Readynas as VM and build-essential

Dewdman42 wrote:

if ReadynasOS is open source

It isn't open source.

However, Netgear has modified various open source packages for use in ReadyNAS.  Those are available here:

• https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GPL/ReadyNASOS_V6.10.9_WW_src.zip

I've never downloaded the various VMs, but I believe Sandshark​ has.

My VM doesn't have build-essential built in.  I'm not much of a programmer and never found a "building ReadyNAS specific apps for dummies".  I would have loved to have built some, but Netgear never made it easy -- assuming anyone trying to do so was already a Linux expert.

once a long time ago, someone here recommended for me to use a VM for building stuff for Readynas and I actually had created a VM with build-essential and everything in there so that I could build stuff on the VM and test it before bringing any binary over to my actual unit.  But I lost that VM image long time ago....

I can even vaguely recall someone here helping me use a VM to build some stuff I needed, but I just can't remember the details now.  So...maybe grasping at straws, just trying to see if there is any way under the sun to get build-essential.

I have thought about also just making a jessie VM and try to build stuff there,  In some cases that might work but not always where readynas has custom libraries of some kind that I would need to bind to, such as in particular libc appears to be.  I could certainly try to build a new version of Python3 on a jessie VM and see if it works. ....it's a stretch.  That's the main thing I need now for one particular purpose that would get my readynas back to the working order it was in before I did a factory reset.

Otherwise I've pretty much decided it can still function great as a backup serve and even as my primary SMB file server and it can even do plex streaming still, but still dependent on a secondary machine to run some services which I use to be able to run on this, but can't now.  The only solution without build-essential is get a new NAS..but honestly I don't really want to do that right now, just because I can't decide which hardware I would get and I feel my readynas is still quite good hardware so I want to keep using it.  Just wish I could build the odd thing I need to build for it, in this case Python 3.5+

If you did find one, it likely wouldn't be for 6.10.9 or 6.10.10.

I hear that, but it's still worth a try.  

So the source that Stephen sent me, that looks like everything is in there I would need to put build-essential together, but the question is what kind of environment is needed to actually build that stuff?  

So I made a debian Jessie VM and built Python3.6 on it...and copied the binary over to my readynas and guess what...it worked!  Except Medusa actually needs at least 3.7 now I think.  I'm gonna try to build 3.10 and see how it goes.  I was not able to build 3.12 on the Jessie VM, build fails halfway through.  Maybe I could solve that or I'll just try 3.10, etc. to see if I can get Medusa working.

But anyway if I can get python3.7+ working then I may be able to get medusa going again on my readynas.  Kind of a PITA to do it this way but hey..if it works I won't complain.  This will get a few more years of use out of my 524X as complete TV show box.

I sure wish Netgear would have archived their apt repo before shutting down NAS dept.  Having build-essential would have been helpful.  I will presume that most other important tools or libraries that needed netgear specific binaries were already in 6.10.9 and I don't actually need access to the netgear repo for much other then build-essential, which they chose not to include in the firmware but do require netgear specific binaries.

Or if they would give us just build-essential (plus dependencies) in stand alone dpkg files..that would be ok too... but I think the train has left the station on that front..  if anyone knows anyone at Netgear that might be able to make that happen though..please pass the word.

oh well.  

The good news is that the basic front view functionality continues to work quite well as intended.  I'd just get a new modern NAS, but I'm finding that the non-arm ones that support ECC are rather expensive.  next time I want one that also will be able to boot alternative OS in order to future proof it or maybe I'll just use OpenMediaVault or TrueNas or proxmox from the get go anyway, but I want to know that in the future I could boot them up with just about any OS I want and use them in some way, unlike my 524X which has been reduced to its most simple duties.  However my 524X has ECC memory, which I still consider important and am saddened to see that only more expensive NAS units even support ECC memory at all.  But a lot of them do run any OS and basically docker containers and VM's are common place...so you can host any services you want on them and they have plenty of resources to handle it.  most of them have HDMI and you could basically use as a desktop PC if you really wanted to.

Either that or maybe I'll just get a little minipc, put proxmox on it with all my services and keep using the 524X as a basic file server.  That's actually cheaper than getting a new NAS entirely (with ECC).  Some services won't be quite as fast over NFS/SMB but maybe fine.  Relook at NAS's again in a few years.  If I got a 10gbit switch and a minpc with 10gbit...might not be terrible SMB performance.

to be honest I am leaning away from using RAID1+ at all anymore, as long as I have proper 321 backups happening.  I don't need the redundancy.  I am happy to restore from a local or cloud backup if something dies.  But this starts to question whether I even need a real multi-bay NAS device anymore.  It used to be that the only way to have really large volumes was by using raid5, but these days we can get huge HDD's much larger then I will probably ever need.  So that purpose is not a factor anymore.  Redundancy would be interesting if I were running business with it, but I'm not.  Raid only adds complication and failure points for the un-needed benefit of redundancy, and requires more proactive and costly maintenance to keep the raid healthy and deal with restoring a raid where a drive has gone bad, etc.  It is all great tech for redundancy, don't get me wrong, but if I don't actually need redundancy, its overhead and additional failure points and no gain in functionality that I actually need.    So anyway the point is, maybe I won't even transition to a modern NAS at all, I'm kicking the can down the road.  If I can run my TV stuff on the 524X for a few more years...then great!  I do like having my file data storage on BTRFS or ZFS even without raid in order to have checksum scrubs and snapshots.  Also the nas OS such as readynas are doing proper smartctl tests and scheduled maintenance, snapshot scheduling, etc.  That's all a good reason to use some kind of NAS oriented OS...even if not raided.