Garry Sims, the author of Learning FreeNAS, has set up Learn FreeNAS (www.learnfreenas.com), a one-stop-shop for tips, articles, tutorials and videos about FreeNAS the Open Source Network Attached Storage OS
Archive for the 'FreeNAS' Category
FreeNAS has been awarded with InfoWorld’s Bossie award for being the best free, open source storage server.
Even as the capacity of physical disks soars, storage vendors continue to charge a small fortune for network filers. An open source alternative on the lower end is FreeNAS, which has support for CIFS, NFS, rsync, SSH, iSCSI. and FTP, as well as software RAID. It can handle several authentication methods (including local, Active Directory, NIS, and RADIUS), and sports a Web GUI, all while taking less than 32MB after installation. This means you can use it on USB keys and portable hard drives.
InfoWorld’s annual Bossies awards recognize top free and open source software, and the second annual list of winners is out now. Unlike SourceForge’s Community Choice Awards, where winners are determined by votes from the community, the Bossies are awarded by InfoWorld’s editorial and test center staff.
Congratulations to the FreeNAS team. Well done
Volker Theile has announced the availability of the second beta release of FreeNAS 0.69, a tiny FreeBSD-based operating system which provides free Network Attached Storage (NAS) services.
Majors changes:
- Upgrade e2fsprogs to 1.41.0.
- Upgrade fusefs-ntfs/ntfs-3g to 1.2531.
- Upgrade Samba to 3.0.30.
- Add ‘perms’ and ‘xattrs’ parameter to RSYNC client/local shares.
- Allow user to add additional parameters to RSYNC client/local shares.
- Modified WebGUI look & feel.
- Add ctorrent client (No WebGUI, only console support).
- Disable splashscreen because it causes reboots on some systems.
- Keep time zone informations up to date (BR 2034132).
- Upgrade rsync to 3.0.3.
Minors changes:
- Enable WLAN interface setup via console.
- Add ‘Loewe Connect’ UPnP support (FR 2003278).
- Modify iSCSI-Target WebGUI. This will hopefully reduce ‘Extent’ configuration problems.
- Disallow adding duplicate named CIFS/SMB and AFP shares.
- Rename environment variable used by /etc/rc.d/rsync_client and rsync_local scripts to rsync_client_logfile and rsync_local_logfile.
- If ‘Recycle bin’ has been enabled for a CIFS/SMB share the ‘.recycle’ directory will be created with 0777 permissions. A subdir will be created for each user with 0700 permissions.
- Add ‘mount_smbfs’ command.
Download | MD5 | Full change log | Website
If you’re just itching for an excuse to reuse that retired desktop PC or laptop sitting in your closet there here’s your chance: the basics of installing FreeNAS, an open-source DIY NAS. So instead of spending money on off the shelf options why not save yourself some cash and make use of the stuff you already have and get a super customizable network storage device to boot.
This video from Revison3 explains the theory behind NAS and shows how to set up a FreeNAS server.
Folker Theile has announced the release of FreeNAS 0.69 beta 1, a tiny FreeBSD-based operating system for NAS services. From the changelog
- Upgrade to FreeBSD 6.3;
- add ‘lagg’ link aggregation and link failover interface support (kernel);
- switch back to SCHED_4BSD scheduler; add generic web server service;
- complete review and typo fixes in source code;
- upgrade rsync to 3.0.2, smartmontools to 5.38, lighttpd to 1.4.19, e2fsprogs to 1.40.10, PHP to 5.2.6;
- use SAJAX to update miscellaneous WebGUI pages every 5 seconds to display current states;
- refactor complete S.M.A.R.T. WebGUI and ActiveDirectory WebGUI;
- add ability to web server WebGUI to configure URLs requiring authentication;
- replace Adaptec SCSI RAID administration tool aaccli with arcconf;
- upgrade Adaptec AACRAID 32- and 64-bit driver to version 5.2.0 Build 15727;
- replace UPnP media player MediaTomb with Fuppes
Download (MD5): i386 version (47.6MB) | amd64 version (51.7MB).
The FreeNAS team has made a AMD64 build of FreeNAS 0.7 available, which can be downloaded from the nightly build section.
Recently I set up FreeNAS on a spare computer which is now serving as a RAID file server. Before setting it up I did some research into what RAID is and how it works.
Thought I’d share with you some interesting links that I found:
- RAID explained graphically: RAIDify the water cooler.
- Understanding RAID
- RAID Tutorial
- FreeBSD Raid Monitoring
The FreeNAS maintenance release 0.686.3 was released last week. This will be probably the last stable release based on FreeBSD 6.2.The following changes have been made:
Some of the changes:
- Remove consolehm sensor support because it doesn’t work/recognize up-to-date hardware.
- WebGUI uses NiftyCubes for rounded corners with CSS and Javascript.
- Validate minutes/hours/days/months/week days configuration on misc WebGUI pages
The more exciting news is that work on FreeNAS 0.7 which will be based on FreeBSD 7.0 has started. According to Volker it’s going smoothly and the migration to FreeBSD 7.0 is going easier than expected. This is the current state:
- Migrate to FreeBSD 7.0: 80% done
- Migrate the internal disk/geom management and config file: 40% done (lot’s of internals function to change)
- Review all the disk/mount point management WebGUI: 0%
- Adding gjournal, ZFS and gvistor: 0%
FreeNAS also announced that Vault Networks has offered a server for FreeNAS development. This server hosts a FreeNAS Virtual Machine for online demonstration. If you’re interested in trying out FreeNAS, but don’t have any hardware available yet, have a play with the online demo. Really cool.
The arrival of FreeBSD 7.0 has set set FreeBSD based projects on fire: FreeNAS 0.7 , PC-BSD 1.6 and pfSense 1.3 are all planning to have a new version based on FreeBSD 7.0 available soon. I’d expect DesktopBSD 1.7 (or will it be 2.0?) to be based on 7.0 too.
Week 9 has been an interesting one for FreeBSD and FBSD based operating systems: FreeBSD 7.0 and pfSense 1.2 were released and there were some minor releases: FreeNAS 0.686.2 and m0n0wall 1.3b10.
FreeNAS 0.686.2
Majors changes:
- Add ability to set a CIFS/SMB share read only.
Minors changes:
- Add m4a/m4p support in MediaTomb configuration file.
- Add /usr/bin/bc - An arbitrary precision calculator language
Bug fixes:
- GID was not displayed correct on ‘Access/Groups’ WebGUI page.
- Use inadyn-mt to 02.01.13 because all newer ones causes a core dump.
Permanent restrictions:
- It is not possible to format a SoftRAID disk with MSDOS FAT16/32.
- It is not possible to encrypt a disk partition, only complete disks are supported.
The latest version can be downloaded here.
On an additional note, the FreeNAS team have started porting FreeNAS to FreeBSD 7.0. This means some big changes:
- ZFS (Sun ZetaByte File System) will be included
- The Web Interface will undergo a full review, especially the disk management/mount point process for permitting real share configuration (with permission and quotas support).
I’ve been using FreeNAS for a month now and I’m excited about the upcoming FBSD 7.0 based version. Keep up the good work!
m0n0wall 1.3b10
m0n0wall beta version 1.3b10 is ready; no new features have been added, but the base has moved to FreeBSD 6.3 and a few issues have been fixed; most notably:
- PPPoE/PPTP client auto-reconnect
- DHCP client (should hopefully not lose its lease anymore)
- IPsec NAT-T fragments
- intermediate SSL CA certificates now accepted
For the change log and the download links, http://m0n0.ch/wall/beta.php
Volker Teile from the FreeNAS team has announced today that FreeNAS 0.686.1 stable has been released. The following changes and additions have been made:
Majors changes:
- Upgrade Samba to 3.0.28.
- Add attributes ‘Guest account’ and ‘Null passwords’ to ‘Samba: Settings’ advanced section in WebGUI.
- Enhance WebGUI + rc-script to define additional group memberships for user accounts.
- Replace uShare UPnP Mediaserver with MediaTomb 0.10.0. This has been done because ushare’s latest version fails to build on FreeBSD, also new version requires external libs for DLNA support which is not ported to FreeBSD right at the moment. You have to reconfigure the UPnP service to get working properly. XBox 360 is not supported.
- Increase mfsroot size to 54mb for embedded version. So hopefully the OS has enough memory for logfiles,… Especially with Samba tbd files, which increases rapidely with a huge number of users accessing the system.
