Monthly Archives: April 2022

Customizing MunkiReport: Dashboards

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I was chatting with Per Olofsson on a recent episode of the MacDevOps podcast about some recent fixes with relocatable Python he did for MunkiReport version 5.7.0 and I happened to mention how much I love my MR dashboards with custom hot keys. He is a long time user of MunkiReport but hadn’t heard that you could make custom dashboards and I couldn’t remember where I had heard of it or even how I made them. Pretty typical of tech these days I think. You learn something, you make something and then you move to the next thing and forget what you were doing or how you did it. Well, thanks to documentation we can share the knowledge and spread the love.

Custom Dashboards

The MunkiReport wiki actually has a short entry which explains how to make a custom Dashboards. Basically, add some YAML files in the dashboards folders and you’re done. Follow the Read Me file for instructions. Pro Tip: Use the Widget Gallery in MR to find useful pieces to build into your dashboards. Note: I’ve added these custom dashboards to my local folder which is set in my “.env” to be outside of the main munkireport folder so it easier to update across version upgrades.

Here are four examples of MunkiReport dashboards:

Security

Munki

Archiware P5

The Archiware P5 dashboard references widgets from my custom P5 module. It’s easy to make modules for MunkiReport. Check the wiki for more info.

How To Securely Sync Your Synology NAS with P5

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Use Tailscale Mesh-VPN with P5 Backup and Sync

In the old days we used to forward ports. On your router the traffic for a server or service went to a port (where a number represents a service, some which are defined, but can be arbitrary) and to a destination IP address. Well, wouldn’t you know it, if ssh is port 22 or web traffic is on port 80 then everyone and their port scanner comes knocking. So then your firewall is tested, and then auto-ban and geo-block and emails go out. What if we could avoid that and not open (or forward) any port to make services work across the internet?

Tailscale is a mesh-VPN which uses WireGuard to securely establish a mesh (point to point) VPN of your devices. Suddenly your iPhone can securely send files to your Mac or raspberry Pi across the world. How cool is that? In today’s advanced lesson: you can backup and sync your Synology NAS using Archiware P5.

Step 1: Setting up Tailscale on Synology

It honestly used to be harder than this, these days you can simply add the Tailscale package via the Synology package center app and you’re done. Almost. There’s one more step.

Step 2: Set up Outgoing VPN access via Tailscale which requires editing some files (which necessitate Terminal and remote login access). This only has to be done once but future updates may require fixes. This was tested in DSM 7. Pro tip: only allow remote access to a restricted and time limited account so you don’t leave it on accidentally.

Step 3. Install Archiware P5 on Synology NAS

Using Archiware P5 to Backup and Sync your NAS is a good thing if you’re already using Archiware P5 to backup and sync all the other things, then at least you have only one dashboard to look at. I use P5 with my clients to backup their shared storage to LTO and it makes sense to backup all the things no matter where they are with P5 also. With Synology NAS package center it’s a simple one-click install for P5. Add your P5 clients to your P5 server via Tailscale and you’ve got a secure setup.

This post is just a quick overview of using Tailscale to set up your P5 clients (which is your Synology NAS in this case).