Having debian installed on the dockstar is quite nice but how about access to the data in there? In this article I will explain how you easily set up a data-storage with autofs, hd-idle, samba and proftpd.
I assume you have debian squeeze running on a usb stick and your data you want to share on your network is stored on an external hard-drive.
1. autofs and hd-idle
In order to mount the hdd as it is connected to a certain mountpoint we will install autofs and to reduce its power-consumption we let it spin down after some minutes with hd-idle. The default repository doesn’t contain hd-idle so dev-eth0.de created a repo for the dockstar. You may want to add it to your /etc/apt/sources.list by adding the line deb http://repo.dev-eth0.de/ squeeze main.
If you want to make sure, that this repository isn’t faked, you can add the gpg key to your apt-key:
wget http://repo.dev-eth0.de/repo.key
apt-key add repo.key
Now install those packages:
apt-get update
apt-get install autofs hd-idle
1.1 autofs
I want to mount my external drives in /media so I added this line to /etc/auto.master:
/media /etc/auto.media --timeout=10 --ghost
This sets /media as the parent folder for all mounts in /etc/auto.media, so create auto.media and add the devices you want to mount. You can use sdxX or the uuid (find out with blkid) as the device:
disk1 -fstype=ext3,users UUID="ddf4386d-a9cb-4b98-9d6f-46e90190xxxx"
Your hdd will be mounted as /media/disk1.
1.2 hd-idle
Spinning down all attached hdds: First of all enable hd-idle in /etc/default/hd-idle:
# start hd-idle automatically?
START_HD_IDLE=true
# spin down after 300 sec and write logfile
HD_IDLE_OPTS="-i 300 -l /var/log/hd-idle.log"
Thats it, just restart the service.
2. samba
You want to have windows-shares on your local network? I will explain how you set up password protected shares because I don’t want all of my friends in my WLAN have access to it 😉
apt-get install samba samba-common samba-common-bin
Take a look at /etc/samba/smb.conf and customize it for your needs, these are those lines I have edited:
# some global vars I edited:
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
wins support = yes
security = user
unix password sync = yes
# my shares:
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
read only = no
writeable = yes
create mask = 0700
directory mask = 0700
valid users = %S
[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = yes
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = yes
create mask = 0700
[media]
comment = all mounted hdds
path = /media
browseable = yes
;veto files = /ftp_share/ #to hide dirs
#to hide dirs another way, try which fits for you
hide files = /desktop.ini/Desktop.ini/DESKTOP.INI/$RECYCLE.BIN/Thumbs.db/thumbs.db/THUMBS.DB/
writeable = yes
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
Once you have set this up you are ready to create the users, note they have to be unix users already:
smbpasswd -a user1 # add user
smbpasswd -e user1 # enable user
If you now log in as user1 and run smbpasswd again you will update the samba and system password. Finally restart samba and try the connection!
3. proftpd
Sometimes I have the problem not be at home when I need certain files stored on my dockstar. I either could connect to it with VPN or simply use FTP (note: insecure file-transfer). I chose proftpd because it’s easy to configure, install it by typing:
apt-get install proftpd
It will ask if you want to install it with inetd or standalone, choose standalone.
The default configuration fits pretty well for my needs, the only thing I enabled was VirtualRoot. As I login I am in jail in my home dir, the module gives me the ability to get out there. There you have to edit two files:
vim /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf
#
# Useful to keep VirtualHost/VirtualRoot directives separated
#
Include /etc/proftpd/virtuals.conf
vim /etc/proftpd/virtuals.conf
<ifmodule mod_vroot.c>
VRootEngine on
DefaultRoot ~
VRootAlias ftp_share /path/to/ftp_share
</ifmodule>
This makes every ftp-user able to access the ftp_share directory. For more security information check out http://www.proftpd.org/docs/faq/linked/faq-ch6.html