How to Build a Raspberry Pi File Server

How to Build a Raspberry Pi File Server(jeremymorgan.com)

69 points by celticbadboy 13 years ago | 54 comments

ChuckMcM 13 years ago |

Interesting, so there are like a billion blog entries "How to build a Raspberry Pi <X> Server" where X is "file", "print", "media", "security", "email", "web", "DNS", Etc.

They are really just how to configure a Linux box to serve that function, except the new hawtness is the Raspberry Pi. One would assume people would get it by now that its just another Linux server so anything you can do with a Linux server you can do with this.

What I like about this is that folks are willing to jump into these sorts of projects with a Pi. (go go DevOps!) When they wouldn't for some reason with an "expensive" computer. It is a lot of fun and there is lots of information out there to guide you.

As for this particular example the original LinkSys ARM based file server was way ahead of the game :-). It suffers from the same problems (there is a lot of unreliability built into the equation) but it spawned a lot of copy cats and its at least as useful as putting a disk on your wireless access point to serve up tunes.

noonespecial 13 years ago | |

I find that fan-freaking-tastic because I've noticed that the people doing these things often had very little Linux experience to start with. The pi makes it unscary because so little is at risk. They don't feel like they're working on a "computer" and its immediately obvious that if you screw up, you can just pull out your card and reflash.

After they wax-on, wax-off for a while with the pi, they are often surprised to learn that they know Linux Kung-Fu.

bduerst 13 years ago | | |

I bought a pi for a Raspbmc media center, and because I wanted it to do more than the vanilla XBMC, I ended up having to learn linux. I ended up buying a second pi for a Samba NAS and web server.

I've spent a couple years developing with WAMP and dealing with windows BS, but now I'm running an Ubuntu VM and building a dev box for linux.

The pi is ultimately what put me in this direction :)

stevekemp 13 years ago | |

We saw the same thing a few years ago with the release of Ubuntu. As soon as the first couple of releases were out there were a million and one blog-spam articles like:

* How to run Apache on hardy * How to run Apache on lucid * How to run Apache on karmic

I was particularly annoyed because I'd written several Debian tutorials which were frequently copied/pasted from and butchered into ad-revenue for other people.

agumonkey 13 years ago | |

Yep, interesting how price point and form factor twist people's state of mind.

adeaver 13 years ago | | |

Not only that but recoverability. I use the Pi as a media server (files hosting on a NAS drive) and if the Pi dies, I drop $40, swap out the SD card and I'm done.

I have the SD card imaged and saved elsewhere so if the card dies, I just get another, re-image and plug it in.

Can't do that with a Mac Mini (what I was using)

secure 13 years ago |

I’d say: don’t. The performance you will be getting is horrible. Ethernet is connected via USB on the Raspberry Pi, so while via Ethernet, you can achieve about 90 Mbit/s, that speed drops to ≈ 40 Mbit/s once you access a USB hard disk drive. This is without any kind of encryption.

dazzawazza 13 years ago | |

I'd say: DO! If you are trying to learn how to do these sorts of things but as with everything Pi, don't get your hopes up about speed.

Once you are comfortable you can move on to a better dedicated setup.

calinet6 13 years ago | | |

I say, come on, be realistic. This is not a practical thing you're building, it's a fun project that happens to work too.

It's like building a model airplane. You don't do it because you need to fly across the country tomorrow in under 6 hours with drink service and a nap, you do it because you can and it's fun.

mdellabitta 13 years ago | | |

Why not build it on older, unused hardware, then. It's not going to help to have to go through all the trouble of getting something going on ARM only to have to start over on x86, for example.

Nux 13 years ago | |

Might be fun to do and the performance is not THAT bad.

Yeah, if you want to watch 100GB Bluray from it will suck arse, but it may be adequate for document storage for example.

Attach a printer to it and you also have a print server. This little setup could serve well an office or a household.

ginty 13 years ago | | |

Actually its fine for streaming HD movies too. I have my home server set up from a Pi exactly like this and it is fine. I have mine streaming video via mediatomb and I have never had a hiccup once, even with 1080p video.

Sure maybe transferring files to/from it is not the fastest but I find it perfectly acceptable (say a minute or so to transfer a 300MB file) and as the OP says I don't feel bad about leaving it running 24/7.

Printer serving is one thing I have not been able to transfer from my old server, seems like the Pi is not that well supported for printer drivers, but I do expect that will be resolved soon by people smarter than me.

Nursie 13 years ago |

The Pi is great and all, but after running setups like these for many years (ARM server + USB enclosure), I came to the conclusion you're better off with some other solution if you're transferring even a few GB around the place.

Of course most of those solutions would be a lot more expensive. The HP Microserver is my current solution, with zfs. And even that could be a lot better as there's no hardware crypto support and scp is sloooooow as a result.

As a general point of cynicism (and that seems to be my mood today) - did nobody ever have a small, general purpose computer before the Raspberry Pi came along?

dcuthbertson 13 years ago | |

> did nobody ever have a small, general purpose computer before the Raspberry Pi came along?

I'm not sure I follow - does anything that runs http://archlinuxarm.org/ count? I have four Pogoplugs at home. For about the last year or so, two of them run a web server and an rsync backup server. The other two are for learning/experimenting.

Nursie 13 years ago | | |

Sorry, text and sarcasm don't always play nicely. I've had sheevaplugs and before that NSLU2s, and a couple of more exotic ARM boards too.

I was more just wondering why this was written at all, because 'how to plug in a USB enclosure' and 'basic samba config' are topics that are so well covered already that it seems odd anyone would write more about them. Adding 'on the Raspberry Pi' seems to be enough for people to consider it novel these days, and I start to wonder if the 'on the Raspberry Pi' crowd realize that the Pi really is just another linux computer.

Note that I'm not saying this is a bad little tutorial.

BHSPitMonkey 13 years ago | | |

He was not asking sincerely; He was commenting on the influx of articles representing the current fascination with using the Raspberry Pi for projects like this (since there is nothing particularly new about the R-Pi other than its low price).

astine 13 years ago | |

"As a general point of cynicism (and that seems to be my mood today) - did nobody ever have a small, general purpose computer before the Raspberry Pi came along?"

Of course, but the Pi has dropped the price point considerably. The Beagle Board targets a similar market but is several times as expensive: http://beagleboard.org/

lazylizard 13 years ago | | |

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/ ???

autotravis 13 years ago | |

Yes, but not that small. I used an old laptop previously and it was much larger, louder and used more electricity.

davidarkemp2 13 years ago |

This just basically tells you how to mount a disk and install samba. You could equally well apply these instructions to any debian-based system.

celticbadboy 13 years ago | |

Here we go with that argument again.

The point of all these people doing "Raspberry Pi" articles with basic Linux stuff is to teach people who just bought a Pi and don't know how to use it. The overall point of this device is education.

dfc 13 years ago | | |

You are correct it is a great introduction to how to use linux to serve files and a key use case for the Pi. But why is it on hacker news?

ersii 13 years ago | | |

Sure, thought the parent comment is correct. I think the comment is fine, I couldn't read any tone coming from it. It's adding information - that these instructions works with other hardware.

dobbsbob 13 years ago |

Why does anybody use Rasberry Pi. It is a black box tightly sealed with patents and protected by corporations. It isn't even remotely an open platform unless you think a few pages of documentation for the enormous amounts of blobs is 'open'. It's one big mess of Broadcom firmware.

Go buy a beagleboard instead, or any taiwanese hardware almost all of them release full docs

ww520 13 years ago | |

I actually like those thumbdrive-size computer like MK808 or UG802. They are smaller than Rasberry Pi, with an enclosure, more powerful hardware, and built-in Wifi.

The only thing is it comes with Android and porting other Linux to it is still in early stage.

NegativeK 13 years ago | |

Hardware documentation isn't relevant to someone who needs a tutorial in setting up a Linux fileserver.

I'd definitely prefer that the entire stack is open source, but there's a lower limit to practicality.

chimeracoder 13 years ago | |

Could you point to anything within a comparable price range to the Raspberry Pi? I have some decent use cases for a ~$40 computer, and I'd gladly purchase an open version if one is available, but the Beagleboards seem to be three or four times as expensive.

dobbsbob 13 years ago | | |

True but at least you can actually buy a beagleboard :P There's an 8mos waiting list for Pi's where I live, only to get a broadcom firmware ridden toy.

With completely open hardware you could hack a beagleboard forever. Or buy a Cubieboard for $49, or Uputer Pi for $69,

gbog 13 years ago |

To those always replying to raspberry articles that it can be done with other setups, and that it's nothing new, I think you're missing the point:

All those tutorials show that a single very cheap and well designed piece of open hardware can be very versatile and that everything we tend to see as magic is just a one page how-to long.

I'm in my forties, an since I have had my first walkman I wanted to get inside the machine, to drive it dwork my, from the bowels. I have seen iPods, but can you ssh in an iPod? I have seen media centers, but can you bulk rename files or script it?

Now with my raspberry I finally got my dream for real, and I can even ssh to it from my phone when I'm away.

_b8r0 13 years ago | |

> I have seen iPods, but can you ssh in an iPod?

If you jailbreak it you can. Here's[1] a one page how-to long guide.

> I have seen media centers, but can you bulk rename files or script it?

Of course, providing you're using something like XBMC. For renaming you don't even need to script, there's friendly programs[2] out there if you want.

> Now with my raspberry I finally got my dream for real, and I can even ssh to it from my phone when I'm away.

I'm glad you're enjoying your Pi, but the argument about it being possible to do with other setups is just as valid. You can SSH to almost anything that'll run SSH from your phone.

[1] - http://guides.macrumors.com/SSH_into_your_iPod_touch_(Window...

[2] - http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Category:Rename_tools

gbog 13 years ago | | |

I didn't made myself clear enough. I know I can ssh to an iPod, and to my Android phone, but I don't own anything there, I cannot install vim with the few plugins I like, I cannot install and use unison to sync files. In also sshed to a printer, but what can you do there?

Nursie 13 years ago | |

Yes it's cheap.

It's not really novel though, there are a lot of other things out there that are interesting too. It's also not quite as open as it could be, for instance the bootloader on my sheevaplug from '09 was able to be hacked, flashed and updated to support more boot devices (just as an example). And some of us were doing this whole Debian/ARM box/USB enclosure/fileserver thing back in '05 with the linksys NSLU2, which wasn't much more expensive back then. Much less capable of course, but...

I guess it just rubs some folks up the wrong way. In reality it's awesome that so many people are getting an intro to linux this way, but it also feels like a bunch of teenagers who think their generation invented music :)

mattbee 13 years ago |

An excellent, cheap plan if you've never set up samba etc. before. To those rolling their eyes at a "toy" solution (and it's better than that), when you _do_ need a bit more performance and more discs I'd highly recommend one of these http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-micr... which HP have been practically giving away for years (£89 after cashback!) - a bit larger & faster than a Pi, 1GiB RAM, four hot-swap drive bays and gigabit ethernet.

bbox 13 years ago |

did that years ago ..with a NSLU2 :) http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/gallery.html

npsimons 13 years ago |

1) Install Debian (http://www.raspbian.org/)

2) Install and setup file servers ('apt-get install samba nfs-server')

mauricesvay 13 years ago |

I wish there was a tutorial that would make it easier. Why not automount disks and provide a web interface to configure the shares?

bdz 13 years ago |

I've done something similar with netatalk and avahi. Since I can use the drive with Time Machine on OSX. Like a cheap Time Capsule.

hilti 13 years ago | |

I'm using netatalk and avahi too on my Raspberry Pi. It work's great as a home storage server and I'm fine with the speed, cause I don't intend to be a hosting company ;-)

AcessoNegado 13 years ago |

Would it be much different with other distributions folks are using on the Pi? I would think BSD/Unix variants would be different.

Also does Raspian support a lot of USB drives out of the box?

Nursie 13 years ago | |

It's not going to be a lot different, no. Some of the details around mounting the drive may be slightly different, but only slightly, and samba's going to be the same whichever *nix you use.

For extra credit you could investigate running minidlna on it to expose your media to things like smart-tvs and playstations.

--edit-- On the external drives thing, most USB drive enclosures should just work (tm) with linux these days, however there used to be problems surrounding power-saving. This is due to them being designed around the way windows uses external enclosures, and linux not waking them the same way, or not realising they had gone to sleep or something, and many disk enclosures I used with older ARM debian boxes (4+ years back) had a habit of going to sleep and not waking up.

tl;dr - YMMV, best to stick to one that is known-good.