Setting up a nas

A couple a weeks ago I bought some spare harddisk (2 500 Gig ATA). I had a spare computer lying around and wanted to build myself an small nas. I already knew 2 distros who’s idea it is to become an easy to use nas solution. Openfiler (Linux based) and FreeNas (BSD based), so I gave them a go. One of them crashed during gui installation when choosing the timezone. So I had to finish it in text mode. But that’s not a big problem only a shame you have to restart the installation.

But after installing it seems that OpenFiler doesn’t support a local user db. You have to setup an LDAP or AD, but for me on my own a LDAP or AD is a small overhead imho. So openfiler was a no go. Then FreeNas, this supported a local user db but after setting up and publishing an SMB share it seems that the security is isn’t that great. I can’t make a share private for my user. So if I wanted someone to copy something to my nas he would have access to my whole share. So FreeNas was no go as well.

Finally I installed the ubuntu server, apt-getted smb,ssh,… I created a software raid using the raid tools and made some shares on this raid folder. Now I have my own small NAS of 500 gig on the network.

So people who want a nas and are looking for a solution. Maybe just go with a normal distro and set it up like me. It only took 30 minutes max extra than using the formerly mentioned distros.

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