How often will this ex2 be updated?

it looks like this interface has just begun its development. i can see many things to get to it right now, and im sure many others can…

Tried to look for a download page on WD for firmwares so I could see the dates in between but it looks like WD don’t have a download page for firmwares :open_mouth:

but in the UI there are a option for “Manual Update” for a a local file ROFL! …

so whats up with that WD? :expressionless:

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This page has the publish dates for all the firmwares:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=906&sid=220&lang=en

It seems like it was once a month last year, but nothing this year so they are probably not actively developing it any more, likely just bugfixes from now on.

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I hope the “idea” tab in the community page is there for a reason :open_mouth:

there is a good potential in this nas software. so i think they cant stop now… :stuck_out_tongue: to me it seems more like they have been fixing bugs last year, and hopefully a big patch now are coming…? with features like advanced settings, text editor with conf files like a webmin thing.

 why the **bleep** is there such caged limits on a linux machine? it just seems stupid for me. 

The “caged limits” as you say might be because WD is balancing the capability of the ARM processor they chose with the feature set of the UI.

This is common amoung all the NAS vendors.  For example, I have a few Qnap devices and some of their devices with the slower/limited ARM CPUs don’t support all the UI based features on some of their faster CPU units.

If WesternDigital moved there WEB UI from a compressed Volume to a writeable Volume people could make the UI more responsive, I don’t see the reason at all why they did what they did.

People who buy the product from WesternDigital are not smart enough to tinker with it? only WD people? come on…

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krycek wrote:

If WesternDigital moved there WEB UI from a compressed Volume to a writeable Volume people could make the UI more responsive, I don’t see the reason at all why they did what they did.

 

People who buy the product from WesternDigital are not smart enough to tinker with it? only WD people? come on…

You can do that by custom compiling the firmware. For example, just to add an extra layer of security I changed the logos on the dashboard’s login page from WD My Cloud EX2 to Windows Server 2012, just to screw with any intruders who come to my server, since I had enabled dashboard cloud access a long time ago and can remotely login to the dashboard (did it more so that I could remotely access my Joomla pages and any other webpages rather than accessing the dashboard itself). The entire firmware source code is available from WD’s support site and you can muck with it as you like on a Linux system and compile it with your custom changes built-in (like in my case the dashboard’s login’s logo :slight_smile: ).

: )  I have never compiled a firmware before  : (  if I do that, will my data be intact? like will it remember my “RAID 1” option?

freshly installed firmware have the “RAID 0” so I may need to tinker the firmware and make it ready for to be raid 1 on the first boot?  : O

how easy is it to brick your X2 with custom firmware? 

I hope the next firmware from Western Digital will reflect all the idea’s that has been presented on this community site,

I don’t think they will do that! but I hope I’m wrong.

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krycek wrote:

: )  I have never compiled a firmware before  : (  if I do that, will my data be intact? like will it remember my “RAID 1” option?

freshly installed firmware have the “RAID 0” so I may need to tinker the firmware and make it ready for to be raid 1 on the first boot?  : O

 

how easy is it to brick your X2 with custom firmware? 

 

I hope the next firmware from Western Digital will reflect all the idea’s that has been presented on this community site,

 

I don’t think they will do that! but I hope I’m wrong.

Compilation instructions are provided in a read me file accompanying the source code. It is not hard BUT it is NOT for everyone. If you aren’t familiar with shell scripting and Linux, you should not even consider it. Not to mention, you void your warranty by running custome firmware.

krycek wrote:

If WesternDigital moved there WEB UI from a compressed Volume to a writeable Volume people could make the UI more responsive…

Since you wrote the comment about people making the code into a writable volume, I thought you were familiar with shell scripting, etc.

Your data should not be impacted since it resides in a different area but if you don’t know what you are doing, yes, you could potentially brick your EX2. See this thread →   http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud-EX2/Bricked-my-EX2-lt-Also-how-I-unbricked-it-gt/td-p/861783

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Thanks for reply

but I really wish Western Digital would consider changing their setup relating to the possibilty to tweak the Web interface (website) in their next firmware.

and fix the puplic share folder in the next firmware as well so not everyone can write and delete : O (fix now is to ssh into your nas) done that, but it shouldn’t be like that : ( not every one knows how to do this ;) 

and there are apps that X4 has but X2 doesn’t if I read correctly from a post from this community.

waiting to see if they completely fail on the next firmware, did they listen or did they not? = O

There are many important (security) issues in the ideas section, which won’t cost much time to implement in the next firmware. I hope they are included and I hope it comes soon!

Any guesses from WD when the next update will be released??

Cybernut1 - through compiling the firmware yourself are you able to easily remove the issue where changes to app’s config files are reset upon rebooting the EX2?  Also have you tried installing any third-party apps not available through the dashboard to any success?

I gave up trying to tinker with the EX2 and just got a raspberry pi to handle most things.  While it took me days of messing about to come to conclusion it was too much hassle getting things to work on the EX2, managed to setup sickbeard, couchpotato, headphones, deluge, museek+, bittorrent sync, LAMP, and wordpress so far on the raspberry pi in a single afternoon after work.  

@Abe_Stew, this is a known problem, and i know of it.

https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13725

in the link here youll see… i think the thing is you have to put the settings.json file in your home folder as .settings.json and then make a link to this settings, so it opens the file in the home folder instead of the original settings.json file. but this message was more to wd…

is this only a user community or is there wd staff here answering aswell? they should answer this post! :stuck_out_tongue:

-edit

found this answer:

Common solution for configs rewriting prevent :

chattr +i

It blocks any changes on locked file.
If you need to rewrite/edit file, just unlock it with chattr -i, write changes and lock it again.

Abe_Stew wrote:

Cybernut1 - through compiling the firmware yourself are you able to easily remove the issue where changes to app’s config files are reset upon rebooting the EX2?  

The config file resetting after reboot will always be there…but what you can do is take your custom config file and replace the default config file in the firmware code before compiling. This does solve the problem you are referring to. But it really depends on what config file you are talking about. I have done it for the main config file of EX2, config.xml that you normally see in /etc/NAS_CFG/config.xml. But for 3rd party apps it wouldn’t apply because WD does not store 3rd party apss’ config files in their firmware anyway. The config files for 3rd party apps get copied only when you install them. If you are running into an issue with 3rd party apps’ config files, then you can use the persistent storage location /usr/local/config/ to backup any config files you want to preserve post-reboot, and by editing the startup script you can copy them over at startup time from that persistent location to whereever they need to be. And then once you compile the firmware with this change, you will basically not see any loss of configs post-reboot. Just be aware that /usr/local/config has a small finite size of 12.2MB (run ‘df -h /usr/local/config’ in ssh to see for yourself how much of that is free). It is ideal for config files which are usually small but should not be used for other files unless they are small.

Abe_Stew wrote:

Cybernut1 - Also have you tried installing any third-party apps not available through the dashboard to any success?

Yes, I have. I have installed Joomla 3.3.6 which was the latest Joomla until a month or so ago (latest is 3.4). Much newer than the old 2.x version of Joomla available from EX2’s apps in dashboard. Works perfectly fine. It really depends on the app’s system requirements - whether EX2 contains the requisite libraries or not.

I also came very close to installing the 3rd party app ownCloud (not included in EX2’s tiny apps offerings) but because two libraries were not installed with the PHP, the system requirements were not met. I just needed to update the library in the kernel itself and would have required a bit more tinkering than I had time for. I think one of these days I just might do that.

coc0nut wrote:

@Abe_Stew, this is a known problem, and i know of it.

 is this only a user community or is there wd staff here answering aswell? they should answer this post! :stuck_out_tongue:

This is primarily a user community though WD staff does occassionally answer questions. But WD staff’s involvement isvery limited. And that is at par with what I have seen on QNAP and Synology forums too. Guessing it’s the same at most other NAS vendors’ forums. Sometimes there are features that you can suggest to WD to add to the firmware and they might consider, and even agree to it. But more often than not, if you want to do something beyond the limitations of the device, you will have to research and implement that extra functionality yourself…and be willing to void your warranty. But with EX2’s price being somewhat low for the diskless version, it is a good device to tinker with. That is why I got the diskless version myself. My drive (a WD Red) will still be covered with warranty regardless of the EX2’s warranty status.

Cybernut1 wrote:


coc0nut wrote:

@Abe_Stew, this is a known problem, and i know of it.

 is this only a user community or is there wd staff here answering aswell? they should answer this post! :stuck_out_tongue:


This is primarily a user community though WD staff does occassionally answer questions. But WD staff’s involvement isvery limited. And that is at par with what I have seen on QNAP and Synology forums too. Guessing it’s the same at most other NAS vendors’ forums. Sometimes there are features that you can suggest to WD to add to the firmware and they might consider, and even agree to it. But more often than not, if you want to do something beyond the limitations of the device, you will have to research and implement that extra functionality yourself…and be willing to void your warranty. But with EX2’s price being somewhat low for the diskless version, it is a good device to tinker with. That is why I got the diskless version myself. My drive (a WD Red) will still be covered with warranty regardless of the EX2’s warranty status.

very good point! that the harddrives are still on warranty, thanks! :slight_smile: now i have another question and that is that if you can log out every device from the desktop app. sometimes, when you log into your account on friends computers and so on. but i will make another thread for that.