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Forum Discussion
Solved
GUI File Management Tool
On our local Ubuntu installation there is a file manager called Midnight Commander. It offers a two window file examination program much like the old Norton Commander. To those of us used to deal...
KUDOS to OOM-9
Thank you to others who pointed to a good terminal emulator.
This discussion is intended to be the analog of a Midnight Commander Installation cookbook.
The audience is Windows centric users.
Midnight Commander is the essential equivalent of the (now discontinued) Norton Commander which was a GUI based (sort of) file management program in the early DOS and Windows days. It is fairly intuitive and easy to use.
For those of us who are Windows centric, the term root as a user with administrative privileges and where the root of the data (system) is located is not necessarily intuitive. The concept of a root user versus the actual root of the entire disk/partition was confusing for me. The two are different. Others may laugh.
A short discussion along with a link to the graphic of a representative Lunix system helped
Here is a link to the actual graphic
http://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/ITKE/uploads/blogs.dir/77/files/2008/09/linux_file_structure.jpg
My suggestion is to download the graphic .jpg file and save it. Open with your favorite picture viewer and then you can expand it for easier viewing.
After about 2 minutes the basic file structure becomes obvious and differences between a ‘root’ user and the important file locations (and actual file system root) becomes apparent for those of us who are Lunix novices.
You will need a terminal emulator program running on your workstation. In my case I used PuTTY as the terminal emulator. There are others.
Next you need to establish a connection to the ReadyNAS with your terminal emulator.
System >> Settings >> Enable SSH and SSH password authentication
Under System > Settings > Services you would need to enable SSH.
The login is 'root' (no quotes) and the password is the same as your admin password. Depending on how you have set up your terminal emulator these login credentials may be remembered.
You have opened up your system to possible compromise so now proceed with caution.
After achieving ReadyNAS root access with a terminal emulator it is fairly easy to move around the file system even with a limited knowledge of CLI syntax.
Installation of Midnight Commander was different than I expected and caused some apprehension…
Here is the ‘blow by blow’
Establish a CLI at root with your terminal emulator
apt–get update This is the command to enter at the CLI
Lots of text displayed with no indication of how/who/what. You are now apprehensive.
apt install mc
Lots more text displayed with no indication of how/who/what along with some other information. Now you are really apprehensive.
Answer “Y” to the question regarding whether to proceed with the installation.
To launch Midnight Commander simply enter mc at the command line.
To exit Midnight Commander simply enter ‘exit’ and you will be brought immediately back to the command line.
At this point I would disable SSH for security and peace of mind until you need to access it next time with your terminal emulator.
You would use SSH. The login is 'root' (no quotes) and the password is the same as your admin password.
Under System > Settings > Services you would need to enable SSH.
On Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) or Mac, you could access SSH via the Terminal.
On Windows, you could use PuTTY (a free SSH/telnet client for Windows).
Thanks for the reply.
We have installed PuTTY and configured SSH so now we have root acess.
So now what? We have been advised that we are on dangerous ground and support may be denied -- and that in turn raises the caution flatg.
OOM-9 points to the apt-get actions in Ubuntu. That app in turn is surrounded by a useable GUI that even I can understand. That is not true for the Netgear environment at least as far I can tell.
We are looking for pointers anyone could provide to get the app installed. As I mentioned to StephenB previously we make and sell widgets and are not in the software development business. The ReadyNAS is a great NAS and apparently a good Linux environment with associated tools. Our reluctance is to go too far inside the environment -- we would like to purchase supported solutions or follow a know cookbook approach.
Thanks for spending the time to comment.
KUDOS to OOM-9
Thank you to others who pointed to a good terminal emulator.
This discussion is intended to be the analog of a Midnight Commander Installation cookbook.
The audience is Windows centric users.
Midnight Commander is the essential equivalent of the (now discontinued) Norton Commander which was a GUI based (sort of) file management program in the early DOS and Windows days. It is fairly intuitive and easy to use.
For those of us who are Windows centric, the term root as a user with administrative privileges and where the root of the data (system) is located is not necessarily intuitive. The concept of a root user versus the actual root of the entire disk/partition was confusing for me. The two are different. Others may laugh.
A short discussion along with a link to the graphic of a representative Lunix system helped
Here is a link to the actual graphic
http://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/ITKE/uploads/blogs.dir/77/files/2008/09/linux_file_structure.jpg
My suggestion is to download the graphic .jpg file and save it. Open with your favorite picture viewer and then you can expand it for easier viewing.
After about 2 minutes the basic file structure becomes obvious and differences between a ‘root’ user and the important file locations (and actual file system root) becomes apparent for those of us who are Lunix novices.
You will need a terminal emulator program running on your workstation. In my case I used PuTTY as the terminal emulator. There are others.
Next you need to establish a connection to the ReadyNAS with your terminal emulator.
System >> Settings >> Enable SSH and SSH password authentication
Under System > Settings > Services you would need to enable SSH.
The login is 'root' (no quotes) and the password is the same as your admin password. Depending on how you have set up your terminal emulator these login credentials may be remembered.
You have opened up your system to possible compromise so now proceed with caution.
After achieving ReadyNAS root access with a terminal emulator it is fairly easy to move around the file system even with a limited knowledge of CLI syntax.
Installation of Midnight Commander was different than I expected and caused some apprehension…
Here is the ‘blow by blow’
Establish a CLI at root with your terminal emulator
apt–get update This is the command to enter at the CLI
Lots of text displayed with no indication of how/who/what. You are now apprehensive.
apt install mc
Lots more text displayed with no indication of how/who/what along with some other information. Now you are really apprehensive.
Answer “Y” to the question regarding whether to proceed with the installation.
To launch Midnight Commander simply enter mc at the command line.
To exit Midnight Commander simply enter ‘exit’ and you will be brought immediately back to the command line.
At this point I would disable SSH for security and peace of mind until you need to access it next time with your terminal emulator.
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