To demonstrate fairness… Also maybe some MyBook Live owners have mains power issues and many power-cuts? Maybe some MyBook Live owners are a bit lazy and simply turn off the NAS without commanding it to shut-down? Maybe some people dive in to the back-end using SSH Telnet and made signigicant changes and here I feel sorry for the Firmware development team as a script what would work on their equipment may trash a MyBook Live what has it’s internals significantly changed? Yes, I’ve made changed to the internals of my own NAS, but I’ve been very careful and kept a detailed change-log. I’ve actually changed very little.
- Corrected a bug with Safepoint back-up where the dry-run ignores the exclude.txt file.
- netatalk service stopped because I don’t need it.
- Added extra exceptions to the exclude.txt file.
- Configured the VSFTP service to be more secure and a lot more frustrating to anyone trying to perform a dictionary attack. If an incorrect password is given then VSFTPD waits for longer then 60 seconds before responding. Promiscuous mode has been correctly configured and only two concurrent connections allowed from any one IP address.
There seems to be a problem performing the firmware upgrade through the Dashboard UI and possibly problems using the automatic update so manually copy the upgrade file to the NAS’s Public directory and invoke the script to pick this up and initiate the upgrade. Just cuts out the Dashboard UI from the equation and this seems to work.
Overall I purchased the MyBook Live to operate as network storage and it actually does this job very well. Curious why people find it slow. For my own video and auto-editing work the MyBook Live is the disk that contains the projects and had the work-space and temporary folders. It’s quite quick and apart from it’s quirks I have to admit it is proving to be quite reliable.
Personally I am giving W.D. a chance to correct the faults. At the same time I also recognise that some of the faults should not be there. Like a device reset button where the option to factory reset the NAS’s operating system is not provided. The all important SSH back-door to correct faults is disabled by default requiring an RMA if things go really wrong. There is not even a route in to W.D’s own technical support staff.
There should be a very simple TFTP server on the NAS that could be used as a route to send a firmware file to the NAS to replace a corrupted partition. Actually, keeping that idea for reference but scrapping it because the SSH facility allows the SFTP protocol so files can be uploaded and downloaded from ANYWHERE on the NAS’s disc. Perfect.
That SSH route into the NAS needs to be there.
If SSH is to be disabled by default then at least have it enabled for 10 minutes (more-or-less) after boot-up until it’s accessed with a valid login. To which it then remains enabled (as if it was enabled from the Dashboard UI). If on boot-up of the MyBook Live SSH already enabled then it remains enabled.
With this in place W.D. could write FixIt programs that could be downloaded onto a user’s computer, that then logs in to the MyBook Live and makes corrections. Programs like these technologically challenged people will be able to use and make life A LOT more easier for the first level technical support. WDTony and Bill_S will be also be able to lower their daily consuption of Prozac and stop smoking the weed each night. 
I try to be fair with my comments, I try be helpful (proof exists within this on-line community) but I also promise to be constructive critical critic if it’s necessary.
After all that, I quite like the MyBook Live. Plugged it in, it’s got it’s cool corner in the house and I generally forget it’s there. It just works, does what I want it to do and consumes very little power. At the moment the advantages of the MyBook Live outweigh the problems which I do believe WILL get fixed.
At that point of time in the future the MyBook Live will be quite an awesome gadget. :robothappy:
