I'm looking for a network storage drive that I could use to back up my most important files (such as family photos and e-mails) from my Mandriva.

I would like this drive to be accessible from my other Mandriva PCs and hopefully even from my Win XP systems.

And I would also like to use this drive as an FTP server to share large video files (for both upload and download) with outside users.

I've got my eye set on this one (in a local store off-the-shelf): WD My book world edition (1 TB capacity). How would this work - any thoughts?

I bought an IOMEGA Storcenter recently with about 1TB of space. It can be used for FTP and Samba. Comes with a nice backup utility too from EMC so that you can backup your Windows computers to it. Well, it's serving my Dad's business and only cost about 300GBP or something like that. Got it from Dell.

The FTP feature is good for Linux though.

Wouldn't recommend Maxstor though, I had bad experience with them not working correctly.

OK, thanks Ian.

This WD drive is around 250 EUR from a local shop. I may go for that then.

Then if I want to store and access the drive from both WinXP and Mandriva, should I format it to NTFS? Or would that cause problems with my Mandriva back-ups?

And further into the subject: What would be the best Mandriva programme to assure my most important files and settings are backed-up regularly? I've used the one accessible from MCC (drakbackup) - is that the one to use?

This is not strictly what you're looking for, but it may suit your need:
http://www.freenas.org/

A quick search on DistroWatch also found this one:
http://www.openfiler.com/

Yves.

As it's network attached storage, it wouldn't matter since the filesystem is managed by the NAS itself and it's operating system - so whatever the NAS offers for formatting it. You normally then access the NAS via a UNC (for Windows shares) or ftp url.

Ian: Thanks, understood (I'm very new to the networking stuff)!

Yves: Merci bien for the links. Especially the FreeNAS looks interesting. I'll read the wiki through.

OK, as I said I'm a total n00b when it comes to network drives...

A little more help would be appreciated...

I bought the WD's My Book World Edition (1TB) and have plugged it in. I've plugged it in my ADSL router (which in turn is connected to my Wireless AP) and powered it up. This NAS is a single drive version (the MyBook World Edition II has two drives).

From windows side I managed to set it up eventually, but had some problems with the network once that was done. I couldn't connect to Internet after that (from WinXP home). So I booted to Mandriva 2008.0 (Free). I saw from WinXP that the drive was issued an IP number within my network and then I browsed to that IP with Firefox (192.168.254.6 I believe was the automatically given IP - I changed it to something higher; I believe it was .30 so that it wouldn't mess with my systems PCs and routers). I couldn't see this drive (IP number) from Linux when I first plugged it in, so I booted to WinXP then. So now I booted back to Mandriva again.

WD has made a WD Anyware Access -programme that works with both Windoze and Mac, but not with Linux. It's called MioNet. But the admin tool can be accessed with any common browser, so I configured it a bit. I managed to change the IP address and found a way to make some groups and users, but that's as far as I got yesterday.

This is what I'd like to do with it:

1. I would like to have this drive act as my network back-up for all my most important files. This, I guess, I can manage with drakbackup by simply stating where to create the backups (in the new network drive IP addrs and folder).
2. But then I would like this drive to act as an FTP server. Would that be possible? So that the system would be accessible by those I grant access to and into those folders I grant them access to.

So simply put:
1 TB would be diveded into two parts: one part for my backups (let's say 500 - 600 GBs) and another part for FTP uses (the rest 400 - 500 GBs).

Would that be possible, and if so, how?

Then referring to the links Yves posted; would this be the way to go? Would I then install this Openfiler or FreeNAS directly into the NAS drive?

As I understand it, for FreeNAS (or equivalent), you have to build a minimal x86 PC around the big hard drive. You should privilege a good network connexion, and adequate DMA and PCI speeds I suppose. Apart from that, this PC might have no sound card, no graphics card, and not much RAM I think... just a small hard drive or CD drive (for FreeNAS itself), and a floppy or usb-key (for settings).

Yves.

OK, thanks Yves. That's then not what I'm looking for. I have a decent PC (my PC #2) next to this network drive, but I want to keep this PC separate from the network drive. It is a stand-alone drive.


I just want to make this external NAS to act as a network drive and an FTP server. If that's possible.

The WD-drive is a NAS (network attached storage) meaning it is a stripped down PC that will define how it provides storage space. This means it will offer you one or more file-systems (FAT32, NTFS, if you are lucky ext3 or something Linux-friendly) and how to make that data accessible (FTP, RSYNC, NFS or Samba). Only the WD documentation can tell you how to set up the NAS in one or more storage areas. Typically you will need the NAS to have a fixed IP adress (so that other PC's know where to find it).

Linux clients can interact with FTP via an ftp client (lftp from commandlien, GFTP in Gnome and no doubt lots of other possibilities). Rsync can be interacted with via rsync or some of front-ends like dirvish and rsnapshot which are good to automatically make regularly (hourly, daily, weekly snapshots). NFS and Samba file-systems have to be mounted by the Linux client either via /etc/exports (nfs, but also install nfs client) or mount -t cifs //server/share /mnt/mywdbackup (samba).

It depends... I don't want to appear to tell you what your needs are, but look at it this way: there's no such thing as a "stand-alone drive". It actually is a stipped-down PC, but much smaller than what you'd achieve by yourself.
By bying a NAS, you actually buy a special-purpose PC (as are many modern routers and modems, too). Let's assume this NAS is $10; on the other hand you can have an equivalent IDE/SATA drive for $4 and make a minimal PC for another $4, which makes it $8 in total: you save $2 in the process. I don't know actual prices. Then there are the other things you'll want to consider: size, noise, and electric consuption.

Were I you (but again, I'm not), I'd actually compare the prices between a "stand-alone NAS" and a fan-less mini-ITX setup with an equivalent hard drive inside. Now it's up to you

Yves.

You are of course right there, but the thing is: I already got the NAS drive. And the other thing is the size and looks; I don't want another PC (even a small one) in my living room where this drive is going.

I meant no disrespect; my point in all of this has been this: I'm a total noob when it comes to this type of hardware and configuring them. I still know virtually nothing; but hopefully will manage to build this up.

I have managed to set it up so that I can access the drive over the (w)lan, but I can only access the bl..dy configuration software! I cannot access the files or the filesystem. WD has provided a software (mionet) that does not operate in Linux. I could try that with wine, but that's kind of beside the point: I have a network drive I would like to access with my Linux PCs...

The WD manual states:

Whatever that is: ext3 or something else.

OK, I'm getting a little bit frustrated with my own total ignorance of the whole network-issue...

I don't know if I should format the whole drive, but how would that work from there on...? It seems obvious that the software WD has provided does not work in linux so I might as well get rid of the stuff pre-installed. But what then? How can I connect to the drive so that I could format it? And if I format it, will I be able to install anything in it (over ethernet cable)?

If I don't format this drive just yet. How would I gain access to the actual files in the drive? Should I mount it somehow?

Quoting FX here: "I'd be ripping my hair out if I had any"

A NAS is a (small) PC, so let's boot it up after connecting it to your router and the router is configured to hand-out IP adresses via DHCP (99% chance yours is). Next step is to find out what IP address it lives on. Usually your router (try 192.168.0.1) can tell you what is connected to it. One of them is the PC you connect from, the other is the NAS. Open browser, type in 192.168.0.3 (or whatever the router tells you) and your router will welcome you (probably after a prompt for a password -- manual shoudl tell you what the default is).

Can you get to this stage? This should not require making modifications on client PC.

Yes, I'm there. I can manage e.g. the drive's IP in this configuration tool. But that's as far as I've got.

Just one thing: Stay away from Western Digital drives. You have been warned...
Seven out of seven drives that failed me in the last 14 months are WD... two of them being the much advertized WD5000AAKS internal HD's, one of them 1TB MyBook- Essential Edition, and another one 160 GB WD Passport.
To be fair, WD replaced all seven drives (they all were within garrantee), but I kept none- sold them all and now working solely with Samsung and Hitachi/IBM drives (although I still have a couple of Seagates and one Maxtor drive busy).

Thanks scarecrow, I have been warned. I just cannot say (at least at this point) that the drive is not working properly as they officially don't support linux. Only windows and I believe lately also OS X.

I don't know if I've said it clearly that I have been able to access the drive from Mandriva through http:// (w/ Konquerer and Firefox). I've set the IP manually to better suit the rest of my networks IP numbers. All the IPs in my LAN are manually set.

With the configuration tool in the drive (http://192.168.254.50), I can see that it's file system is CIFS. With the conf tool I can e.g. (i) create users (ii) add folders (iii) define rights to the folders for different users (iv) set the IP address automatically (DHCP) or manually amongst other things.

I cannot see another way of interacting with the drive though. If I try ftp'ing it 'ftp 192.168.254.50', it just says that I don't have access rights there. And I don't know how to (or even if I should) mount a network drive. In windows I should install the MioNet and get access to the drive with that tool.

We are getting there -- slowly but surely. Check on your NAS what share(s) have been created. If none, create a small test one using the webinterface. Let's call this test. Having established that you can see the drive and that it uses CIFS as file-system I think this should work (al as root):

Add following line to /etc/hosts in order to define a name for your nas:



Obviously you can change the name to whatever you like (but I guess it is best to stay an alphanumerics and avoid the rest).
Create a mountpoint for the NAS.

Depending on usage you may want to have more restrictive permissions. Note that the software on the NAS will also define access, so I prefer to start with NAS accessible to all on the linux box. Next step is mounting the file-system of the NAS on your linux box. You can do this as root (and even automate this at boot by adding the appropriate line to /etc/fstab) or do it as a user:


If this works w/o errors, then you should be able to see what is on the nas by an ls /mnt/nas command (or via file-browser).

Here's an update to the situation.

I now can see the drive and have been able to mount the NAS drive folders under my home folder like this:
/home/dude67/nas/folder1
/home/dude67/nas/folder2
/home/dude67/nas/folder3

I have a user set up in the NAS with the config tool provided, but due to some restrictions, I have been unable to use the same username I use in my Linux systems. Now, according to a suggestion I got, I've set this user ID and pw in KDE control center: Internet & network | Local network browsing | Windows share.

In MCC | network sharing | Share data with Windows system I have found this nas drive and set it up so that each of the folders I've created in the nas-drive (with it's own config tool) are mounted under my home folder (mount point) with the user ID and pw (Mount options) as I set up in nas (not the user ID and pw of my Linux user). As can be seen in the list above.

Now, this is my current problem:
I can see these folders fine with my current user ID (read rights), but I cannot get write rights to it! It only gives write access to my root account.

I've managed to copy files and subfolders to these nas-directories from my regular home folders by opening the nas folder with root rights in Konqueror. But that's kind of an awkward way of working with a network drive. I also tried to change the rights to the nas-folders (and it's new sub-folders) when the nas folder was opened with root rights, but I can only change the first tier folder's (the /nas folder) rights. For all of the sub-folders and files I get "no rights to this folder/files" answer.

Any ideas as how to get my regular user the read-write access to these nas folders?

Oh, I've also installed Webmin. I just thought there might be a tool within Webmin that could help me accomplish this. I must admit though, that I'm not so "fluent" with webmin, but I've used it briefly in the past.

Standard Linux access control will prevent a user from accessing something he does not have access to. I think this applies here, i.e. another user than yourself (dude67 on your linuxbox) is owning the mountpoints. Because this user is different from yourself, you are barred access by your Linux system. 'root' bypasses all access control so can access it.

Can you post output of following commands:


(I include the mount command on the offchance that it will show who is owning the mounts).

Assuming that dude67 does not own /home/dude67/nas (and the subfolders), but that another users owns these, I suggest you add dude67 to the group of this other user and ensure that /home/dude67/nas 'rwx' access for the group owning it (mode 770, like drwxrwx---). You can add dude67 to this other user's group via MCC, System, Manage Users.

Here's mount

and here's ls -l

To me this says that root owns these folders. But whenever I try to change (as root) the ownership, I get this:

I made it with the help of a user in a Finnish forum! But I thought I'd report back here also. I got the user rights OK by doing the following.

1. I unmounted the samba-shares
2. Re-wrote the mounting with this addition of my linux user uid and gid
   
   CODE
   //nas/data /home/dude67/nas/data smbfs credentials=/etc/samba/auth.nas.user1,uid=500,gid=500 0  0
3. Re-mounted the samba-shares

I don't really know what I did wrong the previous times, but now I got it working.

Cheers to everyone who helped me here also!

This is my /etc/fstab if that's of any interest to anyone.