I finally have my storage project up and running after a weekend of INSANE trouble shooting.
As mentioned earlier, I ordered a Tranquil BBS2, and I picked up a couple of 2TB drives.
I’ve been considering running OpenSolaris on the machine, and then pondered FreeBSD. After a while, I considered Nexenta Core, and then I settled on NexentaStor – an appliance OS built on top of OpenSolaris/Nexenta Core.
Being quite used to Linux and OS X, I figured I should be able to pretty much run the installer of a USB key.
If you’re thinking that should be easy.. think again.
When that seemed like an impossible task, I figured I could try installing in VMware and cloning the installed disk.
When that didn’t work out too well, I figured I’d try netbooting the installed media.
Now, I did bump into a pretty fucking annoying problem, in that the BBS2 has a VGA slot and I have precisely zero monitors at home.
Not counting the KDL-52W4500 
Problem #567 was not finding a VGA cable.
Ten bucks later, problem #568 reared its ugly head.
The VGA port on the BBS2 is covered by a steel “service port hatch”.
And the screws were set tight enough that I stripped the screws.
Two days later, I plug in the VGA cable, try to boot from one of my earlier USB sticks to find out.. it boots!
Except the BIOS settings were fucked up, and so Grub tried booting a fixed disk instead of removable storage (Mass storage emulation; NOT boot order).
No problem – just plug in a USB keyboard and… the DG945GCLF2 board refuses to power up my USB keyboard in time to let me enter BIOS.
Dig around for another keyboard that seemed a bit more responsive, try it out, get me into BIOS.
All of a sudden, the thing seems bootable!
Of course, I felt like doing a reinstall via CD (since I hacked the USB stick to pieces, pretty much 
) ).
Luckily, I had gone out earlier to buy a USB DVD reader since I was determined to get this moth******er up and running before the weekend was over.
All in all, it’s been an interesting but oh-so-frustrating experience getting this machine up and running.
It’s amazing how much no output, lack of hardware and retarded design decisions can set you back.
Now I just have to transfer 6TB of data onto my new storage box, yay! (6’000’000 / 30 = just shy of two and a half day of constant copying).
So long, suckers!
Huzzah! Also, you forgot to thank me!