Get some base Linux info in QNAP TS-210 using console

QNAPs runs on (sometimes heavily modified) Debian distributions. But, what about kernel version etc.?

There several ways of getting this information from console. Out of them following works on TS-210:

• uname -a
• cat /etc/issue
• cat /proc/version

If you ever need more information on this then… LMGIFY.

In this article I’ll show you the very basic commands that can be used on QNAP TS-210 (modified Debian Linux) to obtain system release, version, hardware info etc.

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chown: Recursively change owner of all files and folders

Sometimes QNAP changes file owner to admin:administ (actually to admin:administrators — admin user in administrators group) which may cause some troubles on certain FTP operations when you’re logged in to QNAP’s FTP server with user different than admin (using this user to operate on FTP is a quite great mistake and you should always use other, less privileged user for this).

Using chown command you can easily fix this.

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Fix problems with sudoers or sudoers.so file on QNAP

Root / power-user configuration on QNAP devices is a little bit different (quite weird) than this, what you can find on most Unix/ Linux systems. And sometimes you may be hit with error messages like “admin is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported“, “sudoers.so must be owned by uid 0” etc. Here are some tips on what to do in this case.

For second error, claiming that sudoers.so file uid isn’t 0, first go to folder containing this file (/opt/libexec/ on QNAP TS-210) and ls -ls to check, who is current user of it. It should be admin:administ (actually admin:administrators, but ls -ls chops names to 8 characters).

If it isn’t, change ownership of this file and /opt/etc/sudoers folder, by executing:

chown admin:administrators /opt/libexec/sudoers.so
chown admin:administrators /opt/etc/sudoers

As for first error, saying, that admin is not in the sudoers file, you may try to execute sudo usermod -aG sudo,adm admin, but this will most likely fail on QNAP.

If it does, then fix this manually as described in here:

1. Execute visudo command to edit /opt/etc/sudoers.tmp file.
2. Scroll down contents of this file, until you reach root ALL=(ALL) ALL.
3. Hit Enter to add a new line below and write admin ALL=(ALL) ALL.
4. Hit Esc, enter wq and hit Enter to save file and exit forsakend vi editor.

This is the only solution, that I found working on my QNAP TS-210.

All others, that required using GRUP, were impossible, as you don’t have access to GRUP during QNAP boot.

Sending emails from console using ssmtp

This article shows simple examples (and disscusses most important side-effects) of using ssmtp for sending emails from console windows or from Bash script. I’m not a very experienced Linux user (actually, I’m very beginner), so consider possible mistakes in this text.

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Unable to set access rights to shares

If you are unable to set or change permissions to your shares (via Access Right Management > Share Folders) that could mean, your smb.conf file become corrupted.

Here are some tips and tricks on what to do in that case.

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Get WebSVN to QNAP

This guide assumes, that you have svn already installed on your QNAP, fully configured and working like a charm, and you just want to enhance it with web client (WebSVN). You can use this guide also on any other server, than QNAP, but keep in mind, that it contains some QNAP-specific problems.

Keep in mind: WebSVN (as good as all other alternatives mentioned in the end of this text) are read-only web SVN clients! You can do a lot of useful stuff on your repos, but forget about committing or anything similar that requires write access or changing repository structure.

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Copy large folders using command-line with progress indication

By many sources cp is mentioned as the fastest way to copy large filesets. And the only fault of it, is that it does not provide an easy way to see progress of copy process. This post discusses various ways of fixing this problem. Keep in mind, that this post is (again) QNAP-optimized, meaning that it mostly focuses on solutions available on my old, lame QNAP TS-210 NAS system. It only points out other methods, that are not available on this very limited edition of Linux.

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Formatting external USB drive under QNAP

At some point it turned out, that using web-panel build-in formatting functionality on board my QNAP TS-210 failed at some certain situations, when I was attempting to format my external USB drive. I did some research and came with conclusions, that I want to share in this article.

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Mount remote Windows share under QNAP

I use my QNAP as backup stations and this for 99% of operations I mount its shares under my Windows. Once, for some non-typical backup operation, I had to do something exactly opposite — mount remote Windows share under QNAP. Since I’m quite Linux newbie, I had to wrote this down for future reference.

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Fix for problem with mixing USB shares on QNAP

Most QNAPs randomly mounts USB disk shares. I.e. you can have disk attached to left USB port as USBDisk1, second as USBDisk2 and after reset — changed together. This causes many problems, where being unable to write some script accessing particular disks could be named at first. There isn’t an easy way to work around it. The only solution I found out was to write an script that resides in flash memory (therefore is called upon each restart of QNAP) and that mounts disks under shares similar to their disk labels.

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Run bash script with every startup of your machine

As a Windows-born user I was kind of surprised, that writing Linux version of autoexec.bat isn’t as easy task as it is under Windows (or formerly, under DOS, from which Windows has inherited this solution). Anyway, here is an example on how to execute bash script during every startup of QNAP machine.

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Remove non-empty directory on QNAP or Linux

You may try to use rm -rf [directory] to delete given directory along with all its content (including all subdirectiories and all files). Use this with caution, to not end up deleting all files on your root! :>

Note, that on QNAP (but not on regular Linux) you have to start your session as admin user, as you cannot use su command to become root. If you try this, you’ll end up with error su: user root does not exist.

The fastest way to download whole page

The fastest way to get whole page or FTP directory contents is to use wget like this:

[code language=”shell”]
wget -r "ftp://dylon.co.cc/Shaun The Sheep (high res) – Series 1 and 2/"
[/code]

However, this may not work always, if destination is secured by password or requires login.

In this situation you may consider rsync…

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Introduction to bash scripts

While playing with some extra features on my newly purchased QNAP TS-210 at some point I was forced to finally write some bash script to be able to control things, that are uncontrollable via administration panel. For this reason I had to learn myself at least basics of bash, that is installed on my QNAP. I used floppix page and linuxconfig.org Wiki as a base for my learning process (and source for this article), however I had to write down my own memo-list to be able to quickly find, what I’m looking for.

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No Samba access after password change

Let us understand it. Windows is stupid and idiotic system. Suppose, you store (remember) your NAS’s Samba username and password, so you don’t have to provide it, each time you access your local network share. If you thenchange your user password, Windows either won’t detect the fact that password has changed or, even if it detect it, it won’t show you login/password dialog box to provide new one. Instead, it continue to provide NAS with wrong (outdated) password.

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