Installing rsync and Unison on the Buffalo TeraStation Live

TeraStation Live 2Tb

just bought a 2TB Buffalo TeraStation NAS and I love the thing. It is silent, fast and highly configurable/hackable whichever you prefer.

There is a good reference community about hacking the TeraStation, and most of the information presented here is just a compilation of several different articles, and forum posts found around the site. So I wish to acknowledge all the people that have contributed to uncover the mysteries of the Buffalo NAS units.

Getting Telnet and SSH

The first step is to get the telnet daemon running. The factory firmware includes a telnet daemon so we do not need to change it. Just download the acp_commander tool and run

java -jar acp_commander -t <ip address> -o

In my case the IP address of my TeraStation is 192.168.1.20 so I ran:

java -jar acp_commander -t 192.168.1.20 -o

You should then see something like

ACP_commander out of the linkstationwiki.net project.
Used to send ACP-commands to Buffalo linkstation(R) LS-PRO.

WARNING: This is experimental software that might brick your linkstation!

Using random connID value = 07CAA8F945F3
Using target: raid/192.168.1.9
Authenticate: OK (ACP_STATE_FAILURE)
Installing addons.tar …
creating directory… OK
Didn’t find locally, looking at
http://downloads.linkstationwiki.net/Uploads/LSPro/Binaries/
java.io.FileNotFoundException: /192.168.1.9/share/acp_commander/addons.tar (No such file or directory)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open(Native Method)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.(FileOutputStream.java:179)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.(FileOutputStream.java:70)
at acpcommander.FileSystem.copyFile(FileSystem.java:44)
at acpcommander.acp_commander.main(acp_commander.java:862)
start telnetd… OK (ACP_STATE_OK)
Reset root pwd… Password changed.

after which you can telnet to your box with user root and no password by doing

telnet 192.168.1.20

Once you’re please run passwd to set the root password. Now you should enable SSH so you can safely connect to the TeraStation. To do so follow the complete instructions on enabling SSH. Although my firmware is verson 2.14 I used the “1.11-1a Firmware” scripts and they worked perfectly.

Even though it is not an absolute necessity you should add the SSH daemon to the Daemonwatch as shown towards the end of the instruction document.

At this point you should have a running SSH daemon in your TeraStation so it is time to start the heavier lifting.

Enable  Key Based SSH  Authentication

On the computer you which to initiate your SSH connections to the TeraStation run

ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub root@192.168.1.20

This will enable key based authentication for user root in your TeraStation. If you want to enable the same type of authentication for other TeraStation users you need to repeat the ssh-copy-id command for each one. Then you must disable StrictMode on the TeraStation’s SSH daemon (StrictMode no in /etc/sshd_conf) due to the permissions on the TeraStation’s  /home directory. Then restart your TeraStation SSH daemon with

/etc/init.d/sshd.sh restart

If you generate your RSA keys with no password you will not need to type a password to login to your TeraStation via SSH from the authorized users/host.

Accessing your file Shares from SSH

All you configured shares are accessible from command line in the /mnt/array1/<sharename>, you can use them to copy any needed files during the hacking process.

RSYNC

The stock firmware also includes rsync so all you really need to do is enable it.

One thing to keep in mind is that the TeraStation recreates some of its files after booting so you need to change one script to make changes permanent, one option is listed in the FAQ, but I ended up not using it.

I ended up changing the file /usr/local/bin/mkrsconf.pl in order for it to create the proper /etc/rsync.conf as well as the /etc/hosts.allow. So download my version of the mkrscon.pl script and copy it to one of your TeraStation shares, then via ssh run the following

cp /usr/local/bin/mkrsconf.pl /usr/local/bin/mkrsconf.pl.bak
cp /mnt/array1/<share>/mkrsconf.pl /usr/local/bin
/usr/local/bin/mkrsconf.pl

to make sure it worked check if the file /etc/hosts.allow exists.

Now you should be able to use rsync to your TeraStation.

Some great rsync backup scripts can be found here and here.

Unison

Rsync is a great backup utility but it is a one way tool, it will not do bi-directional sync so I opted to install Unisson, which is a fast and stable sync tool.

I have several computers that I use daily and I need to have them synced all the time. To make things a bit harder they all have different OSes. I use an iMac with Leopard, a PC with Windows XP and a laptop with Ubuntu. All my documents are synced up to the TeraStation and down to each machine flawlessly using unison and some scripts.

The challenge in getting Unison on the TeraStation is that you’ll need to compile it, and that was not as easy as it seemed at first.

Follow the instructions on to install PKGSRC Arm tools so you can compile natively in the TeraStation Live.

Now Download Unison source and the OCAML compiler’s source.

At the time of this writing the OCAML stable version was 3.10.2, but I ran into compilation problems that I could not resolve so I tried version 3.09.3 and it compiled just fine after creating the opnames.ml file as explained bellow.

Compiling OCAML

cd /mnt/array1/<share>
tar zxf ocaml-3.09.3.tar.gz
cd ocaml-3.09.3
./configure
gmake world
gmake install
gmake clean

While compiling the ocamtools I got an error while compiling, specifically: Unbound Value “name_of_insrtuctions” : Error 2

This has to do with an error in the make file in the tools directory to generate the opnames.ml ocaml-3.09.3. A sed command in the TeraStation is giving an error so the file is not generated appropriately and stays empty.

For simplicity you can download the correct version of the opnames.ml, and place it in you ocaml-3.09.3/tools directory, then rerun “gmake world”.

Compiling Unison

Now all you need to do is to compile your unison sources by doing

cd /mnt/array1/<share>
tar zxf unison-2.27.57.tar.gz
cd unison-2.27.57
gmake UISTYLE=text NATIVE=false

Even if you get an error about etags not being found during compilation your unision bunary should have been generated. To check run

./unison -version

which should produce

unison version 2.27.57

Or whatever version you compiled. Now all you need to do is to copy unison to /usr/local/bin and you are set.

cp unison /usr/local/bin

Now test if you can reach your unison remotely via SSH by running the following on your PC

ssh root@192.168.1.20 unison -version

You should see the same message as above “unison version 2.27.57” after you type your root’s password.

Before you can use unison to sync up all your computers you need to of course install it in every machine, but please pay attention that all of them need to be on the same version.

You can find some great tutorials on Unison here, and you can also check out the full manual so have fun.

Pre built unison binary for version 2.27.57 compiled on my TeraStation Live by following the out lined procedure. If you want to save yourself some of the pain just download it…

I hope this document helps you out and that by writing it I am giving a little bit back to the community.