Hey there! I’m starting this little project to set up a NAS (Network attached storage) at my home.
I actually don’t need any NAS, but I have an old Acer Aspire with the following specs.
And I will bring a new life to this old engine, capable to do some magic.
The first thing I need to figure out is what operating system this NAS will be using. I choose Ubuntu for this, but instead of running a headless installation, I will use the laptop big 16’’ screen to show a clean GUI to manage all the stuff locally.
I could have chosen any linux distro like fedora, debian or even lightweight and headless arch instead, but I see Ubuntu a good spot between the debian apt package manager and the fedora performance and stability.
First of all, this server can be access locally, so I don’t want the future me driving mad due to ugly UI, so I tweak mate desktop environment with a few goodies.
I like papirus modern / flat design, so I install the icons here using.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:papirus/papirus
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install papirus-icon-themeYes, I like dark mode UI. Adapta seems simple enough to run well on a 10 year old laptop without issues at all and is beautiful, so here it i our GUI.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:tista/adapta
sudo apt update
sudo apt install adapta-gtk-theme
I will like to manage the NAS sometimes from my reliable MSI modern 14 running fedora. This is my most used computer, and I use it to develop any kind of software, so I will configure ssh on both.
To install the ssh software in ubuntu I run the following command:
sudo apt-get install openssh-server ii.I install ssh client on my laptop and connect using the following command
ssh nas-admin@x.x.x.xHere we go, something like this will prompt. We are in!
nas-admin@portable-nas:~$if you don’t want to use that large IP, I’ve you covered! go to your hosts file on
/etc/hosts and add the following line:
x.x.x.x portable-nas
So now you can access the NAS with the following friendly hostname
ssh nas-admin@portable-nas