Network and system goals and objectives

This post will mainly be an outline for the various features and capabilities I want my system to have by the time I'm through with the project. It will serve as a framework to guide the remainder of my efforts on this front.

Ubuntu system 

These are the things I need to get set up on the server

• Install Edimax AC1200 USB wifi adapter
• Set up Samba to be accessible from any computer on the network without requiring a password. Allow network access to the backup hard drive.
• I may be amenable to creating user accounts and requiring passwords, but this would be different from how it was configured before
• Ensure that upon reboot, that I can ssh back into the system to log back in
• Everything needs to be mounted automatically after a reboot
• For the time being, I'm going to forgo this. 
• Configure a remote access solution to view the screen (VNC or something like NoMachine)
• I went with x2go, which seems to be working fine and is really easy to set up. 
• Just as a quick note: when using x2go with SSH keys, if you are using Puttygen to generate the keys, make sure to use the conversion option to export the private key to OpenSSH format. x2go can't use the native PuTTY .ppk format, and attempting to do so only results in repeated requests to "Enter passphrase to decrypt a key", followed by an Authentication Failed error.
• Install and configure Crashplan, begin backing up the hard drive again
• This was pretty easy too, just follow the instructions on the Crashplan website.

Network

Additionally, there are a few things I want to do on the network side.

• Set up the Netgear WNDR4500 router I got from Newegg (running dd-wrt) as the main router for the network, using the cable modem/router only as a passthrough
• Set up OpenVPN on the router to allow access to my home network from anywhere in the world
• As part of this, I want to make sure that I can route my traffic from other locations through my home network. This would be useful, for example, when accessing the internet from a public wifi hotspot. 
• Previously I had the ability to wake my main desktop by sending a magic packet to the LAN cable. However, the primary connection will likely be a wireless USB adapter, and there isn't a real "wake on wifi" standard. But I may be able to wake it from the LAN cable that is plugged into the "client bridge" router that is primarily being used to get our older non-wireless printer onto the network. 
• Internal DNS server - I would really like to be able to access my devices using hostnames such as desktop.home, or something similar, rather than keeping track of all the IP addresses for each device. 
• This may be difficult, and with the small size of the network I might consider either just tracking all the IP addresses, or maybe keeping a central "hosts" file that can be synced to all machines on the network. 

Note: This post is part of a loose series. Go here for a full list of all posts in the series.