Application needed to really use your NAS

[MikeG.6.5]

There is at least one windows application that is almost a requirement to make the fullest use of your NAS. This application is called WinSCP. I'm sure there are similar applications for MAC and Linux, but I wouldn't venture a guess as to what they are called, nor where to find/download them.

WinSCP can be found here: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php. This application is a combined File Manager/Explorer and Editor, as well as a Terminal and PuTTY front end for executing various shell, perl, python or other types of scripts or executing system level apps that can't be done with the ADM. The file manager within WinSCP goes in to the NAS at a much higher (root) level of the drives, as opposed to the ADM's File Manager. ADM's File Manager only takes you to the share level and to USB devices, and you really can't operate at the levels above the shares. (Root of the drive space, etc.)

**** WARNING **** If you have never used WinSCP before and you are not sure what you are trying to do, or if the file is needed, DON'T MESS WITH IT! Assume (until you research otherwise) that it is the most important file on your NAS. Don't delete ANYTHING unless you know what it is! You have been warned!

In order to be able to use WinSCP you have to enable the Terminal Services in the ADM. Do this through the Services app -> Terminal. Don't leave this as the default port of 22. You want to make it harder to get hacked into. I suggest going to ports in the 10000 range, but try keeping the 22, so one example would be 10022. If you know how to forward ports on your router, this is the number you are going to use for the LAN (local) side.

When you first open WinSCP it's going to give you a log in screen. This is the LAN IP of your device, or the Cloud ID, if you are accessing it through the WAN. You need to give a USer ID, Password and also a port. (If you used my example above, 10022...) The user ID MUST be either the admin account or root account. (Logon name must read "admin" or "root") The password for root is the same as the password for admin.

Once you get into WinSCP and it's viewing your NAS, you are going to see 2 large file manager type panes. The one on the left, by default, is the local computer you are running WinSCP from. The one of the right is the root level (highest level) of the NAS's drive system. From here you can go into folders on the NAS to find log files, start-stop.sh files, cron files, etc.

Here are some common locations for various system level files on Asustor's default (bare bones) install:

Log Files: /var/log
External USB drive: /volume1/USB1 (USB2 etc...)
crontab file: /var/spool/cron/crontabs (This file is named root and is probably the only file in the folder.)
Individual shares: /volume1 (There are other folders here, but the ones shared in ADM show up here.)

There are many more files and folders you can move through or manipulate. Just make sure you don't delete/move/edit something unless you know what you are doing. This can be a start of how to use your NAS a bit better, more efficiently, etc. Knowing where things are is half the battle. Being able to find stuff within the ADM is impossible if they don't give the right level of access. WinSCP is the best way to get that level of access.

[MikeG.6.5]

Last post was about WinSCP, and I just covered some small basics of the file manager and where to get the application from.

Next I want to talk about Terminal (and it's brother, PuTTY)

****WARNING**** You can do some serious damage if you do anything in Terminal/PuTTY without at least looking up commands online. The Asustor NAS uses busybox 1.19, so use the busybox repository for a reference! You have been warned!

With WinSCP running, you get the two panes, one for the local drive and one for the remote drive. You also have a series of menus across the top, including one called Commands. this menu has two particularly useful functions buried in it, called Terminal and PuTTY.

Terminal is just a command line. It executes one line of code and then waits for your next line to be typed in. It's not for running a script with output to the screen. It doesn't work that way. (If you need to output to the screen use PuTTY)

It's useful for checking running processes, or stopping a process that's hung, etc. To check running processes type "ps" in the execute line and hit enter. (Drop the quotes.) This seems to give a huge mass of scrolling information... With time you can start making some connections of what this is. BTW, you can get the same information within the ADM by going to Activity Monitor -> Process. If you know how to do it, and you know you want to do it, after you find out the pid for a given app you can then kill that app (stop it from running and delete it from active memory.) I'm not going to tell you how to do that, though...

PuTTY is almost the same exact thing as Terminal, EXCEPT, you can get output to the screen and can get some interaction with specific types of apps that PuTTY can run. Some examples of this would be cpan for perl, scripts that allow input, etc. One other thing of note about PuTTY is this... If you start an app within PuTTY and you intend to use this app after you exit PuTTY, you are probably better off running it in Terminal. Terminal keeps apps alive. PuTTY terminates anything you started within that session when you exit the session. There is a way to not do this, but I'm not going to cover it. Research it on your own.

[Jussumguy]

Yes Sir, this solved my problem. Thanks for the info.