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Environment: Linux home network. All devices running Linux Mint 19.3 or 20
A few months ago, I was given 2 x RN104 devices, one of which has 4 x 2TB drives and the other 4 x 4TB drives. I have only just really got around to trying to use them in anger and have foud this the most frustrating experienc in all my 37 years of working with computers.
I am trying to set the devices up with user accounts for the family so that each has a set of home folders which they can use to back-up their computers. I can set up the user accounts easily enough but for the life of me cannot find out how they log on to their accounts in order to populate their home folders.
I can share and mount the existing default folders over NFS no problem, but does not acieve the required result.
"Note: A user's home folder will only be created when that user accesses the ReadyNAS for the first time using his or her account."
Fine, but I can find no documentation or posts anywhere that explains how a user is to log onto their account.
I have tried accessing the ReadyNas using http://IP address/share which only gives any results at all when http access is enabled and then it merely displays an FTP list of files. No login window is displayed.
The only login window that is ever displayed is the Admin login window, never the "user" login window.
I have tried setting up Readycloud & MyNetgear accounts to enable remote access with no success.
All the support documentation says is: (From Memory) Users normally access their data via network shares... which is again, not the required result.
I really cannot understand why the setup I want is so hard to achieve. It would have thought that that this would be what most users would expect.
I realise that this product is now obsolete, but if anyone could help, I would be most grateful
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
Thanks to all for your helpful responses.
Unfortunately, all they have done is confirmed my opinion that the ReadyNas is NOT suitable for the Linux environment. I don't see why Iit should be necessary to install Samba on every machine on the network simply to access a ReadyNas, which is after all a Linux device.
I have instead decided to abandon the ReadynNas and install the drives in a JBOD enclosure driven by a Raspbery Pi. I can acheive everything I want to much more easily.
It's a shame, as I was given 2 of these boxes which, had they been more flexible, could have proved useful.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
Strictly stick with SMB (and e.g. FTP if desperately required) - there is an authentication in place ... Windows and Apple users do the same, and most Linux desktop distributions do the very same. Most what you read in the ReadyNAS (and many other NAS vendors) features like the home share and other features in documentation are based on this. User and Group based access control and configuration are a snap like this.
Unless your are willing to learn NFS bottom up and manage all your U**x-like systems accordingly, probably in combination with an LDAP server, learn to understand that NFS(v3) does not work based on authentication but much more on GID and UID of the system where the exported NFS shares are mounted. There is no "NFS just works" - almost all home and many small business Linux environment using NFS are a mess. Unless you have all UID, GID, usernames, and much more in sync over all systems, NFS user and group based access will never work correct.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
What may be frustrating you (and does for a lot of users, Netgear should change this) is that the user folders are not created until the user has logged into the NAS the first time. You can, of course, log in that first time for them. So, you may not be seeing them because they don't yet exist.
Frankly, though, I find the automatic user folders to be inadaquate and recommend they only be used by those who need them such as for Mac TimeMachine and environments (esp. with Active Directory) where the number of users just makes anything else difficult. Some significant items to me are that the usage of them is not displayed in the admin GUI, they do not support RSYNC for backup, and you just have less control over them individually. Their time of creation is an additional annoyance.
So, since you just need folders for your family, you can create some like any other share and set the access yourself. Note, however, that they cannot have the same name (including with changes in upper/lower case) as the user. So for user John, just create JohnShare, or somesuch.
I can find no documentation or posts anywhere that explains how a user is to log onto their account.
First of all, you should consider if you really want to use home folders. They are a bit of a pain. If you don't want people to see the home folders of other family members, then you probably should use them. But if you don't care about that, then you are better off using public share. You can still restrict access if you like.
But to answer your question: The home folder is created when you access the NAS with SMB using the user's credentials.
I can find no documentation or posts anywhere that explains how a user is to log onto their account.
Any authenticated access - SMB, FTP, AFP, SSH, and to the admin Web UI (only for members of the admin group as there is no user login on http(s)) - is considered a login _and_ does create the "username" home folder.
NFSv3 and the simple NFSv4 on the other hand (leaving the fully blown NFSv4 implementation with my big friend Kerberos alone) does not need any authentication - it's all UID/GID/exports access based.
First of all, you should consider if you really want to use home folders. They are a bit of a pain. If you don't want people to see the home folders of other family members, then you probably should use them.
That's exactly what the home folders here on ReadyNAS are designed for. Unfortunately - and different from the big NAS makers - e.g. admin's can't get access as a folder e.g. by SMB for administrative tasks). These are private folders, not shared folders.
A member of the admin group on can (of course) enumerate and access these folders in the admin Web UI - but not by SMB, AFP. When using FTP, even admin can only see /home/admin - neither admin nor other members of the admin group will be able to gain access.
When allowing SSH access to a user why ever, he will be able to enumerate the folders in /home but won't be able to access these thanks to the very basic U**x protection in place by default:
stephenssh@RN516:~$ ls -als /home total 4 0 drwxr-xr-x 1 admin admin 160 Nov 17 2014 . 4 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 296 Mar 3 22:28 .. 0 drwx------ 1 admin admin 18 Aug 9 2013 admin 0 drwx------ 1 anyotheruser users 60 Dec 5 2019 anyotheruser ...
0 drwx------ 1 stephen users 0 Jul 16 09:29 stephen 0 drwx------ 1 stephenssh users 0 Jul 16 09:43 stephenssh ... stephenssh@RN516:~$ cd ../anyotheruser -bash: cd: ../anyotheruser: Permission denied
First of all, you should consider if you really want to use home folders. They are a bit of a pain. If you don't want people to see the home folders of other family members, then you probably should use them.
That's exactly what the home folders here on ReadyNAS are designed for. Unfortunately - and different from the big NAS makers - e.g. admin's can't get access as a folder e.g. by SMB for administrative tasks). These are private folders, not shared folders.
The annoying lack of access by admin's is why I said "probably".
But perhaps more on target, I suspect most home NAS users don't really need private folders (and might not want them for their kids). Personally I keep them turned off.
That's exactly what the home folders here on ReadyNAS are designed for. Unfortunately - and different from the big NAS makers - e.g. admin's can't get access as a folder e.g. by SMB for administrative tasks). These are private folders, not shared folders.
Sure you can, if you use SMB to access the top level of the NAS and use the admin credentials, the home folders are in the home folder of your primary volume (typically data/home). I've not tried other protocols, but have always believed it works for them as well.
It's been that way since OS 3.x on the NV, though the main volume was C there.
On my NAS, I can access \\192.168.0.42 (without specifying a share) using the admin credentials and one of the folders is data, in which lies home, in which lie the user folders.
home does also show up at top level, where access is denied. I'm not sure why that is.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
Yes, you are correct @Sandshark - using SMB and the admin user UI does allow the access, missed to add this. It's a bad (no, very bad) way to access NAS resources by admin (aehm root). Especially where one can't use (leaving the trick alone using once the name and once the IP) frm the same (Windows) client.
Does it work for users in the admin group then, too?
Here again, other vendors allow to control the access to the home folder.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
I don't have other admin users, so I've not tried it, but /etc/frontview/samba/Shares.conf.admin gives the entire admin group access to the top level of every volume, so I assume it works.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
Can't work on other protocols like ftp because /home is not ACL enabled, a standard ftp daemon is in place and standard U**x apply. That's why admin can only see /home/admin ...
using SMB and the admin user UI does allow the access, missed to add this.
Well, yes it allows the admin to access the files. It doesn't work very well if you try to upload files in the folders though (since the file owner won't be right). Plus there is the ReadyCloud user issue.
The feature certainly makes sense in enterprises. But I still think it is best avoided if you are a home NAS user.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
Thanks to all for your helpful responses.
Unfortunately, all they have done is confirmed my opinion that the ReadyNas is NOT suitable for the Linux environment. I don't see why Iit should be necessary to install Samba on every machine on the network simply to access a ReadyNas, which is after all a Linux device.
I have instead decided to abandon the ReadynNas and install the drives in a JBOD enclosure driven by a Raspbery Pi. I can acheive everything I want to much more easily.
It's a shame, as I was given 2 of these boxes which, had they been more flexible, could have proved useful.
Unfortunately, all they have done is confirmed my opinion that the ReadyNas is NOT suitable for the Linux environment. I don't see why Iit should be necessary to install Samba on every machine on the network simply to access a ReadyNas, which is after all a Linux device.
I have instead decided to abandon the ReadynNas and install the drives in a JBOD enclosure driven by a Raspbery Pi. I can acheive everything I want to much more easily.
It's a shame, as I was given 2 of these boxes which, had they been more flexible, could have proved useful.
Thanks again and goodbye
And with that configuration you will need to address exactly the same issues with NFS that have been discussed for the ReadyNAS. As has already been described, it is absolutely not necessary to use SAMBA to access shares on the ReadyNAS -- you can use NFS. It is necessary to do so and control user access easily; not because of any shortcomings of the ReadyNAS, but due to the way NFS works. NFS does not control access, it leaves that to the system accessing it. When access to all systems is controlled via Kerberos or similar, then that does make it easier. But a NAS is not a full-blown server that runs Kerberos.
Since you said goodbye, you may not read this. But I did not want to leave this thread for other users to read and incorrectly believe that the conclusion reached is a valid one.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
Hi there... again and thanks for your reply, but from what I gleaned from the previous responses, it IS necessary to log on as a SAMBA user if the user directories are to be created. There is no provision for user logon to the NAS via the network using anything other than SAMBA, and the only way the user directories get created is by user logon.
This was the whole thrust of my initial question: How does a Linux user log on to a ReadyNas? and the answer appears to be: using SAMBA. It would seem that the ReadyNas approach is for users to mount admin created shares, not for users to logon with an ID and create their own.
Unfortunately, all they have done is confirmed my opinion that the ReadyNas is NOT suitable for the Linux environment. I don't see why Iit should be necessary to install Samba on every machine on the network simply to access a ReadyNas, which is after all a Linux device.
I have instead decided to abandon the ReadynNas and install the drives in a JBOD enclosure driven by a Raspbery Pi. I can acheive everything I want to much more easily.
It's a shame, as I was given 2 of these boxes which, had they been more flexible, could have proved useful.
Thanks again and goodbye
And with that configuration you will need to address exactly the same issues with NFS that have been discussed for the ReadyNAS. As has already been described, it is absolutely not necessary to use SAMBA to access shares on the ReadyNAS -- you can use NFS. It is necessary to do so and control user access easily; not because of any shortcomings of the ReadyNAS, but due to the way NFS works. NFS does not control access, it leaves that to the system accessing it. When access to all systems is controlled via Kerberos or similar, then that does make it easier. But a NAS is not a full-blown server that runs Kerberos.
Since you said goodbye, you may not read this. But I did not want to leave this thread for other users to read and incorrectly believe that the conclusion reached is a valid one.
There is no user logon facility (that I can find) using http, which would be the simplest way for users from any OS platform and was the way in which my ancient Seagate GoFlex_Home worked and was the way that I had hoped the ReadyNas would work, but it does not.
Re: How does a Linux user logon to their account on a Readynas
Since NFS is not "authenticated access", it is necessary that sombody log in to the NAS with with that account using another method for the user folder to be created automatically. That somebody can be the admin. But, you don't have to use the automatic home folders at all, which would make it much more like your RasPi solution.
Since you are apparently familiar with Linux, there is also a command-line tool accessable via SSH, mkhomedir_helper, that can be used to create the user home folders. Just run it with the user name as the argument.
