Netgear ReadyNAS Duo

I decided it was time to upgrade from my old NSLU2 to a more sophisticated NAS and opted for the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo. Its already running a GNU/Linux variant, but I obviously wanted to do a bit more with it, so here you'll find HowTo's on what I've done, hopefully they'll be useful for others.

Some simple, quick and basic things to do upon first plugging in and powering up your ReadyNAS

Before doing anything else the first thing you should do is update your system as there may be a newer version of the firmware available from Netgear. This is easily achieved from the Frontview WebUI by going to System → Update and then clicking on the Remote tab, from where you can tell the ReadNAS to go off and search on-line for updates.

The second thing to do is add a normal user so that you don't mess up the admin or root account. This is also simple to do in the Frontview WebUI by going to Security → User & Group Accounts and selecting Manage Users from the drop-down menu on the right. You then “Add user” tab and enter the users details before hitting Apply.

Installing add-ons is straight-forward, simply choose your add-on from the Official Add-ons or Community Add-ons and save the file to a local directory. Then go to your ReadyNAS Duo Frontview page, select System → Update and then click on the “Local” tab, find the file you just saved to a local directory, then hit the “Upload & Verify” button. Thats it, you may be told the ReadyNAS needs to restart to complete the install, but thats fine, let it go ahead and restart (providing you don't have any other back-up jobs running).

Below I describe how to use and/or tweak installed packages, they are in no particular order, but I would recommend installing apt-get first and following the instructions for then installing nano which is a much easier text-editor to use than the default vi.

• apt-get : Installing and using the Debian package manager which allows you to install additional programs compiled for the ReadyNAS (e.g. nano, mpd, keychain).
• EnableRootSSH : Having root ssh access enabled is generally a bad idea on *NIX systems, once you've installed the add-on you can disable it, but retain ssh access as normal user for administering the ReadyNAS.
• Transmission : An alternative BitTorrent client to the default that comes installed on your ReadyNAS.

Most of the following HowTo's are concerned with installing and configuring packages from the Debian repository, or taking advantage of the tools that are already installed to do many of the tasks you'd normally be expected to perform via Frontview WebUI.

• DokuWiki : Its already running a web-server (Apache) so why not use it to host a wiki (includes installing CGI/PHP which are pre-requisites to running DokuWiki).
• MPD : Have your ReadyNAS stream music anywhere, like having your own mp3-streaming radio station. NB Never got round to writing this page.
• ssh : Be able to ssh from the ReadyNAS to other devices.
• rsync : Rather than using the Frontview scheduler to set up jobs I preferred to set up rsync jobs over ssh and schedule them with cron.

Having installed lshw I had a peek at the hardware that is in the ReadyNas Duo, details are here. Interestingly it indicates that there is a wireless interface which will be investigated.

Other random stuff.

• Wake-on-LAN : get your NAS to turn on and off of its own accord. NB Never got round to writing this page.

• Netgear ReadyNAS
• Netgear ReadyNAS User Manual (pdf)
• ReadyNAS Forums
• Official Add-ons
• Community Add-ons
• Official ReadyNAS HowTo's
• ReadyNAS Freeware

readynas linux howto