Raspberry PI NAS

Setup your own NAS on a Raspberry Pi.

Preview

Dashboard

Monitoring

Table of Contents

• Hardware
• OS
  • SSH
• SMB Shares
  • Format Drives
  • Mount Drives
    • Prepare Disks
    • Mount Disks manually
    • Mount Disks automatically
  • Setup SMB Server
  • Setup TimeMachine Share
  • Other useful things
    • HD-Idle
    • Log2Ram
    • Check Disk Utilization
• Docker Setup
  • Install Docker
  • Prepare Docker Environment
    • 1. Clone Repository
    • 2. Configure your Setup
    • 3. Run Compose-Stack
    • 4. Try it out
  • Components
    • Configure Pi-hole
• CloudflareD

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 4 4GB
• SD Card 32GB (Silicon Power)
• QNAP TR-004 RAID Storage (RAID 5)
• SEAGATE IronWolf 4TB (ST4000VN006)

If you want to use a software based RAID setup instead, you need to format your drives first. You can use the following guides to setup a RAID 5 with Btfs:

• RAID 5 with Btfs
• New documentation

OS

• 64 bit Raspbian
• Vanilla Rasbperry Pi OS Bullseye (e.g. Raspberry Pi OS LITE 64 bit) Installation guide

SSH

More documentation to enable SSH or generate Keys.

# Enable SSH
sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

# SSH Keys
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C

SMB Shares

Format Drives

# List Disks
sudo fdisk -l

# Open Disk (replace X with the disk letter)
sudo fdisk /dev/sdX 

# Create Partititon
n
default
default
default
w

# Check Table
sudo fdisk -l

# Format the partition (replace X with the disk letter)
sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sdX1

More documentation can be found here.

Mount Drives

Prepare Disks

In order to identify the disks with a descriptive name, we need to add a label to the disks. This can be done with the following commands.

# List Disks
sudo fdisk -l

# Goal state
# /dev/disk/by-label/qnap (8TB)        | LABEL="qnap"

# Add Label to Disks: (replace X with the disk letter)
sudo e2label /dev/sdX1 qnap

Mount Disks manually

# Change Owner of /mnt directory (Otherwise SMB Shares cannot be mounted)
sudo chown root:users /mnt

# Create Mount Points
sudo mkdir /mnt/qnap

# Check Permissions
stat /mnt/qnap

# Change Owner (replace $USER with your username)
sudo chown -R $USER:users /mnt/qnap/*

# Change Permissions
chmod -R 775 /mnt/qnap/*

# Mount Disks
mount /dev/disk/by-label/qnap /mnt/qnap/

# (Optional) Mount Disks with User Permissions
mount -o user=$USER /dev/disk/by-label/qnap /mnt/qnap/

More documentation can be found here.

Mount Disks automatically

# Identify UUIDs or Labels of the disks
sudo blkid
# Edit /etc/fstab
sudo nano /etc/fstab
# Add the following lines to /etc/fstab
#LABEL=qnap /mnt/qnap ext4 nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=1ms 0 0
LABEL=qnap /mnt/qnap ext4 defaults 0 0

More documentation can be found here.

Setup SMB Server

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

# Install Samba
sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin

# Setup Shares
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

# Add Configuration to smb.conf (replace $USER with your username)
Comment out all lines under "Share Definitions" and add the following lines:

[nas]
    path = /mnt/qnap/nas
    writeable = Yes
    create mask = 0775
    directory mask = 0775
    public = no
    force user = $USER
    force group = $USER

[timemachine]
    path = /mnt/qnap/timemachine
    writeable = Yes
    vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
    fruit:time machine = yes
    public = no

# Setup SMB User (replace $USER with your username)
sudo smbpasswd -a $USER

# Restart Samba service
sudo systemctl restart smbd

# Check SMB Status including Version
sudo smbstatus

More documentation can be found here and here.

Setup TimeMachine Share

# Check if Avahi service is running
sudo systemctl status avahi-daemon

# If the `avahi-daemon` is not installed, install it with the following command:
sudo apt install avahi-daemon

sudo nano /etc/avahi/services/samba.service

# Add Configuration to samba.service
# You can choose different Icons of your Server based on this file
# /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Info.plist
# https://simonwheatley.co.uk/2008/04/avahi-finder-icons/
<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
  <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
  <service>
    <type>_smb._tcp</type>
    <port>445</port>
  </service>
  <service>
    <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
    <port>9</port>
    <txt-record>model=RackMac3,1</txt-record>
    <txt-record>model=MacPro7,1@ECOLOR=226,226,224</txt-record>
  </service>
  <service>
    <type>_adisk._tcp</type>
    <port>9</port>
    <txt-record>dk0=adVN=timemachine,adVF=0x82</txt-record>
    <txt-record>sys=adVF=0x100</txt-record>
  </service>
</service-group>

# Restart Avahi service
sudo systemctl restart avahi-daemon

More documentation can be found here. After modifying the samba.service file, the TimeMachine share should be visible in the Finder.

Other useful things

HD-Idle

Setup HDD spin down times to save energy and increase lifetime of the disks.

# Install hd-idle
sudo apt install hd-idle
# Configure hd-idle
sudo nano /etc/default/hd-idle

# Change line according to your available disks. Replace X with the disk letter.
# The following line will set the default to 0 and the custom idle time for disk sdX to 8 minutes. Save File afterwards.
HD_IDLE_OPTS="-i 0 -a sdX -i 480 -l /var/log/hd-idle.log"

# Configure hd-idle service
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/hd-idle.service

# Add the following lines in the "[Service]" section
# This will make sure that the service will be restarted in case of errors.
[Service]
...
Restart=always
RestartSec=3

# Restart Systemd Deamon
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# Restart hd-idle
sudo systemctl restart hd-idle

# Check if hd-idle is running
systemctl status hd-idle

# Check if disks are spinning down
cat /var/log/hd-idle.log

More documentation can be found here

Log2Ram

sudo apt update
sudo apt install log2ram

# Check if log2ram is running (after reboot!)
systemctl status log2ram

More documentation can be found here.

Check Disk Utilization

df -h

Docker Setup

Install Docker

I recommend to install it yourself following a simple guide.

Prepare Docker Environment

All following commands need to be run from your Raspberry PI. Either connect via SSH or direct access.

1. Clone Repository

git clone https://github.com/timoknapp/rpi-nas.git
cd rpi-nas

2. Configure your Setup

Replace Placeholders in docker-compose.yml file:

• ${PATH_TO_DISK} with related Path on your PI

• Execute the following command on your PI: id `whoami`

  • Replace ${USER_ID} with the integer value of uid.
  • Replace ${GROUP_ID} with the integer value of gid.

• Set password postgres user

3. Run Compose-Stack

docker-compose up

4. Try it out

Opening a browser with the IP of your PI should show now the Heimdall dashboard. A configured dashboard would like like one on top. (e.g. http://IP-OF-YOUR-PI)

Components

Following show all the applications of the docker-compose.yml related to their exposed ports on the host.

Application	Port	URL	Optional
Portainer	9000	http://localhost:9000
Heimdall Dashboard	80, 443	http://localhost, https://localhost
Pi-hole	53, 8080	http://localhost:8080
CloudflareD	-
Homebridge	8581	http://localhost:8581
Deconz Conbee	8888, 8443	http://localhost:8888, https://localhost:8443
Plex	32400	http://localhost:32400/web/index.html	yes
CloudCmd	8008	http://localhost:8008	yes
pyLoad	8088	http://localhost:8088
Nextcloud	8081	http://localhost:8081	yes
Home-Assistant(1)	8123	http://localhost:8123	yes
Grafana	3000	http://localhost:3000
InfluxDB	-
Telegraf	-
Internet Speedtest	-		yes

Optional means that the application is not necessary for the NAS to work properly. It is just a nice to have. If you want to use it, you need to uncomment the related lines in the docker-compose.yml file.

(1) In order to expose your external devices using Zigbee/Z-Wave dongles to the Home Assistant container, you can read this guide

Configure Pi-hole

• Open http://IP-OF-YOUR-PI:8080/admin and login with the password you set in the docker-compose.yml file.

• Go to Settings -> DNS -> Interface settings and change the setting from Allow only local requests to Permit all origins -> Save. (This could already be set by the environment variable DNSMASQ_LISTENING in the docker-compose.yml file)

  • This will add the following line in /etc/dnsmasq.d/01-pihole.conf:

  except-interface=nonexisting

  Since the Pi-hole is running in a docker container, it is not possible to use the Allow only local requests setting as its only considering the local network of the container.

• Go to Settings -> System -> Disable Query Logging.

  Since we want to use the Pi-hole as a DNS server only, we don't need to log any queries. This will reduce the amount of writes to the disk and will allow us to run Pi-hole in anonymous mode.

• Add the following lines to /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.conf:

  PRIVACYLEVEL=3 #; 0=show everything, 1=hide domains, 2=hide domains and clients, 3=anonymous mode
  #; MAXLOGAGE=24.0 #; up to how many hours of logs to show in pihole web interface
  MAXDBDAYS=7 #; delete entries older than 30 days. Setting this to 0 will disable the database.
  DBINTERVAL=60.0 #; write to the pihole-FTL.db file every 30 minutes (lets the HDD spin down)
  #; DBFILE=/etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.db #; path to the database file. Setting this to DBFILE= disables the database altogether

• Restart Pi-hole container!

Configure CloudflareD

Tdb.

• Add your Cloudflare API Token to the TUNNEL_TOKEN variable in the docker-compose.yml file.

More configuration options can be found here or here.