Getting Started

Installing the SDK

The NAS OS SDK development environment is based on a VirtualBox virtual machine, which contains a full Ubuntu system, with everything required to run the SDK tools. You will first need to install VirtualBox on your system. Please refer to the VirtualBox Manual for detailed installation instructions.

Warning

In order to use the SDK Virtual Machine, the host OS must be 64 bits, or at least Intel VT-x capable.

You will first need to download the .ova file of the SDK:

NASOS_SDK-0.7.ova

To import the .ova file (NASOS_SDK-X.Y.ova) into VirtualBox, select File > Import Appliance...

Import Appliance

Click on Open Appliance... and browse for the .ova file

Selecting the .ova file

Note

You can refer to the VirtualBox Manual for more information about appliance import.

Click Next then review the VM settings, and check the Reinitialize the MAC address of all network cards box

Reviewing the appliance settings

Click Import to start the import process

Import progress

Start the VM by selecting it in the list and clicking Start

Starting the VM

Once the VM is started, your environment is ready.

Note

Use the following credentials to log into the Virtual Machine:

- login: rainbow
- password: rainbow

You should then get a desktop environment similar to this

VM desktop

Initialize your project

The first step is to create a directory for your project.

From the file browser, add a directory called Projects in the home folder
In the new Projects directory, add a directory called MyApp

Now open the NAS OS SDK graphical tool by double-clicking its icon on the desktop. and choose File > New Project

Creating a project

Click on the Browse button and navigate to the folder you just created: Home > Rainbow > Projects > MyApp.

Set your app ID to com.mycompany.myapp and keep the default values for the other entries.

Editing the project's settings

Click Next. You are presented with the publishing information for the app. Keep the default for now and choose Finish. You can edit your project anytime by selecting Edit > Update configuration.

Your project folder should now look as follows:

Project folder

Write the app files

Build script

The NAS OS SDK graphical tool created a build script template when initializing the project. This script copies the following files from to the source directory to the according destination inside the app:

The rc.local file goes in /etc/
The index.html file goes in /var/www
The default apache2 configuration files templates go in /etc/apache2

See the Understanding Apps section for details on the build.sh script.

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll keep the default build script.

App scripts

The scripts directory contains scripts that are used to specify tasks to be performed before or after the installation, the update or the removal of an app.

See the Understanding Apps section for details on the purpose of each script.

The NAS OS SDK has created some default scripts, which take care of the necessary network port handling, so we will keep those for the purpose of this guide.

App files

The app files can be binaries, configuration files, scripts or any resource files required by the app. They must be placed in the source directory and installed by the build.sh script.

As we saw above, our build.sh script installs a default index.html file. For the purpose of this guide, we will modify this file so it contains the following:

<html>
<body>
<h1>NAS OS SDK Getting Started App</h1>
</body>
</html>

Build the app

You can now build your app by selecting Rainbow/Build

Building the project

This will create a build directory in the project’s folder, which contains all files generated after running the build.sh script within the app’s container context.

Note

Depending on the steps and their complexity, building an app can take some time, especially if files must be downloaded from the Internet or certain files are uncompressed.

Test the app

Once the app has been built, it is ready for packaging. Select Rainbow/Pack to create the package.

Packing the project

The package is named *.rbw and placed inside your project’s build directory.

In our case, we just created an x86_64 package, which is located in the build/x86_64 subdirectory of the project directory.

It can be installed using the rainbow command line. Open a terminal by clicking the Terminal Emulator on the desktop. Then enter the following command:

sudo rainbow --install ~/Projects/MyApp/build/x86_64/com.seagate.myapp-1.0-x86_64.rbw

Installing the app

You can now inspect the running app by using the following command:

sudo rainbow --list com.seagate.myapp

Checking the app

Now to test the app, open the web browser by clicking the top left icon of the desktop:

Open the browser

And type in the URL that was displayed in the url field of the app details, in our case this is http://10.0.2.15/apps/myapp/

You should get something similar to the following:

Testing the app

If that’s not the case, then carefully restart the previous steps and make sure you haven’t missed everything.

Going further

So far we have only created a dummy app that just displays a very simple web page. Of course this is far from what the NAS OS SDK is capable. The purpose of this section was to get you started and present the main tools offered by the SDK.

The next section will be about Understanding Apps, and will present the different steps that we have performed with much more details.