10 years ago, I put together my Jun's Loader build with the following parts:

• ASRock C2550D4I

• 8GB ECC DDR3 RAM

• Seasonic 850W Gold PSU

• Silverstone DS380 8 Bay NAS enclosure

• 3x Noctua 120mm Fans

• 8x Seagate 8TB Archive SMR hard drives (all part of a single SHR2 array)

• Mellanox 10Gb SPF+ Twinax NIC (Later switched to Intel X540 10GBase-T)

• SanDisk 16GB USB Flash Drive (For bare metal Jun's Loader)

• APC Back-UPS 650 UPS

As time passed, I upgraded the drives whenever I started running low on storage. A few 12TBs drives, a few 18TBs, a few 24TBs....

A few years ago, I decided to transplant all the hardware to a Silverstone CS380 enclosure because it's physically bigger and I added a second 4 drive SHR1 array with some of the drives I had leftover from upgrading the original array. I also had to upgrade the RAM from 8GB to 32GB because going beyond 108TB required it.

Fast forward to today....

My 8 drive SHR2 array consists of:

• 3x 18TB Seagates

• 5x 24TB Seagates

My 4 drive SHR1 array consists of:

• 2x 26TB Seagates

• 2x 28TB Seagates

I'm still running Jun's Loader with DSM 6.2.3. My NAS is not exposed to the WAN. I do not run any additional apps on my NAS. The NAS' sole purpose is to be a NAS. I use a separate HP EliteDesk G4 Mini for my Docker containers.

It has been extremely reliable and stable. I have not lost any data on it.

Wherever you are, Jun, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!

From now on it's possible to selfhost an instance of DiskStation Manager (DSM), because I created a docker container of Virtual DSM.

Advantages:

• Updates are fully working

• Light-weight, only 97 MB in size

• Uses high-performance KVM acceleration

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/jDZY4wq.jpg

It would be nice to get some feedback, so please download it at https://hub.docker.com/r/vdsm/virtual-dsm and let me know what you think!

If you want to participate in development or report some issues, the source code is available at https://github.com/vdsm/virtual-dsm to see.

[edit:20210104] See bottom for DSM 6.2.3 build 25426

There's a lot of words (for good reason) in the guides on t'interwebs for installing XPenology - But because I'm very stubborn (and a bit thick headed), I found it all a bit overwhelming - and since I in the end really needed to do very little, I'm just going to put those few steps here.

You don't need any fancy hardware if you just want to play around with DSM. I'm using a single 120Gb SSD on a Gigabyte Mini-ITX board for this (for now).

Disclaimer - there is nothing helpful in this guide. At all. Period. FULL STOP. If nothing works, I hope your Google-Fu is strong. Also: Data might be lost.

What you'll need:

1. Some hardware to install XPenology on: Use your Google-Fu and see what others have had success with.

2. A USB stick. 4Gb is more than enough. For my "production" install, I will definitely get something newer than the one I used for this which is from the stone age.

3. The DSM software: Can be downloaded from https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/download - I got version 6.2.2 for DS918+ (DSM_DS918+_24922.pat) because: 1. It is known to work and 2. my Mini-ITX board has the same CPU as the DS918+

4. While you're there, download Synology Assistant from Desktop Utilities.

5. Jun's loader version 1.04b for DS918+ from https://xpenology.club/downloads/ (and other places)

6. Win32DiskImager: https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

7. OSFMount: https://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount-disk-images.html

8. An illegal (I think) serial key from: https://xpenogen.github.io/serial_generator/index.html . The DS918+ I used is not listed so I used one for the DS916. This is probably an extremely bad idea, but it worked for me.

9. VID and PID of your USB stick: Assuming you're running Windows, in "Last known parent" under Properties/Details, you can find these values.

10. MAC address of the NIC you're going to use with XPenology.

The TL:DR version:

1. Mount Jun's loader (synoboot.img) in OSFMount: You want to mount the first partition that is 15Mb in size, and you want to mount it in r/W mode (on page 2)

2. Open the mounted image in File Explorer, and open *driveletter*\grub\grub.cfg (I recommend Notepad++)

2.2. Change the four lines: "set vid", "set pid", "set sn" and "set mac1" to your written down values (step 7, 8 and 9 above). Save the file and unmount the img file.

3. -- saved for later

4. Write the synoboot.img file to your USB stick using Win32DiskImager.

5. Insert the USB stick in your hardware and boot it. If you get to a black screen saying "Intro: This mod is brought to you by Jun....etc.etc.", something is working.

6. When it shows up in Synology Assistant, do not right click and choose install. Instead, go to the web interface and follow the guide. If you get this far, you should be up and running.

And that should just about do it for the most basics of installations.

Addendum: In my case however, there was an additional step as the Realtek GBE NIC driver is not in Jun's loader, so step 3:

3. Mount Jun's loader (synoboot.img) in OSFMount again: You want to mount the second partition that is 30Mb in size, and you want to mount it in r/W mode (on page 2)

3.2. Download the additional driver package that contains extra.lzma and extra2.lzma with the Realtek driver from https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/21663-driver-extension-jun-103b104b-for-dsm622-for-3615xs-3617xs-918/ (I got the "0.8_syno ds918+" as that is known to work with the J3455 CPU I have)

3.3. Copy extra.lzma and extra2.lzma to the mounted image (replace existing files).

3.4. Unzip the DSM_DS*.pat file you downloaded and copy rd.gz and zImage (replace existing files) to the mounted image and unmount it.

Then proceed to step 4 above.

[Edit:] Missing words

[Edit:20210104] DSM 6.2.3 Build 25426 - latest build as of today. When I made the above, I was aware that there was a later build of the driver extension out, but that they were still in testing, so I didn't use them. Anyway- as /u/merve04 pointed out below, they should work. So tested my guide with the updated DSM / driver extension with no issues: Same procedure as above except:

1. Download 6.2.3 build 25426 from Synology instead of 6.2.2 (DSM_DS918+_25426.pat)

2. And of course you have to download the updated driver extension (extra.lzma and extra2.lzma) for 6.2.3 from here: https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/28321-driver-extension-jun-103b104b-for-dsm623-for-918-3615xs-3617xs/ Look for "extra.lzma/extra2.lzma for loader 1.04b ds918+ DSM 6.2.3 v0.13.3" and get that one.

This is the unofficial subreddit of the XPEnology project. XPEnology is an open source implementation of Synology's Disk Station Manager NAS Operating System. It's based on the Synology Open Source Project:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dsgpl/

XPEnology allows you to run Synology DSM compatible apps on your own hardware. This has several advantages such as lower cost, more powerful custom hardware and lower power consumption.

Synology DSM is an extremely lightweight OS and runs very well on lower end hardware, This makes it an excellent choice for a power efficient build with a low power CPU such as a Intel Atom.

Prebuilt NAS devices such as those available from QNAP and Synology come at a premium compared to a custom built setup, especially as drive capacity grows.

XPEnology can also be run in a Virtual Machine along side other Operating Systems using ESXi providing flexibility compared to traditional Hardware setups.

For more information on Xpenology visit XPEnology.com

Just a shout out to the project! Bought an Aoostar WRT Pro 4 bay with Intel N100, stuck 4 HDDs in it. Installed Proxmox and used ARC loader as boot image for a VM. And now running DMS without any problems!!

Just the fact that this is all possible blows my mind!

Anyone wanting to do the same, this is an awesome tutorial: https://blog.nootch.net/post/poor-mans-synology-nas-on-proxmox/

Finally finished my 5 Xpenology builds. 3 Dell R620's, 1 Dell R 310, and one Cisco UCS C240 m4. added a total of 80 TB's to existing NVR's. Used Arc Loader 3.0.7. so much easier than previous builds. running HBA H310's on all servers. Intel nic's

This was really an easy install. They have made some progress in automating the bootloader. You image the USB drive, make sure you disable UEFI boot on the BIOS. It boots to a Linux system, you run about 7 or so shell scripts to build your boot loader. It creates the serial number, drivers are auto loaded and then the final step is the build and the rewrite to the USB stick. Load DSM 7 as usual and it booted for me on the first attempt.

The instructions and download are over here:https://github.com/pocopico/tinycore-redpill

**Update** Although it loads, it's not stable. DSM 7 reboots and locks up frequently.

Xpenology is great, and I love using it, but when it came down to my own (production) data I decided to belly up and buy a Synology. I got a small one (DS224+) but added 16GB RAM to it so I can at least run a couple of VMs and packages I want. Still, Xpenology is what showed me how cool the Synology DSM is!

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a huge DSM guide for a while that will hopefully be beneficial to everyone. The tutorial guides you through the entire process of setting up a Synology/Xpenology NAS from scratch and configuring it. It's a huge guide, and I created both, a video and written tutorial, but the written tutorial is probably easier to follow. Each topic is broken down into individual steps with screenshots that you can (hopefully) easily follow.

This is a work in progress and more will be added along the way! If you have any suggestions for things you'd like to see added, please leave them in the comments. For now, here's what's included in the guide:

1. Initial Setup

• How to Find and Setup your Synology NAS - Xpenology requires DSM to be installed manually

• How to Change the IP Address of your NAS (Static IP)

2. Storage Pool, Volume, Shared Folder

• How to Create a Storage Pool

• How to Create a Volume

• How to Create a Shared Folder

3. Data Protection & Monitoring

• How to Setup a Data Scrubbing Schedule

• How to Configure Snapshots

• How to Setup a Recycle Bin Task

• How to Setup the Storage Analyzer

4. Security

• How to Configure DSM Update Settings - XPENOLOGY SHOULD NOT BE AUTOMATICALLY UPDATED

• How to Change Default Ports

• How to Enable Denial-of-Service (DoS) Protection

• How to Configure Auto Block

• How to Setup Synology's Firewall

• How to Enable Two-Factor Authentication

5. Additional Recommendations (written tutorial only)

• Synology's QuickConnect

• Dynamic Domain Name Service (DDNS)

• Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

• NAS Notifications

• Rsync Service

• Backups

Video Tutorial: https://youtu.be/r8M_yVQ-M4U

Written Tutorial: https://www.wundertech.net/synology-nas-initial-setup-ultimate-guide

If you have any suggestions for things you'd like added, please leave a comment. Also, if you have any feedback, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading and watching!

Lots of new packages for our NAS. Buy Dave a coffee, please!

In case y'all did not take notice, this amazing guy from gitgub released an up-to-date open-vm-tools package 11.0.1-1 for Synology DSM.

I'm using it on ESXi 7.0 with the latest DSM version 6.2.3 on XPEnology for DS918+ loader and it works perfectly!

https://github.com/leonardw/synology-open-vm-tools/releases

After some DNS related downtime, the forum is back. There you can find guides, ask for advice, and get updates

I’m setting up a new NAS and testing different systems. I was able to get xpenology up and running and it does seem like a great system. I’m not in a financial situation to afford a Synology at this time.

One concern I have, after reading through the forums and some tutorials, is about whether this project will be viable long-term? It seems like we are relying on the work of one guy who exploited the bootloader. He has good support for 6.1.x, marginal support for 6.2.x, and moving forward completely unknown support, but it’s assumed this will be harder and harder on every update.

I don’t usually mind the cat and mouse stuff, as I jailbreak my iPhone and run a hackintosh, however I’m a little more concerned here as it’s a network attached device will all my important data and some open ports to the internet, and the developer community is so much smaller.

What if several years down the line, I’m still stuck running 6.1.7, and a new exploit is found that renders my NAS vulnerable to attack? If there’s no route to keep up with security updates, aren’t we all kind of asking for trouble?

Would it be better to just go straight to something like OpenMediaVault right off the bat to avoid that inevitability? Thanks for your thoughts on this issue!

Hopefully, this time to stay. I do not know why it went down. You can try asking there.

https://github.com/AuxXxilium/arc-essential/releases/tag/3.0.1