Welcome to my fourth blog about HexOS. I’m building a HexOS NAS for my family home and documenting my user journey as I go. You can read my previous posts here. I have build my machine and installed HexOS, this is my first time playing with it. I am at the welcome screen and lets see what happens next….

I clicked the first thing suggested, Configure users.

Do I need to add a user?

I am not really clear if I am already a user: is “Gingerling” a normal user or an admin that is only used for serious stuff? Is the gingerling icon top right my server username or is that my HexOS website login?

I also find being landed on the Folders tab when I clicked Configure users (the first suggested item in welcome) a bit confusing. I saw that Add Folders was the second suggested item on the welcome screen.

I can see Users on the folders screen, but it upsets my sense of rightness with the universe that on this screen My Folders is top and Users is second but on the welcome screen it was the other way round. It’s a small thing but it annoys me for many days!

Anyway, I click on Add new under Users and I get this info “Add local account. Local accounts can be assigned to protected folders. They cannot be used to manage your server.”

I am a little bit unsure about this. It sounds like this is for giving people in my family access to specific parts of the NAS. I am guessing this will allow me to, for example, give my kids their own folder that they can play with but that they can’t edit anything else. But I am still unclear if I should be setting up a user for myself or not. I decide to consult some docs.

Reading docs and missing search

I start with the graphical guide I mentioned in the last post, which is here. It stops after the install on the machine and before set up so isn’t any help with this part. I got a bit distracted sending a message to the creator to suggest tweaks (basic instructions for switching off secure boot and being on the same LAN when setting up via the web interface).

I headed back to the forum next but I couldn’t see a search feature to find a post about users or basic set up – I also tried making a new post as sometimes there is a search built in there also.

I then found search in the menu bar which was confusing to me, but it only took me a few minutes at least.

I did a search…

… got no results.

I also couldn’t find a set-up guide using the search either.

So I went back to the forum using the back button – while this search feature is really comprehensive it’s not under the forum page so then I couldn’t just make a post when I don’t find the info needed. I think a simple search feature on each forum section would be great. Having gone back to the forum I noticed a section for questions “users & folders.

Asking questions

I found this post which says that new users can’t administer the server at all, they will only have access to what they’re given access to. I am thinking that this is going to be a bit of a faff giving myself access to everything manually. Still, for clarity I ask:

“I would like to check that it’s not necessary to add more users. Should I be adding a user for myself for day to day access to the NAS when I’m not doing admin stuff? Or is it safe/standard to just use this admin account as how I access the NAS all the time. I don’t have anyone else that needs access right now.

Also the user ID that shows top right on the https://deck.hexos.com – is that my server user account or my HexOS website login showing there? I have the same username. I think it might be the website one.”

I leave this for now and look at adding a folder.

Making a folder

On the Folders tab under My Folders I tap New Folder. I like these popups in the interface, they feel very light touch, no screen with multiple steps etc.

However I get a rather over-enthusiastic error message that pops up when I type a space (or hypen etc) in the username exclaiming they cannot “start or end with a space, underscore of hyphen” – I haven’t finished typing yet 😊

I notice that I have to choose the pool location even though I only have one pool (this has been mentioned here). Also the Pool name is HDD’s which is…. a bit bland. I decide to go and name my pool before making a folder.

I really dislike the description of Public access as being Everyone has access to the folder. Who is “everyone?” The whole world? Is this content on-line for anyone to see or does this just mean “All users?”

When uploading to YouTube Public means anyone with internet access can see it and Private means only people I invite to access it can see it.

On Google Docs the options are Private or Anyone with a link (the link can be guessed I suspect) or you can add people with their email to access the file, which is an extension of private in my mind.

It’s not clear to me what Public means in the context of a NAS. I decide to leave making a folder right now until this is clarified: I make a new post on the forum Clarifying who has access to a public folder and move on!

😱 The answer to this was so unexpected to me! Apparently anyone with my wifi password would have access to a “public folder”. I just would not ever have imagined the wifi password as the gate to the NAS. In addition, in my small town with poor mobile/cell coverage I have often given my wifi password to guests, visitors, builders/contractors so they can make wifi calling or listen to podcasts etc. I do have a guest network at the moment, but only for kicks, I didn’t really think it was needed – this made me feel a bit like I am playing with fire with this NAS, like I don’t know what I am doing and could make a big mistake easily.

Trying to rename my pool

I couldn’t work out how to do rename my pool either and decided to go for a coffee with my friend and come back to it later. I found a post about it later on and discovered this isn’t possible for now.

Overwhelmed and confused

Between the last section and now a couple of weeks have passed: I think blogging as I go and QA of software being my job are holding me back a bit from just diving in. I asked my questions in the forum and got pretty overwhelmed by some of the replies, and am struggling to integrate the different bits of information together.

For example how users and folders and wifi passwords interact and how they might work if I later add remote access, which I might want to do for things like photo backups for example. I want to follow best practice for my scenario of home use, but I don’t know what that is. I also lack of directions from within the software, the intro of add folder and add user isn’t helping me feel confident when I have found out I didn’t at all understand the security implications. I feel this shows just how important the documentation and support is going to be for this product.

I am happy to go through this muddle and stress as an early adopter or something that’s important to me however.

Community response conundrum

I am also a bit torn about weather I should mention or describe the forum responses which I personally found off-putting.

I have at no point felt unwelcome or attacked on the forum however one reply in particular had an intense technical enthusiasm that was so unnerving to me as less intense hobbyist. It’s a new and small community and I didn’t want to call out an individual publicly for trying to help me, and I know they are passionate and doing this work for free – so for now I reached out to them by DM to discuss it.

Coming up with a to-do list of things to try

In an attempt to refocus I am building a list of things I want to try right now. I am trying to choose the most basic thing – this isn’t easy to make a list of easy things when I am aware may things will work with plugins and I don’t know how well those work yet.

In the long run I want all my photos backed up on the NAS, automated backups, a library of DVD’s and music I can access from my TV and phone and then things like home automation to fix some of my gripes and maybe my own VPN which I think can be done on my HexOS. For now I think I will start with:

• Adding a new user and accessing the NAS as that user
  • what does my nas look like to someone else
  • what are the diffrent ways people can access the nas when on my network with or without a user account?
• Accessing my NAS from my phone
  • how does this work?
  • what can I do with the most simple method and no plugins?
• Backing up my laptop of my NAS
  • I think this will be fairly easy in it’s simple form, I am imagining just dragging stuff to a folder on the nas from in my file browser
  • I would like to look at backup tools and see what that is like
• Backing up my phone
  • what do I want to back up and how do I do it?
  • Are there any tools for to google/android that might automate and do I want to use them
• Adding media and accessing it from my TV

A guiding factor for me personally, and probably why this list seems cautions, is that this is a clean blank slate and I have a lot of unsorted data, photos and old backups. I am keen to tread lightly and start well rather than throw stuff up there and make bad choices that will require time to fix.

Rebooting and trying again

I was going to get started on my list, however, I had switched off the NAS to save a bit of power and when I switched it on again I had this error on the deck. Health: Your server is not running normally.

I plugged in the monitor and the screen showed the same Console setup screen I had seen before. I tried option 8 Reboot, and after reboot I still had the error in the deck.

I went to the forms and searched “not running normally”

I found a thread that had a similar issue, it didn’t help but scanning through it and the other threads it occurred to me to check if the pool was still accessible. It wasn’t.

I decided to see what tapping add new pool would do, it suggests my drives aren’t running or accessible

Also I am really loving the idea that there will be docs baked into the app, at the moment tapping Learn more takes me to page not found. I want to write these docs please! HexOS team if you’re reading, hire me pls 😉

Starting over again?

While writing this forum post asking for help it seems to me that I actually didn’t have a pool of three drives I had a pool or one drive and two unused drives. This is the screenshot from that post.

I assumed initially that the unused drives section was because I didn’t have any data on the server yet or about redundancy (to me this means duplicated data on the drives so if a drive fails I don’t lose data). However while scanning the post that seemed not to be relevant before, I clocked this comment that mentions single drive pools are a problem. I don’t know why the two unused drives wouldn’t show though, they were never in the pool.

I am thinking I will need to start again with my install but have that to-do list ready for when I am able to get started next time.