RAIDiator in VMWare or VirtualBox

[Nullius]

Hi,

One of my clients (small size business) has just bought a Ultra 6 Plus NAS.
Since I'm going to be the one maintaining it, I'd like to be sure my changes to the system won't harm it (and especially the data on it).
That is why I'm curious if it would be possible creating a virtual system comparable to the RAIDiator OS (in either VMWare or VirtualBox).
I know I could create a debian image but I'd like it to be more realistic (not necessarilly with RAID drives.

Is there any way I could do this?
I have quite a bit of Linux knowledge but have never built a kernel from scratch.
I managed to build the kernel from the sources I found on http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=2324
I'm stuck what I should do next though.

Does anyone have an idea on how to proceed (and if it's actually possible doing this)?

Tnx!

[Nullius]

OK ... I found a similar topic:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=48878

Since that topic dates from december last year, I guess there is no real change in the situation?
Tnx!

[mikethompsonuk82]

i don't think any changes you make will harm it. Anyway, the thread you mentioned seems to give a good idea from what i can see.

[chirpa]

No change this then. Would take too much work to make it run properly in a VM. Too many hardware ties and such.

What are you going to be modifying on the system? What did you build the kernel sources to add?

[Dewdman42]

If I was going to try to create a VM of something that would most closely represent what is running on my Ultra2+, which debian distro would it be? Would it be safe to say that many/most things could be built on that VM system and then packaged up for installation on my ReadyNAS?

[WhoCares?]

Debian Etch for the x86 based ReadyNAS line, and yup, most things should work although you may need to recompile some stuff. If you're familiar with Debian then you can check what's already on the ReadyNAS using the dpkg tool and change your VM accordingly. Since the GPL sources for the packages used are available that shouldn't be too hard.

-Stefan

[chirpa]

As Stefan pointed out, the base line would be Debian Etch. Non-essentials get stripped out of the firmware, for file size, such as 'man' docs and unused perl modules, etc. Common programs like Apache,ProFTPd,netatalk,etc are up to date compiled binaries, not using stock debian stuff; and those can be found in our GPL repository.

[Dewdman42]

Maybe at some point I will play around with that. Thanks!