Saturday, October 20, 2007

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:

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

cool, thanks for the info :)

Anonymous said...

any tip on HOW to "Move fun_plug and logs to a USB flash key to avoid unnecessary disk spin-up". I can't find anything on the net !

Cheers

Alex (alexandre@jennaoui.com)

Sidney said...

This is in my todo list but I've been dragging my feet due to work and family commitments... as well as not having a suitable flash drive to boot. :( Try searching the forums for help there. In addition, upgrade to version 0.5 of fonz's fun_plug will make this a much easier task.

Sidney said...

Ok, just completed the move to the USB stick in under an hour. See the post here.

Anonymous said...

The link for setting up SSH is wrong - it's a duplicate for setting up backup-on-dns:

http://bfg100k.blogspot.com/2007/12/setting-up-backup-on-dns-323.html

HTH,
Cosmo

Anonymous said...

One more thing: You probably should change the wording from "reset" to "reboot". Otherwise someone might get confused and do a reset from the back of the unit and wipe out their settings...

-Cosmo

Sidney said...

Opps... sorry about the mistakes.. have amended the post accordingly. Thanks for the feedback!

Anonymous said...

Hello mr,
I'd like to install fun_plug on my dns-323 but I need more informations: will the existing data still be accessible after the installation? Is the process resersible? is the original web page accessible after the update? thank you

YYK said...

thanks for sharing.
i have a dns-323.
your post is so helpful.

Unknown said...

Can you confirm whether installing fun_plug will erase the data already on the disk?