The latest DSM update makes btrfs drives unavailable on budget Synology models

• overlayRoot.sh

  2 26 2.4 Shell

  Read-only Root-FS for most linux distributions using overlayfs.

- easy to backup, and some protection against sudden disk failure

Here is my solution:

- a Raspberry Pi 400 with keyboard: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/

- Two external 2.5´´ HDD drives, 5 TB each, with USB3 interface (I took a Western Digital one and an Intenso one, as it is tradition to use different makes in a RAID, in order to avoid correlated failures)

- One powered USB 3 Hub with sufficient power for all of them. These can be relatively expensive, so leave room for it on your budget, you need it.

- an industrial-grade SD card for the Raspberry's system

- you also might wont some kind of organizer to keep the devices together while providing for good passive cooling, like that: https://www.amazon.com/DecoBros-Cabinet-Basket-Organizer-Sil...

My set-up includes:

- standard Raspbian for the software

- I use the root-fs overlay provided here https://github.com/fitu996/overlayRoot.sh , in order to protect the SD card from constant writing

- /var (and with it the system logs) go to a different partition of the RAID

- RAID is set up with mdadm . There are good instructions on the web.

- I use ext3 or ext4 file systems for data. btrfs is in theory easier to extend but it has much worse robustness characteristics than Ext4, and no well-working filesystem repair tool if metadata gets corrupted. Some people might use ZFS but I think it is overkill and over-complicated for this case, it is not part of the standard kernel, and it might make kernel updates more difficult or impossible.

- also I set up openssh-server, Samba, Linux NFS server, a MoinMoin Wiki, rsync.

- I configured systemd so that Ctrl-Alt-Del on the keyboard will shut down the system, even if it is disconnected.

The overlayfs needs to be activated when everything is finished. It has the effect that changes and logs are stored on the RAID. If you update the system, it needs to be deactivated.

Of course, back-up your SD card.

Also, always back up your data - RAID is never a substitute for backups. What RAID is good for is that it increases availability of your device in case one of your disks fails. But there are many errors which it cannot help against, so you DEFINITIVELY need egular full backups (like you need for any Synology or whatever NAS as well!!).

• synology-wireguard

  49 897 0.0 Shell

  WireGuard support for some Synology NAS drives

I've had a less than stellar experience with their support too. I'm the author of a reasonably popular WireGuard plugin (https://github.com/runfalk/synology-wireguard) and in the next DSM version they are basically breaking all kernel module plugins without a migration path. A kind user has found a workaround and made a PR, but Synology have no interest in helping out with this (https://github.com/runfalk/synology-wireguard/issues/66#issu...).

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