A better DNS-323... with fun_plug!

Ok, so the DNS-323 is a cheap entry level file, print and upnp media server. However, with the use of fun_plug, you can easily turn it into a something more! You can use it to run subversion, bittorrent, web server with PHP support (think dynamic websites!), backup server and more!

An excellent way to get started is to download and use the fun_plug package developed by Fonz. Just by copying the archive file into the root folder of the first volume (called Volume_1 in the default network share), do a reboot and you are done!

The base package includes telnet and an updated (busybox) shell. After the reset, wait a couple of seconds and telnet into the box using the hostname and the default port 23. The default settings in Fonz's package skips the login process and automatically grant you root access. You will probably want to get that changed especially if you are in an unsecured environment. Even for home users, I strongly recommend that you set up authentication just in case.

To do this, edit the telnetd.sh start script, comment the LOPT variable referring to "sh", and uncomment the LOPT variable using "login". Finally, reboot (or manually restart telnet).

IMPORTANT: You cannot login as root unless you have set a password! So before you do the above, use the "passwd" command to set a password for root. After that, use the script "store-passwd.sh" to write this information to flash memory so that it survives the next reboot.

If you hit any problems with Fonz's fun_plug, the first place to check is the log file fun_plug.log in the directory /mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/log.

Now that you got a some-what secured telnet access, consider the following mods:

• Move fun_plug and logs to a USB flash key to avoid unnecessary disk spin-up
• Setting up SSH
• Setting up nightly backup from Volume_1 to Volume_2
• Setting up SubVersion
• Setting up mldonkey (bittorrent client)
• Setting up BackupNetClone (more sophisticated backup)
• Setting up lighttpd with PHP (web server)