Quick post this evening. Caving to peer pressure and the fact that my domain/hosting was expiring soon, I have moved to a new hosting provider. Thanks to P-Cass for the tip, I am now saving money and enjoying a much faster more responsive server. Hooray! One more reason to start blogging more regularly again.
In my last “great ubuntu NAS project” post, I explained how to get an ubuntu server OS up and running with the absolute basics. Now let’s get this thing customized. I personally wanted to add the following to my rig:
Let’s dive into the details…
Here we go folks. Complete, yet half-baked documentation on how to setup your very own home NAS using free Linux software. I know this has been written about before, and in fact I have pulled from many fine sources (see my acknowledgement below). This is documented here mainly so I don’t forget how I did this. It’s not really for you – sorry internet. Let’s get started:
Read the rest of this entry »
This is basically part two of my previous post about troubles in NAS-land. That experience got me thinking about switching up my NAS solution. Here’s why:
Given that I’m comfortable with Linux (Ubuntu specifically), I was eager to see if I could make the switch to something more Linux’y, and still have the nice features and flexibility of FreeNAS. Here was what I wanted:
Here was my final verdict:
So that’s it. I’ve made up my mind. Ubuntu Server here we come. It’s going to be quite a project to get this initially setup, but I think it will be an enriching and useful project. It’ll open my home server up to new capabilities and hopefully enhanced performance. FreeNAS is great, but it’s sort of like riding a bike with the training wheels on. It’s time to ride on two wheels now.
P.S. I should also mention that during my research, I ran across OpenMediaVault (http://openmediavault.org/). The original FreeNAS project forked into two projects. The first fork was FreeNAS 8.0 based on FreeBSD8, which is aimed at higher-end server equipment. I avoided this version because it is still in it’s infancy, requires a kind of ridiculous amount of power and it’s still based on FreeBSD. I recently discovered that the second fork is actually a Debian Linux based fork aimed more at the home NAS market. Now they have me second guessing things. Since it’s based on debian, perhaps this would be the easier route… naw.
If you’ve followed my blog in the past, you probably have noticed that I have been a big fan and user of FreeNAS for my home NAS needs. FreeNAS is a great project and quite excellent for those who want a basic, easy to use, polished NAS OS for free. I can’t speak enough to how good FreeNAS is. However, recently, I’ve had some challenges that caused me to re-think my home NAS strategy.
I should probably follow the old saying that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. In this case, I totally disregarded that wise advice and “fixed” with wild abandon. With my current NAS operating relatively glitch free for over a year on FreeNAS, of course it was time for some upgrading and tinkering.
It started out as an idea for offsite backup, which involved installing duplicity (which turned out to not be that hard), which presented some challenges. More on that later. I was also doing some large file transfer across my home network, which is gigabit but was struggling to achieve a decent transfer rate. I decided after some research that my hardware was holding me back, it was probably my 2-3 year old chipset bottlenecking transfer speeds. Fortunately, I had just decommissioned another system in my home with considerably greater horsepower. That’d be great to replace this aging slow NAS system. So backed up my data on the NAS to some old HD’s laying around the house (slowly… across the network), and switched to the new hardware. Upgraded FreeNAS in the process to the latest stable v0.7.2. Restored my config. Good so far.
Then, my FreeNAS box started rebooting randomly. Worse, it rebooted and hung while we were away in Hawaii for two weeks. Nothing I hate worse than having no access to my tunes, let alone other data, and having a broken system that I can’t do anything about, a thousand miles away. At first I thought I was getting power-outages. But I discovered later that it was nothing to do with our power at the house. After a look through syslogs, and some internet searching I found my problem. Corruption.
I was able to run fsck (file system check) on the RAID array and get the darn think back serviceable again… but the reboots continued. What… the… hell. I started to go through my mental checklist of what could be going wrong with the system. Why the crazy random reboots? And absolutely no warnings in the log files, no errors, no kernel panic, nothing. Had to be something with the motherboard, cpu, memory or power-supply or something. After a while I decided to replace the motherboard first… which forced me to replace the memory. Two more variables removed. Still, reboots. Finally I replaced the power-supply. Bingo – problem solved. Why did I even bother to do an upgrade in the first place?!
Well, at least we are stable for now. Stay tuned for part two… switching to Ubuntu Server from FreeNAS.
You may remember that I had posted about setting up a remote file server (via the web interface), a little while ago. Well I just stumbled across this post which talks about using secure FTP via the ssh tunnel. It’s dead simple to setup and is actually quite an elegant solution. It does require FTP software that supports SFTP, so it’s not quite as user friendly or configurable, but it’s great for power-users. I think I audibly said, “duh!” when I stumbled upon this. Also, it’s nice having the SSH capability exposed externally. Note that the tutorial is for FreeNAS 8, but is totally applicable to FreeNAS 7 (if you’re like me an are sticking to the legacy server software).
And regarding security, I would definitely use a different port than the standard SSH port, at least externally. Otherwise you’ll get clobbered with traffic from hackers attempting to connect to your server for not so nice reasons. You may want to consider using a keyfile as well – which makes it less convenient, but much more secure.
The year 2011 just flew by. I’m happy to report that after a year of dedication to a new weight loss strategy, I actually got some pretty good results. Let’s re-wind a little. Way back in April of 2011, I briefly touched on my efforts to lose some weight over the course of the year. Back then, I was talking about this new fad diet and how I had little motivation to exercise. At the beginning of the year, I started the slow carb diet (inspiration from Tim Ferriss) and started meticulously documenting my weight and body fat percentage daily (also documented my measurements). I’m proud to say I kept it all up over the entire year.
Only one thing has changed since then. I’m still on that fad diet and I still haven’t found my motivation to exercise. However, my weight has dropped pretty drastically despite my sedentary nature. I dropped over 40 pounds during the year to be more accurate. That’s more than three (3) average sized bowling balls worth of extra weight that I was carrying with me everywhere, putting stress on my bones, my heart and my mind.
This is great and all, but there is another good 10 or so pounds that I need to drop to be back in the normal weight category (right now, I’m still overweight for a 6’1″ dude). So, this year I resolve to actually start that exercise at least a couple of times a week to move that body-fat percentage down even more, and hopefully lose those last 10 lbs in the process. I’ve been thinking that getting back into running again might do the trick. However, Suzy and turned me on to this whole rebounding thing which involves a trampoline (how fun is that?). While I feel pretty silly effectively bouncing on a tiny trampoline (and probably look pretty silly too), it leaves my muscles sore and jelly-like after only 20 minutes of jumping. Seriously… even my abdominal muscles are sore. NASA can’t be wrong about this…
For additional motivation, I’m posting my 2011 data here (call it a public humiliation diet tactic). I apparently love fads… slow-carb, rebounding, public humiliation. I’m such a chump.
Uncle Rick threw down the gauntlet during our yearly Parmeter Thanksgiving get-together, deep in the forested hills of Oregon. A challenge to post something (even if it is only a weak one liner) to their respective blogs. Well, here you go. It’s not much, but it will do. Now Uncle Rick, let’s see if you can match your challenge as well.
Another geeky freenas related post today. All those not interested in reading through techy garbage, please feel free to leave early. For those of you here to learn about said techy garbage, please open your text books to page 204 and follow along.
For some time now, I have been aware of the rather handy feature that Windows Home Server boasts with a web based file manager (I believe they call it Remote Web Access or some such generic name). Being a stalwart FreeNAS guy, I was impressed, but didn’t let my jealousy shine through. How cool is it that you can log into your NAS from outside the network and upload/download any file that is there via a spiffy web interface? Very cool. Want.
Sure, you can setup an FTP server, but I really don’t like exposing an FTP to the outside world. Too many security issues with FTP. Yes, I know you can setup an SSH tunnel and do FTP, but that’s kinda boring and not everyone has the patience to setup their own SSH client, etc. Plus I wanted an easy way to allow my friends and/or family to log into the server to grab things like photos or videos or even upload their own files. I’m certainly not going to get 99% of these folks to setup a secure FTP session via SSH.
Recently, I came across this LifeHacker article about setting up FreeNAS to run SickBeard and SABnzbd to do a sort of Internet PVR. After reading this, and seeing the techniques they used to get this up and running I was suddenly inspired to work on the above project. I knew there had to be a way to shoehorn something in. So I began to look at my options. I finally stumbled upon a slick PHP/Ajax based Web File Manager front end with decent security that would work for me and decided to give it a shot. (Ajaxplorer)
If you want to be the master of your domain, and show your Windows Home Server friends up, then this setup is for you. Enough background, let’s get started.
Get the Necessary Pieces:
Configure FreeNAS:
Install Ajaxplorer
Additional Security Concerns
I’m not much of a security expert, however it was absolutely essential to me that this be a decently secure solution. I really don’t want people hacking around in my NAS from the outside.
In this configuration there are at least 3 caveats with regards to security:
$HTTP["url"] =~ “^/ajxp/server/conf” {
url.access-deny = (“”)
}
Now, to my surprise, if you disable and re-enable the webserver via the web UI or reboot the system you’ll completely blow away any changes you made to the config file (http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=1941). This is apparently how FreeNAS is designed. So, here’s how I got around things. I made a copy of the websrv.conf file named mywebsrv.conf and instead of launching the default web server, launched my own via a config script. Do this by adding the following to System > Advanced > Command Scripts:
/usr/local/sbin/lighttpd -D -f /var/etc/mywebsrv.conf -m /usr/local/lib/lighttpd
Make this a post-init script meaning it runs after the system boots and initializes. Ensure to add all of the directories that you would like to deny access to into the configuration file. After you’re done with this step, make sure you disable the other default webserver via the web gui before you reboot the system. This should do the trick and forbid access to your sensitive directories.
If you’re reading this and can think of more, please do let me know so that I can plug those holes too.
Poke a Hole in your Router
Because everyone has a different type of router at home, I won’t even attempt to begin to tell you how to do this. However, you’ll want to make sure that you port-forward whatever port you defined in your LightHTTPd configuration above. You can use a different outside port if you desire, but I like to keep it simple and use the same port number.
Now you can access your stuff anywhere you have an Internet connection. If you have a Dynamic DNS service to help you remember your IP, even better!
Final Thoughts
While I’m pretty happy with the results, I’m sure there are improvements that can be made to the installation etc. Others have used Ajaxplorer in place of the Quixplorer that is currently running on FreeNAS (which can be used on the internal network). Ajaxplorer can be a bit sluggish, and it doesn’t integrate perfectly with FreeNAS, but it gets the job done. If you have any suggestions, tweaks or improvements let me know and I’ll include them here! I hope this helps anyone that has been thinking of doing this. It’s certainly been a learning experience for me.
Remember a couple of years back where I made a rather bold, stake-in-the-ground, statement in a blog post? Back then, I had such a different, pre-dad point of view. It was such an innocent time. A time with boundless amounts of energy, optimism and vanity. At the time, it was all about maintaining that youthful, kid-less image. It was about caring about style over function, performance over comfort. At the time, a cross-over SUV seemed like a way to cling to those values, while getting some small level of practicality.
Mark your calendars (if you’re keeping track at home). On August 12th, 2011 my will was finally broken and I have become a mini-van owner. This post-dad point of view is 100% on-board with a mini-van and the lifestyle that it promises. Mini-van’s are all about convenience and comfort. They’re all about capacity and doors that open themselves with the push of a button. They’re all about cup holders and arm rests and tinted windows. They are about incrementally improving the family travel experience.
Just like last time, this is a new era. An era that I fully admit that I resisted before but have come to completely embrace. Next time I’m thinking about taking a stand on the topic, I’ll just remember this humbling moment when I waffled.