Is there a way to install linux packages on the EX4?

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX4
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For example this: http://mama.indstate.edu/users/ice/tree/

Basically I want to be able to make a decent listing of all the files on some of my JBODs. The files are too big for me to backup (for now, at least), but easy to replace so long as I have a listing.

I’ve tried   ls -R >file.txt  and I get the list, but its not particularly friendly; tree appears to provide a very good alternative, if there’s any way to get it going?

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So what you are pointing to in your question is a web page with the source code for tree. To answer your question, you can compile the tree’s source code if you have the knowledge and skill to do so andput it on the EX4…there is nothing stopping you. But as far as Linux packages (e.g. rpm packages), the answer is no.

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I know what you’re saying; but no I don’t actually know how.

Keen to learn, though if you can explain/point me somewhere?

I’m on an electronics degree, so this is all helpful stuff; and it also means I have some programming experience so I do have some small idea about compiling; just never done it manually.

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I’ll have a crack at explaining :slight_smile:

What you need to look for is how to cross compile for the architecture of the box.

If you:

uname -a

 you’ll see the architecture is: armv5tel

Linux NeNAS 3.2.40 #3 Tue Jun 17 09:59:36 CST 2014 armv5tel GNU/Linux

Does that give you enough to google for? :slight_smile:

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Possibly. I suspect I’ll still need some help, but I have a couple of friends and uni lecturers who I’m sure would be keen to help me out of my Windoze GUI days lol.

Once I have it on there, future firmware updates won’t screw with it, will they? Or am I likely to need to reinstall in periodically?

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My best guess would be its unlikely you’ll need to reinstall it. In fact, the ‘install’ process might well prove to be as easy as drop the compiled executable in to /usr/bin and chmod +x it or something. I’d be surprised if it was affected or removed by an update.

So normally, you’d get the source on the machine you’re going to run it, then run Make and Make install. It tests for a suitable compiler and it there it compiles the app during Make and then Make install deploys it and the supporting files to the system (like man pages and what not). 

But for that you need a compiler on the box and I don’t think the NAS has one by default. Hence the suggestion to looking at cross compiling.