Home NAS with an old desktop¶

Turn a spare desktop + a USB disk into a simple LAN file store: format the disk, share one folder over Samba, add a server-side recycle bin, then mount it on a laptop so it's just there after boot.

This page is the assembly + the non-obvious lessons. For the step-by-step Samba server config and the generic client mount, see Samba file sharing (SMB); for mounting local disks on the server, see Setup Data Server.

1. Prepare the disk¶

Check what the OS sees, and confirm which port speed the enclosure negotiated — a USB 3.0 drive dropped onto a USB 2.0 port is ~10× slower.

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,FSTYPE,TRAN,MODEL   # find the disk (e.g. sdb, TRAN=usb)
lsusb -t                                    # 5000M = USB 3.0, 480M = USB 2.0

Confirm it's blank, then lay down a GPT table + one ext4 partition:

sudo wipefs /dev/sdb                        # empty output = no existing signatures
sudo parted -s /dev/sdb mklabel gpt
sudo parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext4 0% 100%
sudo mkfs.ext4 -L nas4t -m 0 /dev/sdb1      # -m 0: no root-reserved blocks on a data disk

Mount it on the server by UUID with nofail so a missing disk never hangs boot:

UUID=<uuid>  /disks/nas4t  ext4  defaults,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=10  0  2

2. Share one folder, not the whole disk¶

Point the Samba share at a subfolder, so anything else on the disk stays off the network:

/disks/nas4t/                ← full disk (private, server-local only)
└── AanaOhana/               ← the ONLY folder exposed over SMB

[AanaOhana]
   comment = AanaOhana shared folder
   path = /disks/nas4t/AanaOhana
   browseable = yes
   read only = no
   guest ok = no
   valid users = anandas

(Install Samba, set the SMB password with smbpasswd -a, disable samba-ad-dc, and start smbd/nmbd — see Samba file sharing (SMB) for the full sequence.)

3. A recycle bin (server-side trash)¶

By default an SMB delete is permanent — there is no undo. Samba's recycle VFS module intercepts deletes and moves files into a hidden folder instead. Add to the share block:

   vfs objects = recycle
   recycle:repository = .recycle/%U
   recycle:keeptree = yes
   recycle:versions = yes
   recycle:touch = yes
   recycle:exclude = *.tmp *.temp *.o *.obj *~ ~$*
   recycle:maxsize = 0

Deleted files land in .recycle/<user>/… on the share, with their folder path preserved (keeptree). To restore, browse into the hidden .recycle folder and drag the file back out.

4. Deleting over the share skips the desktop Trash¶

On a mounted SMB share, the file manager shows "Cannot move file to trash, do you want to delete immediately?". This is normal, not a fault: the desktop Trash is a local-filesystem feature, and a network mount has no local trash. With the recycle bin (step 3) in place, clicking Delete still isn't truly permanent — the file goes to the server-side .recycle, not the desktop trash.

5. Mount on the client — pick ONE model¶

The big lesson. There are two sane ways to mount this on a laptop, and they are mutually exclusive — trying to have both is where all the pain came from.

For a personal machine, the simplest choice wins: a plain per-user mount in your home folder that appears at boot, no sidebar theatrics.

//192.168.0.104/AanaOhana  /home/anandas/nas/aana_ohana  cifs  \
  credentials=/etc/samba/credentials/aanaohana,uid=1000,gid=1000,\
  file_mode=0600,dir_mode=0700,iocharset=utf8,_netdev,nofail  0  0

• credentials=… — a root-only (chmod 600) file holding username=/password=, keeping the password out of /etc/fstab.
• uid/gid=1000, dir_mode=0700 — owned by and private to you.
• _netdev,nofail — wait for the network; never stall boot if the NAS is offline.

Verify it's wired into boot without actually rebooting:

sudo mount -a
systemctl show home-anandas-nas-aana_ohana.mount -p WantedBy   # → remote-fs.target

WantedBy=remote-fs.target is the proof: that target is what mounts network filesystems at boot.

6. Who is the "user"? (the identity model)¶

The confusing bit when the laptop login and the Samba login share a name:

• Samba authenticates against the server's account database. The client sends a username + password, checked against smbpasswd accounts on the server. The local laptop user is irrelevant to that check.
• A Samba user is backed by a Unix user on the server — to log in as foo, a Unix foo must exist on the server (it can be a nologin service account created just for Samba).
• Real file ownership is decided on the server. Files written through the share are owned by the server-side Unix user the Samba session maps to — regardless of which machine or which local user created them.
• uid=/gid= on the client mount is only cosmetic — it relabels how ownership looks locally; it changes nothing on the server. A CIFS mount maps the whole mount to one uid/gid, so it can't show "whoever is logged in" as the owner.

Gotchas¶

• USB 2.0 trap — always lsusb -t after plugging in; a NAS silently stuck at 480M is miserable.
• Recycle bin ≠ backup — it only catches SMB deletes (not overwrites, not server-local deletes), and empty folders vanish. It grows until emptied.
• Don't mix auto-mount with GUI eject — the Device or resource busy / must be superuser errors come straight from that combination.
• Credentials file needs to be reachable by whoever mounts — a boot mount runs as root, so root-only 600 is fine. Only if a user triggers the mount (gvfs) do the file and its parent directory need to be group-readable by that user.
• nofail everywhere for network and removable mounts, or an absent NAS drops boot into an emergency shell.