Monthly Archive for April, 2009

FreeNAS links, howtos and video

Published on April 30, 2009 in FreeNAS. 0 Comments Tags: .

FreeNAS LogoThe following are some links I’ve saved up with regards to FreeNAS, the FreeBSD/m0n0wall based, open source Network Attached Storage operating system.

1. More Uses For Old PCs and Laptops

The Telegraph.co.uk has an article on how to re-use that old PC in your attic. One of the recommended uses is as file-server:

Turning your old PC into a NAS device is a bit more of a challenge. The hardware requirements won’t be a problem and most PCs less than 4 or 5 years old should be up to the job, though you’ll probably need to add some extra hard drive capacity. However, unlike a multimedia server, which can also, at a pinch, still be used as a PC, a NAS device is dedicated to the one task. It is also better suited to more serious applications, as it requires a more structured approach to file management and security. It can’t easily be done using Windows-based software either but there are several freeware and open source applications that do the job very well indeed. These include FreeNAS, NASLite and NanoNAS  and OpenFiler, but they’re not for absolute beginners so be prepared for a fairly steep learning curve. [whole post here]

 

2. Connect a FreeNAS to a TiVo

Bob Bakh discusses how to set up a TiVO (settop box) to use a FreeNAS server for storage.

I configured a box to run FreeNAS on my network to manage storing Media, and backing up vital information in my home.

It was a great tool, however I wanted more, mainly the ability to simply play media stored on the FreeNAS box on my home TV without the use of a general purpose computer. One way was to use my AppleTV, hack it and use an AFP mount, or an NFS mount directly to the AppleTV, this worked well, but was a pain, and a hacked AppleTV is not a happy AppleTV. So I gave up on that plan.

I looked at my TiVo and realized I had the makings of a decent setup there, so I started to Google around for some solutions… [read the remainder]

 

3. Three Minutes to 3 Terabytes: VIA ARTiGO and FreeNAS Store Terabytes in a Shoebox

It truly is a beautiful thing when something just works. This is especially true with computers. High capacity storage has become almost a commodity with the price of an external 1 TB USB hovering around $100. All you have to do is plug in the power and connect the USB cable, and you’ve got instant storage expansion. Works great for a single computer, and you could even unplug it from one and plug it into another. While that does work, it tends to get old after a while, and if you’re using that method for backups, you will more than likely end up forgetting or just quitting altogether at some point.

Network Attached Storage (NAS) is one answer to sharing large storage devices over a network. You could buy a NAS device from your favorite local or Internet supplier, but chances are you’ll wind up with something less than what a “real” NAS has to offer. That’s where VIA’s ARTiGO A2000 comes in. The A2000 fits a full-featured computer with space for two 3.5″ SATA drives in a package about the size of a shoebox. Add to the hardware the FreeNAS open source software and you’ve got a really capable storage solution. [Read further how to setup VIA's ARTiGO A2000 with FreeNAS]

 

4. Time Machine OSX Leopard to FreeNAS

I recently replaced a Windows 2003 box with an OSX Leopard server; the users are now 90% mac users and long file names are always a problem for mac users on a windows file share so it makes sense. I installed the OSX server and setup the file shares required. Being an OSX Leopard server Time Machine is the obvious choice to backup the server. So it seems out of the box you can only use Time Machine with another OSX server or so it seems. I have always been keen on FreeNAS having used its cousin m0n0wall for some as a firewall.

A bit of quick digging round lead me to an article on ReadyNAS by DavidB. The instructions are for ReadyNAS but they work just as well for FreeNAS and I’m sure any other server you may want to use. 

A quick summary of the process I followed based on the above article:  [Read Further]

 

5. FreeNAS, IN DEPTH

Last but not least, Jupiter Broadcasting has an indepth review of FreeNAS:


PC-BSD 7.1 Galileo – reviews

Published on April 30, 2009 in PC-BSD. 0 Comments

PC-BSD LogoPC-BSD 7.1 was released two weeks ago. Distrowatch had a first look, but now there are also (short) reviews on the IT Massive and ExtremeTech.

Both reviews, though not scientific but more a like personal opinion, do like PC-BSD but also point at some weak points.

The IT Massive’s summary is:

 

 I love FreeBSD and I tried really hard to like PC-BSD but I’m sorry to say that I don’t. I like the concept of the BSD desktop but I feel its still a few years behind the Linux desktop in hardware support and you’re likely going to have more luck there.

However the PC-BSD people have done good work in making BSD more accessible to normal users which is impressive. PC-BSD has some very interesting ideas for the open source desktop like the PBI install system, I would like to see more Linux distributions do something similar to PBI or what Linux Mint does. For the most part I don’t think that not using the command line would be a problem since most tasks have graphical tools.

ExtremeTech concludes:

 

A few shortcomings aside, I really like PC-BSD 7.1. It’s free, easy to install, and offers a lot of value for any computer user that is willing to look beyond the usual operating system choices. There’s plenty of software available for download and, unlike certain Linux distributions, it’s incredibly easy to install or to remove from your system.

Real diversity in choice of operating systems is something that we should all value. As much as I like Linux why should the choice just come down to Windows or Linux? Or even Mac OS X? PC-BSD is offering users yet another alternative that’s free, secure, and very stable.

I definitely think PC-BSD is worth a download….

Sources:

FreeBSD link roundup – 28/04/09

Published on April 29, 2009 in (Free)BSD links wrap-up, BSD Certification, FreeBSD and pfSense. 0 Comments

FreeBSD

FreeBSD Logo1) Martin Wilke is looking for people to test QT 4.5.1. He also reports he managed to get Firefox 3.1 Beta4 working on FreeBSD. Please test.

2) Ivan Voras has done some virtualised benchmarking of

  • Ubuntu 8.10,
  • FreeBSD 7.1 and
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 beta

on the three currently most prominent virtualisation platforms:

  • VMWare ESX 3.5 U3,
  • Citrix XenServer 5.0 U2,
  • Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2

The results are mostly better then I thought they will be. Especially suprising was FreeBSD’s more than decent performance which actually lead the others in one benchmark…”

… The results show that a wholly-virtualized FreeBSD machine under ESXi was consistently almost as fast as the para-virtualized Xen Linux.


pfSense

pfSense logoAbout a month ago, the pfSense developers gave a sneak preview of the new pfSense dashboard theme. Following feedback and comments, Holger Bauer has now designed a new theme:

Well, after there was not too much love for my last theme I tried to do something more masscompatible this time trying to take all the critics in consideration that I earned so far:

  • less colorful, stick with the original pfSense-colors (grey/red)
  • don’t waste too much space for the header/footer
  • kind of corporate look
  • static menu, that doesn’t scroll away (I guess that at least was
  • something everybody liked about the hackathon theme)
  • more lightweight on graphics
  • So here is what I came up with so far. This is still in the making so (like always) your feedback is appreciated and might influence the final result.

New design here

 

BSD CertificationBSD Certification

Dru Lavigne has an update on the BSDA Exam

The BSD Associate Exam is now over a year old! Here are some interesting
atats so far:

  • 12 Events in all of 2008; 14 events in just the first half of 2009 
  • Over 1000 people have registered for a BSDCG ID (needed to register for an exam)
  • The exam has been held in US, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, Denmark, Ukraine, Netherlands, Argentina, and the UK
  • So far, 66 people have passed the BSDA exam and received their certificates
  • Read further

FreeBSD 7.2-RC2 Released

Published on April 25, 2009 in FreeBSD. 1 Comment

FreeBSD LogoKen Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.2:

The second of the two planed release candidates for the 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. We believe, with the exception of the new bce(4) driver not working with lagg(4), all the major issues that have come up from the testing have been addressed. We will work with the vendor to get that issue addressed post-release.
At this point we know of no problems big enough to impact the dates for the rest of the release cycle which is here:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.2R/schedule.html

There is one known issue with 7.2-RC2. We switched from KDE3 to KDE4 and during my tests done before uploading the images, a problem with package dependencies for KDE4 was discovered. The kdemultimedia4 package has audio/lame as a runtime dependency but that package cannot be pre-built due to licensing issues. So the install of kdemultimedia4 fails if you choose to install kde4. The ports folks have been notified and will make the necessary adjustments before the final release.

Read the complete release announcement for further details.

PC-BSD 7.1 vs. Kubuntu 9.04 Benchmarks

Published on April 24, 2009 in FreeBSD vs Linux, PC-BSD and X vs Y. 3 Comments

The well-know bench marking website Phoronix has carried out a benchmark run between Kubuntu 9.04 and PC-BSD 7.1 (20/04/2009)

Earlier this month PC-BSD 7.1 was released, which is based upon the FreeBSD 7.1 stable release, but of course with the extra packages and changes that make PC-BSD an easier to use BSD-based desktop operating system. PC-BSD 7.1 ships with X.Org 7.4 and KDE 4.2.2 installed along with many other packages when using the x86 or x64 DVD installations. Though with the Phoronix Test Suite now having enhanced support for PC-BSD, we decided to see how well PC-BSD 7.1 performs against Kubuntu 9.04.

Both systems perform almost equally (only seconds of difference), but Kubuntu scores more points in this test than PC-BSD.

I’d say that this test is not altogether “fair” as different versions of GCC and X.org have been used. This could easily have quite an impact on the results.

It would be interesting to see if Phoronix did this test again later on this year when FreeBSD 8.0 has come out.

Link
Details and graphs of the test

FreeBSD Security Advisories (openssl, libc)

Published on April 23, 2009 in FreeBSD Security Advisories. 0 Comments

The FreeBSD Security Team has issued the following security warnings:

  1. FreeBSD-SA-09:08.openssl  - Remotely exploitable crash in OpenSSL
  2. FreeBSD-SA-09:07.libc - Information leak in db(3)

For background info, problem description, impact, workaround and solution, have a look at the individual advisory pages: openssl | libc

FreeBSD Foundation Project: IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh

Published on April 23, 2009 in FreeBSD Foundation. 0 Comments

A couple of days ago, Google announced it’s sponsoring some FreeBSD related projects in its annual Summer of Code. Now the FreeBSD Foundation has also announced it has accepted a project (not GSoC) for funding.

Rui Paulo will be implementing the forthcoming IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh standard for FreeBSD. Wireless mesh networks are 

expected to become widespread as routers and network appliances deploy them, allowing wireless networks to be built and extended dynamically. Support for the standard will allow FreeBSD consumers to take advantage of this new technology.

FreeBSD foundation logoAs well as end-users, FreeBSD-based product vendors will benefit from access to mesh networking technology in building future versions of their products,

said Robert Watson, president of the FreeBSD Foundation.

I am thrilled to be bringing such an exciting and technically advanced feature to the FreeBSD operating system,

said FreeBSD Developer Rui Paulo. The project will be completed by July 2009.

Google SoC 2009 FreeBSD projects announced

Published on April 21, 2009 in Google. 1 Comment

google-bsdGoogle announced yesterday the students selected to participate in the Google Summer of Code 2009. Among the 1,000 students, 20 will be working on FreeBSD related projects.

The list with students, mentors and projects can be found here

We wish all the students the best and hopefully a lot/all of their coding will find their way into future FreeBSD releases.

Links

FreeBSD Wiki (GSoC2009) | Announcement | FreeBSD Project SoC 2009 |

50th BSD video posted on BSDConferences (youtube)

Published on April 21, 2009 in BSD World. 1 Comment

50 BSD related videos have now been uploaded to the BSDConferences channel on Youtube.

The newest 4 videos are :

Murray Stockely has some interesting statistics.

Videos from DCBSDCon 2009 posted (youtube)

Published on April 21, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

Murray Stokely has uploaded 8 videos from the first DCBSDCon to the BSDConferencesYouTube channel. With help from Jason Dixon and Will Backman and open source software such as avidemux, mplayer/mencoder and audacity.