Installing debian on my QNAP TS-210

I bought two QNAP TS-210 and four 2TB hard drives as a split site backup strategy for our important files. I knew that it was possible to install debian on the qnaps but wanted to try the default firmware for a while.

I was a great fan of the default firmware for a few days but started to get annoyed with little things:

• I couldn't tweak the nfs settings to my liking.
• The rsync backup setup was pretty basic and I wanted to use something more intelligent like unison 

It is possible to tweak things using some clever scripts that replaced config files, but then you start being unable to use the web based system to configure your system so in the end I decided to go with the more familiar debian experience.

I started out my linux career with debian and after a happy relationship with ubuntu I just kept on returning to debian for my server and now I have 4 debian computers and plan to convert the last ubuntu box over pretty soon. I'm a big fan of debian and I'm actually used to the location of files and the ability to apt-get anything out there so I thought I would give installing Debian a go.

I followed the guide at http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/qnap/ and was up and running in no time.

I was planning on trying out a read only root filesystem with a separate /var partition so went with the following partitions:

3GB - ext3 root
1GB - ext3 var
512MB - swap
1.8TB - data mounted on /home.

This is what my 'parted -l' looks like:

Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 17.4kB 3000MB 3000MB Root raid
2 3000MB 4000MB 1000MB Var raid
3 4000MB 4512MB 512MB Swap raid
4 4512MB 2000GB 1996GB Data raid

When setting up the machine for the first time I recommend that you do not set up the 1.8TB data drive otherwise you will have to wait 4 hours for the 1.8TB /home partition to be built. Best to finish the debian install then create the big partition. The resync can happen while you are not sshed into the system.