GitHub - itprogresscorp/Mini-Bucket: NAS Control Panel

5 min read Original article ↗

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Version 3.6.4

A resource-efficient web-based NAS control panel for any hardware.
Debian 9 | PHP 7.0 | SQLite | Standard Linux Utilities

No heavy frameworks. No Docker bloat. Just pure PHP, HTML, JS, and classic Linux tools.

📌 About

Mini Bucket is a lightweight yet powerful server management web panel designed for resource efficiency on any hardware.
It works only with built-in PHP 7.0, HTML, JavaScript, and standard Linux utilities. No additional modules. No powerful hardware required.

🎯 Ideal for:

  • Home NAS on any old PC or SBC
  • Office file servers with limited resources
  • Raspberry Pi 1 and other single-board computers
  • Repurposed enterprise hardware (128 MB RAM is enough)
  • Edge servers and remote storage

✅ Tested on:

Hardware RAM Status
Raspberry Pi 1 256 MB ✅ Fully working
Netgear Stora MS2000 128 MB ✅ Fully working
Debian 9 on x86 512 MB+ ✅ Fully working

🚀 Key Features

📊 1. Live Dashboard

  • CPU (total + per-core), temperature, RAM, Load Average
  • Interactive graphs: CPU, network traffic (RX/TX), Disk I/O
  • SMART status, temperature, disk space usage
  • RAID & LVM status, mount points
  • Network: IP, MAC, per-interface traffic

🔥 2. Firewall Manager (UFW)

  • Enable/disable UFW, view status and rules
  • CRUD operations + search & filter
  • Preset rules: SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, MySQL, PostgreSQL
  • IP blocking, active connections, colored UFW logs

📈 3. System Monitor + Diagnostics

  • Real-time CPU, RAM, Disk, Uptime stats
  • Tools: ping, traceroute, netstat, port scanner, DNS lookup, speed test
  • Process and systemd service management
  • System logs with filtering and export

🖥️ 4. Web Console (SSH via Browser)

  • Full shell access
  • VSCode-style dark theme with syntax highlighting
  • Command history, XSS protection

⏰ 5. Cron Job Manager

  • CRUD operations with flexible scheduling (5 cron fields)
  • Quick presets, next run preview
  • Logging, manual execution
  • Support for remote servers — view and manage cron on other hosts

👥 6. User Management

  • Panel Users (SQLite) + System Users (Linux)
  • OS Group management
  • Password generator with strength indicator

💾 7. Disk, RAID & LVM Management

  • Disk Manager: GPT/MBR init, partitions, mounting, SMART
  • RAID Manager: RAID 0,1,5,6,10, LINEAR, hot-spare, scrub
  • LVM Manager: PV/VG/LV, snapshots
  • Mount Master: mount local partitions, RAID, LVM, SMB/CIFS, NFS

📁 8. Dual-Panel File Manager

  • Two independent panels, batch operations
  • Background operations with progress & cancel
  • Archive, permissions (chmod + ACL)
  • Download folders as on-the-fly .tar

🌐 9. Sharing Services

  • FTP (vsftpd) — start/stop, directories, SSL, limits
  • NFS — exports, clients, statistics
  • SMB/CIFS (Samba) — users, shares, sessions
  • Rsync — daemon, modules, users

🛠️ 10. System Manager

  • Service management (NFS, SMB, Rsync, FTP, SSH, Apache2, UFW, NTP)
  • Power Management (reboot, shutdown)
  • Date/Time (timezone, NTP), network (hostname, DHCP/Static, DNS)

🔍 11. System Checker

  • Check All / Fix All buttons
  • Categories: packages, services, permissions, config, firewall, network

🔌 12. Plugin System (NEW in 3.6.4)

Mini Bucket now supports plugins — extend the panel with your own functionality!

What plugins can do:

  • Run on local host (where Mini-B is installed)

  • Run on remote hosts via API

  • Auto-install from main server repository to remote hosts

  • Have their own SQLite database

  • Use system APIs and authentication

  • First plugins available:

📋 Log Manager — view, search, and manage system logs without SSH. Live mode, export, log clearing, file browser.

🧩 Plugin Template — starter template for developers. Ready structure, auth, DB examples, API integration.

Resources for developers:

📚 Plugin Development Documentation - https://mini-bucket.ru/wiki/knowledge-base/dev-pugins/plugin-development/

🗣 Forum for plugin discussions - https://mini-bucket.ru/community/community/plugins/

📦 All available plugins - https://mini-bucket.ru/plugins/

Install plugins via: System → Plugins → Repository → Install

🌍 13. Multilingual interface (NEW in 3.6.6)

  • Available language packs: Russian, English
  • Built-in plugin for convenient management of installed language packs
  • Ability to edit and customize language packs

🔄 Key Rotation System (for multi-server setups)

In distributed systems with multiple servers (masters and slaves), Mini Bucket supports:

  • Dynamic API keys — automatic rotation with zero downtime
  • Cascading key rotation — changes automatically propagate to all connected servers
  • Unlimited hierarchy levels — masters and slaves with arbitrary nesting depth
  • Fault tolerance — exponential backoff retries

This allows you to manage a whole cluster of NAS servers from a single panel.

🎨 UI/UX Features

  • Card style with rounded corners, gradients, shadows
  • Toast notifications (success/error/warning/info)
  • Loading preloader
  • Tab navigation with counters
  • Hover effects and animations
  • Auto-refresh for active tabs (2–30 seconds)
  • Confirmation dialogs for dangerous actions

🔐 Security

  • Critical files moved to var/www/minib/ outside web root
  • Authentication via isAuthenticated()
  • Output escaping (htmlspecialchars)
  • JSON storage (no direct writes to system configs without confirmation)
  • AJAX API — all actions sync with the server
  • Apache configuration hardened

📦 Installation

Requirements:

  • Debian 9 (Stretch) or compatible
  • PHP 7.0+ (built-in modules only)
  • SQLite 3
  • Standard utilities: mdadm, lvm2, ufw, vsftpd, samba, rsync, smartctl, nmap, traceroute

⚠️ Important system requirement:

Mini Bucket must be installed on a clean system.
It is not recommended to install it on a system where other services or packages are already present.
During installation, permissions for some system files will be changed, and modifications will be made to configuration files.

Install command:

git clone https://github.com/itprogresscorp/Mini-Bucket.git
cd Mini-Bucket
chmod +x install.sh
bash install.sh

P.S. Feedback

The project lives and grows thanks to your ideas and bug reports.

Website - https://mini-bucket.ru/

Forum / Community — https://mini-bucket.ru/community/

Wiki — https://mini-bucket.ru/wiki/

Version history - https://mini-bucket.ru/updates/

Installation - https://mini-bucket.ru/install/

Donations — https://mini-bucket.ru/donation/

And remember: Mini Bucket is not just another framework-based build. It's a lightweight panel for old hardware, built on pure PHP, JS, and HTML. And it works.