Fair warning right away: I’m not a programmer. The code could be prettier, the architecture more elegant. But my goal was different – to make a convenient tool for myself as a system administrator. What came out came out. Don’t judge too harshly, it’s beta.
How it all started
I had some free time. I had an old Netgear Stora MS2000 lying around – I’d installed Debian 7 and OpenMediaVault on it back in the day. Then a disk crashed, I reinstalled Debian 9, but OMV turned out to be too heavy for this hardware.
Editing configs in the console every time was tedious. And all I really needed was SAMBA and NFS. So I thought, why bother? I’ll write a couple of PHP scripts to create and edit shares.
And so Mini Bucket began.
The first two pages – and off we went
I whipped up the first two pages quickly: shares started working. Then I thought, «It would be nice to have a dashboard to see all the stats.» A third page appeared – a dashboard with graphs.
Then I figured: since I’ve got SMB and NFS, might as well add rsync and FTP too. Added them.
Day by day, my «two-page panel» grew into a project now called Mini Bucket – NAS Control Panel.
And you know what? It actually works. On hardware where modern panels simply won’t start or slow to a crawl.
What is this thing?
Mini Bucket is a web-based NAS control panel focused on resource efficiency. It runs on:
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Pure PHP 7.0 (built-in modules, no Composer)
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SQLite
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Standard Linux utilities
No extra modules, heavy frameworks, or powerful hardware required.
Where it’s tested (and actually works):
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Raspberry Pi 1 (256 MB RAM) – yes, the original one
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Netgear Stora MS2000 (128 MB RAM) – an old enclosure with soul
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Debian 9 on old laptops and VMs
What it can do (and it can do quite a lot)
I wasn’t chasing «pretty» code – I was chasing accessible tools for myself as a sysadmin. Here’s what I ended up with:
1. Live Dashboard
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CPU (total + per core), temperature, RAM, Load Average
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Interactive graphs: CPU, network traffic (RX/TX), disk I/O
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SMART, disk temperatures, space usage
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RAID and LVM status, mount points
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IP, MAC, per-interface traffic
2. Firewall (UFW)
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Enable/disable, view status and rules
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CRUD + search/filter
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Ready-made rules: SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, MySQL, PostgreSQL
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IP blocking, active connections, color-coded logs
3. System Monitor + Diagnostics
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ping, traceroute, netstat, port scanner, DNS lookup, speed test
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Process and systemd service management
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System logs with filtering and export
4. Web Console (SSH through the browser)
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Full shell access
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Dark VSCode-style theme, syntax highlighting
5. Cron Scheduler
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CRUD, flexible schedule (5 fields)
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Quick presets, next-run preview
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Logging, manual execution
6. User Management
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Panel users (SQLite) and Linux system users
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Password generator with strength indicator
7. Disks, RAID, and LVM
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Disk initialization (GPT/MBR), partitions, mounting, SMART
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RAID 0,1,5,6,10, LINEAR, hot-spare, scrub
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LVM: PV/VG/LV, snapshots
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Mount everything: local partitions, RAID, LVM, SMB/CIFS, NFS
8. Dual-panel File Manager
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Two independent panels, batch operations
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Background tasks with progress and cancellation
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Archives (tar/zip), permissions (chmod + ACL)
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Download folders as .tar on the fly
9. Sharing Services
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FTP (vsftpd) – start/stop, folders, SSL, limits
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NFS – exports, clients, statistics
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SMB/CIFS (Samba) – users, shares, sessions
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Rsync – daemon, modules, users
10. System Manager
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Service management (NFS, SMB, Rsync, FTP, SSH, Apache2, UFW, NTP)
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Reboot, shutdown
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Date/time (timezone, NTP), network (hostname, DHCP/Static, DNS)
11. System Checker
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«Check All» and «Fix All» buttons
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Categories: packages, services, permissions, configs, firewall, network
12. Key Rotation System (for multiple servers)
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Dynamic API keys with automatic rotation – no downtime
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Cascading rotation – changes automatically propagate to all connected servers
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Unlimited nesting (masters and slaves)
About installation (important note)
Warning: Mini Bucket must be installed on a clean system. Not recommended to install where other services and packages already exist. The installation process changes permissions on certain system files and modifies configs.
Installation: https://mini-b.itp-corp.ru/install/
The script automatically checks compatibility, creates directories, sets permissions, and initializes SQLite and basic configs.
Honestly about bugs and status
Attention! This is a beta version.
Yes, there are bugs. Yes, some issues are still unresolved. I’ve tested on Raspberry Pi 1, Netgear Stora MS2000, VMs, and old laptops. Overall it works, but it’s not without its rough edges.
I will release updates. The main thing is that the beta has been released and is ready to try.
Plans and support
License: AGPLv3+
Contact: sa@itp-corp.ru with subject «Mini-b»
The project is open, but I don’t promise perfect code – I promise it solves a real problem on old hardware.
The bottom line
Mini Bucket is my take on what a NAS control panel should be when:
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You have old hardware
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Modern panels are sluggish
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You’re tired of editing configs manually
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And you’re not a programmer, but a sysadmin who just wants things to work
I made this for myself. Whether to share it – that’s up to you. But if you have an old Raspberry Pi or Netgear lying around – give it a try. Maybe it’ll like it as much as I do.
https://mini-b.itp-corp.ru/
https://github.com/itprogresscorp/Mini-Bucket
Original post Rus Lang. https://habr.com/ru/articles/1039454/
ссылка на оригинал статьи https://habr.com/ru/articles/1039652/