The OpenMediaVault install script, a NAS on one command line

What one command actually installs

The repository description is precise, a script that installs omv-extras and openmediavault if not installed already. The README expands on that, saying the script will install openmediavault, omv-extras and the writecache plugin, and that if you already have openmediavault installed you should not worry because your openmediavault will be preserved and only the parts that are not installed will be added. That property, that it is additive rather than destructive, is the single most useful thing to know about the script, since it means the risk is in the parts it does change rather than in the parts it leaves alone. The underlying platform is openmediavault, which the documentation describes as primarily designed to be used in home environments or small home offices but not limited to those scenarios, and as a simple out of the box solution that everyone can install and administer without needing expert level knowledge of networking and storage systems.

The wiki is the documentation, the README is a pointer

The first thing the README says is to read the wiki, and the reason it gives is that the instructions in the repository are very basic and may not include everything needed for all systems, while the wiki does. The wiki links are per platform, with separate pages for Raspberry Pi, for AMD64 and for Armbian, and a note to see the wiki for other systems. There is also a link to the new user guide, and the documentation for omv-extras is at wiki.omv-extras.org. That structure is a warning as much as a map. The script is one artefact, and the platform specific knowledge, which is where the failure modes live, is spread across wiki pages that are maintained separately. For anyone writing documentation about this tool, or evaluating whether to rely on it, the honest summary is that the script is the easy part and the platform instructions are the part that determines whether the outcome is a working NAS or a machine that needs a new SD card.

Three rules that prevent the usual mistakes

The README states three constraints, and each of them exists because of a common failure. The first is about the medium. Please use a new SD card if installing on an arm or SBC device, and flash it with the latest Debian OS Lite image without a desktop environment, or the Server image, available for your board. The second is about the environment. Installing OMV with a desktop environment is not supported, and the README points at the forum for the many reasons why. The third is about networking. This script may alter previous network setups, and it has a greater chance of breaking wifi setup, so the install manual is where the help is. Taken together these say the script expects a blank machine, and that the interesting risk is not the package installation but the network reconfiguration the script performs along the way. The script can be told to skip that step, which is the subject of a later section.

Running it, and the flag that skips the network steps

The installation is a single line, and the README offers both wget and curl so you can use whichever you prefer.

sudo wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/install | sudo bash

sudo curl -sSL https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/install | sudo bash

The README stresses that the installation process demands sudo, and that it will take some time. If you would rather not let the script touch your network configuration, the workaround is to download it, make it executable and run it with the -n flag, which the README presents as the way to skip the network setup steps.

wget https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/install
chmod +x install
sudo ./install -n

Running a script piped from the network into a root shell is the shape of the install, so an adopter who wants to read the script first can download it, which is the same three line block, and read before executing.

One supported release, and older scripts that are on their own

The version policy is narrow and stated without ambiguity. The install script only supports the current OMV release, and the note says the script will always install OMV 8.x on Debian 13, Trixie. For an older, end of life OMV version there are separate scripts, one per Debian release, and the table maps them.

| OMV version | Debian release | Script | | --- | --- | --- | | OMV 7.x | Debian 12 (Bookworm) | `installOld7` | | OMV 6.x | Debian 11 (Bullseye) | `installOld6` | | OMV 5.x | Debian 10 (Buster) | `installOld5` |

The invocation is the same shape as the main install.

sudo wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/installOld7 | sudo bash

The caveat is the important part of that section. These older scripts are unmaintained and provided as is, and end of life versions of OMV may no longer install properly, because their package repositories and dependencies are no longer maintained and may have been removed. So the older scripts are a historical convenience, and the failure mode of using them is a package that cannot be fetched, not a clean error message.

The repository is a folder of shell scripts

The top level listing shows what the project actually is, and it is a set of scripts rather than a package. There is the current install script, a generic installOld and three numbered variants for versions 5, 6 and 7, a preinstall script, and a checksums file. Then there are the upgrade paths, fix5to6upgrade, fix6to7upgrade, fix7to8upgrade and upgrade4to5, which are the scripts that move an existing installation from one major release to the next. A tests/ directory sits alongside them. The presence of a checksums file and a preinstall script tells you the project takes the integrity of what it downloads seriously, and the presence of four separate upgrade scripts tells you that OMV major upgrades are a recurring chore rather than a rare event. For a user, that last point is the one to weigh, because the upgrade scripts are the part that runs on a working system with data on it.

Where to get help, and what state the project is in

Support for the script is handled through the openmediavault forum, and the README is explicit that if you get stuck in any part of the script, that is the place to find a solution. There is no issue tracker workflow described for this repository, and the community channels are the wiki, the omv-extras documentation site and the forum. On the state of the project, the repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-09-26, and the project publishes no GitHub releases, so the scripts in the repository are the artefact and there is no version stream to pin. The licence field is recorded as unknown rather than as a named licence, which is worth resolving before you redistribute the scripts or bundle them into your own image build, since a script that fetches and installs packages with root privileges is exactly the kind of artefact an organisation normally wants to have a clear licence for. The version support matrix in the README is the other document to keep current in your own notes, because the difference between a working install and a failed one is often just the Debian release underneath it.

Editorial conclusion

The install script fits a home user or a small office that wants a NAS on a Raspberry Pi or an AMD64 box without reading a distribution guide, since the script performs the whole installation and the wiki covers the platforms the script does not. It does not fit a production system, since the script is explicitly not for a desktop environment, it may rewrite a network configuration that already works, and the older scripts for end of life releases are provided as is and may simply fail. Verify three things before running it: that you are on a fresh SD card with the Debian 13 image for your board, since the script expects a clean system, that the network configuration it proposes is one you actually want, and that the writecache plugin and omv-extras repository are acceptable additions to a machine you care about.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript on GitHub
3. README