To be able to serve files in a mixed environment, where Linux, Windows and Android devices exist.

Samba is only needed for the server side. It serves a filesystem to the LAN, which can be used using the CIFS filesystem, no Samba is needed on the client side.

Thanks Tobi. That encourages me to have a go at making up my own nas.

Freenas was mentioned earlier. It seems to be continuing as it started at http://www.nas4free.org/

Quickly looking through it there is a web interface but as usual it doesn't seem to offer the easy user management that commercial simpler nas's have, limiting directory access, fake roots etc. It seems that sort of thing can be done long hand as it uses the usual unix like rights management. There is a file editor built into the web access though - a sort of help setting it up but very very tedious. Seems it will run on an atom board as well - an earlier one. Ideally booted from a usb stick or cd if preferred. They seem to favour software raid to get round the replacing failures problems.

John
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Thanks for all the suggestions.

I have ended up putting together a custom setup: Celeron 847 (Asus C8HM70-I: only mini itx with on-board USB 3.0 & a PCI-e for adding eSATA) in a Athenatech A1089BR case with 2 large HDDs. The power usage is higher than I would have thought: idle @ 44 Watt & 56 Watt with mprime. I suspect this may be higher than the actual power usage since the 150 Watt build-in power supply is operating below its most efficient range. I am trying to work out if a 80 W PicoPSU will be worth the money to decrease the power usage. Airflow in the case is not great & I will swap out the 80mm fan for a better one. Idle temps for the Celeron is 45 degr C idle & 57 C with mprime stress testing.

Particularly after reading about the issues with FreeNAS & OpenFiler, I just went with a Debian Wheezy install. Incidentally setting up file sharing was very quick. I just copied my setup from the old server. Setting up a uefi boot was very painful particularly since a I wanted a dual boot on each drive for redundancy. The motherboard does have a legacy boot option but I thought I might as well see what the uefi thing is all about.

All in all a dedicated NAS would probably have been cheaper and the setup time would certainly have been much faster. Not nearly as much fun though ;)

Regards,
Stefan

I've just bit the bullet and bought a brand new HP microserver. Bit dearer than it would have been a week ago as they had a £100 cash back offer on in the UK but for £158 for all of the basic bits including next day it seems to be a cheaper option than atom boards etc and a number of other cheaper set ups.

From an HP tech note I may have to fit additional cooling if I put a raid controller in the wrong slot so I suspect I will add a bit more anyway. I hope software raid 5 works out ok though.

John
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I've gone through the server or nas options pretty thoroughly now. Conclusion for me is that a server has more possibilities than a nas. Basically because anything that can be run on Linux can also be run on a server even remotely controlled if needed. Things aren't so simple on the nas software I have looked at which probably comes down to their original aim - just to serve files. There are many add ons for self build and also hacks to commercial nas's but it looks like building up a box complete with one of the low overhead desktops and adding the required software is a better option if people want to do more with it. This includes less obvious things such as using the boxes own external ports even for streaming video to the telly and other ports for backups. The desk top on it can easily be remotely controlled. I'm not too keen on working in the console unless there is no other option.

As far as ZFS file systems go which initially attracted me mdadm raids can be scrubbed periodically to correct errors which to me is more or less the same as the self healing ZFS offers. For some it's a pity that mdadm doesn't offer Raid 0 with parity partitions allowing them to be scrubbed as well. If it did I suspect my box would just have 2 rather large disks in it allowing them to run cooler and consume less juice. :rolleyes: as it is I'm stuck with 4 wd reds.

On the earlier comment about samba why? Turns out that d-link who make there source available do use samba but only reveal as much as they need - user rights, directories, cifs and nfs etc. The latter is an option. Discouraged at the consumer end due to loading. They also make user set up some what easier to understand than the usual samba interfaces. I thought this was the case on most nas's so questioned convert to samba hacks on some sites as samba is already there.

John
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That looks like a nice system. There is something to be said for a system designed to be a server from the point of view of an enclosure with enough space & cooling for drives as well as a server motherboard. I am sorry I did not see this HP system previously. I had to upgrade the chassis fan on the Athena case due to heating issues.
Using a standard system does make modification easy. For instance I have the root system on an external usb 3.0 flash drive so that I can spin down the drives during prolonged periods of inactivity. I am still going to add a linux compatible UPS so that the system can do a graceful shutdown in the event of a power failure.

Regards,
Stefan