Original post here. First, thanks to everyone who responded. Thought I’d write up an update on my progress.
I took the advice to keep the NAS dedicated to storage and bought a Beelink mini computer (2Ghz Quad core Intel Celeron; 250GB; 4GB RAM) for the server and installed Linux Mint. I decided that the perceived complexity of Docker and Portainer were more than I wanted to tackle right now and that the benefits wouldn’t be worth the effort, so I’m installing directly to the OS.
So far I have Jellyfin and Audiobookshelf up and running. Most of the setup is straightforward. I’ve spent the most time so far learning to permanently mount the NAS and set the necessary permissions. Took a bit of online research to figure this out. Second most time was setting up NordVPN with Meshnet for remote server access.
Next step is the Servarr suite. I’m thinking that’s going to be a bit more of a challenge.
Awesome to see, good luck to you!
If you’re looking for tips, I’d try to set up Prowlarr first if you intend to use it, it’ll save some reconfiguration down the line.
Though I don’t find anything as complex as mounting and permissions in the *arrs, haha.
But my favorite part about tinkering with home servers is just learning a little at a time, expanding naturally. It’s easy to find guides that are the “ultimate, best server configs”, but unless you understand what benefits they’re offering, you can’t really determine what fits best for YOUR needs.
I started with CouchPotato on Windows years ago and now have *arrs running through docker on headless boxes and keep adding on fun services.
Cool, with time you will see the benefit of containers. I don’t use portainer but I do use podman and docker-compose.
Nice work though. For me I also bought and setup a HDhomerun for live tv with Jellyfin.
Nice! Would you mind sharing the configuration for permanently mounting? I tried it in the past but I never really could get it to work right consistently.
I’ll look up the exact info when I get home and provide links if I can find them again.
The summary is that I had to add a line to /etc/fstab with the ip and folder route of the nas drive and folder, then the mount point in linux, the file system type for the mount, options that give login creds/group id + establish permissions I want to apply to the mount, and an option that keeps the drive from trying to mount until my network is connected.
Finally, for that last option to work, I had to enable a process that I forget the name of. I think it was in systemd, but I was able to initiate it from the command line.
Since I don’t know your level of expertise, I’ll go step by step. Forgive me if you already know how to do some of this.
In terminal, type “sudo nano /etc/fstab” (without quotes). This brings up a file where you can add the mount point so it mounts at boot and set options for the mount. Go to the end of the file and enter a line like the following, substituting your info in the appropriate places:
//[static ip for nas]/[top level folder on nas you want to mount] /[mount point in Linux] [file system type for mount] [mount options, nas login credentials, permissions] 0 0
Mine looks like this: //192.168.1.0/Media /mnt/Media cifs _netdev,user=anonymouse,password=*****,uid=1000,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
The “_netdev” option is the one that delays the mount until after your network is up. The “file_mode” & “dir_mode” set the mount permissions. There is info out there showing how to insert a reference to a credentials file instead of placing them in fstab in plain text, but I didn’t bother since I have my computer and user profile pretty well locked down.
To get _netdev to work, I had to enter the following in terminal (without quotes): “sudo systemctl enable systemd-networkd-wait-online”.
I couldn’t find all the sites I visited while setting this up, but here are a few:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/429604/fstab-not-automatically-mounting-smb-storage?rq=1
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab#Options
Hope this helps!
Hey, thanks very much! I’ll give it a try!
