N2200 user modules

[misha]

I have uploaded some sketchy details on creating a user module.
Link: thecus.nas-central.org/wiki/Category:N2200

[hlan]

Thanks for the links. They give an idea idea about how powerful this feature could be - for the Thecus user community and ultimately for Thecus Sales - but unfortunately the feature is not documented well enough to be available.

"Getting binaries for your modules: The current version (1.0.06) of the Thecus N1200 firmware is compatible with the "woody" Debian distributions so you can find packages on archive.debian.org/debian-archive/pool/main"[/i]

That would be great - why is it that this module feature is not documented any better?

[misha]

Hi hlan,
Excellent feedback thanks. I agree, Thecus could do a lot more in this area to help us help ourselves.
Do you have any specific ideas as to how to improve the documentation?

[hlan]

I'd wish

- Official documentation from Thecus, rather than reading through many posts and replies in different forums for different products

- Information from Thecus on the version of OS deployed and any (relevant) customization done in there by Thecus

- Recovering from errors, e.g. for the passive FTP manipulation a user writes "got this wrong and the NAS will not boot anymore". Great (!) - would I then throw it away?

- 1 example fully documented.

- Thecus modules (e.g. N2100) follow exactly the same principle as user modules so that they can get inspected as examples. I wanted to look into the WEBSERVER module from Thecus for the N2100 but the kitting seems to be different than those described in the forums for the user modules.

At present my thinking is that I do not want to spend much more time on the N2200 (that I believe even Thecus do not support well given the lack of documentation and updates but increasing list of issues) trying to find out how a feature works or should work (this is very time consuming). Security has not been top concern by Thecus (no passive FTP port ranges, no ACL for features, nut much log information) and therefore I should better buy a 2nd NAS from another company just for external connectivity (FTP, WEBSERVER, Web Access, mail server) and a more active user community.

I also think that this product is a bit of a challenge. It's entry level priced and therefore purchased by people who are not IT experts. Implication is it needs good documentation (which costs money to produce) hence conflicts with the low cost product philosophy. However, the rewards are that if Thecus get it right then they are well placed for supplying a next NAS.

[misha]

I agree with you on most of your points, particularly where most technical people will have bought the other model (or brand) of NAS with better hardware and support for customising.

Have you had a look at the GPL source for the firmware? I've had a brief look, but its very disorganised, and I'm not sure how much value it will be.

Have you tried using the N2200 to decrypt the N2100 module? I have found this works on the official modules, not yet tried the WEBSERVER. An example of how to do this is:
des -D -k AppModule "MODULE.app" "MODULE.mod"

[hlan]

Misha, Thank you very much - your wiki is very clear and a great initiative. Tob job!

I am not a Unix person/expert. Therefore I need to work my way by googling to find out about the commands, and perhaps I have too much respect/fear to do something wrong ...

Question #1:
I loaded the ROOTCMD module and sneaked around. I could read from different directories but did not manage to navigate around (e.g. cd .. did not work judging from output by pwd)- is there a reason for this?

Question #2:
The system tells me it is a "Linux N2200 2.6.24 arm5tejl (Marvell arm5tejl processor) GCC version 4.3.2. What debian/linux would I have to install (in a VM) for basic validation before going "live" on the NAS?

Question #3: There's a module that give GUI access to the settings and statistics of pure-ftp ( lkr.sourceforge.net/kcmpureftpd/download.html ). How would I go about to adapt / verify if this is suitable for the N2200?

Misha, at the moment you are most expert in user modules - your advice is very appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

[misha]

I'm glad you are making some progress! ;D

The ROOTCMD module does not persist state between submissions from the web page. Effectively, each time you submit a set of commands, they are run in their own shell. This is

now finished off by
ps dad will finish this.
ps he he he he he he he he he he he. eh o
love u dad

[misha]

Thanks to my daughter for finishing that post for me...

Note that you can enter multiple lines into ROOTCMD, example

cd /somedir
ls -l
cd /somedir/someotherdir
ls

if you want a more interactive behaviour, try the ssh module which is DROPBEAR, then connect via putty.

QEMU can emulate an ARM, there are some sites for example
www.aurel32.net/info/debian_arm_qemu.php
You can run qemu on linux, and you can run linux on VirtualBox, or a live cd, or multiboot.

The GUI you found relies on KDE, which requires a window manager, I imagine it would run very slow on the N2200. You may be better off with a web GUI, for example. Alternatively you may be able to run the GUI on a different box and connect it to the NAS.

Good luck!

[sridharreddapani]

Is it possible to install more commands in Thecus 2200? I got ssh access using DROPBEAR thanks for that module. I am trying to install more commands such as su, nohup etc.. Did any one compiled Gcc - coreutils on thecus 2200?

[misha]

Hi,

I did get a cross compiler working, more details at...
forum.thecusforum.eu/showthread.php?p=11664#post11664

[lapucelle]

Apr 28, 2010 19:12:21 GMT 7 misha said:

I agree with you on most of your points, particularly where most technical people will have bought the other model (or brand) of NAS with better hardware and support for customising.

Have you had a look at the GPL source for the firmware? I've had a brief look, but its very disorganised, and I'm not sure how much value it will be.

Have you tried using the N2200 to decrypt the N2100 module? I have found this works on the official modules, not yet tried the WEBSERVER. An example of how to do this is:
des -D -k AppModule "MODULE.app" "MODULE.mod"

tried it. failed. i ran the shell script in dropbear and got the output webserver.mod from input webserver.app. tried installing it and was prompted that NAS model was wrong... lemme see if other flags make a difference...

[misha]

Hi lapucelle,

Thats great that you managed to extract the MOD file from the APP file.

There are likely three reasons the module did not work for you:
1. The module files have a section for which NAS models it works on. You could add the N2200 to this list to force it to try it.
2. The module directories and some other directories are different for the N2100 and the N2200.
3. The CPU and libraries are different for the two boxes, so you would need different binaries.

If you want to update the web server, hlan has made progress in this area: thecus.nas-central.org/wiki/N2200_User_Patch_MyWWW

[lapucelle]

Jun 19, 2010 18:25:30 GMT 7 misha said:

Hi lapucelle,

Thats great that you managed to extract the MOD file from the APP file.

There are likely three reasons the module did not work for you:
1. The module files have a section for which NAS models it works on. You could add the N2200 to this list to force it to try it.
2. The module directories and some other directories are different for the N2100 and the N2200.
3. The CPU and libraries are different for the two boxes, so you would need different binaries.

If you want to update the web server, hlan has made progress in this area: thecus.nas-central.org/wiki/N2200_User_Patch_MyWWW

Hi misha, I've already done the symbolic link to match the module directories (thanks to you too!). So yeah its likely to be due to 1. or 3.

The webserver tweaking looks good. Will try it out once I get this problem out of the way - just dun like to stop something after starting haha.

Just wondering about another point, is it possible for us to install the modules directly thru SSH rather than through the web interface? bearing in mind my linux/unix background stretches as far back as 3 mths ago.

[misha]

Hi lapucelle,

I'm glad to hear you have recent *nix experience, you can be the forum guru.

A small warning before trying this, if you stuff up the existing web server it makes it hard to get to the admin web page. At least you have SSH so you can fix it without calling the coast guard.

The bonus of applying the module via SSH is you can do one step at a time and check the results.

The .MOD file can be unpacked further, either with "tar -xzf ..." or something like that (haven't got it in front of me), or with a windows archive utility like 7-zip. The .MOD is an uncompressed archive which is then zipped (i.e. MODULE.MOD = MODULE.tar.gz).

To install, look for Shell/install.sh
To enable, look for Shell/module.rc, pass in a parameter of "start".
Also look for Shell/enable.sh, which usually calls module.rc .

You can skip all the bits that manage modules, try comparing the files to those in the HELLOWORLD module.

Best of luck in happy hacking land!