After being affected by a ransomware, I started paying Dropbox so my files could be always backed up. But I had some security concerns regarding the online storage of personal files, so I decided to mount a NAS Server for them using a Raspberry Pi and Seafile file-hosting software.

The goal is to setup a local server with RAID 1, to ensure the data in case of one of the disk fails, like it has happened to me before :c.

Hardware

Let's start by enabling the VNC server on the raspberry pi as it follows:

Now it's time to configure the security settings.

Link

*Before you can delete the user don't forget to remove "access as pi user " in the Raspberry Configuration menu and reboot.

And then to remove the pi home folder just do:

sudo rm -rf /home/pi

We will setup the firewall and fail2ban later.

If the drives are news you can follow this video to configure them using Gnome Partition Editor. You can download Gnome Partition Editor by searching "gparted" on the "Add/ Remove Software" menu.

Then we need to install mdadm for setup the RAID configuration:

sudo apt-get install mdadm 

For RAID 1, we use the following command:

sudo mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=mirror --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 

Then we check it by:

cat /proc/mdstat

Then let save the RAID configuration

sudo -i

mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf | tail

Output should be like:

Now lets create the file system using Gnome Partition Editor

Then:

Setup the size of the new partition and click Ok. 

Then in the terminal type:

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/md0

Expected output:

Then

sudo mount /dev/md0 /mnt

sudo blkid

Output:

So, we copy the UUID for /dev/md0 and then

sudo vim /etc/fstab

And we add the following line:

UUID=uuid_copied /mnt ext4 defaults 0 0

then:

sudo chown -R pi:pi /mnt

sudo chmod -R 0777 /mnt

For further details you can check the following link.

Now is time to install the database using mariaDB:

sudo apt-get remove mariadb-server

Then install the software-properties-common:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Then add the key:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8

Then install mariaDB

sudo apt update

sudo apt -y install mariadb-server mariadb-client

Then:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You can check the following link.

Now its time to create the databases:

sudo mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE seafile;

CREATE DATABASE ccnet;

CREATE DATABASE seahub; 

Now we create the user:

CREATE USER 'seafile'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Now we grant privilieges:

GRANT ALL ON seafile.* TO 'seafile'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;

GRANT ALL ON ccnet.* TO 'seafile'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;

GRANT ALL ON seahub.* TO 'seafile'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION; 

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

EXIT;

Now its time to install the dependencies needed:

sudo apt-get install python2.7 libpython2.7 python-setuptools python-pil python-ldap python-urllib3 ffmpeg python-pip python-mysqldb python-memcache python-requests unzip wget python libpython3.6 ffmpeg

pip install certifi idna

cd /mnt

wget https://github.com/haiwen/seafile-rpi/releases/download/v7.0.5/seafile-server_7.0.5_stable_pi.tar.gz

sudo tar -xvzf seafile-server_*

cd seafile-server-7.0.5/

Sudo ./setup-seafile-mysql.sh

Follow the instruction from here

Then in the file conf/gunicorn.conf dont forget to change it as it follows:

sudo vim conf/gunicorn.conf

Now it is time to download and setup nginx:

sudo apt -y install nginx

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/seafile.conf

And copy the following configuration:

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/seafile.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/seafile.conf 

Now lets setup the Systemd Service

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/seahub.service

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/seafile.service

Finally:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl start seafile && sudo systemctl enable seafile

sudo systemctl start seahub && sudo systemctl enable seahub

Now, you should able to log into your server by at 127.0.0.1:8000 or your ip:8000.

Advanced Settings

First lets check the nginx version by:

sudo nginx -v

if its above 1.8.0 then we can add the following line in:

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/seafile.conf

Further configuration can be found here.

For safety reason, we need to avoid that nginx  display his version, for that we remove the # in the line server_tokens off in the file:

sudo vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Also we need to set a root password by:

sudo passwd

Then we add in the file /etc/sudoers

sudo vim /etc/sudoers

For adding captcha install the following stuff:

 pip3 install django-simple-captcha

 pip3 install django-recaptcha

 pip3 install captcha 

Firewall setup

For installation:

sudo apt-get install ufw

Then lets add the important ports:

sudo ufw allow 80/tcp

sudo ufw allow 8000/tcp

sudo ufw allow 8082

sudo ufw allow 22

Now, for enabling the firewall:

sudo ufw enable

And for checking:

sudo ufw status

More details here.

Fail2Ban Configuration

Install using:

sudo apt install fail2ban

Then create a file in /etc/fail2ban/ and write the following

sudo vim/etc/fail2ban/jail.local

SSMTP Configuration

So ssmtp is unmaintained but is good enough for us:

sudo apt-get install ssmtp

sudo vim /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

More information here.

For the raid setup:

sudo vim /etc/cron.daily/mdadm

For Fail2ban add

sudo vim /etc/fail2ban/jail.local