Enable personal website

[patricr]

I see that option in Services>Web server>Enable personal website. Beyond that I don't know what to do. Do I need to create a www directory in the user homes directory? I did that and placed an index.html file but it did not work.

[orion]

Yes, it's apache's userdir module function. You put your index file under www of your home directory (not User Homes). You can access your page by: http://your_nas_ip/~username/

EDIT: I found the setting file is under: /usr/builtin/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/userdir.conf

[Blast]

I see that option in Services>Web server>Enable personal website. Beyond that I don't know what to do. Do I need to create a www directory in the user homes directory? I did that and placed an index.html file but it did not work.

The Documentation concerning the operation and usage of this NAS is pretty piss poor.. I had to dig around for awhile to find this out..

What a joke..

[Elrique64]

The documentation is rather poor for most if not all of the Asustor apps and for even many of the 3rd party apps. Getting some installed is a hair pulling adventure at times, and an outright head banger at others...

Probably the most STRAIGHT forward install from App Central, that I have experienced, at least, is Python, but there is little to no documentation on it after you've done the install itself. Nothing about paths fit other, more standard installs. You have to do a bit of hunting to find the directory it's installed to in order to use it. And hunting for this requires a different app than what came with the NAS to start with, WinSCP... There is no native Python editor in the system, and no real way of knowing the install worked other than WinSCP... You can't write a Python script and have it as an icon in the ADM, either. (At least not that I have found anyway.)

Really, though, once you figure out some of the quirks of these NAS's they do work fairly well.... But it is a learning curve, even if you are a Linux user from the get go.

[Blast]

The documentation is rather poor for most if not all of the Asustor apps and for even many of the 3rd party apps. Getting some installed is a hair pulling adventure at times, and an outright head banger at others...

Probably the most STRAIGHT forward install from App Central, that I have experienced, at least, is Python, but there is little to no documentation on it after you've done the install itself. Nothing about paths fit other, more standard installs. You have to do a bit of hunting to find the directory it's installed to in order to use it. And hunting for this requires a different app than what came with the NAS to start with, WinSCP... There is no native Python editor in the system, and no real way of knowing the install worked other than WinSCP... You can't write a Python script and have it as an icon in the ADM, either. (At least not that I have found anyway.)

Really, though, once you figure out some of the quirks of these NAS's they do work fairly well.... But it is a learning curve, even if you are a Linux user from the get go.

You're spot on.. I've been working with a wide variety of storage, network and OS systems now for a long long time.. Even the Patriot Memory Javelin documentation was better..

I've got at least 8 trouble tickets out to support and have gotten only one response from them that wasn't moronic.. Most told me to reboot the NAS.. I scratched my head and said to myself.. "Will Amazon let me return this unit?"

I appreciate the info you've been posting.. it's been really good to review..

[ianinfrance]

I see that option in Services>Web server>Enable personal website. Beyond that I don't know what to do. Do I need to create a www directory in the user homes directory? I did that and placed an index.html file but it did not work.

The Documentation concerning the operation and usage of this NAS is pretty piss poor.. I had to dig around for awhile to find this out..

What a joke..

Agree. The NAS itself seems to work fine, but I'm really struggling to get any of the apps to do what they say on the packet. Maybe these forums will give us the information we need. Problem is that I don't - for example - know what my username is supposed to be, nor exactly how to use it.

[Elrique64]

Your user name is: admin
An alternate for this, depending on what you are doing is: root.

These are DEFAULT usernames within the Linux environment. Once you get into your NAS, by going to http://nas.ip.goes.here:8000 you can add and remove programs, etc. setup up shares, set up things like Plex Media Server, etc.

One of the issues I see with all of the huge influx of NAS's on the market is that the "average" user has no idea WTF to do now that they have the device. People are buying them because they "sounds neat" or "I think I need this cuz my buddy at work has one" or "The sales guy at (put in electronic store here.) says I needed it to do " and now the average, less than technically inclined are wondering "What's NEXT?" Then there is either a learning curve, or a rash of NAS's hitting fleamarkets, garage sales and ebay as people off-load something they never could quite figure out how to use.

This is NOT THE USER'S FAULT!!! This is a marketing FAILURE!!! Every manufacturer of these devices is at much as fault as the next. They are trying to make what used to be considered semi-high end networking and server administration tool into a home appliance. A NAS doesn't do anything special, it has no monitor output (OK some do, but not all) and doesn't do anything a regular USB drives can't do, except it does it over the network. Unless you know how to set it up to do those other things. And most people don't know how to do that, even.

Making a NAS as common in a home as a TV ain't gonna happen, unless people are willing to learn and capable of applying that learning to the boxes in question. Asustor does some pretty damned funky crap with their flavor of Ubuntu Linux. Things that are standard in other distro's are NON-EXISTANT within Asustor's implementation. So you go online to figure out how to do something to find out Asustor's version of "XXX" can't do it because it wasn't planned for. Until people who DO understand what's going on make companies start to conform to a standard and a minimum requirements, there will be issues with any hacked together distro.

ianinfrance, I'm sorry I started talking to you about the logon id's and all, then went on a rampage. You got caught here, and it wasn't your fault. There are many very skilled people here. There are also a few that couldn't help themselves out of a wet paper sack if I cut the hole in it first... (I'm thinking of a SPECIFIC person right now.) Those of us that know, well, we're trying to help. If you need specifics, ASK! We're more than willing to share and I'm real good at telling you "I don't know" if I don't know it. I mostly try to reference documentation, if such is available, as do many others here. If it's not available I will try to post outside links if I can find it.

[Elrique64]

OK, now I've calmed down a bit, so going to address your questions about websites...

Once you enable the personal website in Services -> Web Server it doesn't really tell you what to do now.

If you open the File Explorer in the ADM you are going to see a shared folder called Web under the ADM icon. It may or MAY NOT contain any additional folders. The first thing I recommend you doing is make a folder called Test here, inside of Web.

Put your index file in that folder an then try going to http://your.nas.ip.here:6880/Test/index.php and see if that works. (It SHOULD but then again, who knows, this is a broken distro, remember.)

If it does, you understand how things are supposed to work now. Make a folder, put in the website, point your browser to it like what I showed you above and you are golden... After you get this working you can mess with virtual hosts and set up ports to take you to specific sites within the NAS itself.

[ianinfrance]

Hi Elrique,

I feel you anger and share it to some extent. The reason I decided to go for a NAS system is simple. My wife uses a laptop, I use a desktop. We are linked by a network together with our printer. It made sense to me to put in a RAID whatever (with mirrored drives) so that my files would be safe against anything short of theft, fire or simultaneous unannounced drive failure of both drives. I don't use it merely as a back up device with the insane sync problems between our machines that we've had in the past. I store my main copies of my files there so we both have access to the latest version of the same things. No one sold me anything, but having twice lost data, with major hassles recovering it from idiosyncratic back up software, I decided, rightly or wrongly that the only pretty safe storage method was NAS. Our ISP upload speed is so pathetic that with several Gigs of multimedia files I truly didn't want to lose, cloud storage wasn't even worth considering, even were I to be able to afford it.

So, Here I was with my shiny new NAS. I set it up very nicely for storage and back up of my files. No probs - well nothing I couldn't solve. I'm ignorant, but far from stupid.

The I decided to try some of the apps that Asus, in their generosity, have provided us with (we'll draw a veil over the cost of providing open source kit). I managed - after sweating blood, to get my mp3 music files to stream. So far so good. I then tried to find a way to be able to view my photos, without downloading them back onto whatever computer I was using to access my NAS with. So far, I've failed. Probably because I did something crass, or didn't know what to do (score one for pathetic lack of provided information).

At that point real life caught up with me. However, things have calmed down and I want to get back to my project of learning PHP and Mysql. It makes sense to me to use a local system if I've got one. To do that, I need a local server (Apache) with PHP and Mysql. According to what Asus tell me, they are there. That's where I find myself now. I can get upload a simple php file into my "shared web" folder. I can try to view it with firefox. What I actually see is not the php output, but the HTML. So clearly PHP isn't enabled, or if it is, I am not sending my files to the right place (documentation) or accessing it in the right way (also documentation). The same files sent to my web page hosting service behaves like a lamb. GRR.

So I agree with you to some extent, but don't see the problem as a marketing one, but as a support and documentation one.

I hope that the helpful community here will find it in their hearts to make up for the lacunae in Asus' ability to speak and communicate in English.

[Overspeed]

Thanks for this info. Now if I may, can I ask about domain configuration? I would like to purchase a .com domain and host a small site on my as5104T. I've done this before with commercial web hosting providers, but no sure how to configure the NAS for this. Typically when you buy a domain, you enter the Nameservers of the hosting provider in your registrar account. This forwards all DNS requests to that server. I don't have a dedicated IP but I am using the Asustor Cloud Connect & DDNS services. Is it possible to forward a domain to a NAS in this manner? Typically Nameserver configurations require eg: ns1.domainhost.com etc. IF all of that is possible, then there is the issue of DNS. I would also like the NAS to host email for the domain I will purchase. I would need port configuration and mail servers configured on the NAS. As far as I know, the NAS has no DNS software so I'm a little stumped as to how it will run public facing websites and email. Is any of this possible?