Anthony Posted March 20, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 20, 2012 I do some volunteering in a small office and help them with their IT stuff. They have no networked storage, but have recently been given a whole load of old Dell desktops, so I thought I'd repurpose one as a NAS box. At home I have a D Link DNS 323 (which is a bit rubbish TBH) and essentially I'm looking to do something like that. a network drive that people can map on their pcs and macs. So what should I do? Install ubuntu? Umm, then what? I'd like it to have a static IP. There won't be anything confidential stored on it, so all it needs is for everyone to have read/write access to the storage area; no quotas or reserved areas, dead simple. I think. Suggestions as to what I should do, or maybe you know where a good article is? Over to you... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted March 20, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 20, 2012 http://www.freenas.org/ No OS required, just an empty system. Install Configure through web-client Done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted March 20, 2012 Administrator Share Posted March 20, 2012 Searching for "linux file server" gave this as the first link, but it's from Jan 2008 so you'll want something more recent. Have a poke around, I'm sure if you find some likely howto guides then we can advise on what is sensible. It's hard to suggest something when I've no idea of your tech experience. Personally I'd do a minimal Debian install and add smbfs. Or buy a cheap NAS, it'll pay for itself in a couple of years due to the reduced power consumption. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDon Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 openmediavault, debian based, piss easy to setup and use. Install the greyhole plugin on there for disk pooling as well and you're sorted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 NAS is essentially Linux with Samba and/or NFS. If you're serving Windows clients only, you'll just need SMB/CIFS, which is Samba. I'd just install ubuntu, then install Samba. There's no recognised easy GUI for Samba, so you'll need to edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file by hand (sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf) but it should be fairly easy. Otherwise, as others have suggested, FreeNAS or equivalent is fine. But if you do that then you can't use it to serve anything else such as email, web etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted March 21, 2012 Author VT Supporter Share Posted March 21, 2012 Cheers guys. Suspect it will be Tegis' link - no web/mail serving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted March 21, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted March 21, 2012 Both Freenas and openmediavault are live-disks as well, so you can try the before install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaztonVilla Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 Linus server not working? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted June 15, 2012 Author VT Supporter Share Posted June 15, 2012 Right then, I've set it up and it's been running happily for a while, but there's an issue that I can't resolve. For some reason some files just aren't deleteable. Here's the link to my q on the forum. If anyone has an answer I'd appreciate it because what I have so far ain't clear... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted June 15, 2012 Administrator Share Posted June 15, 2012 Can they be deleted when you are logged into the server? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted June 15, 2012 Author VT Supporter Share Posted June 15, 2012 Took yer bloody time replying Simon. The answer is... yes. So what do I need to change? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted June 15, 2012 Administrator Share Posted June 15, 2012 TBH I haven't a clue. You went for freeNAS and I've no experience of that, I don't even know what software it's using under the hood. You could try running tail -f /var/log/syslog try deleting something and see if it logs an error. (ctrl-c to exit). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted June 16, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 16, 2012 FreeNAS is FreeBSD based (according to wiki). Are you using Samba (accessing using Windows file and printer sharing on the other computers)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted June 26, 2012 Author VT Supporter Share Posted June 26, 2012 Yeah, Levi's right, it's using FreeBSD. I'm using CIFS for sharing. Is that Samba? Think so. I can log in to the pretty front end via my browser, but how would I go about accessing the console to try your suggestion Simon? I have putty, would that work? I'm not really a linux bod as you may be able to tell... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted June 26, 2012 Administrator Share Posted June 26, 2012 FreeBSD is not Linux so I'm definitely not the person to ask. Is there nothing in the pretty front end for "console"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted June 26, 2012 Administrator Share Posted June 26, 2012 Or can you see the files in the pretty front end? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted June 26, 2012 Author VT Supporter Share Posted June 26, 2012 No, no 'console' button and not able to view files that way either. I did find a box (Zeroconf share discovery) that you're supposed to tick if you're accessing the thing with Macs (which some people are). Don't think it's got anything to do with file deletion/non deletion though. I blame that Tegbrink fellow. Gives me a recommendation then buggers off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted June 26, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 26, 2012 ouch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted June 26, 2012 Author VT Supporter Share Posted June 26, 2012 Mwah, love you really Tegis x x x It's seriously doing my head in. Any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted June 26, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted June 26, 2012 Does everyone have a separate login to the nas or using the same, or guest? I'd check the file-permissions as well. Does the fronted have any way of doing that or is it console stuff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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