Build a NAS in a VM or on any SBC Device

Time: 40 Minutes

Generally I don’t really care about the details or best practices but over my career I have learned the importance of why best practices exist. I decided to build my own NAS from parts I had laying around. I had a RPi 4 model b (2 gb) and (2) 2 tb firecuda drives (spindle drives) I bought two sata to usb cables with power adapters to complete this build.

This is kind of a long article I apologize, but I felt the need to give all of the details of this particular build.

Here are the Pre-Requisites:
1 – Ubuntu Server/RPi OS Bullseye/Bookworm
2 – Webmin installed to manage it.
3 – iSCSI, nfs-kernel-server, & Samba-Cifs

note: If using the RPi 4 Device you will need the following:

1 – RPi 4 Model B Device
2 – (2) sata to usb cables/adapter w/power adapter
3 – (2) 2tb Hard Drives
4 – RPi OS installed on the device
5 – 30 minutes of time
6 – patience

Use RPi Imager to burn the os to the SD Card:

Remove the SD Card and plug it back in we have some things we need to do before we boot the pi with it.

Open File Explorer

The Above can be copied and pasted into this file I always put it at the start of the line:

ip=12.18.2.21::12.18.2.1:255.255.255.0:rpi4-k3s-w02:eth0:off cgroup_enable=cpuset cgroup_enable=memory cgroup_memory=1 swapaccount=1

Next we need to open the config.txt

sudo nano -c /boot/config.txt on Ubuntu Server it’s sudo nano -c /boot/firmware/config.txt
### This will disable WiFi and Bluetooth ###
dtoverlay=disable-wifi
dtoverlay=disable-bt
# dtparam=audio=on
dtparam=audio=off
### Add on the last line after the [all] section This makes sure 64bit is used ###
arm_64bit=1

note: Plug the SD Card back into the Pi and power it on. After it boots; ssh in to the Pi for the next steps.

Make sure we update the repositories and the OS packages
1 – sudo apt update && sudo apt -y full-upgrade
Let’s install the needed software, so that you cover the whole spectrum of a NAS Server:
2 – sudo apt -y install tgt samba nfs-kernel-server mdadm rsync dump
Check to see if the drives are recognized:
3 – sudo lsblk
Create the RAID array
Use double dashes in the command on line 4 please. I like to use all my space so I use raid 0.
4 – sudo mdadm –create –verbose /dev/md0 –level=0 –raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
Let’s make sure it was created properly
5 – cat /proc/mdstat
md0 : active raid0 sdc[1] sdb[0]
9767276544 blocks super 1.2 512k chunks

Create the filsystem on the raid
6 – sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/md0
Create the mount point
7 – sudo mkdir -p /media/Stor1
8 – sudo mount /dev/md0 /media/Stor1
Let’s append the config to the mdadm config file
9 – sudo mdadm –detail –scan –verbose | sudo tee -a /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
Enable the Raid at boot
10 – sudo update-initramfs -u
Put the raid mount point in the fstab file
11 – sudo nano -c /etc/fstab
12 – /dev/md0 /media/Stor1 ext4 defaults,nofail,discard 0 0
Test the raid to make sure it’s functioning properly
13 – sudo chmod -Rf 777 /media/Stor1/
14 – sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York

Let’s install your new GUI: (IF YOU ARE INSTALLING THIS ON A RPi 4 GOTO RPi4 install below)
15 – sudo apt -y install software-properties-common apt-transport-https
16 – apt-key list
# look for the jcameron-key if it's not there then do the following. #
17 - sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys D97A3AE911F63C51
18 – sudo nano -c /etc/apt/sources.list
## Add this to bottom of the file - Webmin Repositories ##
deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib
19 – sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install webmin
20 – sudo systemctl status webmin
Goto the interface in your browser after the script has completed.
21 – https://[your server’s IP]:10000/

### and login with your account. ###

On the left navigation goto Tools>File Manager
I created my directories under /mnt directory
Mine look like this /mnt/Stor2/dir_name_here

Now we need to share them. I will use NFS here, but I will also give an example smb/cifs/samba.

Enable Samba Share

That completes the process for Samba/NFS shares. If you have any questions you can email us support@rpihobby.us. Also use the comments also if you like.

I will not take credit for The Virtualmin Install part I posted earlier. The individual below gets all the credit. This is per enzochzng on the Raspberry Pi forums, Post is here.

Thank you for reading and stopping by.