Small, cool graphical file manager for a Linux NAS?

madasshurt · February 7th, 2010, 05:17 PM

So, I have one of these, a D-Link DNS-323, and a crap-ton of files on it to manage. Trying to do through a Windows box is incredibly slow, and I'm thinking that it'd be easier to manage them by puTTY'ing into the box and doing so through the Linux OS on the box.

Problem is that I'm really lazy, old, and don't feel like re-learning too much more Linux, and would just as soon not have to try and manage via command line functions, or worse, do the "rm -rf" freakout dance

.

Is there a small, cool "graphical" file manager that I could install on the box so that I can manage directories and move files around -- nothing too fancy, can even be like the old MS-DOS file managers -- that won't require me to install anything else (like KDE or Gnome or whatever, assuming I have enough memory on the box to run it anyway?)

I don't really need much more on the box, as I'm not interested in turning it into a Linux desktop, of course.

Per the wiki, I do have the Fonz fun_plug installed and the bundled utils that come with that.

dar · February 7th, 2010, 06:58 PM

huh... to me using the cmd line IS the lazy way.

I've heard of Midnight Commander... but never used it.

Here is an article on some of them http://www.linux.com/news/software/a...gers-for-linux

I think I'm intruiged by the vi one. Though I could do that in vim anyway... actually you could try vim if you know vi. Just vim a directory and use the help and go from there.

dar · February 7th, 2010, 07:01 PM

oops... looks like most of them are GUI based, still a couple command line ones.

Midnight command is an oldie and probably the most used.

Note I do NOT use vim to do file/directory management.

madasshurt · February 7th, 2010, 07:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dar

oops... looks like most of them are GUI based, still a couple command line ones.

Midnight command is an oldie and probably the most used.

Note I do NOT use vim to do file/directory management.

I've found some that were GTK+ based... from what you know, do I have enough with the native build of Linux to install that? Not trying to be a pesky n00b, but I really don't want to brick the device, as it has all kinds of family pictures, our music collection, etc. on there.

dar · February 7th, 2010, 11:52 PM

I don't think you have enough for the GTK+ solution.

There is a package called something like 'funutils' I didn't check but it might have midnight commander in it.

Login to the box over putty and type 'mc' at the command line and see what you get.

...

ack. Now the wiki doesn't respond. I wonder if they have it down.

I found a howto for midnight commander there... but ymmv. It looks like if you have the fun_plug stuff you can get all the requirments for mc easily enough.

MuchasVeces · February 9th, 2010, 04:49 PM

I've had good luck with Thunar. It may require installation of some of the xfce4 stuff, though

madasshurt · February 9th, 2010, 11:25 PM

So I've got the Midnight Commander gz file, and I know I'm supposed to put it someplace, and then unzip/un-tar it, and then... compile it?

But where do I put it, and once I do so, how do I compile it into a working program? I haven't done anything with Linux since 2002, and fuck all if I can remember anything that I did back then.

dar · February 10th, 2010, 02:51 AM

Easy/lazy way that will punch a hole through your package installer system...

but it'll get it installed

Untar the archive

cd to the directory made

Note: see my comments after the following command BEFORE you do them. There are a couple of things to consider.
do the following

./configure
make
make install

If it fails at any of those steps post back here how it failed and I'll try to suss out what went wrong.

Note that the last thing 'make install' will copy stuff to your system directories... which will bypass your package management software... which isn't bad per-se but can be a pain later.

Alternatively you could just run it from there... in that direcotory if you run './src/mc' you'll get an error about skins but past that you'll be in midnight commander.

Note that you could change where things get installed by giving the './configure' command line options. Run the ./configure with the --help option to see all of them. the --prefix option is used to tell where the base of the install is to be. For instance if your home directory is /home/joeblow you could do './configure --prefix=/home/joeblow' to get it installed in your home directory vs system directories, but then you'd need to make sure those binary directories are in your path. yech... it's why some people just do a 'make install'.