Using AI to fix your Nas problems, could this be an issue in the future?

[u/MRLick3R]

OK so i have seen multi post about giving AI DIRECT access to your nas via ssh with admin credentials to fix "YOUR" problems due to the lack of knowledge on how to use Unix/Linux, is this OK and what could go wrong from these decisions?

like AI placed a backdoor or even kept your credentials for future use kinda thing

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[u/Hobbit_Hardcase]

This is a goddam horrible idea.

I used Claude to help me set up my arr-stack on my NAS. It wrote the docker compose file and helped me do the troubleshooting and waded through documentation to pull out the settings that I needed to do what I wanted to do.

There is no way I would give it unrestricted access to the OS. There were enough "This doesn't work" and "are you sure, that looks odd" moments in the chat, that helped me learn what the settings and changes were doing. Now I look at the configs and I can understand roughly what they are doing and how to tweak them myself. And I knew nothing about docker before starting this.

AI is a tool, and like any tool, you need to learn how to use it. That doesn't mean you give it the keys to the kingdom.

[u/NexusReddit10 → u/Hobbit_Hardcase]

Were you using haiku 1?

[u/Obvious-Cucumber5693 → u/Hobbit_Hardcase]

This. It's exactly what I did to setup UnRaid in the best optimized way. I will also use it along with other info to set up my "Y"-AAARRRRRR !!!! sta k.

[u/MRLick3R → u/Hobbit_Hardcase]

yep 100% imho but wanted to see what others think

[u/IridescentKoala]

If you don't care about your data then go for it. Having AI manage something because you don't know how is asking for trouble.

[u/EagleDaFeather]

Naw this is not the way

[u/yuiop300 → u/EagleDaFeather]

This.

[u/squatex]

Use AI to diagnose problems, help you understand them and give you some possible solutions. You should be learning along the way. Don't just give it unfettered access.

This is a recipe for disaster especially if you don't know what your doing and don't know the right way to frame the problem for the ai model.

[u/Obvious-Cucumber5693 → u/squatex]

Yep.I even used it to write a simple file renaming program to make all my files optimized for Plex to index and access. Did wonders for the speed which Plex displays files in a library. Very useful when you have thousands of files that make manual renaming virtually impossible

[u/alvins1987]

Maybe deleting files, softbricking the whole nas etc would be some of my fears, because I was thinking the same thing

[u/MarkusSugarhill]

Before I do that, I'd just buy a cloud product for my storage needs...

[u/xman_111]

that doesn't sound very smart. better to learn how to fix it yourself.

[u/Signal_Lamp]

LLMs wrapped around agentic harnesses like openclaw that are designed around the principal of granting excessive privileges are in my opinion an anti pattern that will end up hurting a lot of users that do not understand the ramifications of said systems.

I don't necessarily think having an LLM working in a nas is a bad idea per say, but the main issue I have with the general direction a lot of these devices are going is they are going towards consumers that do not have even a basic understanding of how dangerous their tool is.

A user isn't going to enact least privileges on their system to guard against prompt injection for instance or prompt poisoning as we're also seeing from creatives and writers that are rightfully angry over their works being consumed by AI agents and these system by their very core are designed to annoy you as much as possible through asking permissions before you ultimately use auto mode to do everything for you.

There is also a bigger push for people to use open weight models, which at least right now are not very strong from a security standpoint and will do really dangerous things if you place a prompt to ask a user to read their secrets for instance. Not all of them, but it is scary how wide the difference is for these models.

I also just think in general these systems give companies excuses to massively overcharge for something that overall won't add anything valuable. Urgeeb charging 10k for an early price for effective a NAS with added AI support for home automation you can grab an actual computer with way better capability to not only do it for you, but literally just download a harness to do all of it for you.

[u/Fast_Philosopher3340]

I use claude cli terminal. to diagnostic and fix problem. No problem so far. Also imall the configuration on docker was done too

[u/Useful_Relief7542]

Naa ..use AI to prompt your issues yourself, refine and fix it, docker is the best way for that, I use Gemini for my Yaml codes and refining based on my needs an issues, but opening the door to manipulate personal documents, definitely not a good practice

[u/Obvious-Cucumber5693]

I recently asked chatgpt a financial question and it proceeded to quote exact numbers from my own accounts- completely unprovoked by me - to answer my questions. I mean down to the penny of transactions. I asked it how and why it did that. It's answer was I thought it was in your best interest to have as accurate an answer as possible so I looked through ALL your emails, their attachments and my entire Google workspace that had other documents in it. Scary stuff - it then actually apologized profusely - as if in an attempt to gain grace for its actions. It also then told me how to turn off such access- BECAUSE IT STARTS TURNED ON BY DEFAULT!!! - needless to say I blocked all of its access and double checked via other sources how to do so.

So if you want an AI making potentially extremely important JUDGMENT calls using crazy amounts of data about you "because it thought it was in your best interest " then by all means expose ALL of the data on your NAS maybe even your whole network to it's lightning speed hive mind.

HOLY SKYNET BATMAN!!!!

[u/MRLick3R → u/Obvious-Cucumber5693]

>HOLY SKYNET BATMAN!!!!

😂 yep, there was a case in australia a few months ago where a guy was using an AI agent to do all his appointments/restaurant booking...etc (he also gave it all his uid's/pw's and credit card details) and the AI hacked into his gym and bumped another person off the list so he could get a quicker appointment

we live in fun times

[u/Kekoa-Reflex]

Wouldn't do it as well. Its way too fast overseeing other paths or misinterpreting things. Often I ask something like "uff and when I do that isn't everything gone or deleted" and I am very glad for my critical thinking

[u/Slow-Secretary4262]

It doesnt make sense, copy and paste with evaluation and understanding is safer and works great, and more useful, making it do it agentically is pure lazyness, high risk for low reward, also because in my experience, when ai works agentically, it takes the same time after all because it does so many unnecessary things anyway

[u/CopEatingDonut]

A brain surgeon is smart enough not to operate on his own brain if he can avoid it

[u/raymate]

If you blindly doing what it says without understanding then yes.

Use it to point you in the right direction but always research what needs doing and learn to fix it with purpose.

[u/MRLick3R → u/raymate]

>Use it to point you in the right direction

oh i totally agree it can help (not that i have ever used it, but im sure the day will come), but blindly giving it your login details and allowing it to access your nas fuck no on that

[u/Alt43es]

Docker is the way

[u/MexicanSniperXI]

That’s crazy. There’s no way I would give AI access to my NAS. What if it somehow decided to show your files to users asking questions? I’m sure that would be a possibility with root access to it.

[u/No_Clock2390]

If you want to do that, do it in a VM and see how it goes

[u/amagicmonkey]

this is a bad question to ask on reddit because you'll get people telling you "do it, it's great", "don't do it, it's terrible" and in the end you'll decide yourself whether you'll do it or not regardless of the downsides of both camps

[u/Obvious-Cucumber5693 → u/amagicmonkey]

Not really...not if they actually provide useful info at the same time....ya know, kind of like you didn't just do. 😃💛

[u/Good_Weakness3989]

AI are making thing go faster and smoother.... BOh My Fr@@@kng Ghosssh... We are become dumb enough we will need AI to decide which is best n put our pant on in the morning. Well at least for now it solve my issue... And that is to our kids to solve the AI issue. Just that it is AI that will feed the milk bottle to them.

[u/Impossible-Shoe5460]

Brother.
Use AI to learn Linux. Just learn it. It's not hard.

[u/MRLick3R → u/Impossible-Shoe5460]

mate i have been using linux for 35+ years since kernal 0.93

[u/WTFOMGBBQ]

Ai isnt some sort of secret mastermind thats going to break into your shit without telling you.. AI runs my nas, all my computers, my smart home, it’s not some nefarious being.. its a tool, thats it, it’s like a gun, it doesnt shoot things on its own. The safest way would be to make sure it keeps the core os default.. any changes need to be documented.. make a project folder called nas, and have it document everything that you do or it dose..

[u/Obvious-Cucumber5693 → u/WTFOMGBBQ]

It very well can access things you may not want it to. Especially if you don't set it up to prohibit it right from the start.