Gain ssh access to ReadyNAS

In my server closet I run a Netgear ReadyNAS+ with 1.5TB of effective storage. It’s a really neat box with support for various access methods, like nfs, ftp, http and cifs and a few more.

My latest informational reorg included an idea to publish sound and video on a share that the kids could access. All that stuff used to sit on a share deep in a structure from a previous box I used to run.

Easy thing to figure out what to do; simply create a new share, call it Media and allow all the internal network read-access.  Mount it on a linux box with root access, then move everything from the old jesper/backup/jesper/bigdrive/private/media to that directory.

The only thing is that it’s not possible to simply rewrite the inodes when moving things from one nfs-mounted volume to another nfs-mounted volume. Every single bit needs to be copied.

It was a somewhat lengthy procedure to move everything onto the NAS, but at that time I had a gigabit card (still have it but it is not recognized by vmware esxi) and data was only going one way – from one box onto the NAS. This time, I was stuck with a 100MBit nic and data had to travel from the NAS, to the computer and then back to the NAS. Admittedly I didn’t have to watch, but I figured it would take me days to shuffle all of that data.

As the ReadyNAS runs a linux distro behind the scenes I figured the solution would be to gain terminal access to the NAS using ssh. Unfortunately that wasn’t on by default. I googled and found several solutions to fix the problem, ranging from opening the NAS and mounting the disks on another computer to using some odd “feature” in Apple File Protocol and hacking the crontab file.

Eventually I found a much simpler solution: Installing the official ‘enable ssh access’ patches.

On http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=94 you’ll find – at the bottom of the page – two patches; ToggleSSH and EnableRootSSH. Both need to be installed, and the NAS wants to reboot after each one.

ssh into the nas. Log in as root with your existing admin password. Voila! you’re in!

Now moving the remaining data was a few keystrokes away and obviously lightning fast using the good ol’ mv command.

Happy hacking!

–Jesper Hogstrom