TM-F2-420-Linux
This is a short, informal guide to set up Arch Linux on a TerraMaster F2-420 NAS.
The TerraMaster F2-420 is a surprisingly capable machine containing:
- Small, passively cooled Single-Board Computer
- Intel Celeron J1900 4-core 2 GHz (64bit) CPU
- Intel HD Graphics (Ribbon cable VGA connector on-board)
- 4GB RAM + slot expandable additional 4GB DDR3L 1333
- 2 Network and 2 external + 2 internal USB plugs
This differentiates it a bit from many other NAS out there that are often based on ARM chips and run some specially crafted, proprietary Linux distribution. The F2-420 on the other hand is based on standard x86_64 and can therefore run just about any modern OS out-of-the-box.
I got myself one of these with the intent to set it up with my own fully customized NAS server with all the bells and whistles I want and none of the bloat.
Prep
Disassemble the case by unscrewing the back, taking out the board and unscrewing the drives bracket to get to the boot USB stick. It might be hot-glued in place but that should peel off with care.
You'll probably want to just pull the "TerraMaster OS" USB out so the machine doesn't boot into that anymore. Unfortunately the TOS USB that came in my machine was a tiny 64 MB (who knew they made them that small?) so I replaced it with my own 16GB USB stick.
Of course you'll want to install your own OS on your own USB stick first. The easiest way to do this, I found, is to plug the USB into a computer, connect it to a VirtualBox virtual machine and boot a Live image of the OS you want to install.
Install Arch Linux
Installing Arch Linux for the F2-420 is pretty much the same as any other machine so if you know how all this works you can skip ahead.
Mount the partition you intend to install on, most likely sda1:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
Install the base system in the mounted directory, generate an fstab, and
chroot into it:
pacstrap /mnt base sudo
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt
Now that we're in the new system, configure timezone and system hardware clock:
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Tokyo /etc/localtime
hwclock --systohc --utc
And locales:
vim /etc/locale.gen # uncomment your desired locale
echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf
locale-gen
And hostname:
echo nas > /etc/hostname
Set the root password, add a normal user, 'nasuser', set password, and finally configure sudo to allow 'wheel' users:
passwd
useradd -m -g users -G wheel nasuser
passwd nasuser
visudo # uncomment wheel with password
The base system has now been set up, so generate the boot images:
mkinitcpio -p linux
Now you can install any other software you'll want on the system. You'll probably want to install some basic services like SSH, NTP, NTFS, DLNA:
pacman -S openssh ntp udisks2 ntfs-3g net-tools ifplugd minidlna
And I like to install my set of standard tools:
pacman -S vim fish beep
If you want SSH, be sure to enable the service:
sudo systemctl enable sshd
If you're configuring your SSH to only allow keys (ie. not password), remember to copy the public key from your client (ie. not your NAS) before disabling password login:
ssh-copy-id nasuser@192.168.1.10
Now comes the hardest part. You'll have to install a bootloader like GRUB to make the whole system boot. When I was setting up my F2-420 I mucked about with this for a long time not getting anywhere. The system just wouldn't boot and, it being headless, I couldn't see why.
What I eventually got working was to bootstrap from the TOS image and use the
GRUB from there. But I figure you probably don't have to go through all that
trouble yourself.
In fact if you can make your own grub work, great! But if you can't, try copy
out the /boot/ directory from the TOS USB (or the image included here).
To make the TOS grub boot Arch, add the following to the end of
/boot/grub2/grub.cfg:
set default="arch"
menuentry "arch" --id "arch" {
insmod part_gpt
insmod ext2
insmod gzio
echo "Arch Linux boot option .."
set root='hd0,gpt1'
linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=12ab34cd-56ef-78ab-90cd-12ef34ab56cd rw
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
}
NOTE: You'll probably want to use UUIDs instead of /dev/sdXX to avoid boot
issues when adding and removing HDDs and USB drives.
And remember to set rw to getting the 'The root device is not configured to be
mounted read-write.' error message.
Lastly, I found that since this system is running headless it can be hard to tell if it's even booting if we're not able to connect to it. To give at least some indication I set up another system service that does exactly one thing: beep once booted.
To set this service up create the following service file:
/etc/systemd/system/beep.service:
[Unit]
After=systemd-user-sessions.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/beep
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
And don't forget to enable the service:
sudo systemctl enable beep
The system will now play a single beep with the on-board beeper once the system has been successfully brought up.
Additional tips
If NTP seems to be out of sync you can try some combination of:
ntpq -p # query
sudo ntpd -qg # force sync
hwclock --systohc # write sys to hw clock
If you're planning on running a Windows share, configure SAMBA something like this:
/etc/samba/smb.conf:
[global]
load printers = No
printcap name = /dev/null
disable spoolss = Yes
follow symlinks = yes
wide links = yes
unix extensions = no
[shares]
path = /shares/
available = yes
browsable = yes
public = yes
writable = no
If you're having trouble booting the boot images you might want to try edit
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf to say something like:
HOOKS="base udev block autodetect modconf filesystems keyboard fsck"
After which you'll of course have to run:
sudo mkinitcpio -p linux
If you're still having trouble, you can also try edit it to include:
MODULES="crc32_generic crc32-pclmul libcrc32c crc32c_generic crc32c-intel"
And run the command again..
Since the TOS USB was so small, I decided to dump the image to have a backup in case I ever wanted to go back. I've included the image as the 'UTOSBOOT-X86-S64.img'.