Dlink DNS-323, part 3 – Fonz fun_plug

This is a continuation of a previous post.

OK, the idea wasn’t exactly brilliant. The script worked fine but completely filling the disks (totally 500GB) from another computer was going to take up towards 40 hours and I am a little impatient. The bottleneck with the DNS-323 is as usual the network connection. So instead, I though about running the script on the DNS-323 itself – which should be very much quicker. But to do that I needed to install a fun_plug to be able to log on and run some software on it.

I had done some small tests with fun_plugs when I first got the DNS-323 but I haven’t checked how much could be done and I was pleasantly surprised. This is a step-by-step description on how to install Fonz fun_plug (FFP) and make it accessible through SSH.

1. Download fun_plug and fun_plug.tgz from this web site
2. Copy the files to the Volume_1 folder on the DNS-323
3. Make sure that the fun_plug file is executable
4. Restart the DNS-323, then telnet to get shell access
5. Install all packages as described in the readme for FFP

cd /mnt/HD_a2
rsync -av inreto.de::dns323/fun-plug/0.5/packages .
cd packages
funpkg -i *.tgz


6. Enable the root password and set a password as well as the shell for root by issuing the following commands

pwconv
passwd
usermod -s /ffp/bin/sh root


7. Verify that you can log on as root

login


8. If the login worked, then store the password to flash memory by running

store-passwd.sh


9. Start the ssh server (which will take a while since it has to create keys), then try to log on from another computer

cd /ffp/start
sh sshd.sh start


10. If that worked it is time to turn off the telnet server and to enable the ssh server instead

chmod a-x telnetd.sh
chmod a+x sshd.sh


I am now running the script on the DNS-323 and it is about 7 times quicker than running it via Samba.

More to follow…