Access DroboApp From Remote

Forum History DroboApps
1

I’ve just installed the Transmission app and I was wondering if anyone knew a way to access the drobo app (192.168.10.1:9091/transmission/web) from anywhere in the world?

Is it possible (1) For Free or cheap, (2) With a dynamic IP address for your house, (3) Secure?

Any chance DynDNS would work?

2

Yes, DynDNS works.

In a very, very summarized sequence of steps:

  1. Get a DynDNS account
  2. Configure your router to use that DynDNS account
  3. Configure your router to forward port 9091 to your Drobo (see www.portforward.com)
  4. Happy dance!

Well, this only gives you the connection, but it does not secure it. To secure it you need to put some password protection on the Transmission web UI, and optionally use HTTPS instead of HTTP (to prevent snooping).

I do this with my DroboFS running rTorrent + ruTorrent and it works perfectly.

3

Make things more secure…

  1. Flash your router with DD-WRT (or other 3rd Party Firmwares out there)
  2. Enable Remote SSH
    2.1) Create Public and Private Key
    2.2) Plug in public key to router
    2.3) Disable password login over SSH
  3. Get DynDNS account
  4. Download PuTTY
    4.1) Configure host
    4.2) Authenticate with private key from step 2.1
    4.3) Configure Tunnels and create Dynamic Tunnel ( ex 13000 )
  5. Connect with PuTTY
  6. Open browser (Firefox and Chrome have proxy switchers)
    6.1) Configure browser proxy to SOCKS5: localhost:13000 (port from 4.3)
    6.2) Browse your local network knowing you’ve connected securely and also can browse internet bypassing corporate firewall knowing they can’t snoop what you are doing (all traffic from your computer to your home router is encrypted using SSH).

If you want a more detailed one, I can write it up with screens. Been meaning to do it.

4

If you feel like going through the trouble of flashing your router with DD-WRT, then I would suggest to try setting up a VPN instead. Setup is actually simpler than an SSH tunnel and this way you can do much more than browsing the Drobo (think FTP, media streaming, share mounting, etc).

5

True, but I don’t like the VPN setups provided by DD-WRT… openvpn is good, but has its flaws. SSH Tunneling allows me not to install on my corporate laptop so people looking in can’t see what I’m using or how to connect, where PuTTY can be run without installing network adapters, etc…