A free Intel NUC with a 1TB mechanical hard drive was just too hard to pass up. Between my media server and random SMB shares across multiple servers, my important documents were scattered across my network.
Putting them on yet another server with a shared folder wouldn’t solve the issue. Cloud-only might allow me to consolidate the storage, but then my files would become access-dependent.
What I needed was a blend of local file share hosting and an encrypted copy safely outside my home. Instead of spinning up a new server and messing around with Samba, I installed a TurnKey Linux File Server. The old NUC then became a secure Samba server with Windows file sharing, browser access, and Amazon S3 backups.
TurnKey Linux did most of the file server work for me
The old NUC already had Samba, WebDAV, and a browser-based control panel after one installation
TurnKey Linux pretty much says what it does on the box. It’s a collection of ready-made, Debian-based server appliances, with each image combining the TurnKey Core operating system with the appliances and browser-based tools needed for each job.
TurnKey Linux’s catalog covers a truly wide range of applications, from WordPress and Nextcloud to domain controllers and file servers. In my opinion, it’s one of the most underrated software projects around, especially given just how much manual configuration it can eliminate.
The File Server appliance from TurnKey suited my free Intel NUC mini PC perfectly. It came with a 1TB mechanical hard disk, which couldn’t match an SSD for speed, but it’s not like documents and photo backups need cutting-edge performance, anyway. The compact, low-power NUC also made a lot more sense than an always-on, power-hungry PC or server.
After flashing the File Server ISO onto a USB stick with balenaEtcher and installing it, its landing page linked me to Webmin, Samba configuration, and a WebDAV file manager. Webmin handled all system administration, Samba made the storage accessible as a Windows network share via SMB, and WebDAV provided a browser-based file manager. I then reserved the NUC’s IP address and gave it the domain name filesrv.home.
TurnKey Linux appliances are as close as you can get to ready out of the box, but preconfigured didn’t mean ready for my personal files. The default storage share at /srv/storage was public and writable to everyone. That was perfect for immediate testing, but too permissive for my important documents.
I used Webmin to create a new user named greg-filesrv, then assigned the data directory to that user and its matching group. I set that directory’s Linux permissions to 0750 (rwxr-x—), disabled all guest access, and restricted the share to the new account only.
While it’s tempting to add new Samba users to the sambashare group, on TurnKey Linux, this group grants permission to manage user-created shares, not access existing ones.
- Minimum CPU Specs
-
1 GHz+ 64-bit
- Software Version
-
v18.1
TurnKey Linux is a collection of pre-configured, ready-to-use Linux appliances that make deploying common server software fast and hassle-free.
My files were available through Windows and a web browser
SMB handled everyday access, while WebDAV gave the same storage a useful second interface
TurnKey Linux had set the NetBIOS name to “FILESERVER,” which I decided to keep. The first real test was therefore opening File Explorer and entering:
\FILESERVERstorageWindows immediately requested the credentials for my dedicated Samba account, then displayed the share like any old SMB network folder. Inside, I created separate directories for documents, photos, and backup testing. Everything worked fine the first time, and I could open, edit, copy, rename, and delete files without touching a Linux terminal.
That boring and ordinary experience was exactly why I chose TurnKey for this project. Plenty of Linux projects are technically successful, but remain super awkward once you return after a month and have forgotten all the commands. Using TurnKey meant I could set and forget the configuration and let the TurnKey Core automatically update the OS on schedule.
TurnKey also included a WebDAV CGI file manager, which wasn’t much use to me other than a browser-based interface for the shared files. To test it, I uploaded a few files via WebDAV and watched them appear immediately in File Explorer. SMB was the natural choice for everyday access from both Windows and Linux, and WebDAV was handy for quick browser uploads and file management.
The one thing I instantly regretted after setting up the file server was not choosing my partitioning layer more carefully. When installing again, I would choose to place the storage on a separate partition from the OS, but rearranging a single disk wouldn’t exactly eliminate the real weakness in this setup.
Everything was still stored on one NUC with an aging 1TB mechanical drive. A disk failure, electrical problem, even theft or fire would take every locally stored file with it. The server was convenient, but it still needed a backup somewhere outside my home.
TKLBAM sent only my changes to encrypted S3 storage
TurnKey’s appliance backup system added off-site protection without uploading an entire Debian installation
TurnKey’s answer to that problem is TKLBAM, short for TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration. It works through Turnkey Hub, which coordinates encrypted appliance backups stored in Amazon S3. Now, AWS has intimidated me in the past, but using a Turnkey Hub account and an AWS account meant the connection was a little less scary.
That’s because TurnKey already supplies a CloudFormation template that creates an IAM role inside of AWS. The Hub assumes that role when managing backups, so I didn’t need to hand over my AWS root credentials or create any permanent access keys by hand.
Going through this process gave me a TurnKey API key on the NUC to link that appliance with my Hub account. My backup then ultimately lands in Amazon’s Sydney region, reasonably close to the physical file server.
TKLBAM is also much more efficient than making a conventional disk image because it already knows what belongs in the original TurnKey appliance. It doesn’t need to upload another complete copy of Debian. Instead, it tracks changes to:
- Files
- Package state
- System configuration
- Supported databases
It then compresses and encrypts that data before sending it on to S3.
That behavior became really obvious when I simulated a backup immediately after installation, during which TKLBAM found nothing to do. Once I had created the directory structure inside the shared folder and uploaded a few documents and photos, the first real backup finally had something to protect and initiated from there.
Once the backup was completed, it appeared in TurnKey Hub under the rather apt name “Backup ID 1.” There, I also enabled the supplied daily backup job, which allows TKLBAM to create incremental backups.
It’s worth noting that I selected the free trial with Amazing S3, and while it lasts for six months with $100 in free credit, it won’t remain free forever. However, a modest document archive should realistically cost very little.
Seeing that the backup had been completed was quite reassuring. However, I wasn’t yet prepared to trust that it was complete until I had deliberately deleted a file, recovered it, and verified that it was intact.
The most useful restore option was hidden in the terminal
TKLBAM recovered one deleted file without rolling back the rest of my file server
To test the backup properly, I created a single text file TKLBAM-restore-test.txt inside my Backup-Test folder and calculated its SHA-256 hash:
Get-FileHash "\FILESERVERstoragecloud-nasBackup-TestTKLBAM-restore-test.txt" -Algorithm SHA256Which gave me:
4FACB46BD9FB651781BEEFFD262DA7E9ACAABBB619B91BB25EDDEB31FF8EF2E5After including it in Backup ID 1, I deleted the original from the Samba share and confirmed it had disappeared from both the shared folder and WebDAV. Webmin offered to restore the entire appliance, but I only wanted that one file. TKLBAM’s command line was needed to perform this more precise option:
tklbam-restore 1 --skip-database --skip-packages --limits="/srv/storage/cloud-nas/Backup-Test/TKLBAM-restore-test.txt" 
The 1 selected Backup ID 1 and the --skip-database and --skip-packages options prevented TKLBAM from applying unrelated changes to databases or packages. The --limits switch restricted the filesystem restore to only the path I supplied.
After downloading the S3 backup, TKLBAM returned the missing file without touching a single additional file on my file server. More importantly, its SHA-256 hash matched the value I had recorded before deleting it. It was byte-for-byte identical.
Selected recovery still requires me to put in the exact Linux path, and S3 is certainly not a Dropbox-style backup and migration system. The downside is that this restore process is a bit less approachable than an everyday SMB file share. It also adds two external dependencies: an AWS account and a TurnKey Hub account.
The free NUC has earned a permanent job
Hardware that looked obsolete became one of the most useful machines on my network
I am definitely keeping this NUC. Sure, it’s not going to match a purpose-built NAS in terms of performance and redundancy. But TurnKey Linux turned hardware that most people nowadays wouldn’t think twice about throwing in the trash into one of the most useful machines on my network.
It now gives my important files a local place to live, and stores encrypted backups on one of the most reliable online cloud storage platforms in the world — Amazon S3. For a computer that cost me nothing, I couldn’t imagine a better second useful life.