best NAS/home network solution

toad · 2010-03-18 22:10:58

What is the best NAS/home network solution?

Current Network:
two Arch, one desktop, one laptop
two macs, ditto
wlan router without usb port
two printers
one scanner

Current situation:
All printers and the scanner are on the Arch desktop running samba. I don't seem to be able to stream from samba, at least wiki doesn't appear to mention it.

Ideal situation:
- music and video streaming
- printing without need for desktop to be on
- central pim data storage, ideally so that I can have my pim suite open (I use kontact but am willing to change - need email, calendar, address book, RSS & newsreeder) on two machines and they don't get their knickers in a twist... Is that at all possible?
- automatic mounting

Even more ideal situation
- all of the above
- WAN streaming

Personally I don't see the wood for the trees at the mo...

sveri80 · 2010-03-18 23:42:31

toad wrote:

What is the best NAS/home network solution?
Ideal situation:
- music and video streaming

IIRC VLC is able to stream a lot of things, but i never tried it.

toad wrote:

What is the best NAS/home network solution?
- central pim data storage, ideally so that I can have my pim suite open (I use kontact but am willing to change - need email, calendar, address book, RSS & newsreeder) on two machines and they don't get their knickers in a twist... Is that at all possible?

I've been turning my head round in the last 6 months for a complete online data storage solution (say a groupware) which is able to synchronize to some offline clients. First thing is, do you want an easy webstorage for contacts, calendar and mail? Use google!

I myself tried out a lot of things, egroupware, horde, kolab, SoGo, simplegroupware and some i cannot remember the names, all of them combined with thunderbird, evolution or kontact. I did not find one solution to satisfy all my needs. Which are basically less then yours (i want mail, calendar, address book and tasks to get synchronized).

The solution i got running now is horde (synchronize calendar and tasks) and a ldap server on my root server. So this is far from perfect, but at least it does work.

So once again, if you have time, take it and play around with all the solutions out there. If you dont have time and want something working, take google.

Last edited by sveri80 (2010-03-18 23:43:40)

zenlord · 2010-03-19 13:56:56

I talked my parents into buying a Asus 1501 nettop to accomplish roughly the same tasks. The ion-chipset should be able to stream even HD-content and the power consumption is really low (probably better than leaving your desktop powered on 24/7...) - I haven't had the time to configure the whole lot, but that should be trivial: at home I have media streaming through mediatomb, printer sharing through cups and file sharing through NFS. pim-sharing should be able through sogo and funambol, but those are two things that are on my todo-list.

If you only want to stream media, there probably are other specialised devices available. But they won't do printer sharing or central pim sharing.

Last edited by zenlord (2010-03-19 13:58:56)

toad · 2010-03-19 14:11:03

Wow, thanks for your input.

It looks like some kind of home server is required - I've been shying away from that 'cos it is a whole new ballgame for me and requires apache, kolab (if it works...) for pim stuff. I managed to get an old laptop off somebody (they said it didn't work anymore , runs beautifully on Arch with openbox), so that might be a reasonable start for playing around.

That Asus 1501 looks a blinder, zenlord! It costs a blinder, too, though. I wish you would document your experiments/tinkering/findings somewhere for others to get inspiration/guidance from.

NAS always seems to come with some software or another. Is that really necessary? Why not just nfs or samba or ftp? I mean, what is the point?

.:B:. · 2010-03-19 14:16:55

You could e.g. get a Qnap TS-219p, put Mediatomb on it for streaming (it can run Debian's ARM port), etc. The more expensive Qnaps are just Atom solutions, so you can run plain x86 on them.

They're not cheap though, but they do consume a lot less than your typical PC.

rwd · 2010-04-07 18:58:57

toad wrote:

What is the best NAS/home network solution?
Ideal situation:
- music and video streaming
- printing without need for desktop to be on
- central pim data storage, ideally so that I can have my pim suite open (I use kontact but am willing to change - need email, calendar, address book, RSS & newsreeder) on two machines and they don't get their knickers in a twist... Is that at all possible?
- automatic mounting
Even more ideal situation
- all of the above
- WAN streaming

You already have the hardware, but the laptop may still be too power hungry or noisy. In that case a second hand eeebox something or a self built VIA C7/ VIA Nano / Intel Atom based system may be a solution (see http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=61662&p=1).

If you want as little configuring as possible take a look at amahi, Freenas (or its coming Debian-spin off OpenMediaVault). They are basically all-in-one homeserver distros. If you want to take the DIY route then I can recommend these apps:
- music and video streaming: mediatomb +djmount (upnp protocol) / FireFly (daap protocol) / mpd (audio only). Or if you just want to watch/listen to your media on your pc that is stored on your server then a share could be enough.
- print-server: not sure, cups maybe?
- central pim: : this is pretty complex to set up right. You need things like a
pop3/imap mailserver -> dovecot / qmail / postfix
groupware app (shared calendar, webmail, tasks etc) -> Zarafa / Zimbra / open-xchange.com / Sogo / Group-Office / Citadel ... )
synchronization using caldav/icalendar
mobile synch of contacts/calendar/mail via ActiveSync or syncML protocol -> funambol or z-push. Zarafa is one of the few options with a free ActiveSync connection l believe.
- automatic mounting: can be done in many ways (smb/nfs/webdav/sshfs). I have a sshfs share mounted through /etc/fstab.
- WAN streaming: can easily be done with mpd. the latest version has streaming server built in so you don't need to set up a separate Icecast streaming server.

Last edited by rwd (2010-04-07 20:40:33)

toad · 2010-04-07 19:46:08

Top stuff, rwd - thanks for your input!

Hardware: a used eeepc is a top idea combined with an external hard disk or two (for a raid, but my data isn't that valuable...).

Software: I will bear in mind the distros you mentioned once I got myself the hardware or even fart around with them on the old craptop. The DIY route is not really an option as I am a) only a bog standard computer user b) do not have too much time on my hands for such stuff.

Cheers!

Arch Linux

#1 2010-03-18 22:10:58

best NAS/home network solution

#2 2010-03-18 23:42:31

Re: best NAS/home network solution

#3 2010-03-19 13:56:56

Re: best NAS/home network solution

#4 2010-03-19 14:11:03

Re: best NAS/home network solution

#5 2010-03-19 14:16:55

Re: best NAS/home network solution

#6 2010-04-07 18:58:57

Re: best NAS/home network solution

#7 2010-04-07 19:46:08

Re: best NAS/home network solution

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