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Forum Discussion
Trouble Setting Up Non-Admin Remote Access on ReadyNAS
Hi all,
I’m running a ReadyNAS RN214 on the latest OS 6 firmware and I’m a bit confused about user accounts and remote access.
I’ve created several local user accounts and assigned each one its own shared folder with limited permissions. Everything works fine when accessing the NAS locally, but when I try to connect remotely, only the admin account is able to log in.
What I want is for each user to be able to access only their own share remotely, without using the admin account. I’m guessing I’m missing something in the permissions, services, or remote access settings.
What’s the recommended way to allow non-admin users to log in remotely while keeping things secure? Any best practices would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
5 Replies
What method of remote access are you using?
My personal; choice is ZeroTier.
Thanks! I’m currently using the built-in ReadyNAS remote access method. I haven’t tried ZeroTier yet; does it allow individual non-admin users to authenticate and only see their own shares? Trying to avoid using the admin account remotely.
ReadyNAS Remote has been unavailable for YEARS. Even it's replacement, ReadyCloud, was taken down quite a while ago now. If your 214 is showing ReadyNAS Remote as an option, you are running VERY old firmware.
ZeroTier works much as ReadyNAS Remote did. It allows for remote access, then uses the normal user and share controls for access control. This may be of some help: ZeroTier-as-a-ReadyCloud-replacement. It's a VPN, but not a traditional one. StephenB listed some other options.
I’m asking because I manage a small site (smokeycloudz.com) and want each collaborator to securely access only their own files without using the admin account.
I’m asking because I manage a small site and want each collaborator to securely access only their own files without using the admin account.
There are two parts to this - one is access to the network the NAS is running on, the other is authentication.
Here are the general approaches:
- Use port forwarding to allow anyone to reach the NAS over the internet, and rely on strong passwords for authentication and security. If you use this approach, I'd suggest FTPS as the sharing protocol. The disadvantage of this technique is that the NAS is EoL and uses a deprecated version of Linux. So there is a security risk.
- Use a VPN to access the network, and use NAS user accounts for authentication. One risk here is that the VPN allows full access to the network. Another is that you cannot easily remove VPN access for a collaborator when the relationship ends. One advantage of Zerotier is that since it creates a virtual network, you can easily exclude devices on your physical network from the VPN. But it would be a bit more work for your collaborators to set up.
- Deploy your own VPN server, and use Radius or Active Directory to authenticate users when they connect using the VPN.
- Deploy an OwnCloud or NextCloud server for collaboration, and mount the NAS shares on that server. (While you might be able to install OwnCloud and NextCloud on the NAS itself, given the EoL status it would be safer to use a different server platform that gets security updates).
- If your site is already cloud-hosted, create a secured area on the web server for the collaborators to use. Then use rsync or something similar to back up their files on the NAS. This is the easiest method (and if your site is hosted on the NAS itself, it would be best to change that to a cloud-hosted service).
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