5 More Things To Do With FreeNAS

Aside from using FreeNAS for its NAS purposes, there are other uses for it. For those a little more technically inclined. I've found several more things you can do with FreeNAS. You may need to refer to all posts and comments to get everything working. I have not tried all these yet but will do so when I have the time.

1. Podcast downloading
2. Using FreeNAS as a Printer Server - see latest on Instructables
3. Using FreeNAS to download Torrents
4. Simple Webserver - I'll write more about this in a future post, but it is straight forward.
   
5. Wiki Server - This fits right on top of the webserver. FreeNAS already has PHP! ;)
   

To read more about FreeNAS see My other FreeNAS posts:

• 9 Great Things About FreeNAS
• 9 Reasons To Use FreeNAS At Work
• 11 FreeNAS Tips
• Data Recovery Using FreeNAS
• Setup Samba Shares with FreeNAS - A 5 Minute Tutorial
  

Related Books

• Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution - Great FreeNAS reference book.
• Network Know-How: An Essential Guide for the Accidental Admin
• Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition

For additional links to tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.

Setup Samba Shares With FreeNAS - A 5 Minute Tutorial

After reading some tweets between Beq and Freenas on Twitter recently, I thought it would be a great idea to write a quick tutorial on setting up a basic Samba (CIFS/SMB) tutorial for anonymous access. I had gone through similar problems when I first started using FreeNAS. The process is very similar the one I used for Data Recovery Using FreeNAS. Note that I am running this setup and keeping it on as a LiveCD setup. All these settings will be lost upon a reboot. You can save the settings to a Floppy or a USB drive.


Bootup and Install

• I Boot up with the LiveCD.
• Configure the IP address via DHCP (option 2)
  
• I go to another machine for the WebGUI to do additional configuration.
  
• From the WebGUI, I login with the default admin/freenas account.
• Then I setup the Disks - steps are below.
  

Adding the Disk

• Disks - Management - Add Choose the Disk.
• In my case it is ad8.
• I give the description as HD (Hard Disk)
• I leave everything else default, leaving the Preformatted file system as UFS (GPT and Soft Updates). Click Save
  
• Now Click Apply Changes
• You should see the status of the Disk as Online

Format The Disk

• If this is a new disk (to FreeNAS) you should format it.
• Choose the Disk you setup in the above step
• Choose the File System.
• Give it a Label (optional)
• Click Format Disk

Mount the Disk

• Disks - Mount Point - Management - Add mount point
• I Choose the Disk I configured above
• I choose EFI GPT as the partition, since I am using the entire disk for data storage.
• Filesystem: I choose UFS
• Sharename: I call it Windows. You can call it anything you want.
• I leave everything else as the default and click Add
  
• save the changes by clicking Apply Changes
• Status should go to OK
  

Setup Samba (CIFS/SMB) Services

• Go to Services - CIFS/SMB
• On the Settings tab, make sure you check off Enable
• Choose Anonymous for Authentication (you can change this once you get it all working)
  
• Give it a NetBIOS name and Workgroup of your choosing
• I left all settings as the default. Click Save and Restart
  

Setup Samba (CIFS/SMB) Shares

• On the Shares tab, Click on the Add Share icon (plus sign)
• Give your Samba Share a name and put a comment in so you know what it is.
• Choose the Path. This should be /mnt/mountpoint. Where the mountpoint is what you setup in the Mount The Disk step's Share name. In my case it would be called Windows. THIS STEP IS VERY IMPORTANT!
  
• Click the Add button.
• Click Apply changes

From Your windows machine, or any machine that can access a Samba share, I go to the folder \\freenasIP - You should see your available Samba share now.

I know all the mounts and share names and all the other steps can be very confusing if you have never set up FreeNAS before. It was confusing to me until I did it a few times. I hope this has helped you get your FreeNAS system up and running. Let me know your thoughts on this process and if this tutorial helped you at all. To read more about FreeNAS see My other FreeNAS posts:

• 9 Great Things About FreeNAS
• 9 Reasons To Use FreeNAS At Work
• 11 FreeNAS Tips
• Data Recovery Using FreeNAS

You can buy the Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution book if you are looking for a good reference book.

For additional links to tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.

Data Recovery Using FreeNAS

I have written several posts about FreeNAS in the last several weeks. For such a small and compact OS, I have found this to be one of my favorite tools of late. I first wrote about 9 Great Things About FreeNAS and then I wrote 9 Reasons To Use FreeNAS At Work. I then wrote 11 FreeNAS Tips that I picked up after using it and reading about it for several weeks.

Today I would like to talk about how FreeNAS can be used as a data recovery tool. Below is my account of how I used the FreeNAS LiveCD to restore data from a Windows Laptop. I've done this on a HP/Compaq Windows XP Laptop and it worked very well.

Bootup and Install

• I Boot up with the LiveCD.
• Configure the IP address via DHCP
• I go to another machine for the WebGUI to do additional configuration.
  
• From the WebGUI, I login with the default admin/freenas account.
• Then I setup the Disks - steps are below.
  

Adding the Disk I want to Recover

• Disks - Management - Add Choose the Disk.
• In My case it was the acd4, the only other one being a RAM Disk or CDROM Drive (acd0)
• I give the description as HD (Hard Disk)
• I leave everything else default, but I do change the Preformatted File system to NTFS
• Save the changes

Mount the Disk

• Disks - Mount Point - Management - Add mount point
• I Choose the Disk I configured above
• I chosse partition 1, since I know the Laptop only has one primary partition.
• Filesystem: I choose NTFS
• Sharename: I call it Windows. You can call it anything you want.
• I leave everything else as the default.
• save the changes.

Get to the Files

• For the easiest access to files I setup the FTP service.
• I go to Services - FTP
• I click enable and then Save and Restart.
• From windows explorer (on the machine I did the WebAdmin work and where I want the data restored to) I go to the folder ftp://freenasIP
• I see the files from my windows install and grab whatever files I need to backup.

Shutdown the Laptop

• When Done copying, I just shutdown the system.
• System - Shutdown

Voila! Now you know how to use FreeNAS as a data recovery tool. There are other dedicated recovery tools, such as SystemRescueCD, but I find FreeNAS very easy to setup and it gives me the results I want faster. Do you use FreeNAS? What features do you like best? Share your thoughts and comments. You can get the current iso of FreeNAS here. Do you have other useful resources for FreeNAS?

You can buy the Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution book if you are looking for a good reference book.

For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.

9 Reasons To Use FreeNAS At Work

Several days ago I wrote about 9 Great Things About FreeNAS. These were some ideas and uses for FreeNAS in general, whether it's at home or work. Here are some more reasons you may want to use FreeNAS, at work!

1. Use existing old hardware - This will run well with your boss.
2. You don't need hardware - Run it as a VM, saves you from having to use any new or old computing equipment!
3. No Monitor needed - Once configured, you probably won't touch the physical box again!
4. Speed up networking - By using it as a Windows Workgroup Master Browser, you can turn off the Browser service on your workstations. Which should reduce network traffic in a workgroup setting.
5. No user accounts to regulate as a public share - One of my favorite features, create one box for anonymous access so you have access to often accessed installs and drivers.
6. Can integrate with AD - I have not tried this yet, but I see an option to integrate it with AD accounts!
7. Can function as a standalone server - You don't need Active Directory or anything else to make this functional.
8. Quick setup for projects - You can set one up as a project server, once over you can easily turn it off.
9. Run it from LiveCD - You don't even need to install it (if you don't need to reboot and save settings). It can function very well off a LiveCD. I have one system running this way for some time now!

Do you use FreeNAS? What features do you like best? Share your thoughts and comments. You can get the current iso of FreeNAS here. Do you have other useful resources for FreeNAS?

You can buy the Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution book if you are looking for a good reference book.

For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.

9 Great Things About FreeNAS

I've been using FreeNAS version 0.69 for several weeks now. I've also briefly used an older version and my experience with it so far has been GREAT! The initial setup of the disk drives did take a little longer than I thought it would. The OS itself booted up fine and everything since then has been pretty much a breeze! If you need a few pointers or need a bit of help with your setup, leave me a comment on this post.

So what are some of the best things about FreeNAS?

1. Share files with more than one computer, a USB drive lets only one pc access the files at a time, with FreeNAS you can have many machines access your files at the same time!
   
2. Stream multimedia content to your PS3, Xbox, Media Center PC.
   
3. Share your iTunes playlists
4. Share your files without having to login using SMB/CIFS and FTP services - anonymous access
   
5. Serve HTTP content via the simple webserver, I serve a copy of my TiddlyWiki
   
6. Practice your basic unix command line.
7. Easy to add additional storage.
   
8. Put your old clunker to use. Yes, your old Pentium II or Pentium II can be brought back to productive life with this software! I'm currently using a 500Mhz pc and have tested with a dual-core PC. Both of them work great!
   
9. Built-in BitTorrent Client - you can free up your pc from BitTorrent downloads. The first bittorrent file I downloaded was DSL, which I knew to be a small download.

If you are security conscious, I really recommend you run FreeNAS behind a firewall. This is a great tool to have and you don't want your new toy to be the hole in your network security procedures.

FreeNAS Resources I found that are helpful:

• FreeNAS.org - the source of the actual software is a great resource of course.
  
• LearnFreeNAS.com - A helpful site all about FreeNAS.
• Linux Backups with NAS - Found an article about backup to NAS using Linux, not exactly FreeNAS based, but found it somewhat helpful.
  

Alternatives:

• OpenFiler
  
• NASLite - Floppy Disk based NAS
  

You can buy the Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution book if you are looking for a good reference book.

Do you use FreeNAS? What features do you like best? Share your thoughts and comments. You can get the current iso of FreeNAS here. Do you have other useful resources for FreeNAS?

For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.