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

[Brian Lavender]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 11:51:13AM -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
[snip]
> 
> 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 Everything it did has been replaced by simpler, stand-alone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.)

Usually under samba, that is accomplished using guest. Does it have a
guest type access? Will it authenticate against Active Directory? I
would say LDAP, but they never seem to advertise that. That always seems
to be the trouble with these NAS devices. You have to manage user
permissions through their web interface. 

I think we need to create a Gcontroller proeject specifically for these
puposes! Fedora beat us to it!
http://directory.fedoraproject.org/

> 
> 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)

I would call that redundant. Just don't do what I did and start dumping
all your data on it and then the disk crash and burns. One big power
surge could fry your NAS and your laptop at the same time. Or, a series
of brown outs. I would connect a usb disk to it, copy your files over
and then put it away for safe keeping.

> 
> 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.

Ever wondered what the avahi daemon is? It has lots of good magic. I
forgot about that while looking at the Promise device. I think with the
Promise NAS that they would at least do the controller and you would
probably get decent throughput.

http://avahi.org/

> 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?)

Uhm, In ubuntu, you should be able to go to Places -> "Connect to a
Server". I think that it may do what autofs does or something like
that. IF the user gets disconnected, they can reconnnect. /etc/fstab
may not reconnect, but I there might be a reconnect option. I have a
book.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Autofs

> 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...?

A user for little William perhaps and his TuxPaint repository? ;-)

> 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" :) )

Glad to hear it does. I guess the big question is how much data can you
pump through it? I was running some tests on a Linksys NAS NSS6000 at
work and I was getting 3 MB/sec. It was pretty disappointed. 

> 
> PS - We're using Kubuntu 8.10 on our laptops.
> 
> Thx & happy new year,

Feliz Año Nuevo!

-- 
Brian Lavender
http://www.brie.com/brian/