Target audience: NAS users
Used tools: XPEnology
What’s the purpose: make NAS and mail server
The task was to make a system for every day archiving data from the server. As usually there will not be money for the new hardware and must use old PC. So, the choice was only one – open source software. With “a little help from our friends” from Google we choose the solution of the task – XPEnology on one old PC – Intel Atom 2GHz, 512MB with DSM 5.0-528 Upd 2 XPEnology is a version of Synology’s well-regarded Disk Station Manager (DSM) which runs on non-Synology hardware. The heart of the device is its Synology operating system DSM (Disk Station Manager), which is used in all devices produced by Synology. It is a well-optimized Linux kernel, most of the changes which aims to work with hard disk drives (full list of compatible discs) and Raid arrays. As well it is composed of many Open source packages, details of which you will find just the manufacturer’s website. DSM is loaded on a synology Device with USB flash drive, soldered on the motherboard, the operation system and all applications located are in special slice of the hard disk drives (on each) this method allows to increase the service life of the boot flash and increase productivity. XPEnology is a bootloader as IMG image. XPEnology compiled from the source code provided Sinology under license GNU. XPEnology and does not contain the operating system.In addition to the kernel in the boot loader included some scripts and driver packages to work on most particular hardware platforms. What to do need for installation :
- A computer with some disks in it and a network connection with Internet access
- A USB flash drive (I used a 8GB)
- Win32DiskImager
- Synology Assistant software
- DSM_DS3612xs_4528.pat
How to create or update boot loader
1.Open Win32DiskImager and select your image file
Double click on an entry in the Search window and your web browser will open.
You can see from the above screenshot that Nanoboot configures the hardware in such a way that your system thinks it is a Synology DS3612xs which is an enterprise grade NAS.
Select the “Clean Installation” option and click the forward arrow
Select “Download or install the latest DSM (recommended)”. If you have issues, head over to xpenology.com and download a known working version and perform the installation for the downloaded file by selecting the “Install DSM from my computer or installation disc” option. Click the forward arrow.
Next you will need to enter an admin password and hostname. Do not enter the fully qualified domain name, just the short hostname. When done click the Install Now button. DSM will be installed and the system will reboot. The process should take no longer than about 10 minutes. Once the installation is complete and the system is up and running the webpage will refresh and you will be taken to the login screen. If this isn’t the case, check the console of your NAS (in other words, make sure you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse hooked up to the machine). You should be seeing a bunch of boot up messages and a login prompt similar to what you’d expect from a Linux system. If this is not the case, or you’re seeing some message like “Operating system not found…” go into your BIOS settings and make sure that your system is configured to boot from the USB drive by default
Login as “admin” using the password you specified during the installation process.We have to install Mail Server and Mail Station if we want to use e-mail Then have to configure them – all you have to do is to follow instructions from article, given in Synology site : https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/tutorials/448 And here is the final result :
This is info for Update/Restore from Control Panel :
- Model name: DS214play
- Current DSM version : DSM 5.0-4528 Update 2
- DSM date : 2014/11/12
