NAS file management Qs

[gmhumphr]

New to NAS, have been doing a lot of research on this page and others and I think I should be able to keep up. Since I haven't actually started to build my network yet (moving in august) I tend to have a lot of questions about the physical nuts and bolts. I know that the NAS has plenty of snazzy features that I want to use but I want to know the physical folder layout, file destination.

The general layout is a 4br apartment for me and 3 friends near my university with one central location near the living room where the router, modem, nas and xbox 360 are, so those are all hard wired together. Then there will be 4 laptops and a few mobile devices that are wirelessly connected (not my apt, unable to wire it myself). My goal is to give myself a 2x 1tb drive RAID 1 setting to save personal files and media files which would be a safe place for others to store their multimedia and sort of pool together all of our collective music and movies so that we all have access to more and when we all go our separate ways everyone can take the newly formed whole joint multimedia library with them.

Specific question now:
I have a very neat manner about me and like to plan things out ahead of time so that when I equip I can spend a day getting everything set up right.

I know I want to give every user about 50gb of personal file space on the NAS to keep things safely backed up that they dont want to share with everyone one else on the network.

I want the folder layout of my NAS to be very clean and un cluttered, a few main folders leading to as many subfolders as people want. It seems that the NASes like to put folders for every module addon that they have (itunes server, ftp, DLNA stream, etc). When I build the movie library to be streamed to the comps and XBOX 360, do all the files need to be saved in the premade folder built around the UPnP/DLNA server? Same for iTunes streaming, do I save the content just on a folder that I name music or do I save it in the folder that is created as part of the specific server function of the NAS? Do I save in both places?

I'm trying to be as efficient as possible to avoid have a file saved two times on the NAS. When a media file needs to be moved from computer to NAS, what folder would I want to put it in in order to have it streamable. (maybe this should have been the question from the beginning and I could have save all the other typing)

That leads me to a question about personal space on the hard drive for each person. I imagine (correct me where I'm wrong please) the NAS home directory would have 5 folders: Person A, B, C, D and Shared. The NAS would be mapped as X: drive for example on my computer which I assume would lead to the root with the 5 folders. When user D tries to click on use C's folder (I understand rights are assigned from the NAS) will he be prompted for a user name and password?

Is it possible to map the drives as X: for common and Z: for personal on each person's individual computer to make it easier for them to save files to and know that one is theirs and protected while the other is shared or in order to map a drive to you have to have a physically different drive?

I hope I don't sound like a nut, but as I hope you may see, I understand the functions of the NAS (streaming, ftp, itunes, etc) but I don't understand the physical implementation of each. I am anxious for any replies, thanks.

 

[roamer]

When I build the movie library to be streamed to the comps and XBOX 360, do all the files need to be saved in the premade folder built around the UPnP/DLNA server? Same for iTunes streaming, do I save the content just on a folder that I name music or do I save it in the folder that is created as part of the specific server function of the NAS? Do I save in both places?

The first question - Which OS do you want to use?
Windows, Linux ?

If you install a streaming server, you will just add the directory where your media files are stored. The streaming server creates only an index about the files, the files are not copied to another directory (no duplicates).

That leads me to a question about personal space on the hard drive for each person. I imagine (correct me where I'm wrong please) the NAS home directory would have 5 folders: Person A, B, C, D and Shared. The NAS would be mapped as X: drive for example on my computer which I assume would lead to the root with the 5 folders. When user D tries to click on use C's folder (I understand rights are assigned from the NAS) will he be prompted for a user name and password?
...

Is it possible to map the drives as X: for common and Z: for personal on each person's individual computer to make it easier for them to save files to and know that one is theirs and protected while the other is shared or in order to map a drive to you have to have a physically different drive?

If you have the local filesystem structure in such a manner on your NAS like
/export/home/user_a
/export/home/user_b
/export/home/user_c
...
/export/home/public

You can either share the hole directory of /export/home/
or you can share all the directory separately.

If an user can access foreign personal-folder depends on the given permissions.
There are two points that you have to configure
- local permissions of the filessystem on the NAS
- permissions of the shares


Anyway you have two create useraccounts on your NAS
Each user will have their own homedirectory (personal-folder)
e.g user_a is owner of /export/home/user_a
That means user_a has fullaccess, but other users have read- or no access.

The directory /export/home/public should be full accessible for all users.

The next point - shares - if you share all folders separately, each user can mount their own personal-folder and the public folder.
That means user_a can mount /export/home/user_a as e.g drive:x and
/export/home/public as drive:y

They can't see/mount personal folder of another user.

That's the easiest way.

If you simply share /export/home/ and the user_a mounts this as drive:x
He will see also the personal-folders of all other users, but if and how he can access them depends on your share-config.
If it is configured in that way, that he don't have the permissions to access,
a window for username/password will appear.

But such config is annoying, because everytime if an user clicks accidentally on a folder, that is not accessible for him, the OS will ask for username/password...

 

[gmhumphr]

Thank you for the very informative post! The mounting of public and each person's private folders on their respective computers sounds like the best way to go about it!

More network information: clients are 4 Windows PCs and 2 Macs.

I understand that in the NAS you assign the user names and password for the people on it, so when user A tries to access/mount his share for the first time he will be prompted for the user name and password, he will enter it once, and will never have to do it again?

Clarifying other points,

The streaming server creates only an index about the files, the files are not copied to another directory (no duplicates).

when you install the media streaming modules you get to choose which folders to put them in, right? I might have a folder already populated with videos and when I install the module I choose that folder to install it into.

Does the FTP server work in a similar way? Say I want to access my personal files from school without having to remember to put the files on a flash drive, how would that be incorporated with my 5 different file areas? Would each share have its own address (I don't know how FTPs work even in day to day usage, this lingo may be off) or would the NAS have an address and then a user, when trying to access the NAS, be presented the root of the NAS and then proceed to the folders, having to enter user names and passwords as necessary?

 

[roamer]

I understand that in the NAS you assign the user names and password for the people on it, so when user A tries to access/mount his share for the first time he will be prompted for the user name and password, he will enter it once, and will never have to do it again?

- If you are using the the same username/password on your clients and NAS no question is prompted.
- If it's different it will be prompted once utill you change the user password on the NAS

Clarifying other points,

when you install the media streaming modules you get to choose which folders to put them in, right? I might have a folder already populated with videos and when I install the module I choose that folder to install it into.

No, program and data two different things.

If your NAS is e.g Windows based you are installing e.g. Itunes in C:\Program Files\itunes , but the audio files are stored in e:\mp3

After the installation you start the GUI (may be web-based) of your streaming server and start the configuration. -> add directory where the media files are stored.

The same with linux, e.g with mediatomb.

Does the FTP server work in a similar way? Say I want to access my personal files from school without having to remember to put the files on a flash drive, how would that be incorporated with my 5 different file areas? Would each share have its own address (I don't know how FTPs work even in day to day usage, this lingo may be off) or would the NAS have an address and then a user, when trying to access the NAS, be presented the root of the NAS and then proceed to the folders, having to enter user names and passwords as necessary?

You don't have different adresses.
If you start a ftp-session from a remote host, username/password will be prompted. After succesfull authentification your staying automatically in your personal-folder (if configured...[usually default]).

 

[gmhumphr]

- If you are using the the same username/password on your clients and NAS no question is prompted.
- If it's different it will be prompted once utill you change the user password on the NAS

Like the user name and password of my account on windows?

How safe is opening the NAS up as an FTP server? Obviously my usage is home based and I don't have any data that people would want or that is terribly valuable, but then again I don't understand why hackers target the people that they target. I see talk of VLAN and VPN but only vaguely understand them. I would have to forward the port on my router that the NAS was connected to, so that means there is no firewall service to it, or just that its IP is viewable from the internet? I was hoping that I could use the FTP server to host a few larger files that couldn't be emailed or maybe post pics on it for selling stuff on CL/Ebay, essentially an IP address from which to host pics that I could link to a website or even email to someone. Is it possible to create a free access point in the FTP and a password protected part?

It should be clear that I have never knowingly had any contact with an FTP...

 

[roamer]

In principle it's not recommended to use ftp over the internet.
At least you should use sftp.