Apart from a power button and some status LEDs on the front, the CH3SNAS has the following external interfaces:
a DC power suppy input This plug is for the supplied external power supply which is rated at 5 Volt by 3 Amps plus 12 Volt by 3 Amps. This 50 Watt rating suggests that the CH3SNAS uses roughly half of the peak power of high-end laptop. Most of this power will be used by the drives (when these are active).
Gigabit Ethernet port This is for connecting the NAS to your local-area network. The port supports 10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s and 1000 Mbit/s ethernet. In practice you are unlikely to see speeds above 200 Mbit/s – likely due to performance limitations of the CH3SNAS.
a single high-speed (480 Mbit/s) USB 2.0 port This port is only used to drive a printer. Other peripherals are not supported by the standard software. You cannot use the port to connect the CH3SNAS to a PC which acts as host without drastic software changes (a SAN is not a NAS; USB master/slave distinction; Windows does not support access to Ext2 formatted drives).
Hardware internals
The central processor in the CH3SNAS is a Marvell Feroceon 1850 processor core inside Marvell’s Feroceon 88F5182 chip “for Networking and Storage”. This core is compatible with the ARM v5TE instruction set architecture (often informally known as ARM9). Although some web sites state that this processor is an XScale processor, this is not inline with Marvell’s documentation and with the table provided by debug tooling specialist Lauterbach. See also Output of /proc/cpuinfo.
In Linux kernel circles, the chip is often referred to as Orion after internal code name. Marvell has been very active recently to get the mainstream Linux kernel to support this architecture.
System-on-Chip
This 88F5182 features a general-purpose CPU (the Feroceon), memory interfaces, as well as a dual port SATA controller, two USB ports (one is unused), and the digital circuitry (“MAC”) required for Gigabit Ethernet. Thus if we compare the 88F5182 to a hypothetical single-chip NAS, it lacks memory (which is normal), analog circuitry (“PHY”) needed for the Gigabit Ethernet port and it requires the usual handful of smaller support devices. The 88F5182 also provides PCI and PCI Express support, but neither is utilized in the CH3SNAS.
Gigabit Ethernet Tranceiver
The physical layer for Gigabit Ethernet (as well as 10 and 100 Mbit/s Ethernet) is provided by a separate Marvell 88E1111 chip. This converts (differential) serial signals into lower speed parallel data for further processing by the MAC layer in the 88F5182. The serial input/output pins are not directly connected to the RJ45 connector, but pass via a transformer (“magnetics”). This is probably to accomodate for differences in common mode level between two computers, and possibly to provide a degree of electrical safety.
DRAM
The CH3SNAS has 64 MBytes of volatile Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAM. The DRAM is not upgradeable as both 256 Mbit Nanya NT5DS16M16CS-6K chips are soldered to the main circuit board.
DRAM is needed to run the software (variables, state, stack). It is also used to buffer data for the various servers (e.g. files to hard disks gets buffered in memory and then sent via Serial ATA drives). It also contains a RAMdisk which behaves like a hard disk, but looses its data when the devices is turned off.
Non-volatile memory
The CH3SNAS has 8 MBytes of Flash memory (Spansion S29GL064A90TFIR4) to hold the firmware and its support files (using a compressed, read-only file system).
Real-time clock
Regardless of whether the CH3SNAS is on or off, a real-time clock chip (the ST M41T80) is powered up from a battery and keeps track of time. This is similar to how PCs work and is needed, for example to execute tasks at predetermined times/dates. Unfortunately, the real-time clock cannot wake up the CH3SNAS at some predetermined time. See Tutorial on NTP-Timesynchronization for information about accuracy of the time function available to software and how to improve that by synchronizing across the network.
Battery
The real-time clock is powered by a 3V battery. The battery should last a few years. If you ever find that the NAS ever looses track of time when you turn if off or disconnect the power, you should replace this battery.
Comparison to a PC
No display or sound
If we compare this to what people typically expect in a stand-alone computer, there is a no display or option to connect one (compensated by browser-based configurability), there is no sound output or option to add sound (compensated by a few LEDs) and no direct keyboard or mouse input possible (compensated by running a web browser on a “real” computer when you need to configure the CH3SNAS).
Soldered-in memory
There is also no way to add or extend the memory inside the system. This is normally not needed. But can be critical for advanced users because the embedded software inside the system does not (unlike personal computers)use space on the hard drive as extra “virtual” memory. All software is expected to be fully operational – even if no drives are inserted.
Virtual memory
During normal operation, the CH3SNAS has 0.5 or even 1 GBytes of virtual memory. This “swap” space on the hard disks (0.5 GBytes/drive) is used to temporarily store stuff that doesn’t fit into DRAM. This is pretty normal for Linux, but is a bit special because under some conditions (e.g. no drives are available yet) the same software needs to be able to run without virtual memory.
User-installable software
A more fundamental difference between a personal computer and an appliance like the CH3SNAS, is that users expect to be able to easily install new software (e.g. a game) on their personal computer. The CH3SNAS is an embedded computer in the sense that it comes with pre-loaded software, and you are unable to easily add more software: the system is closed and optimized for a particular set of tasks. Fortunately there are ways for advanced users to add more software (see fun_plug within the constraints of the memory limitations.
CH3SNAS Hardware OverviewMarvell Feroceon 88F5182 chipMarvell 88E1111 Gigabit Ethernet tranceiverTransformerOne of the two Nanya 32 Mbyte DDR DRAM chips8 Mbytes of Flash memory supplied by SpansionThe battery used to power the real-time clock (the 8-pin chip)CH3SNAS external interfaces
If you only want to temporarily deactivate fun_plug, simply rename the file fun_plug in the topmost directory of your CH3SNAS, reboot, and you are done.
But there could be cases where you want to completely remove fun_plug. Because the folder containing the fun_plug packages is owned by user root, this folder can only be deleted by root. This can be done by a single rm (remove) command in a PuTTY (ssh) terminal session if you are log in as root. You may want to see this article on root user for information about the special role of the root user.
But let’s assume pessimistically that that doesn’t work because the ssh server is not running or because you have problems logging in as root. Fortunately, the fun_plug script is no owned by root can still be modified by non-root users. This enables a trick to remove the folders without using root privileges: simply add commands for the removal of the fun_plug folder and the fun_plug script to the script itself. These commands will be executed under root privileges during the next reboot.
Note that the folder may be named either ffp or fun_plug.d – depending on the version of fun_plug that you have installed.
Script
You have to download the Script for the Removal here
Installation and execution
Rename the downloaded script to fun_plug and copy it to the NAS in the topmost directory of Volume_1. This will probably overwrite a existing script file fun_plug.
Reboot the CH3SNAS by holding down the power button 5 seconds or via the web interface (Tools -> System -> Reboot). During the reboot, fun_plug will be completely removed.
This tutorial is outdated and no longer maintained! Please check for the current tutorial here
The Conceptronic CH3SNAS runs an embedded version of the Linux operating system (OS). This includes a kernel and various Linux programs (mainly servers). Because the CH3SNAS (and many others) runs on an ARM processor, the executable version of Linux and the programs are binaries generated for the ARM processor.
The Firmwares includes a very interesting bonus: the user can execute a script (file) named “fun_plug” when the OS is booted. Unlike all the other Linux software which is loaded when the NAS boots, this file is located on Volume_1 of the hard disk rather than within the flash memory. This means the user can easily and safely modify the file because the contents of the flash memory is not changed. If you delete the fun_plug file (see here for instructions), or replace your hard disk, the modification is gone.
Fun_plug allows the user to start additional programs and tools on the NAS. A Berlin-based developer named “Fonz” created a package called “ffp” (Fonz fun_plug), which includes the script and some extra software which can be invoked by fun_plug.
Installation of fun_plug is easy and takes about 6 steps (with two optional more if you want to do some sightseeing rather than just racing over the Autobahn). These steps should be performed carefully, as they depend on typed commands and running with “root” privileges.
Fun_plug is essentially a technique to stepwise turn a NAS with fixed out-of-the-box functionality into an open Linux machine on which you can install additional software packages and, if you want, learn a bit about Linux.
Responsibility
This also implies that you are (temporarily or permanently) turning a stable turnkey system into a system that Conceptronic no longer supports. This is similar to buying a notebook with Microsoft software, and installing Linux on it. The shop where you bought it can no longer help you if you claim the audio no longer works. Although there is a Tutorial on how to disable and even remove fun_plug, and although the authors have tested their recipes, checked the wording and added warnings, these are advanced tools which can, if you experiment more than your own know-how can handle, give advanced problems.
Risks involved in all this are not so much damaging your hardware (shouldn’t be possible), but loss of reliability of the NAS (you bought a file server to reliably store files, didn’t you). This risk may be acceptable because the software was preintegrated and tested by competent people. But you yourself are, at the end of the day, responsible for deciding to use this.
Possibly a less obvious, but more real risk is that some kind of extensions to the NAS (e.g. adding a server) imply that you may decide to open your local network a bit to the outside world. For example, to allow others to view your holiday videos stored on the device. The out-of-the-box NAS can already have this problem (via the ftp server). The point here is that you are responsible for the security of your device and entire network. This site doesn’t even have tutorials on basic security issues like firewalls, etc. because these are all NAS independent and the tutorials would never be foolproof anyway. So when used wrongly, the NAS and firewall obviously do allow others to read more data than you intended. Or to delete your valuable data. Or to replace software by other software (chance is small, but the impact is high).
Conclusion: as the NAS is a powerful networked device, and as these tutorials can help you make it even more powerful, you are responsibility for having the basic understanding of networked security. Again, this also applies to an out-of-the-box NAS. But the more you mess with it, the more you need to apply some common sense. This is incidentally the reason why we provide some explanation on what you are doing in the tutorials, rather than just telling you what to type 😉
Benefits
The main reason why people go this route is to extend their NAS with servers such as BitTorrent clients and Web servers. Other typical uses are to add extensions which fix current limitations of the device (e.g. time accuracy, fan noise).
Technical synopsis
In a first step, we install a script named fun_plug that provides a hook to extend the boot process of Linux on the NAS. That hook was intentionally added by the vendor to enable this. But Conceptronic does not document or support all of this.
An initial set of packages (downloaded as a single compressed archive) gives you enough tools to get started and, if you are curious about the machine or its software, to carefully look around.
This set of tools gives you the ability to install even more software packages (typically servers) from trusted sources. These packages should obviously all have been compiled for the ARM-type processor in the CHS3SNAS and should have been tested on the device (or a very similar device) by a software expert.
Tested Devices
This Tutorial has been tested on various devices. Other devices may work, please leave a comment in case you have tested an additional device.
fun_plug (this is a text file, you probably have to right-click to save it to disk) Note: If you want to install fun_plug on the D-Link DNS-320/DNS-325/DNS-345, download this file: fun_plug
fun_plug.tgz (this is a 10 MByte “tarball” file, roughly the Linux counterpart of a Zip file)
Place a copy of both files in the topmost directory of Volume_1 of your NAS using Windows Explorer (see Screenshot of what shared network drives looks like in Explorer, or alternatively use Samba or FTP).
Option: view the fun_plug script
For fun, you may want to open the file fun_plug by left-clicking here. Alternatively you can open it in Windows’ Wordpad or, better, Notepad++ under Windows. Please be careful not to accidentally modify it. Avoid using Windows’ Notepad for viewing/editing Linux text files: Windows and Linux use different end-of-line conventions.
The script fun_plug is an ASCII file with commands which are executed by the Linux command interpreter (sh for “shell”).
Lines starting with “#” are comments (“#!/bin/sh” is a special case).
You might be able to decode that the program creates a log file called ffp.log (an ASCII file used here to capture the lines which start with “echo”).
Firstly, a number of named constants are defined for various file names and fragments of file names (the lines like “FFP_SOMETHING=...“).
You can see that Fonz developed it for a D-Link DNS-323 (rather than a Conceptronic CH3SNAS, but this doesn’t matter as Uli, PeterH and others have tested in on the CH3SNAS).
The command date will copy the current date and time to the log file.
Next, a first script setup.sh is run if it is found in the expected /mnt/HD_a2/.bootstrap/ folder. Initially it will not be found.
Then a new directory “ffp” is created (mkdir) and the fun_plug.tgz file is unpacked (tar) into that directory. This step is a bit more complex than normal due to a problem with the tar version supplied with the NAS. As a workaround tar is run twice (first the older version, and then the tar version which was untarred from fun_plug.tgz).
If all went well, the log file gets an extra “OK” string. And the tarball input file is deleted (rm). This obviously only happens once (the script skips the unpacking if the tarball file is not found using the if [condition]; commands fi construct).
The “chown” is about changing ownership for a program called busybox. And “chmod” is about changing access privileges.
Then, a script file /ffp/etc/fun_plug.init (“containing the ffp-scripts package”) is executed if it is detected.
Next, a script file /ffp/etc/fun_plug.local is executed if it is detected. It can be used to add your own startup commands: it will not be overwritten by package updates.
Finally, a script file /ffp/etc/rc is run if it exists.
Reboot
Reboot the NAS by holding down the power button 5 seconds or via the web interface (”Tools” -> ”System” -> ”Reboot”). This causes the NAS to go and find the file fun_plug on Volume_1 and execute it.
Option: view ffp.log
If you are interested, you will find that the fun_plug.tgz tarball has disapeared, and has been unpacked into the newly created ffp directory.
You will also find the ffp.log file created during execution of the fun_plug script and while executing some of its commands. It is longish (e.g. 47 KBytes) because the tar program generates a lot of warnings about repairing links (this only happens once). You can view the log file with WordPad or NotePad++.
From now on, whenever the NAS is rebooted and thus the fun_plug script is re-executed, the script appends about 15 extra text lines to the end of this log file. These contain the date/time of reboot and the status of various servers which you may enable in the future (see below). This appending of information to ffp.log gives you one way to determine whether fun_plug is really running: if you last reboot of the NAS is listed, fun_plug and any servers that it actives are running.
Note that the end of the initial log file already states that a server called telnetd is already running. We will use Telnet in the next step.
Connect via telnet
Telnet SessionAfter rebooting, you need to connect to the NAS using a protocol called Telnet. Telnet allows you to “login” on a remote machine via a command line window.
Windows users can use an open-source telnet client called PuTTY. PuTTY is a self-contained program: the PuTTY.exe file can be stored wherever convenient and executed without any prior installation. In the PuTTY configuration screen you need to set the following before pressing Open:
Host name (or IP address): use the name of the share (e.g. CH3SNAS) or its IP address (the factory default is 192.168.0.20)
Select Connection type “Telnet” (which defaults to port 23)
Now you can press Open (PuTTY can save these settings under a default or name if you want, but you will likely be using ssh instead of telnet later on).
Linux users are “supposed to be” familiar with how to use telnet.
After connecting to the device, the first line telnet will show:
/#
Now you are logged in. This command “prompt” is where you can type in commands. The prompt shows you are in the root directory. Note that Linux command lines are not very communicative. These Rambo-like social skills are generally attributed to Linux’ resource-deprived childhood.
Change root password
We proceed with updating /etc/shadow by using the program pwconv. It uses /etc/passwd to generate the necessary lines in the shadow-file.
pwconv
Now we need to change the password of user “root” to prevent unauthorized access.
Run the passwd command and enter a new password twice (note that Linux passwords are case-sensitive):
passwd
Next, activate the root-user which is disabled by default:
usermod -s/ffp/bin/sh root
And change the home-directory of root to a permanent one:
If this was successful, proceed to the next step, otherwise return to “passwd“.
Store the password in the NAS. This step is essential, otherwise your password will be cleared on the next reboot! Please check the following section before executing the command itself:
Note: For the D-Link DNS-343, you need a different store-passwd.sh script. See DNS-343 store-passwd.sh
Note: For the D-Link DNS-320/DNS-325/DNS-345, you need a different store-passwd.sh script. See this entry for further details
Now execute the command:
store-passwd.sh
This invokes another shell (.sh) script which copies the password-related files to data partitions in Flash memory (mtd1 and mtd2).
Activate SSH
Now activate SSH (secure shell: telnet has major security limitations). Such lines can best be copied line-by-line or together into PuTTY:
First Connection with SSHNote that executing sshd.sh takes a while to execute and generates three pairs encryption keys for secure communication between the CH3SNAS and a remote client (computer). Each pair has a “fingerprint” for the public key and a corresponding graphical “randomart” image. The fingerprint for the RSA encryption algorithm will incidentally show up again in the next step.
As shown in one of the pictures, the first time you connect to this new (as far as ssh is concerned) machine, you will get a stern warning from ssh. This is because ssh expects to be connecting to this machine through an encrypted connection (now and likely in the future). But ssh wants to be sure that you are connecting to the intended machine rather than to an imposter (“man-in-the-middle”) and has no way of knowing if this is the case. Assuming that you are connecting to via your own (safe) LAN, you don’t need to worry whether the presented identification (public-key fingerprint) is the right one. If you need to connect over the internet (very unlikely) or are paranoid (unlikely), you can follow the confirmation procedure described in this website.
Note that this step associates the name and IP number of your NAS with this public key (this is stored on your computer). This means that during future ssh sessions to this machine the confirmation of the public key is done automatically.
Logging in using SSH
Now you can try to login using an ssh session as user root. This involves starting a second copy of PuttY.
Once you were logged in sucessfully, you can deactivate telnet using:
chmod-x/ffp/start/telnetd.sh
SSH SessionIf the login was not successful, please check that you executed all necessary steps from above. If you still cannot login, please contact us in our forums.
Note that at this point telnet is actually still running, but it will stop working the next time you reboot the NAS. Once you have tested that the ssh server and the associated root password, and encryption keys are working fine you can reboot the NAS: from then on your NAS appliance has essentially been turned into a (somewhat) general purpose Linux computer which you can tweak via “normal” (sic) ssh command line sessions.
Now what?
Congratulations! With the last step, you’ve installed your fun_plug 🙂
Note that the initial execution of the fun_plug script creates a new usThe Conceptronic CH3SNAS runs an embedded version of the Linux operating system (OS). This includes a kernel and various Linux programs (mainly servers). Because the CH3SNAS (and many others) runs on an ARM processor, the executable version of Linux and the programs are binaries generated for the ARM processor.
The Firmwares includes a very interesting bonus: the user can execute a script (file) named “fun_plug” when the OS is booted. Unlike all the other Linux software which is loaded when the NAS boots, this file is located on Volume_1 of the hard disk rather than within the flash memory. This means the user can easily and safely modify the file because the contents of the flash memory is not changed. If you delete the fun_plug file (see here for instructions), or replace your hard disk, the modification is gone.
Fun_plug allows the user to start additional programs and tools on the NAS. A Berlin-based developer named “Fonz” created a package called “ffp” (Fonz fun_plug), which includes the script and some extra software which can be invoked by fun_plug.
Installation of fun_plug is easy and takes about 6 steps (with two optional more if you want to do some sightseeing rather than just racing over the Autobahn). These steps should be performed carefully, as they depend on typed commands and running with “root” privileges.
Fun_plug is essentially a technique to stepwise turn a NAS with fixed out-of-the-box functionality into an open Linux machine on which you can install additional software packages and, if you want, learn a bit about Linux.
Responsibility
This also implies that you are (temporarily or permanently) turning a stable turnkey system into a system that Conceptronic no longer supports. This is similar to buying a notebook with Microsoft software, and installing Linux on it. The shop where you bought it can no longer help you if you claim the audio no longer works. Although there is a Tutorial on how to disable and even remove fun_plug, and although the authors have tested their recipes, checked the wording and added warnings, these are advanced tools which can, if you experiment more than your own know-how can handle, give advanced problems.
Risks involved in all this are not so much damaging your hardware (shouldn’t be possible), but loss of reliability of the NAS (you bought a file server to reliably store files, didn’t you). This risk may be acceptable because the software was preintegrated and tested by competent people. But you yourself are, at the end of the day, responsible for deciding to use this.
Possibly a less obvious, but more real risk is that some kind of extensions to the NAS (e.g. adding a server) imply that you may decide to open your local network a bit to the outside world. For example, to allow others to view your holiday videos stored on the device. The out-of-the-box NAS can already have this problem (via the ftp server). The point here is that you are responsible for the security of your device and entire network. This site doesn’t even have tutorials on basic security issues like firewalls, etc. because these are all NAS independent and the tutorials would never be foolproof anyway. So when used wrongly, the NAS and firewall obviously do allow others to read more data than you intended. Or to delete your valuable data. Or to replace software by other software (chance is small, but the impact is high).
Conclusion: as the NAS is a powerful networked device, and as these tutorials can help you make it even more powerful, you are responsibility for having the basic understanding of networked security. Again, this also applies to an out-of-the-box NAS. But the more you mess with it, the more you need to apply some common sense. This is incidentally the reason why we provide some explanation on what you are doing in the tutorials, rather than just telling you what to type 😉
Benefits
The main reason why people go this route is to extend their NAS with servers such as BitTorrent clients and Web servers. Other typical uses are to add extensions which fix current limitations of the device (e.g. time accuracy, fan noise).
Technical synopsis
In a first step, we install a script named fun_plug that provides a hook to extend the boot process of Linux on the NAS. That hook was intentionally added by the vendor to enable this. But Conceptronic does not document or support all of this.
An initial set of packages (downloaded as a single compressed archive) gives you enough tools to get started and, if you are curious about the machine or its software, to carefully look around.
This set of tools gives you the ability to install even more software packages (typically servers) from trusted sources. These packages should obviously all have been compiled for the ARM-type processor in the CHS3SNAS and should have been tested on the device (or a very similar device) by a software expert.
Tested Devices
This Tutorial has been tested on various devices. Other devices may work, please leave a comment in case you have tested an additional device.
fun_plug (this is a text file, you probably have to right-click to save it to disk) Note: If you want to install fun_plug on the D-Link DNS-320/DNS-325/DNS-345, download this file: fun_plug
fun_plug.tgz (this is a 10 MByte “tarball” file, roughly the Linux counterpart of a Zip file)
Place a copy of both files in the topmost directory of Volume_1 of your NAS using Windows Explorer (see Screenshot of what shared network drives looks like in Explorer, or alternatively use Samba or FTP).
Option: view the fun_plug script
For fun, you may want to open the file fun_plug by left-clicking here. Alternatively you can open it in Windows’ Wordpad or, better, Notepad++ under Windows. Please be careful not to accidentally modify it. Avoid using Windows’ Notepad for viewing/editing Linux text files: Windows and Linux use different end-of-line conventions.
The script fun_plug is an ASCII file with commands which are executed by the Linux command interpreter (sh for “shell”).
Lines starting with “#” are comments (“#!/bin/sh” is a special case).
You might be able to decode that the program creates a log file called ffp.log (an ASCII file used here to capture the lines which start with “echo”).
Firstly, a number of named constants are defined for various file names and fragments of file names (the lines like “FFP_SOMETHING=...“).
You can see that Fonz developed it for a D-Link DNS-323 (rather than a Conceptronic CH3SNAS, but this doesn’t matter as Uli, PeterH and others have tested in on the CH3SNAS).
The command date will copy the current date and time to the log file.
Next, a first script setup.sh is run if it is found in the expected /mnt/HD_a2/.bootstrap/ folder. Initially it will not be found.
Then a new directory “ffp” is created (mkdir) and the fun_plug.tgz file is unpacked (tar) into that directory. This step is a bit more complex than normal due to a problem with the tar version supplied with the NAS. As a workaround tar is run twice (first the older version, and then the tar version which was untarred from fun_plug.tgz).
If all went well, the log file gets an extra “OK” string. And the tarball input file is deleted (rm). This obviously only happens once (the script skips the unpacking if the tarball file is not found using the if [condition]; commands fi construct).
The “chown” is about changing ownership for a program called busybox. And “chmod” is about changing access privileges.
Then, a script file /ffp/etc/fun_plug.init (“containing the ffp-scripts package”) is executed if it is detected.
Next, a script file /ffp/etc/fun_plug.local is executed if it is detected. It can be used to add your own startup commands: it will not be overwritten by package updates.
Finally, a script file /ffp/etc/rc is run if it exists.
Reboot
Reboot the NAS by holding down the power button 5 seconds or via the web interface (”Tools” -> ”System” -> ”Reboot”). This causes the NAS to go and find the file fun_plug on Volume_1 and execute it.
Option: view ffp.log
If you are interested, you will find that the fun_plug.tgz tarball has disapeared, and has been unpacked into the newly created ffp directory.
You will also find the ffp.log file created during execution of the fun_plug script and while executing some of its commands. It is longish (e.g. 47 KBytes) because the tar program generates a lot of warnings about repairing links (this only happens once). You can view the log file with WordPad or NotePad++.
From now on, whenever the NAS is rebooted and thus the fun_plug script is re-executed, the script appends about 15 extra text lines to the end of this log file. These contain the date/time of reboot and the status of various servers which you may enable in the future (see below). This appending of information to ffp.log gives you one way to determine whether fun_plug is really running: if you last reboot of the NAS is listed, fun_plug and any servers that it actives are running.
Note that the end of the initial log file already states that a server called telnetd is already running. We will use Telnet in the next step.
Connect via telnet
Telnet SessionAfter rebooting, you need to connect to the NAS using a protocol called Telnet. Telnet allows you to “login” on a remote machine via a command line window.
Windows users can use an open-source telnet client called PuTTY. PuTTY is a self-contained program: the PuTTY.exe file can be stored wherever convenient and executed without any prior installation. In the PuTTY configuration screen you need to set the following before pressing Open:
Host name (or IP address): use the name of the share (e.g. CH3SNAS) or its IP address (the factory default is 192.168.0.20)
Select Connection type “Telnet” (which defaults to port 23)
Now you can press Open (PuTTY can save these settings under a default or name if you want, but you will likely be using ssh instead of telnet later on).
Linux users are “supposed to be” familiar with how to use telnet.
After connecting to the device, the first line telnet will show:
/#
Now you are logged in. This command “prompt” is where you can type in commands. The prompt shows you are in the root directory. Note that Linux command lines are not very communicative. These Rambo-like social skills are generally attributed to Linux’ resource-deprived childhood.
Change root password
We proceed with updating /etc/shadow by using the program pwconv. It uses /etc/passwd to generate the necessary lines in the shadow-file.
pwconv
Now we need to change the password of user “root” to prevent unauthorized access.
Run the passwd command and enter a new password twice (note that Linux passwords are case-sensitive):
passwd
Next, activate the root-user which is disabled by default:
usermod -s/ffp/bin/sh root
And change the home-directory of root to a permanent one:
If this was successful, proceed to the next step, otherwise return to “passwd“.
Store the password in the NAS. This step is essential, otherwise your password will be cleared on the next reboot! Please check the following section before executing the command itself:
Note: For the D-Link DNS-343, you need a different store-passwd.sh script. See DNS-343 store-passwd.sh
Note: For the D-Link DNS-320/DNS-325/DNS-345, you need a different store-passwd.sh script. See this entry for further details
Now execute the command:
store-passwd.sh
This invokes another shell (.sh) script which copies the password-related files to data partitions in Flash memory (mtd1 and mtd2).
Activate SSH
Now activate SSH (secure shell: telnet has major security limitations). Such lines can best be copied line-by-line or together into PuTTY:
First Connection with SSHNote that executing sshd.sh takes a while to execute and generates three pairs encryption keys for secure communication between the CH3SNAS and a remote client (computer). Each pair has a “fingerprint” for the public key and a corresponding graphical “randomart” image. The fingerprint for the RSA encryption algorithm will incidentally show up again in the next step.
As shown in one of the pictures, the first time you connect to this new (as far as ssh is concerned) machine, you will get a stern warning from ssh. This is because ssh expects to be connecting to this machine through an encrypted connection (now and likely in the future). But ssh wants to be sure that you are connecting to the intended machine rather than to an imposter (“man-in-the-middle”) and has no way of knowing if this is the case. Assuming that you are connecting to via your own (safe) LAN, you don’t need to worry whether the presented identification (public-key fingerprint) is the right one. If you need to connect over the internet (very unlikely) or are paranoid (unlikely), you can follow the confirmation procedure described in this website.
Note that this step associates the name and IP number of your NAS with this public key (this is stored on your computer). This means that during future ssh sessions to this machine the confirmation of the public key is done automatically.
Logging in using SSH
Now you can try to login using an ssh session as user root. This involves starting a second copy of PuttY.
Once you were logged in sucessfully, you can deactivate telnet using:
chmod-x/ffp/start/telnetd.sh
SSH SessionIf the login was not successful, please check that you executed all necessary steps from above. If you still cannot login, please contact us in our forums.
Note that at this point telnet is actually still running, but it will stop working the next time you reboot the NAS. Once you have tested that the ssh server and the associated root password, and encryption keys are working fine you can reboot the NAS: from then on your NAS appliance has essentially been turned into a (somewhat) general purpose Linux computer which you can tweak via “normal” (sic) ssh command line sessions.
Now what?
Congratulations! With the last step, you’ve installed your fun_plug 🙂
Note that the initial execution of the fun_plug script creates a new user group utmp.
The script that installs the ssh server creates a new user named sshd and adds the user to utmp. This user is for internal use only, and has no ability to login. It is standard procedure when installing OpenSSH, and believed to be safe.
On a NAS, user sshd also shows up as having read-only ftp access to Volume_1. Although it is doubtful that this user really can access ftp, this seems to be a bug and is being investigated.er group utmp.
The script that installs the ssh server creates a new user named sshd and adds the user to utmp. This user is for internal use only, and has no ability to login. It is standard procedure when installing OpenSSH, and believed to be safe.
On a NAS, user sshd also shows up as having read-only ftp access to Volume_1. Although it is doubtful that this user really can access ftp, this seems to be a bug and is being investigated.
Conceptronic CH3SNASThe CH3SNAS is a Network-Attached Storage device manufactured and marketed under the Conceptronic brand. This brand is owned by the 2L Alliance based in The Netherlands.
The CH3SNAS is essentially a small file server which you connect to a local TCP/IP network via an ethernet cable. In a home network, the CH3SNAS will typically be connected via a UTP cable to a router. The CH3SNAS can contain up to two 3.5 inch SATA drives (which can be sold bundled with the actual CH3SNAS). The drives can have any capacity (typically 0.2-1 TBytes/drive). If two drives are used (for extra capacity or to enable RAID 0 and 1 modes), they do not need to have equal storage capacity or be of the same brand.
The CH3SNAS is internally a small, networked Linux computer with one or more shared (logical or physical) network drives. The CH3SNAS is primarily intended to store files that can be accessed by a computer on the local network.
One specific application highlighted by the vendor is to stream audio or video from the CH3SNAS to other networked devices such as laptops or a Playstation 3. Alternatively it can centrally store media, which can then be copied to smaller portable devices (Conceptronics markets their storage product line with the slogan Grab’n’Go).
Files can optionally be accessed across the internet (via an FTP server, which is disabled by default for security reasons). As a bonus, the CH3SNAS can also act as a print server, thus converting a printer with a USB port into a printer than can be shared across the local-area network.
CH3SNAS Usage
The CH3SNAS caters to a wide range of users:
average home PCs users with a wired or wireless network
users interested in computing technology (and thus interested in trying out more advanced featues)
tweakers who are willing to spend significant amounts of time to tune/adapt the (and may thus actually extend the system – which is internally Linux-based).
More information on target users, target usage, and interoperability with various operating systems can be found in the article on Usage-Scenarios.
Hard disk configurations
The CH3SNAS can be operated with a single or dual 3.5 inch hard disk of any capacity or brand. When the system is initialized, the user has the option of creating partitions (volumes) which can be on a single disk or span both disks. A list and discussion of the possible storage configurations can be found in Configuration Options.
Hardware
Marvell 88F5182Externally, the CH3SNAS has a Gigabit Ethernet connector, a USB port for connecting a printer, a connector for the supplied power supply, a single on/off button, four status LEDs and a somewhat hidden reset button.
The internals obviously consist of the hard disks themselves (which may come with the CH3SNAS, but can also be purchased seperately) and a circuit board that houses the processor and memory chips which form the small computer which contols the hardware and provides the numerous software features. Unlike destop PCs or laptops, the computer is not hardware upgradeable. The central chip is a complex System-on-Chip manufactured by Marvell (Marvell Feroceon 88F5182). More hardware details and photos of all key components can be found in Hardware.
Software
Webbased ConfigurationThe software running on the embedded processor core is mainly needed to support the following features:
SMB/CIFS (file server for a LAN)
FTP (file server for usage across the Internet)
Print server (connect a USB printer to the network)
uPnP (multimedia server)
iTunes server (Apple’s multimedia server)
More software details on these protocols and a more extensive list of modules can be found in [[CH3SNAS:Software]] [[XXX]]. The software also includes a configuration interface which be access via a web browser (similar to the way routers are typically configured).
This Linux-based software is stored in an on-board non-volatile Flash memory which allows the CH3SNAS to boot even when the hard disks are not yet operational. The softwarecan be updated to newer firmware versions via the web-based configuration interface. In addition, the CH3SNAS (as well as various similar devices) have options to allow the more technically inclined to add scripts or even additional servers without having to recompile code or even without having to modify the content of the Flash (via the so-called fun_plug technique).
References
More detailed versions of the above abridged sections can be found on separate pages in this blog:
Usage – target users, target usage, and interoperability
The CH3SNAS uses the Linux ext2 file system, and thus cannot preserve data which was written to the hard disks (e.g. using Microsoft Windows) before these are inserted into the CH3SNAS: reformatting will normally be necessary for both a new and a used hard disk. Lets assume the drives have storage capacities of respectively C1 and, if a 2nd drive is present, C2 Gigabytes. The CH3SNAS supports a number of different ways in which to format individual hard disk partitions using the built-in web interface:
Standard – each drive can be accessed as a different volume (results in a volume of size C1 and, if present, C2)
JBOD – Just-a-Bunch of Disks, allowing both drives to be accessed as a single large volume (of size C1+C2)
RAID 0 – files are “striped” over both drives, thus potentially giving higher performance (resulting in a single volume of size 2*min(C1,C2))
RAID 1 – files are automatically mirrored at the sector level on both drives, thus allowing data recovery if either drive fails. RAID 1 results in a single volume of size min(C1,C2). Note that this occupies 2*min(C1,C2) of total disk space.
Configurations 2, 3, and 4 require a dual-drive system. A RAID 0 or 1 volume can be no larger than the smallest of the two drives, but can optionally be configured to be smaller than min(C1,C2). Any remaining space on both drives becomes accessible as a single JBOD volume.
Consequently, a dual-drive system can support up to 6 alternative configuration options:
Two Standard volumes
A single large JBOD volume
A single RAID 0 volume (if both drives have the same size, and no JBOD volume is needed)
A single smaller RAID 1 volume (if both drives have the same size, and no JBOD volume is needed)
A RAID 0 volume and a JBOD volume
A RAID 1 volume and a JBOD volume (see screen shot)
It may be possible to create other working configurations (such as RAID 0 + RAID 1 + JBOD), but these cannot be created using the built-in configuration interface and will probably not have been tested.
Under Windows, volumes can be assigned user-selectable drive letters (such as R: for a RAID).
The CH3SNAS seems to be targetted at home users with enough experience to set up a basic wired- or wirless network. Some effort was clearly invested in making the configuration of the system painless. The device and its manual thus do quite some handholding for the novice user to get the device to work as intended. The device and its manual unfortunately do not provide guidelines for novice users about suitable backup strategies or ways to safeguard their data. This may be current practice for this type of product, but is a problem when you give novice users the storage capacity to e.g. save all their home videos on a single drive or device. [IMO vendor should do something about this in printed manual, but volunteer to create a page on [[Data backup do’s and don’ts]]?]
The device does contain some optional features and settings (such as an FTP server or options for setting IP addresses) which are suited for more technically oriented users.
For the real enthusiasts (hobbyists, students, IT professionals) the CH3SNAS and some of its competitors provide
Compatibility with Microsoft Windows
The CH3SNAS is simplest to access for PCs running a version of Windows. This is because the access protocols are based on a set of proprietary Microsoft standards (MSB/CIFS) which are supported by Windows itself. Thus, to a PC running Microsoft Windows, the NAS looks exactly like another PC with one or more shared drives (see screenshot) and possibly a shared printer. No special software is therefore needed under Microsoft Windows to access or configure the CH3SNAS.
Although an EasySearch utility is provided to simplify initial network setup for non-technical users, it is relatively easy to set up the NAS without this using the written documentation. The actual configuration of the NAS (e.g. drive formatting, access control, enabling FTP) is done using a web browser (default IP address 192.168.0.20).
Compatibility with Linux PCs
Internally, the device runs a small Linux distribution and an open-source file sever (called a Samba server). This is presumably to keep the materials costs (smaller processor, less emory), development cost (open source) and power consumption of the device down.
The CH3SNAS can also be accessed by Linux PCs: although LINUX natively tends to use a UNIX equivalent (NFS) to the Microsoft protocols provided by the CH3SNAS, Samba client support is relatively standard in Linux distributions. Although setting up access to from a Linux PC will, however, be a bit trickier than from a PC running Microsoft Windows, this is not necessarily an issue for typical Linux users.
Alternatively, Linux PCs users can access an implementation of NFS which is hidden in the 1.03 firmware, but is not accessible via the web-based configuration interface (yet). A tutorial on to access this hidden feature will be provided in the future. For urgent needs, see the personal Blog of Dennis, a former employee of Conceptronic.
Compatibility with Apple computers
The CH3SNAS does not natively support Apple’s AppleTalk protocol suite (roughly Apple’s equivalent of Microsoft’s SMB/CIFS). Modifications are possible to support this. This involves installing the open source Nettatalk server via the use of FunPlug.
Compatibility with the Playstation 3
The CH3SNAS is sometimes used with Sony’s Playstation 3 for wireless streaming of multimedia. In this scenario, the PS3 discovers the CH3SNAS using uPnP and uses uPnP to display available tracks/videos.
Compatibility with the XboX 360
As of Firmware 1.05, the CH3SNAS can be discovered by the XboX 360 for streaming multimedia content to the XboX.
Here the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo on the Conceptronic CH3SNAS:
Processor : ARM926EJ-Sid(wb)rev0(v5l)
BogoMIPS : 331.77
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp java
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 5TEJ
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0x926
CPU revision : 0
Cache type : write-back
Cache clean : cp15 c7 ops
Cache lockdown : format C
Cache format : Harvard
I size : 32768
I assoc : 1
I line length : 32
I sets : 1024
D size : 32768
D assoc : 1
D line length : 32
D sets : 1024
Hardware : MV-88fxx81
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000
Here the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo on the Conceptronic CH3MNAS:
Processor : ARM926EJ-S rev0(v5l)
BogoMIPS : 332.59
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 5TEJ
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0x926
CPU revision : 0
Cache type : write-back
Cache clean : cp15 c7 ops
Cache lockdown : format C
Cache format : Harvard
I size : 32768
I assoc : 1
I line length : 32
I sets : 1024
D size : 32768
D assoc : 1
D line length : 32
D sets : 1024
Hardware : Feroceon
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000
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