NAS and media server

[Mark Woodward]

On 03/06/2011 12:00 PM, discuss-request-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org wrote:
> From: Rob Hasselbaum<rob-IdUdaS/NwSyQrzRDRVclEQ at public.gmane.org>
> Subject: NAS and media server
> To: blug<discuss-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<AANLkTim-ANFH4P1j5KEsai9pNEPVyjkFQfKPP5KexpH5-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg at public.gmane.org>
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>
> Any recommendations for a good (preferably Linux-based) NAS and media server
> box for a home network? At a minimum, it has got to be able to do automatic
> backups of machines on the network, both Linux (rsync or sftp) and Windows
> clients. Big plus if it can also serve media to an Xbox 360.
>
> I have a beige box running BackupPC that has been working great for years,
> but I think the hardware is on its last legs. Plus it's slow.
I have a DLink DNS-321 dual drive NAS box. It was cheap, about $140 a 
year or so ago. I must say I was skeptical when I bought it, but its 
pretty great.

It has a music server, SMB, NFS, ftp services as well. It runs linux 
internally. It also uses the standard "fun_plug" protocol where in it 
searched for a file called fun_plug on the root partition of one of your 
disks and executes it at boot time. Using this, there is a project out 
there that provides a pretty comprehensive set of utilities including 
sshd and gcc. It does this without ever re-flashing the device, so there 
is no danger of bricking.

I've used it with Windows, mac, and Linux clients. I use it as a media 
server for the living room and a backup for my home directories.

One cool but sometimes annoying thing that it does is spin down the 
disks when they are not being used. So, initial connections take about 
5~10 secs for the drives to spin up and stabilize if the device was idle.