Xigmanas – Installing Packages to an Embeded install.

Booting Xigmanas from USB or eMMC Drives allows for the attached HDDs to be exclusively used for storage which can simplify the process of migrating to an alternate NAS solution or hardware.

Typically, you would use an embeded install of Xigmanas when booting from USB or eMMC due to the size limitations of these Drives.
The downside to embeded images is that the packages are pre-installed into the image and new packages can’t be installed as in a traditional Linux install.

There is a solution found in a Xigmanas Forum post by using Union-FS which will be sumarised below, but thanks to Jamaroney for posting this information.

HDD Preparation
Select which HDD you will use for the installation of additional packages. I will be using /mnt/disk0.

SSH to Xigmanas and enter the follwing commands to create the required direcories.
cd /mnt/disk0
mkdir extensions
mkdir extensions/usr
mkdir extensions/usr/local
mkdir extensions/var
mkdir extensions/var/db
mkdir extensions/var/db/pkg
mkdir extensions/var/cache
mkdir extensions/var/cache/pkg

Enter the following commands tothe topof the Comands Scripts page as “PostInit”.
rsync -a /usr/local/ /mnt/disk0/extensions/usr/local/
mount_unionfs -o rw /mnt/disk0/extensions/usr/local/ /usr/local/
mount_unionfs -o rw /mnt/disk0/extensions/var/db/pkg /var/db/pkg mkdir /var/cache && mkdir /var/cache/pkg
mount_unionfs -o rw /mnt/disk0/extensions/var/cache/pkg /var/cache/pkg