I’m kinda new to linux, however I seem to remember running a headless ububtu server years back. Also remember it took a long time to setup being my first headless server.
So, to my current issues. I just installed mint on an old pc and just want to use it to run my security cams, store the files, and host my nas. Took me over 6 hours to get the raid setup properly, so much differing information on ‘how to’ for noobs like myself, but managed to get it working and moving files over to raid file now.
Coming from mostly windows crap most of my life, its confusing where and how the raid is setup, and honestly I’m still not convinced I did it right, but everything I check says it is, and I’m sure it knows better than I do.
Ok, now the issue, how in the ever lovin shit can I just share that stupid folder/disk to my network. 90% of the options are greyed out while looking at the properties tab, and need sudo access to change it, so whats the point in having the gui? Am I just dumb and smoked way too many doobies? Got samba installed, but not configured yet, only cause I ran across much more conflicting info, some said in mint its easy like windows…right click and share that shit, easy right? Even I didn’t think so, and I’m ok with that, I’m really sick of windows and want to convert all the pc’s but damn…stiff learning curve.
Don’t get me wrong, I ran DOS back in the day, and I was not bad at it, better than your normal user at the time but by no means a power user. So I should be able to grab the concept quickly, but I am failing. Total of 12 hrs on this now and considering just putting win7 back on this pig and giving up.
I know no one can give me direct answers, and not looking for tech support, but looking for advice so im not wanting to ‘hulk smash’ this thing
Raid: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/RAID
Don’t forget part “email notifications”. In addition to configuring the raid, you need to understand when the disk crashed, otherwise the raid will not help.
If you share files with windows. Basic way SMB share: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Samba
if you want share files with linux or windows with not basic ways you have many choises. NFS for example, or sshfs if you need folder time to time, or share directory with nginx ( https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10663248/how-to-configure-nginx-to-enable-kinda-file-browser-mode ), or overkill: nextcloud server.
UPD: In general, you just need to find a linux distributive with good documentation and use this documentation for the first time. Some things are solved differently in Linux than in Windows and you just won’t know about it without reading the wiki.
Hey, just to let you know, software raid nowadays is quite a bit better for home NAS that hardware raid. I would suggest using ZFS and zpools as a software raid.
If you are already past that point though. As far as sharing, if you are just using it as a small home server or NAS and want things simple, you could just use TrueNAS. It would make things much easier.
If you are running your main computer and sharing the files, I would suggest trying NFS instead of Samba. Samba shares are notoriously unreliable and buggy. Windows has NFS support for a while now for your other machines https://blog.netwrix.com/2022/11/18/mounting-nfs-client-windows/
+1 for TrueNAS
I’ve been running one for almost ten years since FreeNAS v.9.x. Will never go back to hardware RAID for home use.
100% agree. Software RAID is the thing you want as a consumer. Doesn’t need to be ZFS. mdraid is another good and well tested option for the traditional way of using RAID.
The main thing you are doing wrong is reading howto articles in the web. Most of them are written by newbies who did the thing they describe for the first time, got something likely working and want to describe this for themselwes an for the other world. This does not mean they did everything right, and howtos usually contain numerous mistakes. Better read official documentation. This will take longer time but you will understand what you do. I don’t know if Mint has GUI tools to configure samba server. I would better edit config file manually, it is more or less simple.
Maybe you want one of the turnkey solutions. There are several solutions that offer you a NAS box with everything pre-configured and a management web-interface. Assembling a RAID and creating a network share is just a few clicks with those. And they should come with documentation.
I don’t really know which one is best. There is openmediavault, unraid, EasyNAS, TrueNAS, …
I agree. Configuring everything yourself, Learning about RAID, filesystems, networking and file servers on an operating system you’re not familiar with is some work. And although Linux has adapted quite some Windows-workflows, setting up Samba isn’t necessarily the right-click - properties - share you learned from using windows.
For security cameras there are solutions like Frigate which can be installed in a container.
If you want to simply make a folder containing media accessible to all on the network, I suggest to install minidlna, a UPnP server. All you need is to have the media folders accessible by minidlna. Otherwise the config is a simple text file.
Sometimes it can be nice to run the gui as root
