Announcing MinimServer 2 for QNAP

[simoncn]

MinimServer 2 is now available for QNAP. All models of QNAP NAS are supported. See this page for information about how to download and install MinimServer 2 on QNAP.

MinimServer 0.8 for QNAP can still be downloaded at present. The download links for this will be removed at some point.

[Peter@57m]

Thanks Simon - a project for tomorrow morning

[DavidHB]

Thank you, Simon. MinimServer 2 is now running on both my QNAP NASs.

My TS 131 threw up an oddity. The system page of the device clearly states that it has an ARMv7 processor. I wrongly relied on this, and therefore encountered an error when I tried to install the ARMv7 package. Your list (which I should have checked, though this is something QNAP should surely not get wrong) correctly states that the processor is an ARMv5, and that package installed without problems.

I also think it would be helpful if the license acceptance box that pops up when MinimServer 2 first starts could contain a reminder in suitably large type that the settings from any previous installation will not be imported into MinimServer 2 unless a full or trial license is activated. That may be stated in the wording, but, if so, I missed it. By the same token, MinimStreamer users need to be reminded in some way that MinimStreamer needs to be installed; at present the information that MinimStreamer is not installed and therefore not running is buried in the log.

Three small procedural points, which may help others, particularly with the installation and activation of licensed versions of MinimServer 2 on remote devices. Firstly, I find it useful to have the license details open on the desktop before I start the installation, so that I can copy and paste them when I get to the point of activating the license. Secondly, I found it made sense to install MinimWatch 2 on the local machine before I started to install MinimServer 2 on the remote devices. The icons in the System Tray gave me, so to speak, a running commentary on the status of the various MinimServer instances as installation proceeded. Finally, with QNAP NASs, it is useful to install the Qfinder Pro application on your local device, as that enables you to access the NAS without having to think about IP addresses and port numbers.

David

[simoncn]

(27-04-2020 01:13)DavidHB Wrote:  My TS 131 threw up an oddity. The system page of the device clearly states that it has an ARMv7 processor. I wrongly relied on this, and therefore encountered an error when I tried to install the ARMv7 package. Your list (which I should have checked, though this is something QNAP should surely not get wrong) correctly states that the processor is an ARMv5, and that package installed without problems.

Once upon a time there was ARMv5, with no floating point support. The Linux ABI (application binary interface) for ARMv5 is armel, which does not use floating-point registers to pass arguments.

Then along came ARMv7, with floating-point support and a new Linux ABI (application binary interface) for ARMv7 named armhf, which uses floating-point registers to pass arguments and improves runtime efficiency.

To move to the armhf ABI, the operating system had to be rebuilt and applications also had to be rebuilt, as an ARMv5/armel application would not run on an ARMv7/armhf operating system. Most platforms did this because the gain was worth the pain.

Because of the disruption this change causes to existing applications, some platforms (including QNAP on the TS-131) adopted a compromise and moved to ARMv7/armel instead of ARMv7/armhf. An ARMv7/armel platform runs ARMv5/armel applications and ARMv7/armel applications but does not run ARMv7/armhf applications.

MinimServer only comes in ARMv5/armel and ARMv7/armhf versions. There is no ARMv7/armel version. This is why the TS-131 (although it has and ARMv7 processor) requires the ARMv5 version of MinimServer.

It would be possible to build an ARMv7/armel version of MinimServer specially for ths TS-131 and a few other QNAP models that use ARMv7/armel. I doubt that it is worth the complexity and maintenance overhead of doing this as I suspect any performance gains over the existing ARMv5/armel version would be very small, although I cannot verify this because I don't have one of these machines myself.

I plead guilty to oversimplfying this in the instructions for installing MinimServer 2 on QNAP by falsely stating that the 131 has an ARMv5 processor. If you have persevered in reading this far, you will understand why I did this.

[simoncn]

(27-04-2020 01:13)DavidHB Wrote:  I also think it would be helpful if the license acceptance box that pops up when MinimServer 2 first starts could contain a reminder in suitably large type that the settings from any previous installation will not be imported into MinimServer 2 unless a full or trial license is activated. That may be stated in the wording, but, if so, I missed it. By the same token, MinimStreamer users need to be reminded in some way that MinimStreamer needs to be installed; at present the information that MinimStreamer is not installed and therefore not running is buried in the log.

Thank you for this feedback. There is information about importing settings in the Quick Start guide (point 2 of the 'Installing MinimServer 2' section). It would be helpful to add the point about MinimStreamer here as well (MinimStreamer is mentioned much later) and I will do this.

The license page is not the right place to explain migration issues but it would be possible to do this on the Welcome page. I would not want to do this for new users who are not migrating but I think it would be possible to identify the first start of the web interface after a migration has happened and add an extra paragraph with this information. Similarly, I think it would be possible to detect whether the user is migrating from an installation that included MinimStreamer as well as MinimServer and add a few words about this. I will investigate whether this is feasible.

[Peter@57m]

Simon,

Tried installing V2 this morning. It appeared to go OK however could not see it in MinimWatch and could not access it through the browser. I have currently reverted to 0.8 and all is OK. I did that in part to see if I'd changed some access setting on the QNAP which would make it undiscoverable.

I was installing it on a QNAP 559 Pro II running 4.2.6.

I tried installing it a couple of times, also tried rebooting the QNAP.

I have attached:

• The status from QNAP when I clicked on MinimServer
• The system log from the QNAP
• A MinimServer crash log
• MinimServer status from QNAP for 8.5.2
  

Let me know if you need anything else.

[Peter@57m]

and this is the log file:

MinimServer 2.0.10, Copyright © 2012-2020 Simon Nash. All rights reserved.
Java™ SE Embedded Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_144-b01)
Java HotSpot™ Embedded Client VM (build 25.144-b01, mixed mode)
Java runtime options: -Duser.timezone=Europe/London
Platform default charset is UTF-8
System platform is linux-x86
MinimServer: startup error
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /share/MD0_DATA/.qpkg/MinimServer/tmp/native/libohNet.so: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.14' not found (required by /share/MD0_DATA/.qpkg/MinimServer/tmp/native/libohNet.so)
at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1941)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1837)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:870)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1122)
at org.jminim.lib.OhNetService.createLibrary(OhNetService.java:673)
at org.jminim.lib.OhNetService.createDeviceStack(OhNetService.java:583)
at org.jminim.lib.OhNetService.createDeviceFactory(OhNetService.java:486)
at org.jminim.lib.OhNetService.access$2100(OhNetService.java:52)
at org.jminim.lib.OhNetService$Proxy.createDeviceFactory(OhNetService.java:1120)
at org.jminim.lib.MonitorService$Monitor.createDevice(MonitorService.java:264)
at org.jminim.lib.MonitorService$Monitor.listenerAdded(MonitorService.java:340)
at org.jminim.core.RuntimeImpl.addEventListener(RuntimeImpl.java:2245)
at org.jminim.lib.RuntimeService$Proxy.addEventListener(RuntimeService.java:224)
at com.minimserver.Server.doStart(Server.java:1136)
at com.minimserver.Server.start(Server.java:763)
at org.jminim.core.ContextImpl.startComponent(ContextImpl.java:227)
at org.jminim.core.ContextImpl.start(ContextImpl.java:115)
at org.jminim.core.RootContextImpl.startComponent(RootContextImpl.java:80)
at org.jminim.core.ContextImpl.start(ContextImpl.java:115)
at org.jminim.core.RuntimeImpl.run(RuntimeImpl.java:2459)
at org.jminim.core.LauncherImpl.run(LauncherImpl.java:1331)
at org.jminim.core.LauncherImpl.launch(LauncherImpl.java:124)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.jav​a:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
at org.jminim.mlaunch.MinimLaunch.doLaunch(MinimLaunch.java:525)
at org.jminim.mlaunch.MinimLaunch.launch(MinimLaunch.java:150)
at org.jminim.mlaunch.MinimLaunch.launch(MinimLaunch.java:90)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.jav​a:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
at org.jminim.launch.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:88)
at com.minimserver.launch.LaunchServer.main(LaunchServer.java:34)

[DavidHB]

(27-04-2020 11:10)simoncn Wrote:  I plead guilty to oversimplfying this in the instructions for installing MinimServer 2 on QNAP by falsely stating that the 131 has an ARMv5 processor. If you have persevered in reading this far, you will understand why I did this.

Thank you, Simon. A fascinating story. I see that there is a note in your models list that explains that some ARMv7 models need to use the ARMv5 package. Hopefully my experience is enough of an edge case that the issue will not arise too often.

David

[DavidHB]

(27-04-2020 11:25)simoncn Wrote:  There is information about importing settings in the Quick Start guide (point 2 of the 'Installing MinimServer 2' section). It would be helpful to add the point about MinimStreamer here as well (MinimStreamer is mentioned much later) and I will do this.

Thank you; that makes sense. Of course, it is always an uphill struggle to persuade the voluntarily illiterate (among whom I include myself on occasion) to read carefully though what they perceive as dense text.

(27-04-2020 11:25)simoncn Wrote:  The license page is not the right place to explain migration issues but it would be possible to do this on the Welcome page. I would not want to do this for new users who are not migrating but I think it would be possible to identify the first start of the web interface after a migration has happened and add an extra paragraph with this information. Similarly, I think it would be possible to detect whether the user is migrating from an installation that included MinimStreamer as well as MinimServer and add a few words about this. I will investigate whether this is feasible.

Thank you again. I think all of that would be very helpful to the folk who are migrating.

David

[simoncn]

(27-04-2020 11:31)Peter@57m Wrote:  Simon,

Tried installing V2 this morning. It appeared to go OK however could not see it in MinimWatch and could not access it through the browser. I have currently reverted to 0.8 and all is OK. I did that in part to see if I'd changed some access setting on the QNAP which would make it undiscoverable.

I was installing it on a QNAP 559 Pro II running 4.2.6.

Thanks for letting me know about this. My HS-251+ has a later version of QTS and this is why I did not find this incompatibility during testing. The log gives me all the information that I need to investigate and hopefully fix the problem.