In search of a NAS OS

So there's FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org/). But you need to format the partitions to a BSD format. I'm not comfortable with that. What I was looking for was a Linux or Windows based NAS that I could control via a web interface. Windows Home Server was a no-no coz I didn't want to end up with Trojan infested torrent.

So I decided to give up and install a full blown Ubuntu with Samba and SWAT. Lucky for me, while I filled every geek ear with my NAS woes, a colleague Ryan told me about Webmin. It's got a neat bunch of tools that allow you to administer your OS via a web interface. You can add shares, users, monitor disk usage and a whole lot more!

http://www.webmin.com/

To install on Hardy Heron Ubuntu:

1. sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl
2. wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.420_all.deb [ change version to newest ]
3. sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.420_all.deb

Thats it! Now visit https://localhost:10000/

If you have firefox3 beta it will complain about the certificate being invalid. That's coz the beta has a problem with self-signed certificated. Just add the site to your exceptions list and you'll be good to go!