[Freedombox-discuss] Minimal spec for NAS?

[bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 07:36:01PM +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> One of the things in the "Is/is not" list for the FreedomBox was
> that it should act as a file server. This is a good thing to
> start with, I think, since it does not require dealing with
> NATs, firewalls, and such, just doing stuff in the local LAN.
> 
> What would be the _minimal_ spec for the _first_ generation of 
> FBX-NAS? Something like the following, perhaps:
> 
>     I create a USB memory stick with FreedomBox, and boot an
>     old laptop off the stick. The laptop is now a NAS server.
>     I can format a disk on another computer (ext4, possibly
>     over LVM), and then plug it into the FreedomBox, which
>     automatically mounts it and shares it over the network.
> 
> I emphasize that this should be _minimal_ and _initial_,
> because otherwise things will get too complicated too fast,
> and nothing will happen. It's better to start with the simplest
> possible thing that can be made to work, and grow the system
> later on.
> 
> * all users see all files
> * uses SMB for maximal client compatibility,
>   and sftp over ssh for maximal security
> * comes preconfigured with a user with a known password
> * management via command line tools, login via ssh
> 
> The next iteration should probably add a web based management
> tool, but there are a lot of open questions of how that should
> work, so I think it would be good to avoid that initially, in
> the name of getting something to work (and people to build on).
> 
> Detection of a USB disk would happen via udev, I guess, or possibly
> over dbus, after which it gets mounted under /media (just like on
> a desktop system). After that, adding it to Samba should be easy enough.
> We could even have Samba just share everything in /media, for
> utmost simplicity, to start with.

Maybe mounting everything that is in /media in a smb share might be
problematic. That means that every plugged in storage will be shared.
Maybe this being an opt-in option rather should be prefered, otherwise you
might end up sharing secret files.

Anyway, this proposal should maybe be dumped somewhere on the wiki.

bert.