Obscure Problems and Gotchas

As is with most popular software and services, there isn’t Linux support. It’s actually one of the reasons I didn’t migrate until recently. I have been on Arch Linux now for about six months and I don’t miss Windows at all. One of my biggest hurdles was finding alternatives to my existing dependencies. One of those dependencies specifically being my cloud storage provider which is currently OneDrive. After evaluating all of my options, I chose between Google Drive and OneDrive; and for my current work style Microsoft’s ecosystem has checked all of my boxes.

Cloud storage software

Cloud storage software is something you normally install directly on your work machine so that you can synchronize all files from the provider and your work machine. Well, like I already indicated, Linux is left out of consideration here. Therefore, you start looking into third-party applications that you pay for, or have to rely on the good of the open source (OSS) community to maintain. When it comes to things I strongly depend on, I’m not inclined to use some random software company’s software out of fears they may be stealing my credentials and/or data. When it comes to OSS, I am even less inclined to depend on the good will of moody keyboard warriors who may or may not keep important software running.

But you are using Arch Linux

I chose Arch Linux as my distribution because I did the research on how it’s maintained. Once I found out that Steam was creating their SteamOS on top of Arch Linux I was sold. Additionally, Arch Linux has some of the best documentation I have ever seen for an OSS project. I have every intention of donating funds to Arch Linux and donate to KDE as soon as I am able. I would also like to donate my time to development, but I am not in a position to do so yet. I still have a lot to learn about development in Linux before I can contribute anything useful. I also have to clear out my current list of development items before I can take on any other projects.

Use your NAS instead of your local machine

I am assuming at this point you have a NAS obviously. If you don’t have one, I strongly recommend getting on as they are incredibly useful.

The alternative I came up with to avoid having to put trust into random maintainers of specific cloud storage software clients was to instead put more trust into my Synology NAS. I already have a NAS that I am trusting with about 4TB of data. I then realized I don’t want to replicate everything from OneDrive on to my local machine, however I wouldn’t mind replicating all of it onto my NAS. That’s the point of the NAS, to store and host things for me.

Synology CloudSync

Connecting to your NAS

The good news is, this is something you would have to do even if you weren’t using a cloud storage service. So if you already understand how to connect to a NAS from your Linux machine then this part is easy.

I cannot provide specific instructions because it entirely depends on your NAS and what Linux distribution you are using. Therefore here are high level instructions assuming you are using a Synology NAS and Arch Linux that is leveraging systemd.

1. Enable NFS on your NAS
2. Setup permissions on your share
   • I will admit up front, I am not clear on how to secure the connection. As of right now it is IP filtered because I am the only user and I am on a private LAN. It’s something I want to investigate more later.
3. Mount the shared folder(s) via NFS on the client side (your Linux box).
   • In the case of Arch Linux these instructions explain everything: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NFS

Then when you are finished you will just have yet another mount point where you access files as normal; for example: /mnt/myNas.

Usage tips

• The CloudSync program keeps things synchronized on a clock, so changes won’t be instantaneous. I think it polls for changes every 10 minutes. This gives you plenty of time to change and adjust files and naming without being blocked by the sync process like it does on Windows.
• Linux will allow you to name your files virtually anything. Your cloud storage provider may not accept this. I can only speak from experience with OneDrive. I mistakenly named a file with a leading space. The file refused to upload and I couldn’t understand why. So for example I was trying to upload ” MyDoc.docx” and I just couldn’t make sense of it until I realized it has a leading space which is not acceptable by OneDrive. Therefore, be careful with naming. Be conservative. Worst case if it’s not working, then log on to your NAS and inspect the logs.
• If you plan on moving large amounts of data directly on your NAS, do not do this via your mount point, you will regret it.
  • In situations where you need to delete or move large amounts of data, log directly into your NAS and do it directly in the DSM GUI. Alternatively, if you would prefer, you can SSH in instead. Just make sure you disable SSH on your NAS after you are finished using it because it can be used as an attack vector.
  • If you do this directly on your local machine, then you are moving the data to your machine and then back to the NAS. Not only is this extremely slow, you could crash KDE. KDE isn’t perfect, just like Windows Explorer isn’t perfect. I have watched KDE Dolphin die a few times over smaller operations, so it’s not something I would risk for heavy operations.

Looking for a NAS?

I really like Synology. I have been using their NASes for years now. My current one is the DS420+, but you choose what’s best for you.

• These tiny servers don’t come with disks, so you have to buy them yourself.
• You should opt to upgrade the RAM up front in my opinion.
• You should install an NVME drive for cache if it’s an option.

I stream music from my NAS every single day. I use it for backups, large file storage, and now for my OneDrive replica. It’s a work horse and well worth the money.