Greetings from France all.
I bought a second-hand QNAP TS-253A (8GB RAM,Intel Celeron CPU N3160 @ 1.60GHz; 2 bays, USB3 ports) which is compatible with Linux NAS distributions.
Initially, my plan was to go with OpenMediaVault 6 but the encryption plugin is not yet ported 6 - I found it after configuring!
Disk encryption is a requirement for me - for privacy reasons (if your disk needs to be replaced, don't you mind someone potentially reading its content ?)
Therefore, I decided to give Unraid a try - with release 6.10.1.
It was not easy but in the end it works.
1. I tried to use the USB Creator with 2 different USB2 keys but it failed.
The program displayed an error - and even some weird messages in Chinese or other foreign language.
I tried a 3rd USB2 key (ENUODA brand) - I used just once. This time the USB Creator was successful.
2. I installed Unraid and tried to configure it. As a new user, I had to read forum posts, to
understand what is required for a mirroring/RAID1 configuration (1 disk + 1 parity drives).
The array creation took more than 11 hours (6GB drives). I found it hard to understand
how encryption can be configured. Based on forum reading, I understood that the whole
disk has to be encrypted - contrary to classical Linux which is partition based, and Synology/QNAP which supports volume based encryption. I decided to go with xfs-encryption based on
forums suggestions. I was really happy with Brtfs on Fedora and Synology but looking further after forum readings I noticed a Phoronix article which scared me a bit : https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.16-Better-Btrfs
3. All of sudden I was kinda stuck in the web interface. I clicked and nothing changed. I decided to check the logs and the forum. I noticed a bunch of Unraid kernel:
FAT-fs (sda1): Directory bread(block NNNN) failed
errors. I tried to check the content of /boot/config and this directory was empty. It's weird as this USB stick was close to brand-new and running badblocks -w -s -o /tmp/usbstick.log I saw no errors in the generated log.
4. I decided to use a 4th USB stick - SanDisk Ultra 64 GB Dual Drive. Windows refused to format it as FAT so I had to format it on Linux - I created a 2GB partition. This time I used 6.10.2 which got released on that day and I copied the content of the zip file - manual USB disk set-up.
5. I booted the new USB stick and everything went well. I had to do the Array configuration again (11 hours, 30 minutes again), and format the disk so I can create Shared - it took me some time to figure out - this was missing. THis time I backuped the configuration quickly just in case I face some new issues - I don't want to wait for close to 12 hours for the array creation.
To summarize:
- the USB Creator really needs some fixing making it easier to install the set-up program on a USB drive. I'm pretty sure many people will not give Unraid a try because of that.
- mirroring configuration required having a look at forum post. Mirroring or even any configuration could be simplified by an assistant, asking the number of disks, the need for redundancy or not and explaining what is to be done.
- disk encryption configuration is a bit limited and confusing at first (I was expecting the passphrase on the Disk settings). I really hope this is something that will be improved in the future. I still wonder if some people go with brtfs-encrypted which was my initial idea - but as the kernel is still 5.15 based it might not be a good idea
- I really wonder if there is not some weird thing going when using USB2 sticks on USB3 ports
I'm using a 64 USB3 key for the time being - a bit overkill but my 3 USB2 sticks were not ok for Unraid USB disk creation or usage.
- The web interface is fine but could be improved (modernized look, it is not as polished as Synology, and help pointers could be added on each menu parts to clarify further)
I will continue to get familiar with Unraid (disk tuning - I've a feeling the disks don't spin down after 1 hours) and play with the Apps.