Night of the Living Servers
Sometimes the best upgrade for a NAS starts with a good idea for something to run on it. This autumn, I suggest a news reader of your own, a convenient way into your home services and a place for files you want to share. A small workshop that should leave you with something useful long after the pumpkin has gone.
Hello, QNAP people!
Late October. Pumpkins are appearing in windows, while forgotten projects haunt the browser bookmarks. Every one of them looked interesting. Somehow, there was never quite time to get it running. The browser has kept a better record of those plans than its owner.
Perhaps it is time to open one.
A good article in CHIP or PC World made it difficult to put the magazine down and leave it at that. You wanted to see whether it would work on your machine. Then you changed something small to find out what happened. Before long, the program described across a few pages had become part of your own computer. Even a modest improvement felt worthwhile when you understood where it came from.
That pleasure has aged well. The satisfaction of building your own workshop comes when you start using it. This issue is about applications worth opening again tomorrow. A QNAP can serve your morning reading and make your home services easier to find after work. Along the way, you get to understand a little more about what happens behind the pages in your browser.
Before the first page appears
The foundation is WebHostPro 0.8.2, a free application from the QNAP Utilities repository. It requires an Intel or AMD x86_64 QNAP running QTS 6.0 or QuTS hero 6.0 or newer. Each site has its own account and folder, along with a separate PHP instance. The applications you add each get a defined place on the server.[1]
Running your own services also means making sense of a few details. What is using port 80? Why do those copied files belong to a different account? WebHostPro shows what needs changing and lets you review a plan before applying it. Moving its front server to ports 80 and 443 requires you to free those ports in QTS first. The application does not change the QTS port settings for you.[1:1]
This is a good time to read the message on screen. Administrators have Halloween traditions of their own. One of the less successful ones involves clicking through a warning and reading it carefully afterwards.
FreshRSS: write your own contents page
The first reward could arrive the next time you open your browser. FreshRSS 1.30.4 brings RSS feeds together in one reader. You choose the sources. Add NASA Image of the Day for a look at space photography, perhaps alongside selfh.st for reading about running your own services. The reading list starts to feel like yours.[1:2]
There is something of the magazine editor in this. Your favourite subject can have as much space as you like. You can spend a whole evening on it, then return to the same sources another day without trying to remember where you found that interesting article.
FreshRSS uses SQLite in the setup described here. Automatic feed updates need a schedule: the instructions use FreshRSS’s online cron mechanism and the QTS scheduler. WebHostPro has no scheduler of its own.[1:3] Once that small job is done, the reader can fetch updates regularly. Even a newsroom of your own needs somebody to set its working hours.
Heimdall: one address worth remembering
Applications on a NAS can resemble tools put away after a job. You need them all. So why does finding the right one keep taking so long?
Heimdall 2.8.3 gives your services a common start page. Add a tile, give it a name and enter its address. Choose QNAP as the application type and Heimdall supplies the icon and colour. FreshRSS and the other applications you use can sit alongside it.[1:4]
It is easy to dismiss such a page as a minor convenience until you are hunting for a panel address again. In time, it becomes a working desktop for the things you actually use. It also offers a useful opportunity to take stock. If you can no longer remember what an application does, a handsome icon is unlikely to save it from the next clear-out.
FileRise: something worth sharing
Finally, FileRise 3.38.0. Picture a folder of photographs you want to look through with someone. Thumbnails help you choose; pictures and videos open in a preview. You can create a link to a file with an expiry time and an optional password. The person opening that link does not need an account in the application.[1:5]
In this setup, FileRise works with material uploaded through the application or placed in its uploads folder. Your other NAS shared folders remain outside this configured workspace. You have a separate place for material you want to browse and share. The free core is available under the MIT licence; FileRise Pro is a separate paid edition.[1:6]
We begin on the local network in this issue. A file link is useful to somebody who can reach that network. Publishing a site on the internet is a separate job, covered in the hosting guide.
After Halloween
The full instructions accompanying this issue take you through configuring WebHostPro and installing the applications. Keep them open beside the panel, then leave room for ideas of your own. A start page works best when it fits your habits. A reader becomes useful as you choose its sources.
Start with an application you actually need. Get it running, then use it the following day. That is when the project finally escapes the bookmarks waiting for another weekend.
In the morning, you open your own reader to a reading list you chose. And suddenly, staying up late makes perfect sense.
Silas Mariusz
QNAP Forum Polska
Yes, I had a plan to post three version here:
newsletter,
felieton,
and a tutorial.