Original post here. First, thanks to everyone who responded. Thought I’d write up an update on my progress.
I took the advice to keep the NAS dedicated to storage and bought a Beelink mini computer (2Ghz Quad core Intel Celeron; 250GB; 4GB RAM) for the server and installed Linux Mint. I decided that the perceived complexity of Docker and Portainer were more than I wanted to tackle right now and that the benefits wouldn’t be worth the effort, so I’m installing directly to the OS.
So far I have Jellyfin and Audiobookshelf up and running. Most of the setup is straightforward. I’ve spent the most time so far learning to permanently mount the NAS and set the necessary permissions. Took a bit of online research to figure this out. Second most time was setting up NordVPN with Meshnet for remote server access.
Next step is the Servarr suite. I’m thinking that’s going to be a bit more of a challenge.
I’ll look up the exact info when I get home and provide links if I can find them again.
The summary is that I had to add a line to /etc/fstab with the ip and folder route of the nas drive and folder, then the mount point in linux, the file system type for the mount, options that give login creds/group id + establish permissions I want to apply to the mount, and an option that keeps the drive from trying to mount until my network is connected.
Finally, for that last option to work, I had to enable a process that I forget the name of. I think it was in systemd, but I was able to initiate it from the command line.