Alot of NAS systems can make perfect little server systems, however managing this can be a daunting task. For that it’s best to use a lightweight control panel like OpenPanel.
OpenPanel is a free open source controlpanel made by colleagues at XLS Hosting, while still under heavy development it is yet a powerful controlpanel with a very lightweight footprint on memory and load.
To install OpenPanel on your NAS you need to do the following:
Open up a terminal and do:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the following 2 repositories:
deb http://download.openpanel.com/dev/ lenny main
deb-src http://download.openpanel.com/dev/ lenny main
Now save your settings in nano (
sudo apt-get update
You will get GPG errors, as this is the experimental repo, there is no GPG key for now, now install OpenPanel:
sudo apt-get install openpanel-minimal
When the setup is done, you need to set the admin password (without brackets):
sudo openpanel-cli
update user openpanel-admin password=< YOURPASS >
exit
If the above step fails, try the following (due to a bug) (also log in with these credentials afterwards, not openpanel ;)):
openpanel-cli
create user username password=password name_customer="Full Name" emailaddress="emailaddress"
exit
Please note that the “create” line is on 2 lines, it ends with the emailaddress!
Now you can launch OpenPanel in your browser (Accept the untrusted certificate, as there is no SSL certificate for this machine):
https://< IP OF NAS >:4089
login: openpanel-admin
pass: < YOURPASS >
Followed through just fine until the password set part:
update user openpanel-admin password=test
% Object not updated: (8195) Member ‘owner-metaid’ not found in class definition
Ah, that’s a bug for now, since it’s the development repo, this sometimes happens. It is fixable by creating a new user:
openpanel-clicreate user username password=password name_customer="Full Name" emailaddress="emailaddress"
exit
Now you can launch OpenPanel and log in. In a few weeks there will be a Samba module and for the future there is also a Transmission and Sabnzbd module planned :).
I updated the blogpost with this info :).