have ideally wanted it to show me the files it failed to copy. but then for 3k I cant expect a high end NAS solution :)
So, in came Samba and the first experimentation with micro SD card (was lying around, so didnt have to but anything). I would have also assumed that microsd card in SD card adapter may not work (some people reported such issues on some other forums), but then I was able to successfully install Samba on it. It was only when I rebooted the device a few times did it stop being recognized.

On the other hand, since I am not going to boot from the SD card, can I not use the external hard disk that I am using for backup to host the samba related files on it? All I would need to do is to copy the files off the sd card to the hard disk and mount it on /opt? Will it not work?

Regards,
Mohit
 
I don't think he is running the OS on the SD card, only few apps like Transmission, Samba would be installed in it.

I am not sure what is the advantage of using a USB drive over SD card. Both storage mediums are flash based and ideally not recommended. I had run an Atom box with the OS on a SD card for about 1-1.5 years without any issue though.
I thought he mentioned he used to boot from a micro sdcard in an adapter.
I have read of people complaining of sdcards not being seen after booting possibly. otoh, have also read of sandisk flash drives being one of the best wrt loading os for pogoplug. other companies drives seem to use some other controller in them that are not as reliable as sandisk ones. I'm not implying that only sandisk drives are the only good drives, there are others too, only thing is you would have to try and find them out.
 
Guys I am confused between the models. I want to remotely monitor torrent downloads on external HDD, and also use it as file/media server for PS3, and have access to the shared folders over the internet, should have inbuilt Wi-Fi too. Which model would you recommend?

As for getting my hands dirty with all this configration, I think I am ready for it.

You can get any model you want, personally I prefer the P21. Only the Pro had inbuilt Wifi and I don't think its available for cheap now, besides it was OXNAS based and I never liked it! ;)

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On the other hand, since I am not going to boot from the SD card, can I not use the external hard disk that I am using for backup to host the samba related files on it? All I would need to do is to copy the files off the sd card to the hard disk and mount it on /opt? Will it not work?

Regards,
Mohit

Yes, you could do that, but I guess it has to be a linux partition (not sure though). Try it out, and make sure you retain the permissions.
 
varkey Can you post a link to the product?

Check the last few pages, it has been posted numerous times.

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I thought he mentioned he used to boot from a micro sdcard in an adapter.
I have read of people complaining of sdcards not being seen after booting possibly. otoh, have also read of sandisk flash drives being one of the best wrt loading os for pogoplug. other companies drives seem to use some other controller in them that are not as reliable as sandisk ones. I'm not implying that only sandisk drives are the only good drives, there are others too, only thing is you would have to try and find them out.

True, many USB drives I tried failed to boot occasionally and faced many issues. Eventually I moved to a hard disk and its been rock solid. :)
 
Question for those who are using Pogo with a USB hard disk.
After Arch is installed, does PogoPlug boot directly into Arch after a power disconnection (not reboot).

In my case, if there is a power outage, the Pogo will boot up and shows a orange light, but it does not respond to SSH nor does it show up in the routers list.

To get the system back up, I have to disconnect the HDD, then boot into normal Pogo, Connect the HDD back, issue the reboot command.
After these steps, Arch works fine.
 
Question for those who are using Pogo with a USB hard disk.
After Arch is installed, does PogoPlug boot directly into Arch after a power disconnection (not reboot).

In my case, if there is a power outage, the Pogo will boot up and shows a orange light, but it does not respond to SSH nor does it show up in the routers list.

To get the system back up, I have to disconnect the HDD, then boot into normal Pogo, Connect the HDD back, issue the reboot command.
After these steps, Arch works fine.

This is probably because the USB drive is taking sometime to initialize and hence a cold boot is fails. You could try increasing the USB delay in uBoot or even try having multiple usb_scan commands in usb_init.

If none of these work, you may have to use a different USB drive.
 
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