Configuration

After the install, you reboot into the new NASLite installation. During the initialization sequence, you'll see that two steps fail, i.e "Retrieving configuration settings" and "Verifying license ID". Then log in using the default username and password: admin and nas. The configuration menu, like the installer, uses a "ncurses" style text-based menu system. Although not pretty, it is intuitively laid out and just works.

Figure 2: Console Main Menu

First enter the provided license code, then enter the "Network Configuration" menu to set up NASLite's IP address. Surprisingly, there's no DHCP option; you have to manually set a static IP for NASLite. Next, return the to main menu, save the configuration and reboot.

Figure 3: Rebooting again

Now you can point your browser at the newly-set IP address to view NASLite's web status pages.

Figure 4: Web Status Root

Surprisingly, NASLite's embedded web server defaults to directory listing instead of rendering the "home" status page, leaving the user to navigate the directory structure to find the appropriate page. This might be just a minor annoyance, but it really detracts for the attractive NASLite web interface.

Once I got to the main status page (Figure 5), the subsection icons in the side navigation bar, at first, were a little confusing to navigate with. A short caption under the icon would have been helpful.

Figure 5: Web Status Page

Before we can enjoy the rest of NASLite, we need to "unlock" it by requesting an unlock code. Note that this is in addition to having previously entered the License ID.

Figure 6: Unlock Code Request

Once you request the unlock code (Figure 6), you'll need to switch back to NASLite's console or dust off your Telnet client to enter it. Interestingly enough, this means that installing NASLite HDD actually requires two computers. One to use as the NAS and another to retrieve the unlock code (since there's not a way to request it from within NASLite's configuration menu). Now, this isn't a huge Inconvenience for most of us, but it would have been nice to integrate the unlock code retrieval into the console configuration menu.

Disk Configuration

Adding and configuring disks in NASLite is pretty straightforward. Using the console configuration menu, either via attached keyboard and monitor or via Telnet, simply select the disk from the "Storage Configuration" menu to configure it and format it. The "Export Disk" setting is pretty much the extent of the permissions. Disks can be exported read-write (RW), read-only (RO) or not at all (--). Not quite the as full-fledged as something like unRAID's permission settings, but it's better than nothing at all.

NASLite also has a capacity alarm, which sounds the system speaker when the specified capacity is reached. NASLite's documentation notes support for most common hardware RAID controllers, but unfortunately lacks software RAID. NASLite packs an interesting "mirror" feature, which allows you to mirror a remote disk via rsync. This is handy for an "on the fly" backup setup.

Service Configuration

Services are configured (Figure 7) by simply toggling them between read-write, read-only or off altogether. When a service is switched on, every active drive is exported via that service.

Figure 7: Services Configuration via telnet

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