Install Debian on WD My Cloud home

Je vous partage ma joie de voir un OpenMediaVault installé sur ce raté de WD (il s’allume, redémarre, je continue à tester, mais devant tant de mépris de la part des dev pour nos demandes répétées et nombreuses, je ne pouvais que partager !)

Traduit depuis http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=467828&view=findpost&p=87961189

Pour installer le système, vous devez télécharger l’archive avec les fichiers d’installation (le lien se trouve à la fin du message) et décompressez-le sur une clé USB au format FAT32. Une condition supplémentaire pour un lecteur flash est qu’il doit avoir une table de partition MBR et que la partition avec les fichiers d’installation doit être numéro 1. Habituellement, tous les lecteurs flash sont cassés, mais parfois je rencontre des options lorsque le système de fichiers démarre directement à partir du bloc 0, sans MBR. De plus, lors du déballage de l’archive sur une clé USB, vous devez enregistrer la structure du répertoire, comme dans l’archive, et pas seulement vider tous les fichiers à la racine.
Ensuite, insérez le lecteur flash USB dans le NAS éteint, maintenez enfoncé le bouton de configuration et mettez sous tension. Une fois que la LED commence à clignoter uniformément, le bouton peut être relâché - le téléchargement depuis la clé USB a déjà commencé. Le système est installé de manière complètement automatique, le processus prend 3-5 minutes, selon la vitesse de lecture d’un lecteur flash particulier. Après avoir enregistré toutes les partitions, le NAS redémarrera automatiquement et un système d’exploitation fraîchement installé démarrera. Au premier démarrage, il reçoit automatiquement l’adresse réseau via DHCP, à l’avenir, cette adresse peut être modifiée en statique. Le système a déjà défini 2 utilisateurs / mots de passe:

root / root - pour l’accès via ssh
admin / admin - pour accéder à l’interface Web.

Si votre appareil se trouve dans un réseau non sécurisé, il est préférable de changer les mots de passe. Encore mieux est d’ajouter un utilisateur régulier, de l’ajouter au groupe ssh et de vous y connecter via ssh, et de désactiver l’accès via ssh par root.
En plus de ssh, le système a la possibilité d’accéder aux fichiers via smb (réseau Windows), ftp et nfs (tout cela est configuré via le même panneau de contrôle). Par exemple, le système a déjà été configuré accès smb au répertoire / stockage de fichiers de données pour tous les utilisateurs sans mot de passe.
Comme nous avons un debian à part entière, avec tous les référentiels officiels, vous pouvez éventuellement attribuer des fonctions de serveur supplémentaires au NAS, par exemple, augmenter le serveur d’impression en branchant l’imprimante sur un port USB, ou même créer un routeur Internet en y branchant un modem USB. Ici, tout n’est déterminé que par votre imagination.

Le script d’installation écrit des copies de sauvegarde des partitions dans la section 24 (DISKVOLUME1 - stockage de fichiers) dans le répertoire oldsystem-backup. Si vous en avez besoin, il est préférable de les réécrire quelque part en dehors du NAS pour une meilleure sécurité.

UPD: Un petit bug a été détecté dans mon programme d’installation. Le fait est que lors de l’installation, je n’écrase que les sections que je modifie. Sections FDT et AFW Je ne touche pas, et, comme il s’est avéré, en vain. Lors de la mise à jour du firmware officiel, ces sections peuvent changer, et les sommes de contrôle dans ma version de fwtable ne correspondront plus aux sections réelles. Ainsi, l’installation n’était possible qu’en plus de la version du firmware officiel que j’avais. Dans d’autres cas, l’appareil est passé en permanence en mode de démarrage USB - clignotement fréquent des LED et plus d’activité.
Maintenant, je l’ai corrigé, et vous pouvez installer mon debian sur n’importe quel firmware officiel. Qui a téléchargé le fichier - sautez. Si vous ne voulez pas tout télécharger, téléchargez uniquement le fichier rescue.root.sata.cpio.gz_pad.img de l’archive - Yandex.Disk peut le faire. Les fichiers restants n’ont pas changé.

Lien pour l’image:

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Thank you for the information, very interesting to read this russian forum, the guy have done very good things !

I would have loved to found this before uploading 2TB of data I would need to move somewhere else before trying, but it seems to be very simple, fast, with awesome result, as the screenshoot of the web interface is exactly what I would like to achieve !
OpenMediaVault interface

maybe I’ll purchase a new one in one months or 2 :slight_smile:

Direct French translation (more than 600 pages of forum post !!! a month to read everithing!) Google translate RU → FR
Google Translate RU → EN

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Wow that looks so amazing.

We could have a proper NAS as everybody wants
Did you guys tried it?

Yes a real OpenMediaVault with all the features.

Open the device to access the config button and to be able to start/stop by removing the alim cable.
Unzip the link onto an FAT32 bootable USB key and plug it when the device is off.
Press the config button and start it : the led blink.
After 2 minutes, it appears on the network http://WDNAS
root / root - to access via ssh (but it first ask for a key)
admin / admin - to access Web interface
Enjoy

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Nice, the procedure looks really simple.

Just 2 quick questions:
1 - Where is exactly located the config button? On the back of the device we only have the “reset”. Do we need to open the case?

2 - Is there any special thing we should take in consideration when formatting the USB drive to FAT32?

Thank you

Hello FoZi,

The button is the only button you have on the device, near the USB Port.
You could try to do the step without open it, but I was more comfortable to click this button while the device was open, up to you !

To have a FAT32 bootable USB key, you could follow tuto on internet, mine was a old Centos usb key, made with Rufus, so you can do the same (download Rufus/ install Centos on it / then copy/paste the files from the extract of the downloaded link provide from forth32)

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Hi I have a quick question , Am I going to loose my data ? like movies and tv shows in public folder

yes

Edit 28.04.2020 : others people confirm that you won’t loose your data

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Thank you very much for your clarifications Western1.

I though we wouldn’t need to install an OS on the bootable drive (but just the files from forth32).

Anyway now you can access your data by just connecting the MCH through USB for example right ? And do you need to do any special configurastion (dynamic dns) to access your my cloud home from outside of your network ?

I’m pretty sure that you need a bootable USB sitck, not just copy/past the file from forth32, i let you try and add your info here !
After install, you will have an OpenMediaVault installed on the MCH, like a NAS, with all feature that OpenMediaVault (v4) can have.
You will have to configure it to access from outside (and of course, you will have to configure your ISP)
If you don’t have time to search how to configure it (the OpenMediaVault forum is full of how-to and articles) or if you know how, you should probably stay on the system provided by WD.

I bought this device to access it remotely from external device, even when my ISP is not working so I didn’t give a try to access my NAS throw USB, as I already have an external HDD connected like that.

i managed to install it successfully but I cannot install docker plugin . and by the way media files did not removed it was removed into a backup folder in the srv folder . Any one managed to install docker plugin

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Should this work also on MyCloud Home Duo?

It seems that MCHD has some sort of software RAID:

Feel free to test it and let us know :wink:

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Tried it and it does’t work.

However, looking at this a bit closer, I doubt anyone here managed to get debian on WD MyCloud Home for real. Here’s why:

  1. user forth32 never mentions that a bootable USB is needed, just his files on a MBR/FAT32 USB stick. This doesn’t make any sense, since operating system WD-Android should be replaced with Debian and so Debian needs to come from somewhere. Does Debian just magically appears on MCH? His files are just a bunch of configs and addon software, there is no operating system to install. The only way this would work is that WD-Android would pick up forth32 script, then some script would download Debian, then it would flash boot partition, then reboot to Debian and so on. I don’t think this is what’s going on here.

  2. If bootable USB is needed for MCH device to boot from it, I wonder what kind of Linux boot-image this should be? I doubt that just any random Linux distro image would work since MCH is an ARM device, so It should have been ARM-Debian image and one that is not an install-ISO, but some ready made live-ISO. BTW, suggested CentOS image doesn’t make any sense. My bet is that bootable USB is actually not needed, though.

  3. bootable images in general do not just pick up any random files or scripts that you put on the USB next to other system files. I don’t understand how this could ever work: “just flash USB with a random Linux ISO and put some extra files on and they’ll be executed.” Well, they won’t.

I’ll be glad if anyone here can prove me wrong and posts some proof-of-life of Debian on MCH with a bit more profound explanation how is this supposed to work.

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Hi @mdvrk, just to confirm you that, following Forth32 steps, I got Debian on MyCloud Home. Openmediavault is running since yesterday (uptime 12 hours). I was not able only to run some plugins (e.g. docker). Also data stored on the disk remain available (I found them in \smb folder).

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Hello Ricardo, thank you for your report.
I’m also block with Docker plugin, as @ahmedespo told.
I found another ISO on the same russian website, with the same problem (no docker plugin) (@mdvrk : for this one, follow the same steps forth32 gave us.)
All the others options seems to works smoothly, despite the SMBv1 option on W10, but at least, it’s very cool to have it.

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Hi guys, I confirm it can be done, and it’s very easy, too! I’m going to report my findings and a couple of questions:

  1. You don’t need a bootable USB, just follow the instructions (MBR, FAT32, block 0…)

  2. At first, I tried with the second “ISO” linked by Western1, but I had no luck. I suppose that version is an “upgrade” rather than a “stand-alone” installation? Anyway, the link provided in the first post works flawlessly.

  3. It’s OMV 4 Debian 9; unfortunately, it’s quite outdated and close to EOL.

  4. It’s kind of a snapshot, rather than a clean install, and I think forth32 explains it in his posts. There are a bunch of folders and subfolders in the main share, there are a lot of pre-installed plugins, there’s even a “readymade” SMB shared folder…

  5. My WD Cloud Home is much quieter, and the transfers are much faster. Just what you’d expect from a NAS…

  6. I think forth32 also explains that there is a way to revert back to its original state, but I wouldn’t know how to do it. In any case, I’m under the impression that the original WD partition isn’t erased in the process, and/or that the files are there, somewhere, intact. Dev/sataa has a capacity of 7,28 TB, but it is a 8TB disk. I don’t think it’s just a matter of rounding: 8 - 7.2 = more or less the files I had on the WDCH

And here come the questions:

  1. Can I safely delete all those folders? (see point 4) If they are required by the OS, I shouldn’t have permissions to modify them, right?

  2. If my assumption is correct (see point 6) is there a way to access the “WD partition”, format it, resize it and so on?

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Many thanks @asachang for your feddback, you seem to learn russian faster than I do :wink:

I was able to start on the second link I provided, but maybe because I was on the first install (OMV 4 Debian 9) ? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

As I still not use it completely, just tell me which folder you want to delete in order to me to test and verify if it’s still works.
My file systems (3To) on OMV show 6 parts where DATA took 2.68 TiB, USR 1.94 GiB, VAR 774.89MiB, DEBIAN, the same and 2 others parts without info.
I think you can access the WD partition directly via “files systems” onto OMV, by plug it onto your PC or via “shell in the box” plugin, no ?

Yes, I guess you’re right. Did you lose the previous configuration? Is it worth updating or, as they say, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it?

Well, basically all the folders that come “out of the box”… for instance, the data folder: it’s full of com.android… subfolders, most of them are empty (or are there hidden files?), but some of them do have some files that appear to be of some use. Ditto for the samba folder, backups folder, and so on. Also, because I have a Mac and use AFP, I noticed that you must create new empty folders and share them using AFP, you can’t just use one of the existing ones. This is not the case for SMB and FTP; in fact, I managed to browse those folders after I made them accessible via FTP (the data folder is already shared via SMB).
I’d like to have a clean system without leftovers from previous installations. There were 3 gb in the data partition… with due respect to forth32, who knows what’s in there? Of course, it’s all my fault: it’s my first time messing with OMV, I don’t know what I’m doing! :grinning:

Same for me. I wonder if the WD partition is one of two unmounted partitions, but I don’t want to break something. sataa18 has file system vfat and no label, could it be the one?

We should have some help understanding how to install a clean version on Debian ?
Does anybody know a CLI to reinstall debian with the same custom kernel used by forth32 .
Please guys keep this thread up and running