[vox-tech] Promise SmartStor NS2300N NAS success & mount questions

[Bill Kendrick]

Upon a recommendation from Brian and Harry from SacLUG, who
went to Fry's with me yesterday, I purchased a Promise Technology
SmartStor NS2300N NAS enclosure.  Together with a 1TB drive,
it ended up being about $70 cheaper than a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo
(with a drive built-in, but only 500GB) that I was seriously
considering.

It does NFS, SMB, FTP, and has a bunch of other features I
may never use.  It can be managed via a web interface, which
is great.  (Just like the Brother networked printer I also
bought recently -- and also for a lot cheaper than I would have
expected -- it was a no-brainer to set-up, and does not require
a Windows box or funky drivers to use, though it does come with
a CDROM with Windows and Mac(?) management apps.)

I like that I can set up users and groups, and am trying to
think of best way of setting up some public and private
directories on the drive.  The main way they'd be accessed
is via mounting them on a pair of Linux laptops, and since I'm
not an fstab expert, I'd love some assistance with that. :)
(I used to run a Samba server, but that box has been retired and
recently wiped clean, to be donated to someone who needs a PC.
Everything it did has been replaced by simpler, stand-alone
devices.)

The purpose of the drive is mainly:

1. central repository for all of our ripped audio,
   such that Amarok can access it easily

2. central repository for all of our family photos

3. data backups (laptops, webserver dumps, perhaps even some
   work stuff, just to have something off-site)

The ReadyNAS Duo apparently has Bonjour, and I don't believe
the device I bought does.  Brian was telling me that Bonjour is
a way of broadcasting the availability of the drive, so that
PCs on the network can discover it.

Assuming I DON'T have this available to me, I guess I simply
need to add some lines to /etc/fstab for the folders in question,
providing the username/password (or pointing to a
root-only-readable password file, if I recall).  Then users
(my wife and I) would need to issue "mount /whatever" to mount
the drive.  (I also need to remember how to give specific users
permissions to mount, so that sudo isn't involved each time.
Is it via sudoers?)

My biggest concern is making sure everyone who should be able
to read/write to public space can, and that permissions and
ownership make sense on the laptops.  This might require making
separate users on each laptop...?

I have to make one complaint... the command-line example they
provided for mounting on Linux/Unix was not only full of typos
(forgot "/" when they were explaining "mkdir /SmartStor",
and included a space between "/" and "SmartStor" in the mount
example), but it simply didn't work, even when I accounted for this.

Anyway, tips here would be welcome.  (Otherwise, just consider
this a report of: "this device works pretty nicely with Linux" :) )

PS - We're using Kubuntu 8.10 on our laptops.

Thx & happy new year,

-bill!