How to setup a basic Slackware Linux NAS home server

I will explain how to setup a basic NAS server on Slackware Linux, but you could do the same on any Linux distro. I'm using Slackware because
I'm more accustom to it. I've setup Ubuntu NAS servers also, and they are great for this.
This NAS server is meant for personal use, a home NAS server. It doesn't have the security setup for outside networks. This is the exact way I
have my home NAS servers setup.
I've tried a lot of the great NAS server OS systems, TrueNAS (My personal favorite), Unraid, openmediavault, etc. They are great, and give you a
tremendous amount of control over the server, but for a simple home server they are extreme overkill. I wanted something simple and easy to
setup that would do just the things I need it to do, and take all the mystery out of the process.
This Slackware NAS server will use the ZFS filesystem for it's storage pools. Slackware doesn't support ZFS modules at boot, but we can make and
install OpenZFS, and load the modules after boot. There is a problem with this though, because everytime the kernel is updated you will have to
rebuild and reinstall OpenZFS. This is something some people may not want to deal with, and in that case I'd suggest using Ubuntu for the OS,
which has native ZFS support.

We need to start with a freshly installed and upgraded Slackware64-15.0 OS.
1. Download slackware64-15.0-install-dvd.iso
2. Start the install process. During the install I choose Ext4 for the filesystem, lilo for the bootloader, and make sure samba and sshd are set to
  start at boot, and very important, make sure mysqld is set to not start at boot. We only need to install the (A, AP, D, K, L, N) packages for this
  command line server.
3. After Slackware is installed exit the install menu and do a reboot. After the reboot run "mc" at the command prompt and navigate to /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  and uncomment and set "PermitRootLogin yes". Then navigate to /etc/lilo.conf and set "timeout = 0", or to whatever time you want. Then navigate to
  /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and uncomment "https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware64-15.0/". Then run lilo and reboot:
```
lilo
reboot
```
4. You can now login to your NAS server with PuTTY if you are on a different machine than the NAS server.
5. Okay, now do a full upgrade with the commands below.
```
slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all
```
  After the upgrade is finished run lilo then reboot:
```
lilo
reboot
```

Install Webmin as the server control panel. (Optional)

This server will be using Webmin for the server control panel, so we'll need to install some perl modules required by Webmin.

Install the perl modules by copy and pasting the block of text below into PuTTY that you have connected to your server.

export PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1
cpan install CPAN
cpan install App::cpanminus
cpanm -n Log::Log4perl
cpanm -n Authen::PAM DBD::mysql DBI IO::Pty Net::SSLeay Sys::Syslog

Intall Webmin

Webmin makes a great web based server control panel. Run the block of commands below to install.

mkdir -p /root/tmp
cd /root/tmp/
wget https://github.com/webmin/webmin/releases/download/2.202/webmin-2.202.tar.gz
tar -xf webmin-2.202.tar.gz
rm /root/tmp/webmin-2.202.tar.gz
cd webmin-2.202
./setup.sh /usr/local/webmin
rm -R /root/tmp/webmin-2.202

Install OpenZFS on Linux
We'll need to download, build, and install OpenZFS
```
# Download OpenZFS
cd /root/tmp
wget https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/download/zfs-2.2.6/zfs-2.2.6.tar.gz
tar -xf zfs-2.2.6.tar.gz
cd zfs-2.2.6
# Build and install OpenZFS
./configure
make
make install
depmod
```
Now OpenZFS is installed on your server.
Remember that everytime the Slackware Linux kernel is updated you'll have to rebuild and reinstall OpenZFS.
Create a ZFS pool
Now we'll create the ZFS pool that we want to share with our other home computers. I've got videos and music that I share with my livingroom
entertainment computer, which is running Windows 11. This setup works great for me, and it's simple.
There are many different ways to use drives with ZFS. I'll be focusing on:
raidz1 - 3 drives with 1 for redundency. Did the raidz1 because it was the cheapest way to get the most storage. I plan on going to the safer raidz2
in the near future, which is 5 disk with 2 for redundency. That would raise my storage to 24tb.
I have 3 8tb 3.5" SATA NAS drives attached to my Slackware NAS server, sdb, sdc, sdd. To use these 3 drives for my raidz1 storage pool named "storage",
I run the following command:
```
zpool create storage raidz1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
```
After you've created your storage pool it will show up in your root directory as a directory, "/storage" in my case. This is where you store the files
you want to share.
Next you'll need to change the permissions of the shared directory. In my case that would be the "/storage" directory.
```
chmod 0777 /storage
```
With this setup of raidz1 with 3 drives you can lose 1 drive due to errors or malfunction. Just replace the bad drive as soon as you can, and you're
back up to speed. With my 3 drives of 8tb in a raidz1 configuration I actually get about 15.5tb storage space.

Install wsdd2 (WSD/LLMNR Discovery/Name Service Daemon)

Next we need to download, build, and install the wsdd2 slackbuild package.

cd /root/tmp
wget https://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/15.0/network/wsdd2.tar.gz
tar -xf wsdd2.tar.gz
cd wsdd2
wget https://github.com/Netgear/wsdd2/archive/1.8.7/wsdd2-1.8.7.tar.gz
./wsdd2.SlackBuild
installpkg /tmp/wsdd2-1.8.7-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz

With wsdd2 our samba shares will be discovered.

Setting up Samba

First make sure Samba is started at boot:

chmod 0755 /etc/rc.d/rc.samba

Next configure Samba

Create the needed /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

Below is a very simple smb.conf for sharing your zfs pool without any password needed.
Just copy and paste using PuTTY the entire echo command below.

echo "[global]
  server string = Samba Server
  dns proxy = no 
  debug level = 0
  workgroup = WORKGROUP
  log file = /var/log/samba.%m
  read raw = no
  socket options = TCP_NODELAY
  bind interfaces only = Yes
  max log size = 5120
 # Change "storage" to the actual name of your ZFS pool.
  default = storage                          
  server role = standalone server
  map to guest = Bad User
  # Change "myfiles" to the folder name you want to show up in network discovery.
  netbios name = myfiles                     
  map to guest = Bad User
  server min protocol = SMB2_02
  # Change "myfiles" to the actual netbios name from above.
  server string = %h server (Samba, myfiles) 
  usershare allow guests = yes
    
[storage]
  # Change "/storage" to the actual name of your ZFS pool directory.
  path = /storage                            
  comment = storage
  browseable = yes
  public = yes
  writeable = yes
  case sensitive = auto
  preserve case = yes
  short preserve case = yes
  force create mode = 0666
  force directory mode = 0777" > /etc/samba/smb.conf

Almost done!

Lastly import your ZFS pool at boot, and start the wssd2 discovery service at boot.
Put the following at the top of your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file:
```
/usr/local/sbin/zpool import storage >/dev/null 2>&1 # Change "storage" to the name you gave your ZFS pool.
/usr/sbin/wsdd2 -d > /dev/null 2>&1
```
After you reboot you should be able to see your ZFS pool in Windows under Network.
Maintaining your ZFS pool
Check the status of your ZFS pool:
```
zpool status # This shows you the status of your zpools.
```
Check ZFS File system storage pool integrity.
To check the zfs pool storage integrity you need to periodically run a scrub operation on the pool, so on my system I run:
```
zpool scrub storage # This pool scrub operation may take many hours. I do this about once a month.
```
Rebuild and reinstall OpenZFS after Slackware Linux kernel is updated.
Everytime you update the Slackware Linux kernel you will have to rebuild and reinstall OpenZFS.
Assuming you have OpenZFS at /root/zfs-2.2.6
```
cd /root/zfs-2.2.6
make clean
./configure
make
make install
depmod
```
Hopefully you now have a Slackware NAS server ready to save and share files.

Recommendations for NAS drives.
I use 3.5" SATA NAS drives for my NAS servers. I would use SSD drives, but they are way too expensive at this point.
My favorite drives are the HGST Ultrastar Enterprise refurbished drives sold by GoHardDrive. I've got about 10 of them, and have never had a problem with any
of them yet. They have been rock solid, some many years old with many hours on them. You can get the HGST drives in 4tb, 8tb and 12tb. I paid about $200 for
3 8tb HGST NAS Helium filled drives. Got some Western Digital NAS drives too, and they do a great job also, but are way more expensive, so I highly recommend
the HGST drives.

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