Installation | Topics | Beyond Lino

Running a family file server

Installation

  • Buy a RaspberryPi and install a virgin Debian on it

  • Add the following modules and configs: (backup, vtun, vnc, owncloud)

Usage

Make backups using rsync

In order to mount the Pi, run pi_mount.sh:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
TARGET=/mnt/pi
WHAT=luc@192.168.1.234

if [ -d $TARGET ] ; then
    echo "Mounting $WHAT to $TARGET..."
else
    echo "Cannot mount $WHAT because $TARGET is not a directory"
    exit -1
fi
sshfs $WHAT:/ $TARGET

Then run backup2pi.sh, which is the same as backup2exthd.sh except that TARGET is /mnt/pi/var/backups/luc.

Access home server using Vtun

One could buy some cloud instance with public IP address to access the home RaspberryPi using Vtun. The vtund configuration file for cloud instance (server side) /etc/vtund.conf:

options {
   port 1234;
   ifconfig   /usr/sbin/ifconfig;
   route      /usr/sbin/route;
}
# Default session options
default {
   type tun;
   proto tcp;
   compress no;   # Compression is off
   encrypt yes;   # ssh does the encryption
   speed 0;       # By default maximum speed
   keepalive yes;
   stat yes;
}
tunnel1 {
   device tun1;
   encrypt yes;
   keepalive yes;
   passwd  SomeSecretPassword;    # Change it!
   up {
      ifconfig  "%% 10.3.1.1 pointopoint 10.3.1.2";
      route "add gw 10.3.1.2 dev tun1";
   };
   down{
      ifconfig "%% down";
   };
}

To /etc/hosts add:

10.3.1.2  home

The systemd unit file for Vtun server is /etc/systemd/system/vtund.service:

[Unit]
Description=virtual tunnel daemon
After=syslog.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/vtund -s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

For RaspberryPi (client side) add /etc/vtund.conf:

options {
   port 1234;
   ifconfig   /sbin/ifconfig;
   route      /sbin/route;
}
# Default session options
default {
   type tun;
   proto tcp;
   encrypt yes;
   speed 0;
   keepalive yes;
   stat yes;
}
tunnel1 {
   device tun1;
   encrypt yes;
   keepalive yes;
   passwd SomeSecretPassword;    # Change it!
   up {
      ifconfig  "%% 10.3.1.2 pointopoint 10.3.1.1";
      route "add gw 10.3.1.3 dev tun1";
   };
   down{
      ifconfig "%% down";
   };
}

The systemd unit file for Vtun client /etc/systemd/system/vtund.service:

[Unit]
Description=Virtual tunnel
After=syslog.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/vtund -p -f /etc/vtund.conf tunnel1 yourcloudinstance.net

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

VNC

Open the /root/.vnc/config.d/vncserver-x11 config file. Replace Authentication=SystemAuth with Authentication=VncAuth and save the file. Run sudo vncpasswd -service. This will prompt you to set a password and will insert it for VNC Server running in Service Mode. After that restart the VNC Server.

ownCLoud

From owncloud.com download tarball and extract it to /var/www. Because owncloud uses some database, choose for example mysql (mariadb). Configure database name: ownclouddb, database user: piuser and database passwd: pipass. Owncloud config file resides in /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php:

array (
    0 => 'localhost',
    1 => '192.168.1.10',
  ),

Instead 1, put your own RaspberriPi IP address. Also, apache configuration should be changed: /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf:

<VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
  #DocumentRoot /var/www/html
  DocumentRoot /var/www/owncloud
  #DirectoryIndex index.php
  #ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/owncloud.log
      ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
      CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Discussion

How to share my file collections as read-only to family members

First answer: seems that in ownCLoud it is not possible to create a symbolic link to some other directory (src).