This post details the steps I took to configure a Network Accessable Storage (NAS) using the Samba protocol on a Raspberry Pi 3 running the Raspbian Jessie Lite distribution. This was done using the openmediavault (OMV) project.

For redundancy purposes, a USB memory stick was configured as a backup location for the shared folder.

A new admin user

After logging in with the default pi root user, you can create a new root account with the following commands,

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$ sudo adduser admin
$ sudo usermod -aG sudo admin
$ su - admin  # Login as admin to verify things worked

At this point, you can create a new SSH connection into the Rpi using the new admin user and delete the default account,

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$ sudo deluser --remove-home pi

Configuring Timezone

The Rpi assumes UK as it’s default timezone. This isn’t something I usually care for in experimental projects, but for a NAS where backups are a concern it is probably best to use the local timezone. There is a linux utility which helps set this up. You can begin the process with the following command,

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$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Installing openmediavault

The openmediavault project maintains an official debian repository with support for the ARM architecture. You can add this as a source and install OMV using the following commands,

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$ cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
$ sudo touch openmediavault.list
$ sudo echo "deb http://packages.openmediavault.org/public erasmus main" > openmediavault.list
$ cd ~
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openmediavault-keyring postfix resolvconf
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openmediavault
$ sudo omv-initsystem

Bear in mind that some of these steps, ESPECIALLY the installation ones take time to run - anywhere between 5 to 30 minutes. I think this is more to do with the hardware limitations of the Rpi than network availability. And speaking of the installation steps, the openmediavault one asks you a few questions about mail service, mdadm and ProFTPD settings.

EXT4 formatting

You can insert a USB memory stick to act as the primary location for our network share. After that, using a web-browser on another system, you can login to the administrative interface of openmediavault using the admin username and password created earlier. The URL to use is the IP address assigned to the Rpi system.

Once logged in navigate to Storage > Physical Disks, select the USB device to use as primary share and Wipe it. This will clear out any data on it.

Next navigate to Storage > File systems, click the Create button and format the primary USB memory device in EXT4. You can Mount the drive using the web interface after that.

User account for sharing

Navigate to Access Rights Management > User menu and create a new user account. We’ll use this as the account to login to the NAS with from client devices.

Configuring a SMB share folder

Navigate to Services > SMB/CIFS. Select the Shares tab and add a new shared folder. You might need to create one on our primary USB memory device. Set the permissions as appropiate, return to the Settings tab and Enable the SMB share.

At this point, you should be able to use another system on same network to connect to the network share (IP address of the Rpi) using the user account we created in the earlier step. While it might be possible to use the admin account, I think it’s bad practise to share a root-level account like that.

USB backup

OMV doesn’t come with USB backup as part of it’s default configuration. You need to add it in as a plugin. Navigate to System > Plugins and you should find it listed under Section:Backup. Install it and you’ll find a new option Services > USB Backup. You can create new backup jobs which will trigger the first time they are created and whenever the USB drive is inserted into the board. I select the From shared folder to external storage mode for these jobs. It might be first required to insert the backup drives and reformat them to EXT4 before making the jobs.