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Forum Discussion
Which apps are a must have for your NAS?
I'v kept my NAS fairly simple only having Plex and Piwigo installed. At the time of purchase, there was a trasition from OS 4.X to OS6.X so the app offerings were all over the place with a lot not b...
I also take a very minimal approach. My main NAS only has SMB Plus installed. SSH is enabled, and I installed iperf with that.
Overall, running a lot of apps can create issues when upgrading firmware. Some also can fill the OS partition - which can corrupt the NAS configuration. So I've decided to pair my NAS with an application server (a desktop PC that is always on, and has the NAS data volume mounted to a drive letter). That gives me more flexibility (since I can upgrade the PC and the NAS independently), and eliminates any risk of an app interfering with a firmware upgrade (or vice versa).
StephenB wrote:I also take a very minimal approach. My main NAS only has SMB Plus installed. SSH is enabled, and I installed iperf with that.
Overall, running a lot of apps can create issues when upgrading firmware. Some also can fill the OS partition - which can corrupt the NAS configuration. So I've decided to pair my NAS with an application server (a desktop PC that is always on, and has the NAS data volume mounted to a drive letter). That gives me more flexibility (since I can upgrade the PC and the NAS independently), and eliminates any risk of an app interfering with a firmware upgrade (or vice versa).
Agreed, minimal is best if you have other options but apps should not be overrunning the OS partition. Admittedly, I have limited knowledge of how the apps work with the Linux OS and whether or not they need to be installed in the same partition as the OS or if their data piece can be installed in a separate partition all together. Please excuse my ignorance either way. :smileywink:
I didn't realize there is a SMB Plus add-on but have been fine with the default SMB service native to the NAS. Although, I'm curious to what it offers above/beyond the standard offering. Right, I have SSH enabled as well but not iperf. I didn't see iperf in the app store so you must have done it manually which is intriguing. Again, I appreciate the feedback as it seems you and Sandshark are the only two on this forum at times. :smileylol:
FWIW, I do have plex running on one of my NAS at the moment. Plex can be pretty tempermental about remote access, and there is an issue there on my current application server that I haven't had a chance to sort out.
NASguru wrote:
I didn't realize there is a SMB Plus add-on but have been fine with the default SMB service native to the NAS. Although, I'm curious to what it offers above/beyond the standard offering.
It just gives you access to a couple of optional settings. For instance, you can turn off SMB1 if you like.
NASguru wrote:
I didn't see iperf in the app store so you must have done it manually which is intriguing.Yes, i installed it with apt-get so I could make some network performance measurements.
Agreed that apps should not be filling the OS partition, but some are not as well behaved as they should be. Plex and MySQL have been guilty of doing it for some users, though I think MySQL issues may be more related to the other apps that utilize it for their databases.
If you install something from SSH, the best plan is to create a folder in the /apps folder (which is on the data volume) and move the contents of the app folder there, then replace the original folder with a simlink to the one in /apps. For small apps that you know will not create a database or log that can grow out of control or leave other "junk" about (like transcoding fragments form Plex), it's less important.
Sandshark wrote:Agreed that apps should not be filling the OS partition, but some are not as well behaved as they should be. Plex and MySQL have been guilty of doing it for some users, though I think MySQL issues may be more related to the other apps that utilize it for their databases.
If you install something from SSH, the best plan is to create a folder in the /apps folder (which is on the data volume) and move the contents of the app folder there, then replace the original folder with a simlink to the one in /apps. For small apps that you know will not create a database or log that can grow out of control or leave other "junk" about (like transcoding fragments form Plex), it's less important.
LOL, I should have read your response first as I just mentioned those Chunk files to StephenB which I thought were from Plex (thanks for confirming it though). I do use Piwigo which utilizes MySQL for it's database but so far it's usage of the OS partitions seems to be small after 20K photos and 200 albums. I used Poussin's intial Piwigo's install for my NAS and believe it's behaving appropiately? Even so, I'm not sure it could be separated out since it needs MySQL and PHP from the root director? However, I'm all ears if you believe it can be done using a similink. On a side note, have you or StephenB upgrade your MySQL and/or PHP to the latest versions manually? I'm not sure there is any benefit (unless there are security patches) but it's something that always irked me that Netgear never addressed in their updates.
StephenB wrote:FWIW, I do have plex running on one of my NAS at the moment. Plex can be pretty tempermental about remote access, and there is an issue there on my current application server that I haven't had a chance to sort out.
Got it, my Plex is purely used locally even though I have remote access enabled. I did have an issue a couple years back where it was filling my OS partition with file names of chunk-00000 through chunk-xxxxx. I never knew why but was able to safely delete them and honestly still not 100% certain it was Plex. It only happened once in 4 years (filled my OS partition to 50%) and I caught it while poking around. Now I make it a point to check the root once a quarter just to see what 'changed'. I still see my OS partition usage climbing (38% currently but was 18% out of the box) but believe that's mostly due to the Antivirus dat files but don't hold me to it. Part of me always wonder why Netgear didn't set up the the OS partition to be at least 10G rather than the 4G it is currently but I'm sure they had their reasons. Anyhow, didn't want to get too far off topic here.
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