ReadyNAS ultra 6: final success

First: this message is going to be a mixture of a lot of things. I'm going to try as best I can to keep everything in a straight line, but things might slip and slide along the way.

First of all, I'm a completely blind user, so having to rely on brltty "for braille output" is required. This means that 2 out of 3 usb-ports are already occupied, one for the braille display and one for the keyboard. A third one for the installer... Since the ReadyNAS 6 only has 3, that would leave me without any options to connect an installation drive, so as a workaround I used vmware to accomplish the installation. It was all a matter of connecting the system usb os drive to the vm, as well as the braille display, and everything booted and ran just fine. (maybe that's not completely conventional, but needs simply must)

Aside for the seemingly horribly outdated 7.0 installer iso (currently on 7.5, with I'd say needed bugfixes) everything up to first boot when absolutely fine. On first boot, it seemed like the system retained ip addresses assigned by vmware, making accessing it over the network problematic. I tried using the firstaid thing, but since the ReadyNAS has 2 lan ports and since after a few trials and errors it still didn't work, I also gave up on that. (Entering the numbers on the keyboard to select the required option, 1 for network interface for instance, didn't seem to do anything, so... at least the window didn't wrap making it somewhat doable) Then, to get network going I just tryed

"dhclient" and wouldn't you know, ip changes so I could at least continue with the configuration. The good thing was that my unraid filesystems could be mounted, the files backed up from truenas scale were still all there, so that backup task could simply continue after configuring rsync modules.

One day later, the only snag I ran into was flash plugin seemingly breaking email notification. (after finding folder2ram on github and updating that to 4.0.1 the issue disappeared, so for now...)

Also, clamav seemed to have some difficulties, but a few ownership and permission changes, as well as creating the logfile and then syncing all to disk got it all fixed.

I also did install and update grub on the internal 120 mb flash module, since the NAS mobo lost its serial number anyway, I now at least don't have to go and hold a button down every time the system reboots...

I'm actually really glad that giving OMV a second chance seems to have payed off. I wanted to find other solutions first because the last time, omv seemed more equal to a pile of broken stones rather than something constructive... (that probably had to do with me wanting to use the internal storage to save kernel and initrd, using debian on a volume group just as the old readynas software seemed to have done, messing with the config file until it worked, and then living with the uncertainty if it would stay up and would be reliable...)

All of this, at long last, does bring me to a few questions though:

- Why the (seemingly massive) outdated installer? The software is like 5 versions ahead, and yet the only useable media one finds doesn't reflect that. (in my case, I wonder if that would or could have saved me from the ip issues I experienced going from vmware to the real system)

- Alternative installation methods: netinstaller, complete offline installation...? Anything to free up the installation pendrive / port to insert the destination drive.

- Is there anything readynas ultra I might need or am missing? So far, the system seems stable, but maybe others have found adding certain drivers or elements improved the experience.

Just goes to show what 24 hours can do...
I would argue though that using the install script might be something not everyone would want to deal with, and that still requires an internet connection. I can certainly appriciate the "simplicity of the web interface" but than as counter balance there's the complexity the install script would throw up when you "dare to have something slightly less standard". And not being standard isn't always by choice either. It could have saved me potentially half an hour or more, if I could just have used the omv installer as netinst / minimal installer that could be unplugged the moment the thing was booted up. That's even skipping the possibilities ssh could offer in many a situation...
Also, even if creating an iso takes some time, consider it a name card, contact card... whatever works. If someone visits the website and finds version 7.0, comes back several months later and still finds 7.0 even though versions in reality have changed, that might just "put people off enough to think... "skip" I was sadly surprised that coming back five or so months later it was still the same installer, and I honestly if not for the absolute need to try and save up money, probably would have just not bothered. I'm glad I did, don't get me wrong here, it's just that I think that this is or could be, an avoidable conception issue.
And then of course there's the whole essential bugs fixed to help new installations and all that, that seems rather important too...