Howto make an old PC function as a Home NAS

[rsnfunky]

Hi,

As the question describes, the aim is to get an old PC function as a home NAS to which the following can be connected:

1) TVs for playing media saved on HDDs
2) Mobile Phones
3) Linux / Windows PCs / Laptops to access and save data
4) If possible access this data from net using a VPN

I was reading this article: https://www.xda-developers.com/how-turn ... -into-nas/

This was on TrueNAS and I understand that it requires one dedicated disk to boot.

My Aim:
1) Have the same features like TrueNAS but using a gentoo box. Can also make it dual boot with Windows and connect to a TV (Functions as a PC in another room).

2) Install Softwares like:
a) Nextcloud for working like Google Photos and backup
b) Jellyfin for Media Server - Will this also fuction as a DLNA for playing media on home smart TV?
c) Any google drive alternative for auto back android devices and whatsapp backups
d) Any other softwares which can be recommended?
d) How to get secure access from the internet.

3) I can connect to this old PC NAS, all the internal and external HDDs that I have and these will be availabe whenever I am at home and that too from any device on the wifi.

[szatox]

Sounds like a plan.
What's the actual problem though? You're unlikely to get a full-blown custom guide, just ask specific questions once you get stuck on something.

c) Any google drive alternative for auto back android devices and whatsapp backups

Can you even use an alternative server to backup android devices?

d) Any other softwares which can be recommended?

This tells me you're on a hype train. You're trying to do way too much in one go.
A NAS is essentially not that different from any other installation, even though it is typically intended to be a very minimal, light-weight installation, just enough to expose some disk space via NFS, SMF and FTP. You're builing a custom solution for personal use, so even those rules don't apply, since you're defining your NAS by function rather than a software stack.
Basically, you'll cross that bridge when you need to, there's no point thinking about it in advance.

d) How to get secure access from the internet.

Depends on how you are connected to the internet in the first place, and what do you understand by "access from the internet" and what do you consider "secure"
Most people are behind NATs and would need a VPN. The implementation will vary depending on the things one line above.

[lars_the_bear]

I would imagine that any Linux distribution would be capable of providing basic NAS functions. It really depends on the amount of set-up you want to do. I don't think using Gentoo here would offer an advantage over any other distribution -- there would still be a lot of set-up. I guess that's where platforms like TrueNAS score: they'll do most of the basic stuff with little additional set-up. My understanding is that TrueNAS can only be installed on a complete drive, but storage is cheap, and you could still dual-boot by using the PC's BIOS to select a drive to boot from (rather that, say, using multiple partitions on the same disk).

But I fear that you might soon get fed up with the constant fan noise and poor energy-efficiency. In my view, it's only worth using PC-type hardware for NAS if you plan to run more CPU-intensive stuff on it as well. Otherwise it's a waste of resources. Just my $0.02, of course.

BR, Lars.

[NeddySeagoon]

Build on what you know works. Add things so you know what breaks. :)
and can back it out.

Start with NFS as that's fairly simple to make work.
Add Samba for the Windows systems.

Do not install everything you think you need and tell us it's not working.
We already know that. :)
The idea is to keep the problem space small, so it's easy to diagnose and fix.

Actually the order you add bits is not important. It's the one at a time that matters.

[Bob P]

Using an old PC for a NAS is a great idea -- but if you let feature creep determine how much functionality you want, you're likely to reach the point where old hardware may not fit the bill and new hardware will be required.

I've been doing this for a long long time. The demands that we placed on old PCs that were re-tasked as home servers were a lot simpler back then. My first "NAS" was built long before the term "NAS" became a marketing thing. Back then I just ran linux on an old PC and installed SAMBA to serve Win and Linux clients at home. Back then we just called them SAMBA servers. The hardware requirements for that sort of thing in the home were so minimal that you could literally use any old boatanchor and a few big IDE disks to do the job. Way back when I used a 486 and then Pentium box for this sort of thing. Ultimately the disk and networking interface requirements forced motherboard/CPU upgrades.

I was deep into Gentoo at the time, yet for the NAS I moved to a FreeNAS to do file serving, backup, and media streaming. It was just simpler to use a turnkey distribution than to try to build everything by hand. Back then just building a LAMP server on Genoo was a major project and a full blown multi-feature NAS was beyond the reach of most people.

If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't start off trying to do it all under Gentoo -- there will just be too much heavy lifting while you're learning the ropes. If it were me, I'd start off with a turnkey distribution, get a basic system up and running, and then add features as needed, taking incrementally small steps. If you really want to do it in Gentoo, I'd recommend building the Gentoo box after the turnkey box is already up and running. I say this because getting your full featured NAS up and running as quickly as possible will be a lot more rewarding than the delayed gratification that will come from a full Gentoo build.


Regarding the dual boot idea, I can't really say that I would ever consider building a NAS and then taking it offline to boot windows on that metal. It just seems counterproductive to me to take down the NAS for any secondary task, but that's just me.


With the older version of TrueNAS (FreeNAS), the dedicated boot device could be a USB stick. Back in my FreeNAS days (prior to the advent of SSD) I used mirrored USB sticks as boot devices for fault tolerance. That was a great solution as it allowed me to reserve the machine's SATA ports for the data disk array. When they rebuilt FreeNAS and the devs were using SSD, they lost USB compatibility and forced everyone to use SSD for the OS mirror. The result was that they consumed 2 SATA slots that put limits on the number of disks in the zpool. Everyone ran out of SATA ports and ended up migrating to LSI SAS disk controllers as the disk arrays grew and grew.

The moral of that little story is that things get very complicated very fast, and the more features you want, the more you're going to strain your hardware, and the more likely that the prospect of building a very complex modern system out of old hardware is likely to fail. You're likely to end up being forced into new hardware. My suggestion would be to start off simple, and add features incrementally, so you'll know what features force you into upgrades and you can make decisions about whether or not they are worthwhile and fit the budget.

Neddy's recommendation to keep the problem space small, and perform incremental feature expansions are true words of wisdom.

[rsnfunky]

Update:

Got my gentoo installation up and running. It took an insanely long time for compile. The gtk-2-webkit took over 30 hours of compile time and kernel about 8 hours on my Athlon II 965 (4 core processor) with 8 gb ram.

Got the NFS server functional and exported 2 NTFS partitions: extract of /etc/fstab

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/mnt/sda1               /mnt/d          ntfs            defaults        0 0
/mnt/sda2               /mnt/e          ntfs            defaults        0 0
/mnt/d                  /export/d       none            bind            0 0
/mnt/e                  /export/e       none            bind            0 0

The /etc/export

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/export         *(insecure,rw,sync,no_subtree_check,crossmnt,fsid=0)

The server came up with no issues.

My /etc/portage/make.conf

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COMMON_FLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=amdfam10"
CFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
CXXFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
FCFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
FFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
LC_MESSAGES=C.utf8
MAKEOPTS="--jobs 4"
USE="video_cards_radeon bluetooth samba ffmpeg vlc matroska taglib exiv2 ffmpegthumbnailer grub dracut ctype curl fileinfo filter gd iconv ssl posix session simplexml xmlreader xmlwriter zip zlib curl imagemagick libmount fsv4 uuid caps junction acl python"


VIDEO_CARDS="amdgpu radeonsi"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"

Problem statement 1: Why did it take insanely long time to get an gentoo install with Gnome.

Problem statement 2: I tried opening the file server by typing the ip address on my mobile browser and the error was connection refused.

[NeddySeagoon]

it's a server, why do you want a GUI on a server?

To connect via a web browser, you will need a web server listening on port 80 for http and/or port 443 for https.
Webservers were not mentioned, so you won't have one. Hence connection refused.
You will get a self signed certificate for https to get started. Your phone won't like that until you tell it to trust it.
Longer term, you can get a real free certificate from letsencrypt.
It will need to be renewed every 3 months.

There are several web servers to choose from.
I use apache as I've been using it for 20 years and have not looked at anything else.
That's not a recommendation, more an admission that I'm stuck in a rut. :)

== edit ==
If you start sshd on the PC and install a ssh client on your phone, you should be abe to ssh ito the PM from your phone.

[steve_v]

1) TVs for playing media saved on HDDs
2) Mobile Phones
3) Linux / Windows PCs / Laptops to access and save data
4) If possible access this data from net using a VPN

All relatively straightforward. Start by working out which servers/protocols are required for access from your client devices, and set them up one at a time.

dual boot with Windows and connect to a TV (Functions as a PC in another room).

Uhh, why? That's well outside the scope of Network Attached Storage.

Any google drive alternative for auto back android devices and whatsapp backups

What you can use for android backups depends on how you have configured the android device(s) involved.
Stock google android supports only google services (for obvious google reasons), many OEMs add their own proprietary backup solutions, and AFAIK none of those have readily available self-hosted server components.
Some AOSP-based projects (e.g. seedvault as included in lineageos) have automatic backup solutions that work with pretty much anything.

Basic backups of files / contacts / calendar / messaging can be done with FOSS android apps (and integrate with nextcloud), but for application and settings backups (i.e. backing up files that are "private" to another app), you'll need root or an AOSP ROM. Google only allows Google services full access to everything on the device, because "security".
As for whatsapp... Probably the same as above. Can't say for sure though, since I don't run blatant spyware on my phone.

Personally, I find nextcloud (WebDAV) + supysonic (subsonic) on apache suits my android (lineageos) file access / backup / music streaming needs nicely. Using NFS for high-performance (10G) LAN file access, and OpenVPN and/or SSH(FS) for everything else...
Disclaimer: The server in question actually runs Devuan, because it's low maintenance and I'm lazy. Anything you can do with Devuan/Debian you can do just as well with Gentoo of course.

How to get secure access from the internet.

WebDAV, OpenVPN, or plain-old SSH. Again, depends on what you are trying to connect from.

all the internal and external HDDs that I have and these will be availabe whenever I am at home and that too from any device on the wifi.

Sure. First you need to decide how those filesystems are going to be made available. What protocols do your client devices support?

The gtk-2-webkit took over 30 hours of compile time and kernel about 8 hours on my Athlon II 965 (4 core processor) with 8 gb ram.

1) Don't install gtk2-webkit or other GUI trash, it's a server.
2) Trim your kernel config so you're not compiling every driver known to man and dog, or use gentoo-kernel-bin.

Got the NFS server functional and exported 2 NTFS partitions
...
I tried opening the file server by typing the ip address on my mobile browser and the error was connection refused.

To be expected, browsers talk to webservers, which NFS is not. You should probably go read some basics WRT remote filesystem protocols and webserver configuration.

Gnome

Just... Why? Why do people keep doing this?
Installing a full-blown DE on a server is a waste of resources at best, and a bunch of gratuitous attack-surface if it's internet-facing. On Gentoo, it's also a bunch of time and energy spent compiling things a server doesn't need.
Administration of a server or a NAS is best done from a CLI, over SSH. No need for Gnome, wayland, X, or 99 other libraries of dubious utility, and no lengthy chrome-kit compiles of any kind.

The hardware requirements for that sort of thing in the home were so minimal that you could literally use any old boatanchor and a few big IDE disks to do the job. Way back when I used a 486 and then Pentium box for this sort of thing.

LoL, likewise. An overclocked AMD DX4-120 IIRC, with disks far larger than the BIOS supported (because Linux can), and some incredibly janky modem sharing & answering machine services I forget the details of. Lived in a grubby basement, as was the natural habitat of such creatures. Only took me a couple of years to move it from the (literal) cardboard box to a proper case, and that only because the CPU cooler (rubber bands) fell off so I had reason to mess with it.
If you take the ship of Theseus approach, I'm kinda running the same sever today... Just many, many incremental upgrades later

[rsnfunky]

Samba Configuration: Working on the Samba configuration initially.

1) Installed Samba server
2) Mounted all the shares on / mnt/
3) Edited /etc/samba/smb.conf and added

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[public]
comment = Public Files
browseable = yes
create mode = 0766
force user = rohit
guest ok = yes
path = /mnt/

[Anonymous]
path = /mnt/
browseable = yes
writeable = yes
read only = no
guest ok = yes

Issue I can browse the samba share and see all the folders but unable to open/access any file.

Tried to change owner to user 'rohit' using chown -R rohit:rohit /mnt/
But it is not helping. The Mounts are all NTFS file systems.

Interestingly, the owners of the directories have changed but not the individual files, it still shows 'root' as owner.

[Anon-E-moose]

I used to use security = share but was discontinued in favor of this

[global]
...
security = user
map to guest = Bad User
guest account = rohit

and in the definitions somethjing like this changing "read only" to no for writable filesystem.

[iso]
comment = iso filesystem
path = /mnt/iso
read only = Yes
guest ok = Yes

[Hu]

Why are you using NTFS for a filesystem exported by the server to clients? You might get it working, but generally you will get better results using a filesystem that is native to the file server. NTFS is a Windows filesystem that Linux can use to some degree, but it is not native.

As I read man mount, Linux will not use the file ownership from NTFS:

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       uid=value, gid=value and umask=value
           Set the file permission on the filesystem. The umask value is given
           in octal. By default, the files are owned by root and not readable
           by somebody else.

Does it work if you use the mount options to set the user to the desired owner?

[rsnfunky]

Sorted:

1) It was a mounting issue. had to edit /etc/fstab for extra mount options with which all the files became executable for users. Had a create a group of ntfs-users (gid 1001) and add the user into the group.

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/dev/sda1               /mnt/d          ntfs            rw,exec,async,auto,user,umask=7007,gid=1001       0 0

2) installed wsdd and started it as a service to make the share discoverable in windows

Why using NTFS: All the past HDD and data was on windows and hence not reformatted the HDDs and external drives.

[NeddySeagoon]

I hope your export sets the RO option, so users cannaot accidentaly overwrite the shares.
755 may be better than 777 for your fake permissions.
Only the owner has write permissions.

[rsnfunky]

Have been able to set up Samba, Jellyfin and Nextcloud.

Issues faced:

1) Samba: Only 1 user is created and can login. I cannot create more users and give them access to various shared folders (maybe different folders to different users). Guidance here would be helpful.

2) Jellyfin: Server installed but the server is not showing all the media content in the folder. Only shows 1 movie (whereas the folder has various movies). Guidance here would be helpful.

3) Nextcloud: Able to get the server up and create user accounts. Unable to get it connected with android phone using nextcloud app. App gives an error that "Access through untrusted domain".
a) How does one use certbot to issue a certificate for the local install
b) The local install shows localhost/nextcloud as server location
c) for certbot, it wants a domain name ending with .com

[rsnfunky]

Have been able to set up Samba, Jellyfin and Nextcloud.

3) Nextcloud: Able to get the server up and create user accounts. Unable to get it connected with android phone using nextcloud app. App gives an error that "Access through untrusted domain".
a) How does one use certbot to issue a certificate for the local install
b) The local install shows localhost/nextcloud as server location
c) for certbot, it wants a domain name ending with .com

Point #3 sorted:
1) Certbot not required as certificate is not compulsory

2) Need to edit the /etc/hosts file and have only:

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127.0.0.1       localhost
::1             localhost

Having anything else say 127.0.0.1 localhost tux' would create a problem with postgres

3) edit: /var/www/localhost/htdocs/nextcloud/config/config.php and add the ip address of the server machine as under so that the android app can connect to the server

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  array (
    0 => 'localhost',
    1 => '192.168.x.x',
  ),

4) Only use the QR code generated from logging into your account and scanning from the mobile app. The QR code can be generated by logging from a webrowser on the server > settings > security > create new app password. (manually entering the details will give password error - as the app does not open a separate dialogue box to enter username and password).

Question: How does one block Nextcloud from accessing internet (Aim: to ensure it does not send any data out to the company servers and everything is on a LAN)

[Hu]

To block Internet access, configure your gateway to refuse to route traffic from the Nextcloud machine to the server(s) you don't want it using. If you need to be very cautious, use an allow-list rather than a deny-list. Any server not specifically approved for Nextcloud to access would be presumed unauthorized, and denied.

[rsnfunky]

4) NFS:

I used the gentoo NFS guide to setup NFS on the NAS:

Steps:
1) Emerged the kernel with NFS client and server option
2) emerged nfs-utils
3) in /etc/exports:

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# /etc/exports: NFS file systems being exported.  See exports(5).
/export         *(insecure,rw,sync,no_subtree_check,crossmnt,fsid=0)

4) in /etc/fstab

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dev/sda1               /mnt/d          ntfs            rw,exec,async,auto,user,umask=7007,gid=1001	  0 0
/dev/sda2               /mnt/e          ntfs            rw,exec,async,auto,user,umask=7007,gid=1001     0 0
/mnt/d                  /export/d       none            bind            0 0
/mnt/e                  /export/e       none            bind            0 0

5) in /etc/conf.d/nfs

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OPTS_RPC_NFSD="8 -V 3 -V 4 -V 4.1"

6) rc-service nfs start

7) rc-service nfsclient start (for testing)


Tried mounting using this command:

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# mount 192.168.1.105:/export /mnt/nfs
mount.nfs: mounting 192.168.1.105:/export failed, reason given by server: No such file or directory

I am on the same server/ Unable to mount the NFS share. What could be the concern.

[rsnfunky]

If i try mounting from a different PC running gentoo (systemd)

Code: Select all

# mount 192.168.1.105:/ /nfs
mount.nfs: failed to prepare mount: No such device

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# mount 192.168.1.105:/export /nfs
mount.nfs: failed to prepare mount: No such device

The NFS is exported by the server:

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# showmount -e 192.168.1.105
Export list for 192.168.1.105:
/export *

[NeddySeagoon]

rsnfunky,

To share portage over NFS, my /etc/exports on the Pi doing the sharing is

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# /etc/exports: NFS file systems being exported.  See exports(5).

# Portage wants it rw!
/var/cache/binpkgs      192.168.100.0/24(no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,rw,async)
/var/cache/distfiles    192.168.100.0/24(no_subtree_check,root_squash,all_squash,rw,async)

/var/db/repos           192.168.100.0/24(no_subtree_check,root_squash,all_squash,ro,async)

The corresponding /etc/fstab, on one of the consumers is

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192.168.100.106:/var/cache/binpkgs  /var/cache/binpkgs                  nfs     vers=3,noatime,nodev,nosuid    0 0
192.168.100.106:/var/cache/distfiles /var/cache/distfiles               nfs     vers=3,noatime,nodev,nosuid    0 0
192.168.100.106:/var/db/repos /var/db/repos                             nfs     vers=3,noatime,nodev,nosuid    0 0

I could not get nfs version 4 to worx so I have stuck with vers=3.

Another gotcha is that the user IDs and group IDs (if group matters) must be identical all over the participating systems.

== edit ==
I should use -o net_dev,bg too or I'll wonder why the boot hangs if the nfs server is down,

[rsnfunky]

thanks @NeddySeagoon, I was able to mount NFS by upgrading the kernel on the client and checking all NFS options.

My /etc/fstab on client is:

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192.168.1.105:/         /nfs            nfs     defaults,rw,_netdev             0 0

The NFS shows on the user / root account but on both have a permission denied error.

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# cd /nfs

/nfs # ls
d  e

# cd /nfs/d
-bash: cd: /nfs/d: Permission denied

Any guidance here.

How does one make the server use NFS v3. (since that is functional).

[NeddySeagoon]

rsnfunky,

If the server is built with NFS vers=3 support, it will serve it when a client asks for vers=3

Is d a mount point?
If so, it needs to be exported and mounted separately as by default, export does not export filesystem trees.

For

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# cd /nfs/d
-bash: cd: /nfs/d: Permission denied 

to work, /nfs/d must be +x.

What does

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ls -l /nfs

I would not be surprised if the owner and group were nobody.
You may need the no_root_squash option (check the underscores) in /etc/exports to make it work as root.

[rsnfunky]

I have mounted 2 HDD partitions on /mnt/d and /mnt/e respectively and these 2 are --bind to /export/d and /export/e on the server.

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# ls -l /nfs
total 8
dr-xr-x--- 1 root 1001 4096 Nov 18 22:24 d
dr-xr-x--- 1 root 1001 4096 Nov 18 22:24 e

I can only access the NFS directory if using root login. I understand that for nfs to work the uid's of user accounts need to be the same on all machines. How does one achieve that for a home use (using ldap for it would be an overkill)

was unable to mount by using vers=3 in the /etc/fstab. My /etc/fstab currently is

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192.168.1.105:/         /nfs            nfs     noatime,nodev,nosuid,users              0 0

had to remove _netdev as I am using systemd and the wifi initialization is being handled by some service (it shows NetworkManager.service and wpa_supplicant.service both running) which first tries IPV6 which it is unable to get (as router is only configured for IPV4) and then it goes on to IPV4 and hence waits for 1:30 mins during boot. (I am unable to give a fixed IP which I have done on the server using openrc).